Brad Watson - The Heaven of Mercury

— What’s the name of the store? Earl says.

— What?

— What’s the name of the man’s hardware store. I’m going to buy that nigger dummy back from him.

— What for? says the salesman. -What use you got for it in a women’s shoe store?

— I’m not going to use him in my goddamn store. It’s my dummy and I want it back. My father sold it without asking me.

— Well don’t tell the man I told you where it was.

Drove up there the next Friday evening, arrived the next morning just as the man was opening his store and setting Oscar out on the porch along with a radial-arm saw and fixing his hand to the handle.

— Yes, sir, how can I hep you this morning? Earl standing there below the porch steps with his hands in his trousers pockets, tired and a Camel in his lips.

— That’s my nigger you’ve got there, I’m afraid.

Man just straightened up and looked at him oddly.

— You from Mississippi?

— I am. My papa sold you this thing without asking me. I’d like to buy it back.

— Well, now, I don’t know. This thing’s pulled in a lot of business for me, here. Sides, this is what it was made for! Mr. Urquhart said you own a ladies’ shoe store. -Yes.

— Well, sir, not to be disrespectful, but I can’t see you got much use for this fellow in a ladies’ shoe store. -Never mind why I want him back. I just said he was mine and was sold without my knowledge or permission. I understand you paid good money for him, now I’m offering to pay good money to get him back.

Man stood there blinking in the early sun for a minute, squinting at him. Hand on Oscar’s arm as if to hold him back, to quiet him. Oscar grinning as ever in the morning light, as wide-eyed and oblivious as ever, ready to work if need be, ready to sit forever if need be, waiting in the dark on some shelf if need be. There and not there.

— Well, sir, the man said slowly. He’s worth a lot more to me than what I paid for him, considering the business he brings in. I sell him back to you, I’m going to want to get me another one. First off, bound to cost more to get another one these days. Second, I wouldn’t count on being able to find another one, if I was to try.

— What did you pay Papa for him?

He paused.

— I paid fifty dollars.

— I’ll give you a hundred.

— Mr. Urquhart, this nigger’s already made me at least five hundred dollars in business.

— I’ll give you two hundred cash, then. You’re not on the highway, here. You’ve already got all the new business from this thing you’re going to get. It’s just decoration now and I’m offering to make it seven hundred dollars you’ve made from him, which gives you a profit of something like twelve or thirteen hundred percent on your investment. I don’t know about the hardware business, but in the shoe business we don’t usually get returns like that.

Man stood there blinking.

— I don’t have all day, Earl said, lighting another Camel. -I got to get back to Mississippi by this evening.

— WHAT DID YOU want to go and do that for? Birdie said.

— It belonged to me.

— Well we sure don’t have any use for an old colored dummy you’re going to let sit and rot out in the shed.

— It might be valuable one day.

— Well that’s not like you, to say something like that. It’s of no use to you now, and that’s what I’d expect you to say about it.

— So it makes no sense.

— It doesn’t seem to, to me.

— Well then all right it makes no sense. Humor me this once.

— For two hundred dollars? That takes a heap of humor, Earl.

— Humor me. If I want to keep an electric nigger dummy in my shed, then let me do it and leave me in peace. Some things a man does he can’t explain and doesn’t care to.

He went out to the car, reached into the backseat and pulled him out, hefted him limp and wooden onto his shoulder and carried him out to the shed and set him against the wall there while he unlocked the hasp on the door. When he’d opened the door, he walked in and struck his Zippo and looked around, saw the empty spot on the high shelf where he’d kept it before Junius sold it, clanked the Zippo shut. He went back out, hefted it back onto his shoulder, and took it into the shed and pushed it up onto the shelf. In the dim light he reached up to straighten the head on the shoulders, to rest the hands in the lap. He turned the feet so they pointed straight ahead where they hung there. Stood there to catch his breath, then light a smoke.

— What say, Oscar? he said, his eyes adjusting to the darkness in the shed so he could just see the black face with the white teeth, the painted whites of its eyes, in the glow of the cigarette. -Welcome home, you yellow pine son of a bitch.

He went inside and picked up the phone and dialed a number and Junius answered.

— Papa, I have that nigger dummy back out in my shed.

There was silence on the other end of the line.

— What’d you go and do that for?

— It wasn’t yours to sell, that’s what for.

— The hell it wasn’t. I’m the one found it.

— And you gave it to me. What I still don’t understand is why you all of a sudden up and stole it from me. You never gave me the money you got for it, by the way, and now I’m out two hundred dollars for it.

— Goddamn, son, I didn’t pay but twenty!

— To hell with that. What did you get for it?

— I don’t remember. Broke even, maybe.

— You’re a liar, you got fifty, which means you made thirty dollars profit on my property, which means you owe me that plus another hundred and seventy dollars.

Junius scoffed. -I’m not responsible for your lack of common sense. And I’m telling you I think that thing is bad luck. You better get rid of it.

— I never knew you to be so superstitious. I’m keeping it, I don’t give a damn if you like it or not. That’s my electric or dummy or whatever nigger out there, and you keep your goddamn hands off of it, now. In fact, I’m locking it in there, so don’t even think about stealing it again.

— Stealing! Goddamnit, I don’t give a shit if you keep it or not, then. But if you ever bring that thing out in my presence I’ll shoot the son of a bitch full of holes on the spot.

Junius hung up. Earl, laughing to himself, went back outside and lit up again. Stood there in the evening on what he’d made into a fine little fiefdom of his own in the flattened land, the brief plains between Mercury and rolling pine woods and farmland north, smoking, thinking it’s not so bad old Earl you got a good woman for a wife and you got healthy children and a good business and another woman who loves you willing to take what’s just her share, and here you got your own goddamn electric nigger out in the shed, to boot. Now what can you hold up to that, you old pig-eyed son of a bitch.

SHE COULDN’T HELP thinking that if they’d had babies, if they could have had babies, Frank might have stayed. Lord knows she’d tried, but nothing took. Began to seem like he was like a mule, some concoction of a beast not able to reproduce itself. But it settled in finally that it had to be her, and most likely something to do with the potion Aunt Vish had given her before, after Mr. Junius, to get rid of what he’d put in her.

One day she’d walked out into the untended pasture behind her cabin and sat down beneath a solitary oak in the middle of the field. There was a crow sitting in the top of the tree, started calling to another crow over in the woods. Crow was saying, What! What! Other crow comes back, What! What! Don’t nobody know what, Creasie grumbled. A big rumble followed down in her belly, and she pressed it with her fingers, lay on her back. She put her hands on her breasts beneath the scratchy blouse she wore and pressed them, wondered if she’d ever nurse a child, nestle a child of her own into her bosom. The crow hopped down a few branches and cocked its head at her. He stretched his head up and called again to the other crow, other crow called back. Then he cocked his head at her again, said, Rrraaack. She felt a muscle or something rise up beneath her hand and turn over, go back down.