Brad Watson: The Heaven of Mercury

— You’ll get over her, she said then. She brought her gloved hand back to its demure position on the handbag. -I’ll help you, if you like.

It was a spell, in spite of his somewhat passive resistance, that would last through a strung-out period of dating some seven years in length, and through a long and unhappy marriage, and more than thirty years would pass before he would truly escape it. It was a moment that precipitated what he came to see as a long journey through a tangled wood, all as if in a semiconscious dream, a pretension of life. He would walk through it like a ghost, present but unaffecting of others, there but stirring no other’s blood aside from in memory, a softening shape about to molt and pass into what passed for the spirit, a free traveling current or pulse in the passage of time.

THE DAY BIRDIE WELLS gave in to Earl Urquhart, she and her friends had picnicked at the river in Finus Bates’s father’s old 90-T Overland. The car got stuck in a mud hole and trying to push them out Finus was covered head to toe, Pud up there trying to drive and slinging the mud all over him. Finus came around and hugged Birdie, shouted, — I love you, Birdie! and everybody laughed because she had mud on her clothes exactly in the shape of Finus Bates, according to Pud, and they all made him go back and jump in the river before they’d let him back in his own car to drive them home.

Earl’s car sat parked on the lawn in front of the gallery at her house. Pud and Lucy jumped out and ran into the house, but Finus grabbed her arm and said, — Birdie don’t go in there. Let’s ride around a little longer.

— Well I got to go in, she said, we were supposed to be home an hour ago. She turned to look at Finus sitting there behind the giant wheel of the Overland, looking like a pouting little boy. -Well maybe you do love me, she teased. -Are you jealous?

— I am, Avis said, her arms crossed. Then she tried to smile. -I’m jealous you got a man like Earl Urquhart in there just waiting to see you.

— Ooo, now, the others said, listen at Avis! Finus turned and gave Avis a curious look.

Birdie jumped out, and they all waved and hollered to her as Finus drove them away, scowling, looking back at Birdie as she went up the porch steps.

In the parlor Earl was dressed for Sunday, hair oiled and parted down the middle. He held a bunch of wildflowers she recognized from the patch they’d just driven by coming from the river. She’d even pointed them out and said Look how pretty, though it was just false dandelions. From the center of the yellow blossoms rose a stem of purple phlox he’d apparently found somewhere, and he didn’t seem to notice its sap leaking onto his fine suit pants. When he stood up to greet her she said, — Did you have an accident? He looked, flushed, and saw it was the flowers then and laughed. She liked him in that moment, shouldn’t have let on, for then he wouldn’t leave that day until she agreed to marry him, no matter how many times she said she didn’t want to, he was just crazy, followed her around the house, onto the porch, out back to the pasture where they kept the horse, would even have followed her down the woods path if she’d taken the chance and gone there. He was like a pesky fly or gnat in the shape of a man, swat and miss and he’s right back again. So finally it was almost like she promised to spend the rest of her life with him just to get rid of him for the time being.

It was later that night when she was in bed and Mama came to stand in the door, looking at her in that way, that she realized what she’d done.

Not long after that her grandfather, ancient one-armed white-bearded sweet Pappy, took her out into his garden, where he liked to walk with her and tell her stories. Everyone said the war had made him a little crazy, though she didn’t think so. There they were in the pale gloaming, supper done. He took hold of her arm and looked at her in that way that used to scare her, like he wasn’t looking at her but at something in his mind. -When I was a scout in the war, he said, one evening like this I came upon a Yankee soldier alone in the woods and laying on the ground.

— What was he doing? she said.

— Something un-Christian, Pappy said. He looked at her oddly. -I can’t tell you.

— Was he hurting somebody, or something?

— No, he was alone. He was committing a sin, is all I’ll say. But I could not blame him, it was war, though I thought it strange.

Her scalp and the back of her neck prickled, though she dared not pursue it but vaguely. Suspected she shouldn’t. She could hardly believe Pappy was even telling this story.

— Well what did you do?

— I laid my musket down and knelt there to say a prayer for him. He was God’s child, though a Yank. Well when he was done sinning he looked up and seen me and jumped, but I had his musket laid next to mine. I said, Don’t be afraid, I won’t shoot you. I took him back to camp and they shipped him to a prison in Georgia after asking him some questions.

— What kind of questions?

— Oh, about his company, what he was up to.

— Did you tell about what he was doing?

— No, it was a private thing, I respected that. I said he’d been asleep.

She could picture this Yankee soldier lying down on the forest floor and doing something to himself, something almost but not quite unimaginable. Her Pappy standing by, not her Pappy yet, a young man.

— Well it’s a strange story, Pappy. I don’t understand it much.

He looked away. Later she reckoned he was trying in his strange way to tell her something about men’s desires, how strong they could be, how they could be twisted into something awful, but in her family they simply didn’t have the words, trusted to God you might say for all that.

She wouldn’t have known a thing about sex if it hadn’t been for Pud, four years younger than her but would try anything. Put herself to sleep every night giddyupping, she called it. Would put both hands down there and rub herself, and say, It feels so good! not a care in the world what anyone would think. Pud, stop that! she would say, and Lucy would bury her face in the pillow, screaming in a funny way. But then Birdie caught not only Pud but Lucy herself doing it one night. Lucy! Of all girls. As soon as Birdie walked into the room and saw them, each in her own little bed, Lucy screamed and ran out of the house and into the yard, they had to go fetch her from the crook of a mimosa tree, sitting up there like a little skinny monkey, making mournful monkey sounds. They talked her down.

— It’s just something feels good, Pud said as they tramped across the dewy grass back to the house in their nightgowns. -There ain’t a thing wrong with it, I don’t care what anybody says.

Birdie hadn’t been any good at it, herself. But then one evening at one of their family gatherings around the fireplace, she was closest to the fire where their old dog Bertram lay sleeping. She sat astride him, for she’d always ridden him like a horse when she was small, before they even moved from the coast, before the hurricane. Now she was too big to do that, and he was old. So she kept her weight off him, most of it, with her legs. But his old backbone was touching her. And when he sighed it moved against her and gave her an odd feeling, a little shock. The talk around her faded to something like murmured talk in another room, or memory of people talking in a dream where she couldn’t see herself the dreamer, didn’t even know if she was there. She moved herself against Bertram again and the old dog groaned a little in his sleep. And again. And when it happened, it so took her that she cried out, not in pleasure exactly but more a mortal fear of what was she knew a forbidden and shameful pleasure, fear of it happening there in front of everybody in the room, who’d come slamming back into her awareness. She shrieked, as if the dog had bitten her, and fell into confusion and convulsive tears. And that’s what she told the others when they rushed to her, as the poor old dog scrambled away, his claws scrabbling on the worn wooden floor. He bit me! Bertram bit me! — Where? her mother said. She wouldn’t answer. Pud stood up then, pointed at Birdie and shouted Giddyup! and ran out of the room screaming with laughter. -Pud, hush! their mother said. -Somebody go chase down Pud. -He bit me! Birdie kept insisting until they finally calmed her and put her to bed.