Brad Watson - The Heaven of Mercury

Creasie was standing at the stove stirring a pan of fried corn.

— Where’s that lemonade, Creasie?

— Yes, sir, I put it back in the icebox. You want me to bring y’all some more?

— No, I’ll get it.

He opened the refrigerator and got out the jug of lemonade and poured the glasses full. Dropped a couple of cubes of ice in, started back out.

— Mr. Earl, you want any more just holler, I’ll bring it out to you.

— All right.

When he got back out to the lawn chairs, Junius wasn’t there. He saw him lying in the shade of the oak tree over by the creek and walked over. Junius’s hat was over his face, his breathing heavy. He sat down beside him and drank down his glass, sipped at Junius’s. He saw Frank come out of the cabin then and go to the shed, get the fishing gear, and go to the car. Big buck grabbed the boat trailer handle with his bare hands and hauled it over to the car, hitched it, turned and waved at Earl sitting there. Bags already loaded into the car. Earl patted Junius on the arm and said, — All right, Papa, we’re heading out. Get Birdie to drive you home if you don’t want to take the train, now. Junius grunted, went on breathing heavy.

Frank was already sitting in the boat. Earl told everyone he made Frank sit back there, but truth was it was Frank’s idea and he wouldn’t budge from it. He liked it. Said come on up here, sit in the backseat. Thank you, sir, I like riding in the boat. All right then, Earl said, you hang on. I’m not taking it easy just because you’re crazy enough to want to ride in an open boat on a trailer going seventy miles an hour. Yes, sir, I like a little danger, Frank said. Suit yourself, then, Earl said. Pissed him off, first time they drove down like that, and flicking his butt out the window was done in anger. He saw Frank dodge it and try to catch it at the same time. That made him grin. So he kept doing it. Third time, Frank caught it and smoked it the rest of the way down. After that, he rarely missed. Crazy son of a bitch had his own cigarettes, now, too.

Ann’s car was already parked outside the cottage when they drove up to Maurier’s camp, the little Mercury coupe he’d given her, driven up from the Tallahassee store, which he’d had her in about six months. He drove over to the landing, backed the boat in. Frank unhooked the cable and pulled the boat over to the dock while Earl parked under the trees across from the cottages and went on in, waving to Frank. Routine was Frank’d be there next morning at five o’clock to go out on the boat. Ann would sleep in most of the morning, work on her books for the Tallahassee store in the afternoon, when he’d come in from fishing. Then he’d leave the catch with Frank to clean and ice down and they’d go out to dinner. Last day, Maurier would set up his propane kettle and Frank’d deep-fry the weekend’s catch and they’d all eat, Frank right there at the table with them. Even give him a beer. Ann liked her beer, and Earl wasn’t one of those teetotalers cared if anybody else drank, as long as they weren’t a drunk.

She was on the bed taking a nap in her clothes, pale yellow dress riding up over her knees and the toes of her stockings twisted from her shoes. Ceiling fan going full bore and blowing at a wisp of blond hair on her forehead, mouth just parted in sleep. Her eyes opened and without looking over at him, looking up into the fan blades, she said, — Hey.

— Hey, there.

He held back a second, watching her. Sensing her mood as if through air molecules in the room between them. She’d become tired of things being this way. Of only seeing him two or three times a month. He’d said, from the beginning, That’s all you want to see of me, if you take my advice. That’s about what I’m good for, when it comes to being pleasant company. Well then, she used to say, maybe you’re not the company I need to keep. May be, he would say. But you know I can’t leave Birdie, she can’t take care of herself. Then she would pout awhile. For such a good-looking woman, she had a bad pout. Changed her whole appearance. Scared him a little bit. Her brooding light blue-green eyes had stopped him in his tracks when she’d come in the store the first time. Can I help you? he’d managed to say. You can give me a job, she said right back, just the hint of a smile. All right, he’d said, without hesitation. When can you start? Right this minute, if you like, she said. He’d thought about it, said, Why don’t you start in the morning. But you can tell me your name now, if you want to. Ann Christensen, she said. All right, Ann, he said. I’m Earl. I know, she said. This is my store, he said. I know, she said. Stood there staring at each other a minute. Then she turned and walked out. Other girls hated her immediately, of course. Wasn’t six months he got the chance to open the store in Tallahassee and made her manager, that solved that. Except that he found himself driving to the coast every weekend so he could spend them with her at Maurier’s. By that time in love with her in a way he had not considered he was susceptible to. He’d never felt that way about a woman, before. Birdie had been cute, popular, and he realized he’d wanted to possess her, like a car or money. But just the presence of Ann had sucked something right out of him, left him spent and entirely open to something else. It made him feel vulnerable. Made him feel more alive. If he hadn’t already pretty much set himself up by then he might not have given enough of a damn to do it, after that.

He loved it, being there with her. Watch her walk around the little efficiency as graceful a woman naked as God put on the earth, as Eve, he had to think, not an ounce of self-consciousness in her, and just naturally beautiful. Maurier had an old swimming pool out under the oak grove beside the river and she’d put on her pink striped swimsuit, a one-piece, and get onto the diving board and dive into the water and come up wringing her hair behind her neck, then shaking it gently out, resting her arms on the side of the pool, and looking at him.

She looked at him now with those eyes, and a salty gust from off the Sound seemed to nudge him toward her, and she said, Come here. And he did.

FRANK WAS SITTING in the boat at the dock next morning at five. Had the gear loaded, ice chest packed with ham and cheese sandwiches from Maurier’s wife’s kitchen, and bottles of Coca-Cola and ginger ale, crackers, and tins of sardines.

— You drive, Frank.

Frank primed the motor, pulled the cord, and got them going away from the dock. They bumped out through the gentle swells and about two miles out Earl raised his hand and Frank motored down and they dropped anchor.

— Going for trout, Mr. Earl?

Earl nodded. -No cover out here. There’s a channel though.

He rigged his own line with a jig and a worm tail and began to cast.

— You can fish if you want to, Frank.

Always a pause after he spoke to Frank before Frank answered. Nothing you could call insolence, just shy of that, and just enough to establish some of his own purchase on the moment.

— Thank you, no sir. Just feel like sitting here today.

— All right.

Pause.

— I likes to fish but I don’t really like it.

— You mean to eat it?

— Yes, sir. I grew up on the river and seemed like that’s all we eat, fish. -Well you eat it when we cook it up here.

— Yes, sir, I don’t like to be rude. I mean I can eat it and like it all right every now and then but I don’t hardly care for it no more.

He had one of those rusty sibilant voices, like a hoarse whisper, like he liked whiskey too much, but Earl hadn’t ever seen him drink anything but beer, and he’d given him that. Sat there on the bench seat before the motor like a meditation in black, big squared-off head held at attention to something not here in the boat.