The Heaven of Mercury (14 page)

P
ARNELL HAD JUST
gone downstairs for a glass of milk when he heard a tap-tapping at the front door and when he looked out the side panes he saw a young colored woman standing there holding a jar in her hands. He saw her eyes cut over and see him looking. He sighed, opened the door enough to look out, as he was wearing his house robe and slippers. She stood there looking at him, mute and frightened it seemed.

-Yes? he said. -How may I help you, Miss?

-Yes, sir, Mr. Grimes, she said then. -I need to see you about Mr. Earl.

-Earl Urquhart?

-Yes, sir.

-Did you know Mr. Urquhart?

She stared at him, her eyes pools of something awful, he couldn't tell.

-Yes, sir.

-Well, what, did you work for Mr. Earl, then?

She didn't say anything for a moment, then she nodded.

-Yes, sir, she said, I worked for him, out at the house. I did. And Miss Birdie. Work in the house.

He looked at her, wondering what she was doing there. Maybe she wanted to view the corpse but didn't feel like she could come to the funeral, though black and white were always welcome at a funeral.

-The funeral isn't set till day after tomorrow, he said then. You could visit Mr. Earl then. I'm afraid he's not been prepared for viewing, just yet.

-Yes, sir, she said, and stood there.

-I was just going to bed, Parnell said.

-Yes, sir, she said, I didn't want to see Mr. Earl. I needed to get something from him.

Parnell thought, What in the world. He saw the jar in her hands then.

-What do you have in the jar, there?

-It's a empty jar, the woman said.

-I can see that, Parnell said. Thinking, what? Some piece of jewelry or something? Did she think Earl Urquhart owed her money and come now to collect it in what looked like an empty preserves jar? Colored people. You couldn't figure them.

-It's late. What did you say your name was?

-Creasie Anderson, she said. -I keep house for Mr. Earl and Miss Birdie.

-Well, Creasie, why don't you come back in two days and attend the funeral, I'm sure that's what Miss Birdie would want.

The woman stood there, didn't move, just staring at him with those eyes. He was about to shut the door when she spoke again.

-She say to tell you she knows about the government bodies. She said to tell you she knows old Clint what helped your papa sell them bodies to the government, and if I said that to you that you would let me in.

Parnell lost his hearing there for a long moment, and his vision seemed to tunnel down to a small round area within which this strange little brown woman with a kerchief on her head stood on the home's veranda. Then through the roaring he heard something plaintive.

-What are you talking about? he said, though he was whispering now, without even thinking he needed to whisper, some automatic response to alarm. -Old Clint who used to work here?
Who
said?

He heard something again. Selena's voice, from up at the top of the stairs, out of sight.

-Parnell, what is it?

He stepped back and motioned the woman to come in, and put a finger to his lips.

-Nothing, my darling, he called up to Selena, his voice sounding strange in his ringing ears.

-Parnell? Are you coming up? Selena's voice carried like the quavery notes of some strange wind instrument down the stairs. -Come up to see me?

-Wait for me, Selena, he called, shooing the colored woman ahead of him down the hallway toward the door to the basement stairs. -I'll be up soon, sweetheart.

-I'll be waiting on you, Selena's voice floated down, playful now, enticing.

He whispered to the colored woman when they reached the door to the basement stairs.

-Shhh, now. We can talk down here.

He watched the woman go slowly down the narrow stairway, holding to the rail, and tried to gather what she was saying into his brain. After his father had died, Parnell had been going through his papers when he saw a packet of official-looking letters, unmarked as to their origin. They were cryptic but seemed to suggest his father was involved in a project of some sort and that this involved those people and maybe more he didn't know of who'd disappeared from the home but whose funerals had gone on as planned. And then one evening about a year after his father died another strange man came calling on his father, and when Parnell informed the man his father had died an unexpected death, along with his mother, the man nodded and stood there a while.

-Did your father tell you anything about activities on his part to assist the federal government, sir, in a study of some sort?

