Brad Watson - The Heaven of Mercury

— Tell him what I told you to. Don’t tell him who I am. He smart enough, he’ll know.

— Yes’m.

— Say Clint, helped his old papa, done told me about it. He’ll remember Clint, all right, used to help them out down there. Tell him I know about the government, them bodies.

She nodded. She waited a minute, didn’t want to say it. She was afraid.

— Yes’m. What if he calls the police.

— If he smart, if he got any brains at all, child, he ain’t going to call no police. People find out what his daddy was mixed up in, ain’t going to be no more business for Grimes Funeral Home.

She nodded, looking down.

— You go on. You never been here, now. I don’t remember you, I don’t know you. I’m just a crazy old nigger woman, you know what I mean?

She looked up. Old woman grinning at her with those snaggly black teeth. She grinned back, a little.

— Yes’m, she said. Everybody know that.

— That’s right, the old woman said, raising her eyebrows and leaning back in the flickering yellow lamplight. -Everybody. Ha ha ha, she laughed then, her voice deep like a man’s and quiet like she was laughing to herself, but those old bloody eyes never leaving her own.

PARNELL HAD JUST gone downstairs for a glass of milk when he heard a tap-tapping at the front door and when he looked out the side panes he saw a young colored woman standing there holding a jar in her hands. He saw her eyes cut over and see him looking. He sighed, opened the door enough to look out, as he was wearing his house robe and slippers. She stood there looking at him, mute and frightened it seemed.

— Yes? he said. -How may I help you, Miss?

— Yes, sir, Mr. Grimes, she said then. -I need to see you about Mr. Earl.

— Earl Urquhart?

— Yes, sir.

— Did you know Mr. Urquhart?

She stared at him, her eyes pools of something awful, he couldn’t tell.

— Yes, sir.

— Well, what, did you work for Mr. Earl, then?

She didn’t say anything for a moment, then she nodded.

— Yes, sir, she said, I worked for him, out at the house. I did. And Miss Birdie. Work in the house.

He looked at her, wondering what she was doing there. Maybe she wanted to view the corpse but didn’t feel like she could come to the funeral, though black and white were always welcome at a funeral.

— The funeral isn’t set till day after tomorrow, he said then. You could visit Mr. Earl then. I’m afraid he’s not been prepared for viewing, just yet.

— Yes, sir, she said, and stood there.

— I was just going to bed, Parnell said.

— Yes, sir, she said, I didn’t want to see Mr. Earl. I needed to get something from him.

Parnell thought, What in the world. He saw the jar in her hands then.

— What do you have in the jar, there?

— It’s a empty jar, the woman said.

— I can see that, Parnell said. Thinking, what? Some piece of jewelry or something? Did she think Earl Urquhart owed her money and come now to collect it in what looked like an empty preserves jar? Colored people. You couldn’t figure them.

— It’s late. What did you say your name was?

— Creasie Anderson, she said. -I keep house for Mr. Earl and Miss Birdie.

— Well, Creasie, why don’t you come back in two days and attend the funeral, I’m sure that’s what Miss Birdie would want.

The woman stood there, didn’t move, just staring at him with those eyes. He was about to shut the door when she spoke again.

— She say to tell you she knows about the government bodies. She said to tell you she knows old Clint what helped your papa sell them bodies to the government, and if I said that to you that you would let me in.

Parnell lost his hearing there for a long moment, and his vision seemed to tunnel down to a small round area within which this strange little brown woman with a kerchief on her head stood on the home’s veranda. Then through the roaring he heard something plaintive.

— What are you talking about? he said, though he was whispering now, without even thinking he needed to whisper, some automatic response to alarm. -Old Clint who used to work here? Who said?

He heard something again. Selena’s voice, from up at the top of the stairs, out of sight.

— Parnell, what is it?

He stepped back and motioned the woman to come in, and put a finger to his lips.

— Nothing, my darling, he called up to Selena, his voice sounding strange in his ringing ears.

— Parnell? Are you coming up? Selena’s voice carried like the quavery notes of some strange wind instrument down the stairs. -Come up to see me?

— Wait for me, Selena, he called, shooing the colored woman ahead of him down the hallway toward the door to the basement stairs. -I’ll be up soon, sweetheart.

— I’ll be waiting on you, Selena’s voice floated down, playful now, enticing.

He whispered to the colored woman when they reached the door to the basement stairs.

— Shhh, now. We can talk down here.

He watched the woman go slowly down the narrow stairway, holding to the rail, and tried to gather what she was saying into his brain. After his father had died, Parnell had been going through his papers when he saw a packet of official-looking letters, unmarked as to their origin. They were cryptic but seemed to suggest his father was involved in a project of some sort and that this involved those people and maybe more he didn’t know of who’d disappeared from the home but whose funerals had gone on as planned. And then one evening about a year after his father died another strange man came calling on his father, and when Parnell informed the man his father had died an unexpected death, along with his mother, the man nodded and stood there a while.

— Did your father tell you anything about activities on his part to assist the federal government, sir, in a study of some sort?

— No, Parnell said after a pause.

— He did not inform you in any way of his cooperation with a very important government project involving matters of national security, sir?

— No, sir, Parnell said, his heart racing. -Perhaps you can inform me, sir.

The man looked at him. Then he looked him slowly up and down, as if appraising him. Then the man said, — I’m sorry for your father’s untimely death, Mr. Grimes. Then he turned and walked away and got into a black car with plain hubcaps across the street and drove away.

For a while Parnell had been convinced that the government had something to do with his parents’ death. That whatever his father was involved in must have endangered him, he must have known something he wasn’t supposed to know, and so some strange espionage-like death was concocted for him. And for a long time after that he had worried that they believed he knew something and would one day be coming for him. But he never heard from them again. His mind was now reeling with the absurdity of the whole business now coming up again in the form of this dumpy little auntie standing there beside him at the empty preparation table, still in her old ragged coat, holding the jar in her two hands in front of her and just waiting.

— Miss V — and she stopped. -She say—

— Who is this she ? Parnell interrupted her. He heard a tremulous quality in his own voice and realized he was beginning to perspire.

— Say we got to have the poor man’s heart, she said then, not looking at him.

— What? Who’s heart? Earl Urquhart’s heart? You are telling me you want this man’s heart? To put in that jar there?

Woman just nodded. She looks worse scared than I do, Parnell thought.

— This is insane! he almost shouted. He started to take her by the arm and rush her out the back door then, but she said again,