The Heaven of Mercury (4 page)

-What about that girl you been seeing, now? What are you doing with that poor girl, if you're so in love with this Birdie Wells?

Finus frowned and looked away.

-Well, what? his father said. -You think you can just jack people around like that, play with them like that?

-I'm not doing that. We just run around together some, that's all, he mumbled. The last thing he wanted to think about right then was Avis Crossweatherly, with her determined if low-key tendency to attach herself to his arm somehow whenever they all went out in a group, and often when he was planning to head somewhere alone.

-Mind that's all it is, then, his father said. -These things have a way of getting serious on a man before he's aware of it. Especially if his head is lodged far up into his ass.

He picked up his hat from the chair and walked out.

Later that afternoon Avis Crossweatherly came into his room and stood at the foot of his bed. Though she was a tall girl with a narrow and somewhat flat face, hence the kangaroo jokes people made behind her back, she had a noble nose, which helped somewhat in close quarters to give her an odd kind of beauty. Though later Finus would think she'd never resembled her hard old father as much as she did in that moment. The old man was a self-made hardscrabble cattle trader whose only words to Finus when they would go out to his farm to ask his permission to marry (a moot point, her being a month or so along, pure ceremony) would be: -Have you any money in the bank, then? And when Finus said, -Yes, sir, a little, and business is pretty good, the old man nodded, said, -All right, then, and the two of them sat there on the porch for another ten minutes with the old man rolling cigarettes and smoking them and saying not another word until Finus got up, joined Avis, who'd been standing in the front yard holding her purse and pair of white cotton gloves in her hands, and left.

At the hospital, Avis was wearing a green dress, a green hat, and her white gloved hands held the handle of her white leather purse before her. Finus, surprised to see her there, didn't know what to say.

-How are you feeling? she finally said.

-Well enough. They say I'll keep the eye.

She stood there saying nothing, until Finus filled the silence and answered her unstated question with a lie about a bachelor party that got out of hand. Her face was like a nickel Indian's set in stone.

-Where was the party?

-Out at Urquhart's, he said. -We were shooting tin cans, drunk.

She stared at him a minute.

-Was Birdie there?

He shook his head. -Home, getting ready for the wedding.

In a moment, she nodded. Then she looked to see if the hospital-room door was closed, and walked over to his bedside.

-I know how you feel about Birdie, she said.

He didn't reply, but looked away with his uninjured eye. He heard her sigh, and then in his good eye's peripheral vision he saw her white-gloved hand reach over the hospital sheets, and to his astonishment he saw and felt it press gently against his groin, find his prick, and give it a gentle but firm squeeze. And what he couldn't believe, in the context of the moment, was that under her strong fingers' gentle pressure he responded like a bull at stud. He looked first at the hand, at the bulge of sheet beneath it that was himself, and then at her face, which wore an enigmatic expression of mischief and tenderness, something he'd never seen in Avis's features before.

-You'll get over her, she said then. She brought her gloved hand back to its demure position on the handbag. -I'll help you, if you like.

It was a spell, in spite of his somewhat passive resistance, that would last through a strung-out period of dating some seven years in length, and through a long and unhappy marriage, and more than thirty years would pass before he would truly escape it. It was a moment that precipitated what he came to see as a long journey through a tangled wood, all as if in a semiconscious dream, a pretension of life. He would walk through it like a ghost, present but unaffecting of others, there but stirring no other's blood aside from in memory, a softening shape about to molt and pass into what passed for the spirit, a free traveling current or pulse in the passage of time.

T
HE DAY BIRDIE WELLS
gave in to Earl Urquhart, she and her friends had picnicked at the river in Finus Bates's father's old 90-T Overland. The car got stuck in a mud hole and trying to push them out Finus was covered head to toe, Pud up there trying to drive and slinging the mud all over him. Finus came around and hugged Birdie, shouted, -I love you, Birdie! and everybody laughed because she had mud on her clothes exactly in the shape of Finus Bates, according to Pud, and they all made him go back and jump in the river before they'd let him back in his own car to drive them home.

Earl's car sat parked on the lawn in front of the gallery at her house. Pud and Lucy jumped out and ran into the house, but Finus grabbed her arm and said, -Birdie don't go in there. Let's ride around a little longer.

-Well I got to go in, she said, we were supposed to be home an hour ago. She turned to look at Finus sitting there behind the giant wheel of the Overland, looking like a pouting little boy. -Well maybe you do love me, she teased. -Are you jealous?

-I am, Avis said, her arms crossed. Then she tried to smile. -I'm jealous you got a man like Earl Urquhart in there just waiting to see you.

