Brad Watson - The Heaven of Mercury

The sun lay full-bore upon the north meadow beyond but here broke through the oak boughs only in bright angled blades to the sparse and spotty lawn grass.

— This old house, Birdie said. -I don’t like being out here alone at night, but I don’t reckon I’ll have to be much longer. I mean, Creasie’s here but she just goes back in her room after supper and it’s like being alone. Oh, I tell you, Finus, I feel so weak. I wish I could just go ahead and die.

Finus said nothing and kept his face neutral.

— Tell me again what happened at the home, he said.

— Oh, well, I reckon I died and came back.

— You said that. But, now — you mean all the way out?

— I tell you, Finus, after Pud died, it just like to killed me. It ain’t right. She was ten years younger than me. And then Edsel and Ruthie. She stopped and her face went blank as if she’d forgotten what she was talking about. But she hadn’t. Just at a momentary loss for words. -And I said to myself I’m just not going to stay around any longer, it’s just not right, everybody dying but me. I believe I just started to shut down. She fiddled with a tissue at her nose. She looked up. -Well I believe I died. I was going so peaceful, just like I’d always hoped I would, and it felt so restful, and then something started happening and I woke up with all them standing over me and tubes sticking in me everywhere. Choking — it was awful! I was so mad! And now here I am, just miserable. You tell me what good’s in that. I told them just to go to the devil, I was going home. Laura and Joe said they’d hire a nurse but I told them I didn’t want it, just let Creasie tend to me best she can.

The outburst winded her and she rested a few minutes, breathing hard and deep and slow. -I reckon they think I’m being hardheaded. I don’t want it to be hard on them. But I don’t want some nurse out here pestering me. I just want to go ahead and die.

— Well, Finus said, sitting in the chair beside the bed and lifting his own glasses to rub at his eyes and the skulled skin loose around them, then replacing the glasses to refocus on her. -Sometimes I think that old saying, One foot in the grave, is almost literal, you know. I mean sometimes you feel like you can almost see into it, like there’s a period there when you’re a little of both, the living and the dead. That’s dying.

Birdie just looked at him blankly a moment, and laughed.

— You’re a crazy old coot.

He got her a glass of water from the bathroom tap and she drank from it. Her nails needed cleaning pretty bad. He wanted to go get some tissue and a nail cleaner and take her hand and help her with them, but such tenderness would embarrass her, he knew. He took the glass from her hand when she’d sipped and set it on the little table beside her bed and sat back down. It was true she was left all alone. Her grandchildren took good care of her but you didn’t like to wear out the young, didn’t feel worth it, not if you had Birdie’s temperament anyway.

— I just remembered a dream I had last night, he said to her then.

— Do you believe in dreams? She turned her head on the pillow to look at him.

— Well I think they come from the waking life. People used to think they came from the gods, or God. He waved a hand at the thought.

— I never could remember my dreams, there’d be just a little flicker of it when I woke up, then gone, she said.

— Well this one just now came back to me, because of your telling what happened to you at the home. All right. In this dream I was a young man again, and strong as I could be, it felt fine. And every night — in the dream, I mean — my spirit would go out of my body and fly around the world, seeing all kinds of things. I might go way over to China in the old days, before there were any Western people there, you know. Or I might be in the body of a sea turtle, swimming deep in the Gulf. And while I was gone out of my body I had this dog who would guard it.

— You never had a dog till you got old Mike, did you?

— No, I never had a little dog of my own when I was a boy, Finus said. -I don’t know why. Avis didn’t like dogs, is why I didn’t have one as an adult, I mean older. But I don’t remember why I never had one as a boy. My papa had a dog, some kind of old black-and-white dog. And we were friends, but he wasn’t really my dog. Anyway, I had this dog in the dream, guarding over me lying there, and I can’t remember what he looked like. He was a talking dog, I guess.

Birdie said, — You’re making all this up.

— I was out spriting around and this dog got restless one night and went out wandering, and some people came and found my body and thought me dead and took it off and buried it, so when I came back the next morning I had nowhere to go, and I had to find a body to go back into or my spirit would die. And I looked around and I saw the dog coming home, but when he saw me he ran off, and I saw a horse, but he shied and ran off, too. Then I saw this old, old man lying out in the high grass in the field where the horse stayed. He was so tired he was about to die, and the sun was about to come up over the treeline and so I quick went into his body and was safe. And then I woke up.

Birdie looked at him blankly a moment.

— That’s how I got so old, Finus said.

— Aw, now, you read that somewhere, she said, and laughed. -I know you. Well Finus it’s good to see you, but you know I told you to say on your show that I didn’t want any company. They say it’s all this fluid around my heart that’s making me feel so bad. It’s just so hard to breathe.

Finus nodded. -I thought I’d come out just for a minute, I don’t want to wear you out.

— I guess I look as bad as I feel.

— Naw.

She did look miserable and tired. He couldn’t trouble her anymore.

He stared at her a long while.

— That time at the Potato Ball when you said you wanted me to run away with you, I thought you were serious, she said. -If I’d a been Pud, I’d a made you do it! She laughed again, and coughed.

— Well, he said after a bit, if I’d a been Pud’s Anton, I reckon I would’ve done it, too. But I was a shy boy, kind of. I sure was smitten, that’s true.

— Well, I reckon it wouldn’t have been any crazier than doing what we did do.

— Ha, he said. -I guess that’s the truth.

They looked at each other. He tried to imagine what it would have been like, to have had a whole life with her as his mate. Seemed like something that would’ve had to happen in a separate universe or something. Maybe it had.

— I should’ve done it, Birdie. I should’ve run off with you. I was a coward, I chickened out. It’s the most disappointing thing I ever did in my life. I’m still ashamed of it.

— Aw, now, don’t be, she said, dismissive. -Finus, I tell you, I don’t think I could’ve lived with you. I mean I probably would have, since I lived with Earl and never left him, but I don’t think I’d have been happy with you.

— Why not?

— Well Earl was hot-tempered and he run around on me, and I don’t think you’d have done that, even with Merry, if you’d been married to me. But you’ve always been so gloomy. Even back then. I think I would’ve just lost patience with you, being so glum all the time. One thing you could say about Earl, he had a temper but he wasn’t gloomy. He was cheerful enough.

— Maybe I was gloomy because I didn’t get you. He grinned at her.

— Aw, fiddle, she said. -You were gloomy when we was just boys and girls. I remember I used to tell you to cheer up .

— I don’t remember that.

— Well I did. And you would always say, What’s to be so cheerful about? And I’d say, Well life! Can’t you just appreciate how everything’s so pretty and life can be so much fun?