Brad Watson: The Heaven of Mercury

Nobody faulted you, Pappy.

It’s for no one else to do, Birdie. I fault myself. I don’t condemn myself. I was human, like anyone else.

Where are you going? she said to him then. He was walking down a twilit white sand trail into the dense pine woods east of the house. He only raised his hand and was lost in the grainy light there. She was tired. She was drifting herself with a northern breeze to the Gulf side where gentle waves flopped and crushed themselves against the sand stained wet and draining. Two ladies lay on towels on the beach nearly naked, their skin glistening with oil. They seemed strange and familiar, too, like people she’d once known in a dream, and forgotten. Birdie went down and lay down on sand between them. They were sleeping. She looked up toward the deck of the beach house behind them and a young boy stood there, looking at her. She waved. He merely stared at her, and so she approached him and was there before him in the buffeting Gulf breeze. He was not afraid. He knew her, somehow. He put out his hand, and when he touched where she was he gave a start, and she wanted to say, it’s only electricity, child, but she could not, and she rose away so that he would wonder for the rest of his life about the presence of this angel who visited him as he stood on a deck overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, when he was a just a boy.

THERE WERE CARS everywhere, from the carport and down the driveways on both ends. Finus drove along the grass beside the driveway and parked by the sidewalk to the front door. But he chose to walk around back and go in the kitchen door, the familiar entrance, and avoid whoever might be playing gatekeeper at this event. Didn’t really want to talk to Birdie’s kinfolk or some righteous church woman full of baloney and saccharine goodwill. He went through the little archway between the carport and the kitchen door, opened the screen door, mounted the steps, and pushed open the stubborn door to the kitchen.

It was crowded, even in there, but at least those standing there were eating, occupied, and at best looked around with a chicken leg poised at their teeth and nodded, grinning at him, and kept eating. Howard Feckman did actually take a chicken wing from between his teeth a millimeter from biting in, set it down on the plate long enough to shake Finus’s hand, then picked up another piece and bit on into it. In spite of all the congregated living bodies, which hovered over and around the tables of food, Finus could see and take in the impressive spread: dishes of broccoli and cheese casseroles, French green bean and mushroom soup casserole, apple crunch desserts, a coconut cake, several crusty pound cakes, large plates of cold fried chicken covered with plastic wrap, a massive ham, the cooling meat drawing up around a shank bone big as a severed sapling. Large aluminum pitchers of ice tea frosted with sweat, ice tinkling in tumblers as the tea was poured in. Sweet potato pudding with melted marshmallow topping. Dishes of snap beans cooked down and dark, sweet, and tartish. Baked squash with onion, soft as pudding. And tall slim sweating steel crankbuckets of homemade ice cream, vanilla and fresh peach, beside at least a dozen pies: glazed pecan, lemon icebox, sweet potato, custard, apple, chess, and what looked like a blackberry cobbler. The din from conversation and eating was considerable, almost made him smile.

He felt someone brush his elbow then and saw old Creasie standing there, eyes limpid and tired-looking, looking up at him. She wore a pretty pink dress with a clover print on it, and Finus was fairly sure it had been Birdie’s once.

— Hello, Mr. Finus, she said to him.

— Hello, Creasie, he said. Finus wondered where this old woman would go now, what she would do. Maybe she had family somewhere, he had no idea. He wanted to ask her, but he didn’t think he had the energy to listen, and he was certain she didn’t much have the energy or will to tell him everything she could tell him. Same space, different worlds.

— Missed you at the services, Mr. Finus, she said then.

— Yeah, he said. -I wasn’t feeling too well.

— Yes, sir. Better get yourself a plate, then, Creasie said. She reached over to the counter and got him a plate and some silverware. He took it from her hands, dark and weathered on the backs, light-colored in the palms.

— Thank you, Creasie, he said. -I believe I’m about to starve to death.

He got a plate and put some chicken, beans, squash casserole on it, and came back over by the sink and Creasie to eat it. He set the empty plate in the sink.

— You was hungry, she said.

They looked at one another for a minute.

— I was out to your old house in the ravine today.

She looked up at him as if not understanding his words for a second.

— Yes, sir, you was? What in the world was you doing way out there?

— Just exploring, I guess, he said. She nodded. -Had a conversation with old Vish out there. Was talking to Parnell Grimes yesterday, said some curious things, then Dr. Heath said I might talk to Vish about them.

— Miss Vish still alive, then, Creasie said. She nodded to herself and walked over to the sink and stacked a few small dishes in there. Finus followed her.

— I took the liberty of looking around your old place, he said. -Hope you don’t mind.

— Umm, hmm, no sir, she said, running some water over the dishes and turning off the faucet, drying her fingers on the apron she wore over the skirt of her dress. -I don’t never go out there no more.

— I was just curious, Finus said then, if you could tell me what is in that old mason jar in your kitchen. Strange-looking thing, aroused my curiosity.

She looked out the window, working at the snuff in her bottom lip for a second, then her eyes cut over at him.

— Yes, sir, what kind of old jar was it, now.

— A tall kind of mason jar, had some thing in it I can’t even tell what it was. She was holding his eye then. -You know what I’m talking about then?

She nodded. Her attention seemed to wander a little and she sagged a little more in the shoulders.

— Fact, I got it out in the truck, if you’d like to see it, jog your memory.

She nodded again.

— I’ll tell you, Mr. Finus. That was a long time ago. She stood there a long minute, seeming to think about something. -Yes, sir, I can tell you the story behind that jar, you help me do something here.

— All right, he said.

— You got a minute, then?

He nodded.

— Yes, sir, come on with me.

— Outside?

She nodded, motioning him to follow her. They went out the kitchen door, down the steps to the archway, and across the drive in front of the carport to the old shed out by the pumphouse. He followed her up to a door cut into the sheet metal siding, which was fastened to with an old hasp lock. Creasie reached up and shook the lock once, dropped it.

— I need to get in here for something.

— Do you not have the key?

— No, sir. Don’t nobody know where the key to this old shed is. I didn’t want to bust in there. You reckon it’s all right to bust in, now?

She nodded toward the carport. -They’s some tools in there back by the deep freeze, might be something that would work there.

He found a rusty-hinged toolbox and in the top tray a short crowbar, and brought that back over. He jammed the flat end behind the hasp lever and yanked and pried until the screws came out of the old wood, and the door swung free. He took hold of it and opened it wide, revealing a packed dirt floor with an old cylinder lawn mower and rusted child’s wagon there, and shelves beginning chest high on which sat blackened hand tools and moldered collapsed cardboard boxes and wooden boxes topped with miscellaneous junk. On the shelf to their left sat a cobwebbed and rotten-clothed bizarre thing, a dummy of some kind with minstrel features, faded red lips and yellowed teeth and yellowed eye-whites, gazing at the space where the door now stood open, just over their heads. It almost made Finus jump.