Brad Watson - The Heaven of Mercury

— You’ll have to forgive me, Parnell said. -Busy day. As always!

— No problem, Finus said. -Take your time.

— Um hmm, um hmm, Parnell said, shuffling his papers, raising his eyebrows and nodding, checking a drawer for something, shutting it. Then stopped all his fidgety activity, placed his pudgy little hands on the desk in front of him, and looked at Finus, eyebrows in a question mark. His child-size hands were almost translucent, made Finus shiver a little at the thought of them handling the dead — or him, dead. And within that cartoonish gathering of flesh blinked those deep-set and absurdly pretty eyes, like a movie idol’s, so anomalous as to shock one upon first noticing.

— Well, I was just passing by, really, Finus said. He put his hands in his pockets, jingled his change, smiled at Parnell. -Any new customers today?

— I’m afraid so, Parnell said. -Mrs. Terhune, from Southside.

— The tamale lady?

Parnell nodded.

— I’ll miss them, Finus said. -Used to buy them by the sackful.

— Selena will, too, Parnell said, referring to his wife, who lived with him there in the home. -She loves tamales.

— Mmm hmm, Finus said. -Say, Parnell, when I called yesterday you said Earl Urquhart died of a heart attack.

Parnell stood somewhat at attention, his head cocked in question.

— Yes?

— Well, I was just rechecking that. Just wondering, no real reason, if there was anything odd there, anything that might have suggested any other cause.

Parnell kept his odd, penguinish pose.

— No real reason, Finus said, just that he seemed so healthy, you know, just talked to him the other day. He shook his head. -Just goes to show.

Parnell, after a beat, nodded as if the pose had been prelude to some odd penguin mating dance.

— Yes, yes it does. You never know. Well, no, Mr. Bates, no sign, no reason to think anything other than cardiac arrest, as far as I could tell. I suppose it could have been a stroke.

— Hmm, yeah, Finus said.

The men stood there awkwardly a moment more.

— So, Finus said. -Well, Mrs. Terhune?

— Heart, Parnell said, doing the nod again.

— Umm hmm, Finus said. -Guess she probably ate a lot of her own fare.

After a beat, both men laughed a little awkwardly, though quietly.

— Well, I won’t keep you, Finus said. -I know you’re busy.

Parnell’s eyebrows jumped again and he shrugged his narrow little shoulders in the too-small black suit. He nodded.

— Yes, three funerals today, as I’m sure you know, Parnell said. -Sorry to be so distracted, Mr. Bates. He gave a nervous little laugh. -I’m terminally disorganized.

— Terminally, Finus said, and gave a little laugh of his own.

— Yes, oh, ha ha! Parnell said, standing up and starting to offer his hand, then withdrawing it as instead he came around the desk to usher Finus on out. -Well good to see you, Mr. Bates, sorry I couldn’t be more help.

— No, Finus said. -Just obligatory, newspaper business you know.

— Yes, Parnell said, already somewhere else, showing Finus to the door, and seeming already away from there into another room as Finus stepped out the door and said goodbye.

— Yes, Parnell said, thank you now, give my best to Mrs. Bates.

Though everyone in Mercury who knew Finus and Avis knew they’d been separated for years, a terminal separation, as it were. Well he was an odd one, Parnell.

Finus made his way on down the sidewalk in the cold gray of the afternoon. It was February. Earl’s wake tonight, services tomorrow, time would roll on. God help him, but he was thinking mourning period. He’d be visiting Birdie every now and then in between. Come late spring, he figured, all this would have pretty much died down. By then, it might be proper enough to propose that his visits take on a different tone. In the meantime, he’d check in on her every now and then to make sure she was doing okay.

BUT WHEN HE called her the next week she was upset. Wouldn’t say why at first, then finally told him she’d received two letters, unsigned, with no return address. The text of the letters was made from cut-out magazine headline words, odd sizes, accusing her of poisoning Earl, and threatening to have his body exhumed for an autopsy.

— It’s Levi and Merry, who else? Birdie said. -Finus, they have hated me and tormented me from day one, always jealous of me, jealous of Earl. And you should’ve seen them in the executor’s office the other day. They stood up after Earl’s will was read and said Earl would never have left them out, that something was funny, they were going to sue me, and just up and walked out. Hubert Cawthon called me and said they’d tried to get an order to dig Earl up, so I know it’s them.

Finus called Cawthon, the district attorney, and Cawthon’s assistant DA. Spud Meriwether confirmed, off the record, that Merry and Levi had indeed sought the order.

— Hell, Spud said, if anybody poisoned Earl Urquhart I’d think it his sister. Woman’s crazy. Besides, Parnell Grimes said he sent a sample from Earl’s heart to the state lab and came back negative.

— Is that right, Finus said, wondering why Parnell hadn’t mentioned this to him. -No poison, then?

— I reckon that’s what negative means, Spud said.

Finus knew from the grapevine that Spud had been one of Merry’s victims, too, only unlike Finus (apparently an exception) Spud had been stuck for a life insurance policy before getting out of his affair.

He went to see Birdie that afternoon. Creasie met him at the door, nodded and hardly spoke, disappeared into the back somewhere. He and Birdie sat in the den. He asked her if she wanted him to help her with a lawyer or anything.

— This is harassment and slander, at best, he said.

— No, I’m just going to ignore them, she said. She sat in a stuffed rocking chair in the corner, fiddling with a silk handkerchief and looking out the window on the long front yard. -I don’t want any more trouble.

— They’re making it, not you.

— I’m not going to give them the satisfaction.

— Well, you let me know if you change your mind.

— All right.

She still looked out the window. Her hair was down, and beautiful. Her face was lined and puffy with the strain of everything. Her hands were slim and still pretty. The pale blue of her eyes in the afternoon light, absorbing the color of her pale blue dress. It was a still moment in the small room, steam heat ticking in the radiator against the wall. Through the door to the foyer he could see beyond to the big living room, cold marble fireplace with the big mirror over it, mute grand piano black in the corner like a museum piece. Here she was, a duchess set up in her little estate, the duke now dead at an early age, wondering what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

He wanted to ask her about Ann, Earl’s girlfriend down in Florida. Not sure why he wanted to ask about that, then.

— Birdie, he finally said though. -I know Earl hurt you. Ran around on you.

She said nothing.

— Do you want to talk about it? All that?

— You’re one to talk, she said. -You and Merry.

She was looking out the window. He shut up then, and they sat awhile in silence. Then Birdie opened a drawer in the little lamp table beside her and pulled out a letter in an envelope and handed it to him. It was addressed to Birdie, no return address. The postmark was back in September. There was another envelope inside, addressed to Earl at the shoe store, with a Tallahassee postmark from the same month. A letter inside it. He looked up at Birdie.

— Go ahead and read it, she said.

It was a letter written in what looked to Finus like a woman’s handwriting. The salutation wasn’t to Earl, was just a familiar Hey , followed by epistolary smalltalk, as well as some discussion of business. He looked up at Birdie again.