-Ooo, now, the others said, listen at Avis! Finus turned and gave Avis a curious look.

Birdie jumped out, and they all waved and hollered to her as Finus drove them away, scowling, looking back at Birdie as she went up the porch steps.

In the parlor Earl was dressed for Sunday, hair oiled and parted down the middle. He held a bunch of wildflowers she recognized from the patch they'd just driven by coming from the river. She'd even pointed them out and said Look how pretty, though it was just false dandelions. From the center of the yellow blossoms rose a stem of purple phlox he'd apparently found somewhere, and he didn't seem to notice its sap leaking onto his fine suit pants. When he stood up to greet her she said, -Did you have an accident? He looked, flushed, and saw it was the flowers then and laughed. She liked him in that moment, shouldn't have let on, for then he wouldn't leave that day until she agreed to marry him, no matter how many times she said she didn't want to, he was just crazy, followed her around the house, onto the porch, out back to the pasture where they kept the horse, would even have followed her down the woods path if she'd taken the chance and gone there. He was like a pesky fly or gnat in the shape of a man, swat and miss and he's right back again. So finally it was almost like she promised to spend the rest of her life with him just to get rid of him for the time being.

It was later that night when she was in bed and Mama came to stand in the door, looking at her in that way, that she realized what she'd done.

Not long after that her grandfather, ancient one-armed white-bearded sweet Pappy, took her out into his garden, where he liked to walk with her and tell her stories. Everyone said the war had made him a little crazy, though she didn't think so. There they were in the pale gloaming, supper done. He took hold of her arm and looked at her in that way that used to scare her, like he wasn't looking at her but at something in his mind. -When I was a scout in the war, he said, one evening like this I came upon a Yankee soldier alone in the woods and laying on the ground.

-What was he doing? she said.

-Something un-Christian, Pappy said. He looked at her oddly. -I can't tell you.

-Was he hurting somebody, or something?

-No, he was alone. He was committing a sin, is all I'll say. But I could not blame him, it was war, though I thought it strange.

Her scalp and the back of her neck prickled, though she dared not pursue it but vaguely. Suspected she shouldn't. She could hardly believe Pappy was even telling this story.

-Well what did you do?

-I laid my musket down and knelt there to say a prayer for him. He was God's child, though a Yank. Well when he was done sinning he looked up and seen me and jumped, but I had his musket laid next to mine. I said, Don't be afraid, I won't shoot you. I took him back to camp and they shipped him to a prison in Georgia after asking him some questions.

-What kind of questions?

-Oh, about his company, what he was up to.

-Did you tell about what he was doing?

-No, it was a private thing, I respected that. I said he'd been asleep.

She could picture this Yankee soldier lying down on the forest floor and doing something to himself, something almost but not quite unimaginable. Her Pappy standing by, not her Pappy yet, a young man.

-Well it's a strange story, Pappy. I don't understand it much.

He looked away. Later she reckoned he was trying in his strange way to tell her something about men's desires, how strong they could be, how they could be twisted into something awful, but in her family they simply didn't have the words, trusted to God you might say for all that.

She wouldn't have known a thing about sex if it hadn't been for Pud, four years younger than her but would try anything. Put herself to sleep every night giddyupping, she called it. Would put both hands down there and rub herself, and say, It feels so good!, not a care in the world what anyone would think. Pud,
stop
that! she would say, and Lucy would bury her face in the pillow, screaming in a funny way. But then Birdie caught not only Pud but Lucy herself doing it one night. Lucy! Of all girls. As soon as Birdie walked into the room and saw them, each in her own little bed, Lucy screamed and ran out of the house and into the yard, they had to go fetch her from the crook of a mimosa tree, sitting up there like a little skinny monkey, making mournful monkey sounds. They talked her down.

-It's just something feels good, Pud said as they tramped across the dewy grass back to the house in their nightgowns. -There ain't a thing wrong with it, I don't care what anybody says.