-No, Parnell said after a pause.

-He did not inform you in any way of his cooperation with a very important government project involving matters of national security, sir?

-No, sir, Parnell said, his heart racing. -Perhaps you can inform me, sir.

The man looked at him. Then he looked him slowly up and down, as if appraising him. Then the man said, -I'm sorry for your father's untimely death, Mr. Grimes. Then he turned and walked away and got into a black car with plain hubcaps across the street and drove away.

For a while Parnell had been convinced that the government had something to do with his parents' death. That whatever his father was involved in must have endangered him, he must have known something he wasn't supposed to know, and so some strange espionage-like death was concocted for him. And for a long time after that he had worried that they believed he knew something and would one day be coming for him. But he never heard from them again. His mind was now reeling with the absurdity of the whole business now coming up again in the form of this dumpy little auntie standing there beside him at the empty preparation table, still in her old ragged coat, holding the jar in her two hands in front of her and just waiting.

-Miss V—and she stopped. -She say—

-Who is this
she
? Parnell interrupted her. He heard a tremulous quality in his own voice and realized he was beginning to perspire.

-Say we got to have the poor man's heart, she said then, not looking at him.

-What? Who's heart? Earl Urquhart's heart? You are telling me you want this man's heart? To put in that
jar
there?

Woman just nodded. She looks worse scared than I do, Parnell thought.

-This is insane! he almost shouted. He started to take her by the arm and rush her out the back door then, but she said again,

-She say to tell you old Clint know about your papa and giving the government them bodies. She say we got to have Mr. Earl's heart in this here jar or she going to tell about it.

-
Who
says? he fairly hissed, throwing his arms up in the air.

-Mr. Grimes, I can't say! she said, looking at him now and he could see tears in her eyes now, beginning to run down her big cheeks.

A thought tickled up to the front of his brain as if released from some little air bubble in the back of it somewhere. That this woman was an emissary of Birdie Urquhart. This was the man's widow asking him to give her maid her husband's heart in a goddamn mason jar, for God's sake. Earlier that evening a drunken woman had telephoned him, said she was Earl Urquhart's sister, and that she wanted him to do an
autopsy
(she'd ripped out the word in her slurring speech) on the man because in fact he'd been
murdered
(ripping that one out, too). He'd hung up on her, thinking it a vicious, foolish prank. And now a chill settled into his blood. Mrs. Birdie Urquhart. He felt a strange and ridiculous momentary sense of relief that maybe this actually had nothing to do with his father and the bodies but it was too confusing and his thoughts wheeled into chaos again.

My God, he thought then. This woman he'd worshiped from afar for much of his life, who looked like the movie stars he'd idolized as a child, who seemed some sort of essence of feminine allure to Parnell, about whom he'd fantasized in the earliest mixings of his contorted desire.

Standing there in the dim room lit by the auxiliary lamp in the corner looking at this frightened colored maid he felt a calm move through him as if he'd been administered a drug. It was the calm of the man who has resigned himself to a terrible turn of events in his life, say a murderer of some sort, whose deed is done and he resigns himself to the way it is and does not acclimate his mind to the anxieties of the lawful majority. He let go of the colored woman's arm then and went over to the locker, opened it, and wheeled the gurney with Earl Urquhart's body on it out, and turned the overhead lamp on and pulled back the sheet from his stricken face. He heard the woman catch her breath.

-You might want to wait outside, he said. -This won't be pretty.

She stood there like an idiot, apparently unable to move.

-Suit yourself, then, he said.

He got out the scalpel and the saw and the spreader from the chest where they were stored, where his father had stored them since Parnell was a child, and went to work. When he'd opened him up, he took the separator, set it in place, then cranked it open. Adjusted his lamp. Then the second chill of the evening hit him, this one worse than the first, for the man's heart was as black as if it'd been skewered and turned on a spit over a fire. Parnell wondered for a moment if a bolt of lightning could have shot down and pierced straight to this man's heart, entering and leaving it clean as a blade of light and blasting nothing else. Hardly thinking, he quickly sliced a small section from one wall and concealed it on the other side of the corpse, between the arm and the ribcage. He paused and looked up at the woman. She was staring into the dead man's chest.

