The Heaven of Mercury (16 page)

C
ARS CLACKITY-CLACKING
by out on the old highway, tires slapping the tar dividers, always put her to sleep, and Earl, it would wake him up in the middle of the night, he'd have to get up and go in the kitchen, make a pot of coffee and smoke before coming back to bed. His heart racing. The man had to be going all-out even sleeping, when he could sleep. It was all that, killed him. They could say all they wanted about her but it was that what killed him, cigarettes and no rest and womanizing, and work all the time, and just that temper, all pent up and not enough chances to steam it out. She gave him every chance she could and then some, let him rant and rave all he wanted, but it wasn't enough. The man had plenty of poison in his own glands, keeping that backed up in him for want of putting it into her, but it just wasn't in her to do that all the time, rutting away like he wanted, and she reckoned he didn't let it build up too much, with Ann and all the girls at the store as wanton and willing vessels.

The old mockingbird with the nest in the camellia was singing in through the window screen again. She'd had Finus's radio show on earlier though she missed whatever he'd said about her, he'd said he was going to say something and she'd said not to tell people she was out here about to die, they'd come and wear her out visiting and kill her for sure, and she didn't want to go that way, with people all around gawking. But when she turned on the radio and heard Finus that bird was out there, cocking his head, and when she turned him off in a little bit sounded like the bird was mocking Finus, singing a waw-waw-waw song made her laugh out loud, it had to be Finus's old sawing drawl he was after. She wondered sometimes if that crazy bird wasn't mocking her, nobody knew better than she did how she yammered on, when she was feeling good anyway, when she was on the telephone, talk talk talk, and suddenly in the middle of yapping-on hear that bird trilling some loud funny song didn't sound like any other bird, and she'd think My lands, that's me!

Now there he was, bouncing on that little camellia branch and cocking his head in and making some rrrack! rickety sound like a crow.

Out back of the house the old junk cars from her son-in-law's junklot across the road had accumulated over the years, spreading into her back lot where there was once just the little field laced with honeysuckle and hanging oak boughs and Creasie's cabin—now fallen in on itself and vines—gathering like the empty husks of giant cicadas, all through the ruined apple orchard. She used to make the best pies of those tart green and brown speckled apples. She couldn't look out the window on the east side of the house or go in the backyard without seeing all those empty rusted car bodies sitting there. Like a joke on Earl, who had loved the automobile second only to other women.

-I don't mean anything by that, now, your papa was so good to me and took care of me all these years, and had to live with me to boot, but you know it's the truth!

Her granddaughter said nothing, but her chin jutted out a little more and she looked away. That Mosby chin, like pictures you see of those old kings and such that inbred so much, though she didn't think that'd been the case with the Mosbys, just bad luck. They say you're attracted to yourself in your mate. You'd think they'd not liked the chin so much, though. Ruthie'd had a normal chin, but this child had come down through her Papa's line. Edsel's boy Robert had looked more like the Urquharts, before he'd died in the car wreck. He'd be grown now like Laura, here, if he'd lived.

Her granddaughter sighed.

-I've got to take Lindy to dance lessons and Chaz to baseball practice, and Dan's on the road again. I probably won't be back by today but I can check in around dinner to make sure everything's okay.

-No, hon, Creasie's got some peas and greens and we'll just eat vegetables. I don't have an appetite, anyway. She coughed dryly into a tissue. -I got some cream in the freezer, maybe I'll just eat some of that later, to settle my stomach.

-Okay, her granddaughter said with another sigh, and kind of, it seemed to Birdie, huffed in a tired way out of the room.

 

ONE LATE AFTERNOON
at Pappy and Mamaw's house, she was just about seven years old, she and Lucy'd been sent over to stay with them, and Pappy took her out into his garden. Gardening was his passion, then, and his garden was lush and beautiful. It was dusk. The light faintly blue, and graying. Pappy had taught her the names of the flowering bushes, the pink camellias and wild azaleas with their yellow blooms, his roses and on down the little slope in back the tall sunflowers like Uncle Will would grow himself one day. Pappy knelt down beside her. Little Lucy was in the house asleep. And in the light becoming so faint she was afraid they were disappearing into it, like with the lessening vision they would both just sift into the gray and disappear, so she gripped his empty coat sleeve with her small hand, the thin wool fabric weightless between her fingers where he'd lost his arm in the war. His long white beard and hair looked silver and luminous in the spare light. He covered her hand with his own and said softly, -Listen, Birdie, can you tell it's something special? She looked at him, afraid. He whispered, -Something has happened. Can you tell?

