Brad Watson - The Heaven of Mercury

Earl said one day, I don’t see — she told him about Mr. Ethridge the night after Mr. Grant came by, and he said Why didn’t you tell me sooner? and she said I just couldn’t — but Earl said, I don’t see what people see in her. Well, she was just charming as she could be, kept her hair long and was pretty. But you know what Earl said about her, said her breath smelled terrible, he said I don’t see how anybody could kiss her, her breath smells just like s-h-i-t. And it did. You could walk into the room and you could smell Merry’s breath. Birdie didn’t know why it was and couldn’t see herself how anybody stood it, she couldn’t ever stand to smell bad breath. It comes through your gums and they can be treated. Earl’s breath never did smell like that, he smelled so much like cigarettes. But then he had his own problem, with the stinky feet. She’d been with Earl when he’d be opening new stores and wouldn’t take his shoes off for two or three days, then come home and his feet smelled like, oh, something awful — she’d pick up his shoes and set them outside, she couldn’t stand it. They finally quit smelling that way, but you keep your shoes on for days like that and your feet smell — well you don’t know how bad they can smell.

Well she never thought life would be so full of meanness and disappointment. She hadn’t been prepared for it.

They’d had the best time at night, when she was a little girl. The house had a big room with a fireplace, and they’d all get in a circle around that fireplace. And Uncle Will was an old bachelor, he’d come down, he lived just a hop and a skip down the road, just a garden between, when you looked you saw the big bright yellow faces of sunflowers looking back. He’d come walking down through the sunflower stalks, singing, and she and Lucy and Pud would play tricks on him all afternoon. One time put some water up over the door and it spilled on him. And put pins in the chair cushion, he’d sit on it. He was one of those old grouches, wouldn’t want to laugh: Ain’t you got no better sense than to do things like that? But you could see how he was tickled about it.

The neighbors had an old white horse named George stayed out in the pasture, and when she’d wake up in the morning sometimes she could look out in the field, sun just up, and see George out there and somehow it made her feel good. She couldn’t remember what happened to him, they must have sold him. She took to a baby goat Papa had and went out to the barn with Papa one day and he got angry and had a hammer in his hand and he slung it, didn’t even know the poor thing was standing there, and the little goat just fell over dead. Hit him in the head. They didn’t even dress it out. It wasn’t a pet or anything but it made everybody sad. Once she got up onto George and rode him out into the pasture and he went under a tree and nearly knocked her off. She was always scared of a horse after that. Earl wanted to get all of them a horse. Well he did have one — a beautiful mare — there was a way you’d pull her and she’d rare, and she’d rare up with the kids, and scare her to death. And Earl was going to break that horse. It’s a wonder he didn’t have a stroke over there one day. He got so mad at that horse he led her out into the lake up in the woods behind the house, that horse had to hold her head way up, Earl was just going to drown her. That’s how he was then. Why in the world he didn’t have a stroke right then, his face was so red.

He had a temper like a lion! But he’d get over it.

She could hear a gentle swishing in the trees. Could be rain, coming.

When they’d go out to that lake Edsel and Janie’s little Robert would say, wasn’t but about three, — Su-u-re is a lot of horse grunt around here. A little boy then, now long gone in the car wreck. What was the good in her living so long, when such things happen to young people? It just wasn’t right your children and even grandchildren should die before you. Finus would know about that.

She couldn’t hear. She’d heard thunder last night, oh, it was so loud one time. It’s funny about hearing, the way it goes. She finally got her hearing aid to work right, got it to squeak, but that lady down at the nursing home said she just took hers out, said she’d heard enough already. Earl used to sell that woman shoes, and she never would listen, and he just quit selling to her, he said he’d rather not have her business than to misfit her.

She knew he opened that store down in Tallahassee so he could be with Ann, she knew that.

— Miss Bird?

Old Creasie sticking her black head in the door.

— No, I’m all right, now just go on!

Merry even wrote that book, nobody would publish it, all about the family, and made Birdie out to be someone who pretended to be dumb but was really devious. Well she might have let them think she was dumb, but she wasn’t devious, she just wasn’t going to have all that fussing and fighting, the Urquharts did enough of that among themselves. And Earl knew she knew what was going on. Every now and then he’d come to her crying, You’re the best woman in the world! No woman’d put up with me but you! Things like that. Crying. I’ll never do it again! She didn’t say anything much, but naturally it killed something in you. She loved him but she didn’t respect him too much.

You know the first train that come through up there where Earl was born, where they lived when he was a boy, said it scared him so bad he run in and got under the bed. He used to tell the story. Little boy, he was. He was born in 1899. Maybe they’d all been different if the times had been different. These days nobody thought anything about sex, but back then it wasn’t so common, so maybe those Urquharts were just ahead of their time that way. Except with them it was more like couldn’t think of anything but sex. Peggy one time, she was Levi’s oldest daughter, and she told her mama, Rae, never will forget, she said old Junius Urquhart felt up under her dress. The idea of such a thing, and his own granddaughter, too. And the old man said, Aw, she’s just lying. But Birdie knew now it was true because just about three weeks before Ruthie died she told Birdie and Pud that he did her the same way when she was a little girl. Birdie said, Why didn’t you tell us before now? Said, Ruthie, that’s ruined your life and you hadn’t ever told us anything about it .

Now that old man could have done well by his family if he’d wanted to. He was a good insurance man, but all he cared about was chasing women. One time he put Edsel on his lap and was talking to him, before Edsel knew it big tears was rolling down his grandfather’s face, and Edsel was a sensitive child, you know, and he started crying too before you know it, and he says, What’s wrong, Grampaw? And old Junius says, Son, nothing’s wrong, that has sold me more insurance than anything in the world. That’s what he’d do, you know, in the Depression. Go into people’s houses and when they wouldn’t buy insurance he’d start to cry, say That’s all right, he knew times was tough, he could hardly feed his own family, he never knew when they’d be out on the street, and so on, and they’d buy a little bit. He worked hard, but he wasn’t honest.

My lands they was all bad, Earl too, but she held her head up and acted like she didn’t know a thing in the world because listen she knew that she could not work and make a living, she’d married too young and was spoiled, and she knew Earl would never marry anybody he just slept with, so she let it go. She knew he respected her, in spite of everything. And everybody depended on Earl, everybody looked up to him, never dreamed he’d die as young as he did, just fifty-five years old. And when he died everybody just fell apart. She’d lived almost as long without him as she ever did with him, and got by all right. But Pud’s death like to killed her. And Lucy going like that, on the stairs in her home, and nobody there. And losing Ruthie and Earl and then Robert. Well it wasn’t fair she should have to live through all that, she should have gone before any of them except Earl.