-Look like some kind of buirnt root in there, she said.

-Open the jar, he said to her, all cool and formality again now. He felt possessed of a strange calm, as if resolving this weird issue for this woman would resolve more than he could understand. -You might want to look away, here. Plenty of time, I suppose, for you to see what is in here when you are on the way back home.

She stared at him with her baleful, frightened eyes and without looking slowly unscrewed the lid to the mason jar and held it tentatively out in front of her, and then she turned her head to look away at the stairwell leading out.

-You'll be going out the back door, Parnell said as he leaned in with the scalpel and a pair of tongs.

 

THE WHOLE ORDEAL
had taken only a half hour and now he was washed up and trudging in a horrified daze back up the stairs to their living quarters. He was muttering a prayer to himself, my God forgive me and mine own for all our sins and our wretched natures. When he reached the top of the stairs he just did catch a glimpse of a pair of bare feet and legs sprawled invitingly from the door of the guest room and for the third time in less than an hour, he felt a shock and a chill—then he calmed, almost smiled to himself, and began unbuttoning his shirt as he approached the supine form of his sweet bride there, just her nightie top on and her arms flung over her head. Again, a cool sweat broke on his broad forehead.

-I'm coming, my darling, he whispered, don't go.

 

THE FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST
from Jackson called him two days later, just after Earl's funeral, having examined the sample of Earl's heart Parnell had sent him via one of his helpers on the day following Creasie's visit. After the usual civilities, the pathologist asked in a somewhat incredulous manner just what in the world that man had been up to in his days. Parnell took a long pause, then informed the doctor that his family had taken care of Mr. Urquhart's father and his grandfather, as well, and that among the Grimes family, in a professional sense, the Urquharts were known as the Blackhearts, for the propensity toward this condition, for which Parnell had no explanation.

He said to the pathologist, -So you reached no conclusion, yourself, based on lab tests?

-Afraid not, the pathologist said. -It could be a damned interesting study, though. I'm tempted to come over and take a look at this situation myself.

He had a voice like a big man speaking with his cheeks full of cornpone, rich and congested and mealy. Strong and suspicious.

-It may involve negro occult matters, I'm afraid, Parnell said. -I'm not sure it would be something we could understand.

-Well if you are inclined to write up what all you know about it, I'd be interested to read such a document, the pathologist said.

-Personally I would like to put it to rest, Parnell said. -This family and their indecent ways and their dangerous and self-destructive habits have been a blight on this community. I would not relish the publication of any sort of record which might also blemish the reputation of the community by association.

-Well, the pathologist said after a moment. -Thank you for the enlightenment, Mr. Grimes. I'm afraid there's nothing concrete this office can truly contribute to your understanding of what led to this man's death. He paused. -Should you see any lateral evidence of this sort of thing, however, I'd be obliged if you would let me know so that I could take a peek, so to speak, at—ah—such goings-on.

-I will do that, Parnell said. -Good day to you, sir, he said, and they hung up.

L
ATER ON THE
afternoon he'd seen Birdie outside Schoenhof's, Finus got into his pickup and drove out into the country, taking little back roads in a meandering way around the circumference of Mercury, until at dusk he was rolling slowly past Birdie and Earl's house on the highway. The lights were on in the kitchen and den, dark everywhere else. He slowed and turned down the road that ran between their house and the junkyard Earl's son-in-law ran with his father and peered into the darkened three-car garage to see if Earl's car was there. He'd be somewhat outside of propriety to drop in and say hello if Earl wasn't home. He could see at least one car there. And then he saw the grainy shadowed figure standing in the driveway. He had to turn in, then, for to pass on by in that manner would be too odd. He pulled up beside the figure, Earl, who was just standing there smoking in the last light. Finus shut the engine.