-Yes, she whispered.

If she held on tight to Pappy she would not disappear without him, he would be with her there, where they went.

Pappy said, -It's a miracle has happened, Birdie.

She looked at him. In the disappearing light he was becoming darker, a shade lingering here on the earth. Within the soft glow of his beard and hair she could barely see his pale eyes.

Pappy said, -Your mama has given us a new little girl. When you get back to your house you'll see. And then, as her eyes became used to the darkening light, she could see him, like a child himself, somehow changed.

And that was when Pud had been born. In the last wisp of light from behind the trees they had walked holding hands back into the lamplit house and stood over little Lucy asleep in the middle of Pappy and Mamaw's bed and looked at her sleeping face.

-Another beautiful child in the world, like little Lucy here, but just a
tiny
baby, brand-new, Pappy said, and he stroked Birdie's hair. -In the morning, we'll all go see her.

She was so happy he had not gone away, the world had not ended in the beautiful moment in the garden, that she began to cry. He held her in his arms, shushing her, and took her into the kitchen, where Mamaw fussed over her and fussed at Pappy for telling her stories and scaring her so. The way he'd point to a plant and say, This here's hemlock, what they used to do away with their enemies in Shakespeare's day and so on. I ever get sick and out of my mind, you bring it to me, in a little tea.

Rrraaack! Mockingbird squawking at her again.

-Sing like the songbirds, that's what you're supposed to do.

The bird cocked his head.

-Go on!

Ooodle oo! Mocking her again.

Pud was so funny, when they was little girls, once learned the f-word and went around saying it when the grown-ups weren't there, till one morning when she'd waked up at dawn and was all by herself in the wide-awake world she heard this old crow cawing outside the window, sounded like he was saying
fuck! fuck!
, and it scared her so she ran into Mama and Papa's room crying, -I'll never say it again!

 

PEOPLE DIDN'T KNOW
what she'd lived through in her life—if Finus Bates was to write the truth in her obituary it'd be an outrage. She told him once, said, I have suffered pain, insult, treachery, I guess nothing'll kill you till the Lord gets set to take you. Finus said, Well some say you're left here for a purpose, and she said, Well I wish He'd let me know just what that is so I can do it and hurry up and go. And Finus just laughed and said, Well you know I don't believe such junk anyway. Well I do, she said, or I did, anyway. I don't know why I'm still here, anymore, I feel so bad.

That Levi. The night Earl had the attack, before he died, Levi was to pick up some five hundred dollars in shoes in Memphis and bring them down to the Mercury store, and they never did get delivered. Already paid for. Birdie was at the Auxiliary weeks later, saw Hettie Martin wearing a pair of their shoes and said, Oh, you're wearing some of our shoes, and she says, Yes, Levi sold them to me, said he was helping y'all out. But they never saw any of that money, Levi just took advantage of all the confusion and stole them. Then turned around to the executor and said, I know Earl! I know Birdie! Lawyer said I don't care what you say, Levi, Earl had a son, you are not named in this will. Then the cut-out letters start, they're going to dig Earl up and do an autopsy, on and on. Oh, it was terrible.

Merry was the worst of the lot in a way but she never really expected any money out of Earl after he'd died. Levi was greedy but with Merry it was more about mischief and mean practical jokes. She got mad at Earl one time and went down to the florist and sent bunches of flowers to this friend and that, in the hospital and here and there, and said just send the bill to Earl Urquhart, my brother. Earl said Goddamn, R.W., I'm not going to pay for that! And R.W. said I know it Earl, I'll pay for it.

He was the sweetest man, R.W was, and Merry did him so wrong. That time he was laid up in the hospital, and said, Well, one thing I know, Merry'd never cheat on me. Well. He was a good man, and made good money selling insurance, made the million-dollar club every year. But didn't have a clue. He never did know about the time Mr. Grant who had the appliance store downtown come by one day when Earl was out of town, said to Birdie, -Mrs. Urquhart I hate to talk to you about this but I got to talk to somebody, and I thought it might be better if you told Earl about it. I figure he might know how to handle it, but if I tell him he'd just get mad.

