Brad Watson: The Heaven of Mercury

HIS GRANDFATHER TOOK him just before dawn on horseback down the beach and turned in through a pass in the dunes toward the old lagoon. They rode around the lagoon and down a trail into the thick brush and piney woods and dismounted in a little clearing on the trail and tied the horse to a bush. Fragrant with citronella his grandfather had rubbed onto their faces and necks and hands, they made their way slowly in a cloud of mosquitoes, yellow flies buzzing fiercely about. It was first light, now, dawn seeping into the air. There were thick patches of saw palmetto they made their way around, stepping on hummocks of spongy ground around marshy spots. The faint blue light seeming to emanate from the little rounded clumps of needled branches at the tops of the pines. There were dense and compact water oaks draped with moss that in this light seemed gauzy veils hung from the arms of great skeletal ghosts. They came to the edge of a clearing smoked with low-hanging fog and haunted with gaunt old giants, suffering ancient leafless oaks and tall crooked poles that were once grand pines, and here his grandfather motioned for him to sit beside him on the grass and to be quiet. All else was quiet. The low fog moved almost imperceptibly within itself, a slow swirling with what breeze made its way into the swamp through the scrub thickets and saw grass and younger pines toward the water.

The birds had begun their singing and their calls, a tuning up of the world, and he began to see them dipping through the fog of the clearing from one part of the woods to another. Crows called from far off. He could hear the rooster doves lamenting. His grandfather touched his hand and motioned with his eyes to one of the old dead oaks, high up, and he looked in time to see a huge bird, its rakish red crest thrust from a hole there, and then the bird launched itself and flew high across the clearing in a loping manner, its body black but for the scarlet head and large painted patches of pure white on the wings, calling in a strange, strong but small-for-its-size-sounding kent, kent , like a piercing loud toy horn, and was gone in the mist. Then another bird, minus the crest but with the strong white slashes on its black wings and on its breast, followed, with the same call. And the woods seemed silent again after that, all other birds diminished to relative silence.

— That’s the ivorybill, his grandfather said then. -Almost gone from this world. You should not ever forget it, Finus. You may not ever see them again.

He wouldn’t. The big storm would wash the hotel away, his grandfather would die just two years later, and for some time his family did not go to the beach. Did he know this somehow, the vision of a child? He thought of the birds again as a teenager and tried for some time to find the spot. And when he finally did, after three early-morning attempts, and sat there the next dawn, he saw nothing but songbirds and crows. It was a part of the world that was gone for Finus, as was his grandfather.

— They’re a shy bird, see, the old man had said. -Don’t like people. And they need lots of woods, lots of old dead trees like this one around. They rip the old bark off and eat the grubs out of there. And when people cut down the woods and grow new trees, it takes too long for old dead trees to come around again, and the birds have nowhere to go. They need no one else but themselves. They don’t need the company of other birds, other animals. They’re a solitary race of bird.

— Like you and me, Finus said.

The old man looked at him and laid a hand on his tangly brown hair.

— Ah, he said, you’re too young for that, Finny. But you may be right. He smiled at him. -Don’t be too hard on yourself, now. Don’t be so hard to get along with.

— I’m not.

— No, you’re easygoing. But you are a loner, aren’t you?

— I like to be alone.

— I see it, his grandfather said. -It’s too bad, but it’s not so bad, after all. Just don’t turn away from people so quick. Give them a long look, don’t close up your heart, now.

— All right.

— An open heart will save you, but you have to be smart, too. You have to be careful who you open your heart to. Some people can’t help but hurt you if they know it, he said, and kissed the young Finus on his forehead.

HE GOT THERE at midnight and found his key to the old cabin and climbed the creaking sand-blown steps to the shaky deck and let himself in and lay down right away in the main room. He and Mike slept together in one of the daybeds and while he slept the ghosts of those whose lives left some parts of themselves there visited him and laid their soft and fog-drifted hands upon him. They passed into him some of the energy that always generated within them but which they could never contain and gather to take shape in the world as they’d known it. He woke in the faint light and gull-calling of dawn. The air in the cabin was suffused with age, he hadn’t been down there in decades. One front window was broken out, the glass on the dry wooden floor beneath it. A pair of beach sparrows flitted in and out of the window to a nest hole in the corner ceiling. He went over to the refrigerator, which was somehow miraculously humming. Inside he found two cold ancient Schlitz cans and drank one straight off, and carried the other with him out to the truck.

He and Mike made their way carefully down the deck steps and to the truck, and he drove down to what he thought was the old path road to the Palmetto Cove site, bulling through a couple of deep sandy spots and crashing through some low pine limbs until he broke out right at the bay shore and had to slam on the truck’s brakes to keep from tipping into the water. When he stepped out there was a good breeze blowing from the north, and a good thing because otherwise he realized he’d have been attacked by yellow flies and mosquitoes and had brought nothing to protect himself from them.

He took off his shoes and socks and rolled his pants up and waded a few feet out into the bay and leaned over and began scooping at the sand of the bay until he came up with a good-sized oyster in each hand. He tossed them onto the bank where he’d stepped in and where Mike lay watching him. Mike sniffed the oysters and lay back down. Finus kept scooping till he had something like a dozen big bay oysters, then he waded back in and sat on the bank and opened them with the short blade of his pocket knife and ate them from the shell, drinking the salty water that clung to the oysters’ edges. He drank the second Schlitz from the refrigerator, tossing the old tab top into the back of the truck from where he sat. The strong breeze cooled him and he felt so tired he had to lie down awhile. He fell asleep, lying there.

In his dream he was first with his father and mother and grandfather again at the Commandant’s house down at the fort, and they were all around the table and happy. They toasted one another, and Finus was grown up in his mind in the dream but also still a little boy. He loved them so much. Some part of him was not just himself but was Eric, also, and he was so happy to have Eric within him and did not question how such a thing could be. The Creole cook was in the dream but he could not see her, and she was also Creasie, and he was aware of Birdie’s presence somehow though he was not sure how, and he wanted to leave the table to see where she was but he also didn’t want to leave such good company, but then he did and when he wandered out of doors it was not nighttime anymore, but a cool and sunny fall afternoon.

He wandered toward a spot of color in the distance and when he got close he saw that it was a bush filled with preening monarch butterflies, migrated there from South America, resting and soaking up the sunlight. He lay on the sand and looked up at them. They were like the leaves of the shrub, they were so numerous. They seemed to shiver under his rapt attention. He felt such an outpouring of love for them, he thought he would weep. They seemed hardly able to contain their delight that he was gazing upon their beautiful wings.