-Finus, Earl said, offering him a cigarette. Finus took it, lit up. Earl looked up as if to check for an early moon, and the men didn't say anything for a minute, smoking in silence.

Earl looked at him, took a last drag, and flicked the cigarette butt into the yard.

-Been a while. How'd you like Tuscaloosa?

-Never did feel quite like home, Finus said.

Earl nodded. -I never did get to tell you how sorry I was about your son.

-Well, Finus said. -That's all right.

-I'm sorry about Merry, too, Earl said, all the trouble that caused. But you know as well as I do there's no controlling that bitch.

-Ancient history, Finus said.

-Well, Earl said, and nodded. He gave Finus a faint smile. -You lost your boy. Can't get a divorce, so I hear. You've nothing left to lose but your business, now that it's all in your hands. May as well just work hard and play the field.

Finus laughed. No doubt about it, Earl looked like a movie star, handsome and confident in his manner. No wonder he had his reputation with the women. But even now he couldn't help thinking what an odd match he was for Birdie Wells.

-I reckon I could get a divorce, if I wanted to pay the price, Finus said. He put on his best rueful smile. -I was just driving around, thinking, thought I'd say hello.

Earl nodded, looking at him, then turned away toward his house, where Finus could see Birdie's stockinged legs through the den screen door as she sat in a chair, maybe reading from the lamp glow that bathed them.

-We'll see you around, Earl said over his shoulder.

-Right, Finus said. -I'll see you.

 

TWO WEEKS LATER
, word came from a friend of Birdie's that Earl had dropped dead of a heart attack while out splitting firewood at his lake. When Earl didn't come home two hours after leaving, Birdie had driven out to check on him and found him on the ground next to a pile of cordwood he'd split, one hand still on the ax, his eyes open. She'd pulled him into her car by herself and driven him to the hospital, way too late. Parnell Grimes judged it cardiac arrest, and there was no inquiry.

That evening, Finus dressed and went out to Birdie's house. Earl wouldn't be ready at the funeral home till the next day. Finus knew Parnell never got them ready the same day if they came in after noon–he was a perfectionist.

Birdie was in her den, with visitors in there and the kitchen, a few scattered into the living room and sunporch. The visitors served themselves from a large percolator on the kitchen counter and ate baked goods from the kitchen table. Creasie was nowhere to be seen.

After Finus had been there a half hour, Earl's brother Levi and his wife, Rae, and Merry came in, obviously drunk. Merry wore the requisite black, but around her neck along with a string of pearls lay some kind of fur stole. On her head was a bright shiny red hat that seemed made from the skin of some large exotic bird, half a dozen blue feathers askew from the crown, bedraggled, as if she'd just killed, skinned, and partially plucked the creature out in the yard and stretched it onto her skull still steaming from lifeblood. She looked over at Finus and closed her eyes slowly, let an odd smile slip across her lips, then opened her eyes and batted them once at him. He couldn't help but wonder where Avis was at that moment, since he'd seen her car parked outside. Just then Merry murmured something to Levi, who gave her a look like he'd just swallowed his tongue and wanted to say something but just shook his head. Merry looked back up at Finus then and said, loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear, -Well I'm surprised you're here, Finus. Being the disgruntled lover and all.

He was confused, at first, felt himself blush that she would joke about their old affair in public, but then he realized from the look she was giving Birdie that she meant
Birdie
, as in Finus and Birdie. Levi still hadn't spoken, still didn't look like he could. Birdie turned paler than she had been. Finus stood in the center of the room like some stiff ridiculous totem. Levi took Merry's elbow and tried to pull her toward the door, whispering something to her, but Merry yanked her arm free and turned back to Birdie. Birdie looked up at her, horrified.

-I don't know how you can sit there and play the grieving widow, Merry said. -
Sweet little Birdie
, she mocked her. -Well you don't fool me.

