Brad Watson: The Heaven of Mercury

She heard the woman inside screaming. Just one loud scream and then nothing. The wind blew in gusts and whipped the light snow into little snow devils across the bare yard. She straightened up and looked at the horse. He shifted his haunches in the old cracked harness. Long dreamy puffs of warm air frosted from his nostrils. She wished she could fit there, in that warm air from his horse nostrils. A cold blast of wind came round the house and hit him broadside, whipped his mane and tail. The horse shifted footing and his hooves squeaked in the shallow fallen layer of snow. Aunt Vish’s old leather crop rested in its knothole beside the seat, and the stringy tips of its braided horsehair flickers rested on the horse’s chestnut flank. They were made from the horse’s own tail. His name was Dan. A long, slow fart flabbered from the proud black lips of Dan’s hole, and the smoke from it too trailed off in the air.

Her feet and hands were stiff with cold. Be like this when I’m old like Aunt Vish, all the time, she thought. She didn’t want to go back inside. She listened. Still no sounds in there. She got too curious, went back in. Maybe the woman had died. She wanted to see her, see if her eyes stayed open. Aunt Vish said some people closed their eyes when they died, some didn’t. Depends on what they seeing when they die, Aunt Vish said. They like what they see, they close they eyes. Don’t like it, can’t stand to look off.

All the eyes and faces of the children were in their same places and Aunt Vish was again washing her hands in the basin. Her sack was tied and set beside the door where Creasie stood. And next to it was a little bundle, like a loaf of baker’s bread wrapped over and over in a stained and yellowing sheet. The woman lay in the bed with a rag on her forehead. Her eyes were open. She was looking at Creasie. Then the woman blinked. Creasie almost jumped back into the door she’d closed behind her.

Aunt Vish dried her hands on her skirts and went over, checked the woman’s forehead, said something to her and patted her cheek. Then came over to Creasie.

— You take my sack, she said to Creasie.

— Yes’m.

Creasie picked up the lumpy sack full of Aunt Vish’s tools. They clattered and clanked and clinked.

— Careful, child! They’s glass in there.

— Yes’m.

Aunt Vish picked up the bundle wrapped in the dirty sheet, held it cradled in one arm, and opened the door. Creasie heard a quiet voice behind them, — Thank you, Miss Vish.

At the buckboard Aunt Vish lay the bundle on the seat between them, picked up the reins and the crop, flicked the crop against Dan’s butt and said, — Hup. Dan pulled them away.

They followed their own ruts back toward town. Crows winged over moving faster than their wings, seemed like. A wind behind them. Their black heads looking this way and that. Creasie looked at the bundle, the edges of its sheets touching her quilts.

— Is that the baby?

Aunt Vish said nothing, then glanced at her, looked ahead.

— Mmm hmm.

— Is it dead?

— It’s dead.

— Aunt Vish. How come the woman to thank you if her baby died.

Aunt Vish looked down her nose at her for a minute.

— I saved her life, she said. -That’s something. If I could have killed that husband, now, I’d done some real good. Should have called me early on.

Creasie looked at Dan’s behind, the tail lifted off it again. Here it comes, she thought. But nothing happened. Dan’s tail dropped back down.

— Why you want to kill that man? she said to Aunt Vish.

— I don’t. I expect she might.

In a minute, looking at the bundle.

— Can I look at the baby, Aunt Vish?

— No.

They rode on.

— Is its eyes closed or open?

— Who? What you talking about, child?

— The baby.

Aunt Vish gave her a fierce look that said hush up or else. She hushed.

— How come it died? she said real quietly after a time.

Aunt Vish didn’t answer. They rode on. They made the turn toward the north part of Mercury, climbing the hill.

— How come we taking the baby with us?

— Hush up all your questions! Aunt Vish said. She nicked the crop tails against Dan’s flank.

They rocked behind the clopping horse back to town, past the old Case mansion and the trail to the ravine, Creasie looking but holding back her question. Down winding Poplar Avenue, into town. Vish stopped in front of Dr. Heath’s house. She reached around behind her for a little paper sack.

— Take these in to Dr. Heath.

Creasie jumped down and bounded up the steps, knocked on the door. Dr. Heath came in his robe, his hair up funny on his head.

— Hello there, Creasie, he said, looking down his nose.

She held the sack out to him. He took it, looked up, and nodded to Vish, who nodded back.

— Bye, Creasie said, and ran back to the wagon.

They clopped on into downtown. White people stopping on the sidewalk to look at them, to laugh at their rig, at Aunt Vish sitting proudly there with the reins in her hand. Past the fire station, where the firemen came out to call out to her, Hey old Aunt Vish! Vish didn’t acknowledge. She pulled up before the white funeral home. Aunt Vish handed Creasie the reins, stepped down, reached back and picked up the dead baby in the bundle.

— You wait here with the wagon.

She went inside. Creasie waited. Old Dan shifted, clopped a hoof on the slushy pavement. Creasie burrowed down into her quilt. After a few minutes Aunt Vish came back out, climbed back onto the wagon seat and took up the reins. -Hup.

Creasie ventured, — He going to bury the little baby, Aunt Vish? A colored baby?

Vish said nothing for a moment.

— Something like that, she said.

They made their way back north of town to the ravine, Dan clopping carefully down the narrow trail. She wanted to ask why the white home would take in a colored child. She unhitched Dan and led him to the little shed Aunt Vish kept for him beside the creek. When she came back up Aunt Vish reached into the pocket of her dress, fiddled there a second, peering in, and came out with a paper dollar, handed it to her. It was more than Aunt Vish had ever given her at one time.

— I give you that. You going to have to go to work soon, though. Getting old enough.

She nodded.

— Thank you.

Thinking of what she might buy.

— You going out in the world, such as it is, Aunt Vish said.

Vish was looking at her.

— Don’t you ever let no man mistreat you, now. Long as I’m around, no man ever going to mistreat you. You just come to me.

— Yes’m.

Aunt Vish smiled her black-toothed smile at her. Creasie looked up at the awful teeth in wonder.

— Why your teeth so black, Aunt Vish? she had once said to her.

Aunt Vish had cocked her head at her like a sleepy-eyed owl.

— Cause my heart’s clean and white, Aunt Vish said. -Count your blessings it ain’t the other way around.

SIN WAS EVERYWHERE and serious for Mrs. Urquhart. She was a scrawny and sallow woman, set upon by demanding spirits, a tight brown bun in her hair like an onion God drew forth from her mind, a punishment and reminder of evil’s beautiful, layered symmetry. Her heart though good was a shriveled potato, with sweet green shoots of kindness growing from it, a heart gone to seed.

— As long as Earl has to work that job in New York, she told Birdie, you’re welcome here, and I’ll love you like my own. But you have to pull your weight.

That meant most of the cooking and cleaning, as Mrs. U was always off to some camp meeting or another, rolling in the dirt and speaking in tongues, for all Birdie knew. Something far from the Methodist mumbling she grew up with, anyway, or even Pappy’s odd way of seeing the world.