Well she, Merry, had been running around with his partner, Mr. Ethridge, and Mr. Grant says, Mrs. Urquhart, he's leaving money underneath the carpet there at the store for her, where she can come in and act like she's browsing—browsing washing machines, now!—and reach down like to scratch her heel and get that money. She's said if he don't, she said, I'll go to your front door and tell your wife what you done.

Not to mention what she did to Finus, all that mess.

-Now, I'm telling you, Birdie told Claudevelyn Peacock, who'd come by early that morning with a chicken and rice casserole and given it to Creasie in the kitchen and come on back to her bedroom, I'm telling you, you may not remember but now Merry was a beautiful woman. She could've been a movie star, I mean she really could.

-Oh, I know it, I remember her, she used to scare me the way she'd just look at you, Claudevelyn said, leaning forward with her hands on her flabby knees. She'd done something to her hair, Birdie thought, or maybe hadn't done anything, or tried and couldn't, anyway it was standing up like she'd put a little box on her head and slept in it. Had a good color, though, strong salt-and-pepper, her own hadn't been anything but pure gray since her sixties.

-That's right, like old Jane Russell, kind of, just a sexpot.

-Oh, yeah, honey, Claudevelyn said. She leaned back in the chair beside the bed and sucked her teeth and looked off like her mind was wandering to something. -Land, yes, she said.

She woke up at some point, Claudevelyn gone.

Earl said one day, I don't see—she told him about Mr. Ethridge the night after Mr. Grant came by, and he said Why didn't you tell me sooner? and she said I just couldn't—but Earl said, I don't see what people see in her. Well, she was just charming as she could be, kept her hair long and was pretty. But you know what Earl said about her, said her breath smelled terrible, he said I don't see how anybody could kiss her, her breath smells just like s-h-i-t. And it did. You could walk into the room and you could smell Merry's breath. Birdie didn't know why it was and couldn't see herself how anybody stood it, she couldn't ever stand to smell bad breath. It comes through your gums and they can be treated. Earl's breath never did smell like that, he smelled so much like cigarettes. But then he had his own problem, with the stinky feet. She'd been with Earl when he'd be opening new stores and wouldn't take his shoes off for two or three days, then come home and his feet smelled like, oh, something awful—she'd pick up his shoes and set them outside, she couldn't stand it. They finally quit smelling that way, but you keep your shoes on for days like that and your feet smell—well you don't know how bad they can smell.

Well she never thought life would be so full of meanness and disappointment. She hadn't been prepared for it.

They'd had the best time at night, when she was a little girl. The house had a big room with a fireplace, and they'd all get in a circle around that fireplace. And Uncle Will was an old bachelor, he'd come down, he lived just a hop and a skip down the road, just a garden between, when you looked you saw the big bright yellow faces of sunflowers looking back. He'd come walking down through the sunflower stalks, singing, and she and Lucy and Pud would play tricks on him all afternoon. One time put some water up over the door and it spilled on him. And put pins in the chair cushion, he'd sit on it. He was one of those old grouches, wouldn't want to laugh: Ain't you got no better sense than to do things like that? But you could see how he was tickled about it.

The neighbors had an old white horse named George stayed out in the pasture, and when she'd wake up in the morning sometimes she could look out in the field, sun just up, and see George out there and somehow it made her feel good. She couldn't remember what happened to him, they must have sold him. She took to a baby goat Papa had and went out to the barn with Papa one day and he got angry and had a hammer in his hand and he slung it, didn't even know the poor thing was standing there, and the little goat just fell over dead. Hit him in the head. They didn't even dress it out. It wasn't a pet or anything but it made everybody sad. Once she got up onto George and rode him out into the pasture and he went under a tree and nearly knocked her off. She was always scared of a horse after that. Earl wanted to get all of them a horse. Well he did have one—a beautiful mare—there was a way you'd pull her and she'd rare, and she'd rare up with the kids, and scare her to death. And Earl was going to break that horse. It's a wonder he didn't have a stroke over there one day. He got so mad at that horse he led her out into the lake up in the woods behind the house, that horse had to hold her head way up, Earl was just going to drown her. That's how he was then. Why in the world he didn't have a stroke right then, his face was so red.