-Merry, please, Birdie said, don't do this.

-Do what, honey, tell the truth? Everybody thinks she is so-o-o innocent, she said loudly then, sweeping her arm around the room, almost losing the ridiculous hat from her head. It seemed the entire house had fallen silent, everyone in the den and in the other rooms, too. -Well, she went on—but Finus had heard enough and if Levi couldn't handle her he would. He stepped over, took her by the upper arm, and hustled her through the kitchen and out into the driveway.

Outside, she twisted from his grip and swung her purse at him.

-What the hell, Merry.

-She
killed
him, is what, Merry said, pushing her hair back out of her eyes and spitting onto the sidewalk. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing bright red lipstick on her pale skin.

-Jesus Christ, Finus said, are you insane? You couldn't be that drunk.

-I don't know
how
, she said, but my brother Earl was healthy as a horse and did not just keel over from a heart attack. Wasn't enough she lived like a little queen out here, having her every whim, new cars, new clothes, a goddamn nigger maid to do all her work, this pampered little goddamn thing, but everybody knew Earl was fucking every girl came through his store, and everybody knew he fell in love with Ann after she went to work there, and everybody knew he set Ann up in the Tallahassee store so he could go down and be with her, and Birdie knew he was going to leave her for Ann and if you don't think that's enough motive for a woman to kill her husband you're a bigger idiot of a half-ass small-town newspaper man than I took you for.

She realized she'd locked herself out of her car, took off one of the expensive high-heel shoes Earl no doubt had given her gratis from his store, and smashed the heel into the driver's window shattering it. She tossed the fur stole onto the seat over the glass, climbed in, cranked up, and peeled out of yard. Finus heard something behind him then, and Avis walked up in the shadows, though he could make out the ironic smile on her face. She nodded to Merry's car hurtling away.

-Too bad you two didn't work out. You deserve each other.

Finus ignored her and went back in to apologize to Birdie for his part in the scene, even though that'd been ending it. He heard Avis's heels clicking down the driveway toward her car.

 

THE NEXT DAY
, Finus went back to the funeral home to pay Parnell Grimes, county coroner and funeral director at the home, a semiofficial visit.

The old Victorian mansion Parnell used for a home and business stood on the west side of downtown near the library. Inside, Finus could smell nothing of the large bouquets and wheels of flowers standing in the foyer and parlors, but only (perhaps in his mind) the faint and pervasive odor of the chemicals of the trade, something like and not like formaldehyde, and sitting across from Parnell Grimes in his back office, looking at the soft little pudgy fellow he was, his pinkness, he couldn't help but entertain the morbid fantasy that a strange ancient secret funerary chemical ran in Parnell's veins in lieu of blood. He seemed distracted, shuffling papers on his desk, glancing up at Finus with a nervous smile, asked what he could do for him. With his smoothness, his balding slicked-down head, and his tight black suit, he looked a little penguinish standing there, to Finus.

-You'll have to forgive me, Parnell said. -Busy day. As always!

-No problem, Finus said. -Take your time.

-Um hmm, um hmm, Parnell said, shuffling his papers, raising his eyebrows and nodding, checking a drawer for something, shutting it. Then stopped all his fidgety activity, placed his pudgy little hands on the desk in front of him, and looked at Finus, eyebrows in a question mark. His child-size hands were almost translucent, made Finus shiver a little at the thought of them handling the dead—or him, dead. And within that cartoonish gathering of flesh blinked those deep-set and absurdly pretty eyes, like a movie idol's, so anomalous as to shock one upon first noticing.

-Well, I was just passing by, really, Finus said. He put his hands in his pockets, jingled his change, smiled at Parnell. -Any new customers today?

-I'm afraid so, Parnell said. -Mrs. Terhune, from Southside.

-The tamale lady?

Parnell nodded.

-I'll miss them, Finus said. -Used to buy them by the sackful.

-Selena will, too, Parnell said, referring to his wife, who lived with him there in the home. -She loves tamales.

