Brad Watson: The Heaven of Mercury

The others had left the dining room. She was alone. She poured a fresh cup of coffee, took out the pouch, poured it all into the cup, and stirred it. She took it back to Mr. Junius’s room and tapped on the door. No answer.

She went on in. He was asleep. She set the coffee on the table beside the bed.

— Just in case you changes your mind, she said, in case he was really awake. He said nothing, breathing heavy. She went out, back to the kitchen, into the pantry, and sat in her chair. Waiting and hoping, and dreading, too. Didn’t know how long she’d sat there when she heard Mr. Earl come into the kitchen in his boots, heard a clatter in the sink.

He stuck his head into the pantry, scowling.

— What the hell did you do to that coffee?

She sat there like a mute, frozen. Then she managed to say, — Is he all right?

Earl snorted.

— He’s better off than I am. I’m the one tried to drink it. That’s the worst cup of coffee I’ve ever had in my life. Tasted kind of like Birdie put some more of that goddamn sassafras in the pot again. Or something.

He just stared at her a minute, then shook his head, saying something to himself.

— Don’t you bother him anymore, he said. -And make a fresh pot of coffee. Just coffee. I’ll be back in about an hour.

— Yes, sir, she managed to whisper, after he’d gone out, the screen door slapped to, the truck door slammed, the truck rumbled off. The quiet came back, there in the pantry.

Last time anybody saw him alive.

HE WAS RESCUED BY the foursome he’d passed on the fairway of hole number 12. Pumped out, unconscious, and carried to the emergency room in the cart of one of the men who’d hit before him on 13. He lay overnight in a bed on the fourth floor of the hospital, and the next morning Orin Heath came up to give him a last check-over before letting him go home. Orin poured himself a flask cap of whiskey, opened the window, and sat in a chair beside it to smoke a cigarette.

— Looks like you’ll miss Birdie’s funeral, he said.

Finus nodded. -Might have to.

— How you feeling?

— Not too bad, considering.

— Did you have what they like to call in the National Enquirer a near-death experience?

— White light and all that? No. Birdie did, out at the rest home.

— I heard they had to revive her out there.

They were quiet awhile.

— Have a drink?

Finus shook his head no.

— Your daddy was quite a drinker, too, wasn’t he, Finus said. -What was his name? He asked though he knew and Orin knew he knew this unless the hole 13 pond water had gotten into his brain.

— Cornelius, Orin said. -Yes, he liked the corn. Said his name gave him a predilection for craving corn whiskey from the getgo. I ever tell you how I got my name? — No.

It was a game, almost a ritual, with them, came up every year or so in the regular banter. There was often some slight change in the story. -I was an accidental conception, Orin said. -Papa said to me one day when he had a load of corn in him that I was conceived on a romantic evening out in a boat on the lake, and they had it rocking. There was a loon calling, round there. Heat lightning way off, purple sky. He had a moment there, forgot who he was with. Came the time to make a decision, to take it out or leave it in. Do I take it out, or leave it in? Looked down at her face in a flicker of lightning glare, she was a stranger, made him wild with lust. Out, or in? Out, Or-in? My name reflects the grave finality of his decision.

— That’s preposterous. What’s that about the loon?

— There was a loon. It’s a strange and ancient, solitary bird. Got an egg the greenish color of tarnished copper, speckled brown. It was in the summer in the northeast, in New England, where he was at school. He brought her back here but she was never happy.

Finus said, — I believe I was named after an Irish chieftain, but I’m not sure. That or they decided I was just the finest-looking young’un.

— The loon’s got a strange call.

— You sound like you been talking to Euple.

— He came in the other day.

— Was he talking about loons?

— No.

— Beans?

— Digestive problems. He fears it’s cancer. I sent him for some tests.

— What do you think?

— Intestinal gas, Orin said. -Constipation. Talks about beans, eats nothing but meat. Never drinks water. He’s dry as beef jerky inside.

— What did you give him for it?

— Nothing. Told him to drink some of those herbal teas, instead of drinking coffee all day. I used to use them for remedies way back, before they got into the stores. I had an interest back then in what they call alternative medicine these days.

— Just the old remedies.

— Yeah. Old medicine woman down in the ravine used to make me up herb tea leaves, roots, all that crap. Worked about as well as pharmaceuticals, then. She had a garden somewhere down in there, grew what she didn’t find wild in the woods.

— Old Vish.

— That’s right.

— She used to treat all the black folks back then didn’t she.

— Well, some. Midwife, mostly. But hell she knew as much in her own way as we did, in those days. What, you want a remedy? Can’t cure old age, my friend.

Finus stood up from the edge of the bed. After a moment he said, — I’ve never believed your papa’s story. I believe Orin is derivative in some oblique way of Cornelius.

— Well, Orin said, I have rather liked being an accident. It’s relieved me of some of the burden of accomplishment. You seem to be feeling better.

— I’m all right.

Orin got up, tossed his cigarette out the window, and closed it.

— You can go on home if you want to. I’ll give you a ride. Your cart’s in the shop.

— All right. Maybe I can get out to Birdie’s later on, anyway.

— Nobody’d blame you if you didn’t. It’s not every day an old man crashes his golf cart.

— I feel all right, Finus said.

— Just take it easy, Orin said.

— I will.

— I fed your dog, let him out to do his business.

— I thank you, Finus said. -I’d like to get on home now.

— At your service, Lazarus.

HE WAITED, LOOKING out the window of his apartment, until Orin’s car had turned the corner, then skitched his cheek at Mike. The old dog looked up with his sad vacant eyes.

— Come on, old boy, let’s take a drive.

Mike followed him slowly down the stairs, taking one at a time on his old shoulders, claws clicking on the wooden steps, scratching on the sidewalk. Finus opened the pickup’s passenger door and gave him a little boost to get him onto the seat, where Mike settled down and put his snout onto his forepaws again, just like he’d been on the floor. But he was alert.

Finus took old winding Poplar Avenue to the north end of town, out past the shopping center and up the long hill, pulled over in the little dirt clearing in front of the old ruined Case house and shut off the engine, went around and helped Mike down from the truck. Together they walked slowly, both of them a little shaky-legged, careful of exposed roots and gopher holes, down the path that led down into the ravine. Though the day was dry and had not cooled, he felt an instant drop in the temperature along the shady path, which had the softened and weed-edged appearance of an old path not used so much anymore. Finus was aware of birdsong all about him, and began to notice them flitting and fluttering in the low limbs and wild shrubs on either side of the path, and crossing the path ahead of him in short bursts of flight.

They came to the low and shaded clearing at the base of the ravine. The little leafy tunnel of the trail opened up into what could only be called a woodland cathedral, its ceiling the boughs and leaves of tall oaks, sycamores, sweet gums, beech trees, and pines. The floor carpeted with pine needles and brown leaves, and furnished with small shrubby trees and the remains of a half a dozen small plank cabins on brick and pine-stump posts. These all stood on one side of a tiny creek that wound down toward a dense-looking swampy area, and on the other side of which stood bamboo thickets and lower-limbed, moss-draped live oaks. All appeared to be abandoned, at first look. Then he saw something on the little porch of the far one, and a movement, and went that way.