Birdie hadn't been any good at it, herself. But then one evening at one of their family gatherings around the fireplace, she was closest to the fire where their old dog Bertram lay sleeping. She sat astride him, for she'd always ridden him like a horse when she was small, before they even moved from the coast, before the hurricane. Now she was too big to do that, and he was old. So she kept her weight off him, most of it, with her legs. But his old backbone was touching her. And when he sighed it moved against her and gave her an odd feeling, a little shock. The talk around her faded to something like murmured talk in another room, or memory of people talking in a dream where she couldn't see herself the dreamer, didn't even know if she was there. She moved herself against Bertram again and the old dog groaned a little in his sleep. And again. And when it happened, it so took her that she cried out, not in pleasure exactly but more a mortal fear of what was she knew a forbidden and shameful pleasure, fear of it happening there in front of everybody in the room, who'd come slamming back into her awareness. She shrieked, as if the dog had bitten her, and fell into confusion and convulsive tears. And that's what she told the others when they rushed to her, as the poor old dog scrambled away, his claws scrabbling on the worn wooden floor. He bit me! Bertram bit me! -Where? her mother said. She wouldn't answer. Pud stood up then, pointed at Birdie and shouted Giddyup! and ran out of the room screaming with laughter. -Pud, hush! their mother said. -Somebody go chase down Pud. -He bit me! Birdie kept insisting until they finally calmed her and put her to bed.

-Bertram wouldn't bite you, darling, I can't find a mark anywhere, her mother said.

-I know, Birdie said softly.

-Well what happened, then, her mother whispered.

-Nothing, Birdie said. -I think I fell asleep sitting there. I must have had a bad dream.

Her mother kissed her and went out, closing the door. And later, when she was half asleep and heard somewhere distant in her mind the opening and closing of the bedroom door again, and a shuffling of little bare feet on the floor, she heard Pud's voice whisper hot in her ear,
Giddyup
, and the two of them giggling as they ran back to their beds.

-Shut up, you hear me, she whispered loud back. -You just shut up, the both of you.

 

O
NLY A FEW
years after that, just married, she and Earl drove to Pensacola for their honeymoon. He was yippy the whole drive down, along those dusty country roads, and she could tell it was nervousness, and come to find out nervousness made his feet sweat, first time she had realized that, bad timing. He was undressing in the room, taking off his shoes, she in bed in her nightgown with the covers pulled up to her chin and trembling herself, but it struck her and before she thought she said, -What's that smell, is that your feet? And he flushed red and went into the bathroom, she heard the tub water running, splashing around, he comes out in a minute with his trousers rolled up, his white bony feet on the hardwood floor. They were in the San Carlos Hotel.

-My feet sweat me sometimes, he said.

-Well, she said. -That's all right. You're human.

He finished undressing, she looked away, then peeked.

-My lands!

-What?

-Oh! She pulled the covers up over her eyes.

-That's what it's supposed to do, he said.

-Well I don't want to
look
at it, she said. -Turn off the light. He did and got under the covers on his side, then sidled up and started kissing on her, rubbing himself hard against her.

-It feels like a
bone
or something, she said. Terrified he would stab her with it.

But he didn't say anything else, passion just came over him, she guessed. She was too frightened to feel passion herself.

-Stop! she said. -Wait. I'm not ready.

-You have to be ready, he said, it's our wedding night. Like he was all out of breath, and hoarse, and his breath stinking of cigarettes.

-Did you brush your teeth? Your breath smells so of those old cigarettes.

And something else, just the hint.

-Is that your feet, still?

-Well
hell
, he said, I
washed
them.

-Well maybe it's just in my nose. Don't cuss.

But then he was pushing on in her and she kind of screamed before she could stop herself. She'd found out later, much as she and her friends would talk about that sort of thing, much as old Dr. Wilson would tell her about it, that you could be
ready
for such as that, but she had little idea at the time, and the same went with Earl, the way he acted. And the pain. She tried to push him off her but he was too strong. Maybe some girls had muscles, girls like Avis, but she was spoiled. And she hadn't ever liked a man enough to make her feel that way, to get
ready
, she just hadn't. Spoiled that way, too, she guessed. But he kept on, didn't take long but seemed like forever, like when the doctor went to work on you but even worse, the old snorting devil having his way, just a nightmare. And later that night, too, and the next morning. She could hardly stand up, much less walk. Didn't want to leave the room, anyway, ashamed. After that just the thought of it scared her so, she wouldn't let him touch her for a long while.

That's what passes for sex, they can have it, she said to herself. She'd thought it would be tender, like a kiss, but down there, a gentle touching or pressing, a joining. Her childhood had just vanished. Of course Ruthie came along not too long after that, she was a mother at the age of seventeen. Sometimes she'd wake in the middle of the night, Earl sleeping beside her, Ruthie in the basinette at the foot of the bed, and she'd want to cry a little bit. Though she'd go into another room and do it. No sense in letting him see how unhappy she was. There was nothing to do about it but try to be happy, or satisfied anyway with her lot. She'd allow herself to grieve for the things that she missed in her life, as long as she was the only one who knew.