-Mmm hmm, Finus said. -Say, Parnell, when I called yesterday you said Earl Urquhart died of a heart attack.

Parnell stood somewhat at attention, his head cocked in question.

-Yes?

-Well, I was just rechecking that. Just wondering, no real reason, if there was anything odd there, anything that might have suggested any other cause.

Parnell kept his odd, penguinish pose.

-No real reason, Finus said, just that he seemed so healthy, you know, just talked to him the other day. He shook his head. -Just goes to show.

Parnell, after a beat, nodded as if the pose had been prelude to some odd penguin mating dance.

-Yes, yes it does. You never know. Well, no, Mr. Bates, no sign, no reason to think anything other than cardiac arrest, as far as I could tell. I suppose it could have been a stroke.

-Hmm, yeah, Finus said.

The men stood there awkwardly a moment more.

-So, Finus said. -Well, Mrs. Terhune?

-Heart, Parnell said, doing the nod again.

-Umm hmm, Finus said. -Guess she probably ate a lot of her own fare.

After a beat, both men laughed a little awkwardly, though quietly.

-Well, I won't keep you, Finus said. -I know you're busy.

Parnell's eyebrows jumped again and he shrugged his narrow little shoulders in the too-small black suit. He nodded.

-Yes, three funerals today, as I'm sure you know, Parnell said. -Sorry to be so distracted, Mr. Bates. He gave a nervous little laugh. -I'm terminally disorganized.

-Terminally, Finus said, and gave a little laugh of his own.

-Yes, oh, ha ha! Parnell said, standing up and starting to offer his hand, then withdrawing it as instead he came around the desk to usher Finus on out. -Well good to see you, Mr. Bates, sorry I couldn't be more help.

-No, Finus said. -Just obligatory, newspaper business you know.

-Yes, Parnell said, already somewhere else, showing Finus to the door, and seeming already away from there into another room as Finus stepped out the door and said goodbye.

-Yes, Parnell said, thank you now, give my best to Mrs. Bates.

Though everyone in Mercury who knew Finus and Avis knew they'd been separated for years, a terminal separation, as it were. Well he was an odd one, Parnell.

Finus made his way on down the sidewalk in the cold gray of the afternoon. It was February. Earl's wake tonight, services tomorrow, time would roll on. God help him, but he was thinking mourning period. He'd be visiting Birdie every now and then in between. Come late spring, he figured, all this would have pretty much died down. By then, it might be proper enough to propose that his visits take on a different tone. In the meantime, he'd check in on her every now and then to make sure she was doing okay.

 

BUT WHEN HE
called her the next week she was upset. Wouldn't say why at first, then finally told him she'd received two letters, unsigned, with no return address. The text of the letters was made from cut-out magazine headline words, odd sizes, accusing her of poisoning Earl, and threatening to have his body exhumed for an autopsy.

-It's Levi and Merry, who else? Birdie said. -Finus, they have hated me and tormented me from day one, always jealous of me, jealous of Earl. And you should've seen them in the executor's office the other day. They stood up after Earl's will was read and said Earl would never have left them out, that something was funny, they were going to sue me, and just up and walked out. Hubert Cawthon called me and said they'd tried to get an order to dig Earl up, so I know it's them.

Finus called Cawthon, the district attorney, and Cawthon's assistant DA. Spud Meriwether confirmed, off the record, that Merry and Levi had indeed sought the order.

-Hell, Spud said, if anybody poisoned Earl Urquhart I'd think it his sister. Woman's crazy. Besides, Parnell Grimes said he sent a sample from Earl's heart to the state lab and came back negative.

-Is that right, Finus said, wondering why Parnell hadn't mentioned this to him. -No poison, then?

-I reckon that's what negative means, Spud said.

Finus knew from the grapevine that Spud had been one of Merry's victims, too, only unlike Finus (apparently an exception) Spud had been stuck for a life insurance policy before getting out of his affair.