by Brad Watson
-Well, maybe it was just as well you and Miss Birdie never married, Parnell said then, meeting Finus’s gaze in a way so open and uncharacteristic, so free of his professional demeanor, Finus felt he was seeing him for the first time.
-How do you mean?
Parnell sat there looking at him frankly, and seemed as if something like grief and regret rested solidly in his features. It made Finus feel oddly vulnerable, himself, just sitting there looking at Parnell looking that way. He wanted to look away from it.
Parnell got up after a moment and opened a filing cabinet drawer. He drew a file from the front, laid it on his desk, sat down again, and rested his short blunt fingertips on it.
-Off the record, of course. Finus nodded. -And just between us. If I share this with you, Finus, it is not for publication nor for any other sort of dissemination. My father’s reputation, as well as Miss Birdie’s, depends on it. It’s weighed on my conscience, though, as I expect it weighed on hers.
Finus leaned forward now. He looked at the file, but couldn’t read its subject heading from where he sat.
-This is a collection of articles and information I gathered over some years on the Atomic Energy Commission, Parnell said, and settled his own gaze on Finus then, as if he’d said something final. Finus looked at the file a moment, looked back at Parnell, then picked up the file and skimmed through it. From what he could gather, going fairly quickly through it, there had been a long-running government project to collect dead bodies and body parts, on the sly, for use in testing the effects of atomic radiation on the human body. He looked up after a minute.
-I’ve read a little about this, over the wires, he said. Parnell said nothing.
Finus said, -What could this have to do with Birdie?
The men sat silently a minute, looking at one another.
-This information, Parnell said, the possibility that my father was doing this, selling bodies and body parts to the Atomic Energy Commission in the early phases of that program, was used to blackmail me. The state forensics lab wanted to take a closer look at Mr. Earl’s heart, after seeing the sample I sent them. He paused. -I talked them out of it.
-Are you saying you had sold them Earl’s body? That makes no sense. He was in his casket till you closed it and put it in the ground, as I recall.
-I’m not saying that, Parnell said.
-Well what does this have to do with Birdie, then?
Parnell shook his head. Then he told Finus what had happened the night Creasie came to get Earl’s heart. And told him about the sample he sent to the state lab, and his putting them off. About everything.
Finus looked down at the file in his hands. When he looked at Parnell again, Parnell’s face seemed collapsed in a kind of baffled relief.
-What I don’t understand, Finus said, is how in the hell Birdie would or could have known anything about all this—he tapped the file with his fingers. -That’s what doesn’t add up. Aside from the general macabre absurdity of the whole story.
Parnell sat down in his chair and blinked his eyes like a confused child.
-Finus, I have no idea. That, I have never understood.
-It was Creasie, her maid, who came by to get it.
Parnell nodded.
-And kept saying she said this and that.
Nodded.
-But never said Miss Birdie said.
-No, Parnell said. -She didn’t.
-So maybe she didn’t mean Birdie.
-Who else, Finus?
-Hell, Finus said, taking out his handkerchief and blowing his nose with a flatulent honk, I guess that’s the question, all right.
Ten minutes later Finus let himself out, and stood on the sidewalk in a wind buffeting him and the Cushman sitting impassively at the curb, both bathed in fleeting shadows of something in the sky. He looked up. Dark baby cumulus drifting from the south as if in search of their mother. And there to the east beyond the Dreyfus Building’s radio tower the mother cloud rose up like a billowing anvil, an atmospheric god.
Finus Magnificus
HE DIDN’T KNOW what to do with himself, where to go. The Cushman sat there, mute and pale off-white. He heard the low loud drone of an old Stearman crossing town to land at the airport, some ex–fighter jock turned crop duster at the stick no doubt. At the stoplight a single car sat awaiting green. A new station wagon, windows rolled up and air-conditioned, vacation luggage strapped onto the roof. He couldn’t tell what model car it was since they all copied the Japs in design, could’ve been a Ford or a Mitsubishi or a Mercedes for all he knew, and two nice-looking young ladies in big sunglasses and hair pulled back were chattering away at one another, the driver pointing at something down the street, and in the backseat a boy of about ten or so, looking straight at Finus, the boy’s hair combed neatly as if he’d just been to the barber though that was unlikely, his face a small pale oval making his dark eyes seem large. There was no expression on the boy’s face beyond frank curiosity over Finus, an old man standing on the corner looking lost. The light turned green and the car turned left toward the viaduct under the train tracks, no doubt headed for the beach highway south. Finus felt a nerve kick in his pelvis and could move his limbs again, unsure if he’d seen this boy or if he was a vision and having nearly forgotten him again anyway, lost in more reverie of his own son at a little less than that age, looking down at him from the crook of a muscular live oak where Finus had constructed a railed platform with a rope ladder which little Eric could haul up after him to keep all others out, and seeing in the boy’s eyes that fascination with power and height.
A gusting moan from the Stearman turning final way over at the field, carried in a sound pocket. A little puff of a breeze, as if from the delicate faraway movement of its wing, carried the odor of honeysuckle from some hidden patch and broke through the lingering acidic exhaust from the station wagon with the woman and the boy.
Finus looked up and blinked in the bright sunlight that allowed no shadow in its merciless position straight overhead, no shadows among the group of schoolchildren huddled into a jittery bunch around the skirts of a young woman about to herd them into the library across the street, same bunch he’d seen that morning, no doubt on some field trip. Their motions as active and contained as ants in glass. His vision blurred with sudden grief and self-lagellation.
There was a sound from the cart groaning against its brake, as if it were impatient, wanting to move on. Finus got in, kicked at the stubborn brake, headed out. Not sure where he was headed.
To Knoll Creek, it seemed, the decrepit course that had thrived in the twenties, when Mercury itself thrived, but which now was as unkempt as a cow pasture, which it had originally been, with knots and whorls of St. Augustine and clumps of Bahia corrupting the Bermuda in the greens, johnson grass wild in the fairway roughs, you might as well drop out of those suckers. It was like playing golf on a farm. There was a par three on the back side Finus had been trying to hole-in-one for years. The cart puttered him to the north end of the town, hugging the curb, cars passing and uttering little honks, whether in hello or watch out or move over he didn’t pursue.
He veered off the road onto the fairway of number 11 and took the path down the hill across the street and sped down the long fairway of par-five number 12, on his way to the par-three water-hazard 13. The long flat fairway quavered in the heat and gave off ripply, otherworldy visions of the pines behind the far green. Passed two men and two women walking pull carts together. They all waved, hailed. Finus passed on. At the 13 tee a twosome had just hit. He’d have time to hit before the party on 12 got there. The course seemed pretty empty. Too hot to play, for most. Too hot for Finus, too, but all he wanted was a good tee shot, one try (with maybe a mulligan) at a one-holer here, to make his day, make his life. Hell he might not ever golf again if he made that shot, and so be it. The twosome, a couple of young fellows he recognized though didn’t recall their names, had knocked respectable shots, one to the green, the other to the fringe. They motored down,
chipped and putted, then waved to Finus as they replaced the flag, got into their electric cart, and drove up along the little copse path to the elevated number 14 tee. Out of sight.
Finus drove up the path and stopped beside the 13 tee, jammed on the parking brake. The Cushman sputtered to a halt and died. He took out his five iron and a ball and tee and walked up onto the tee. Used to be he hit an eight iron on this hole, a mere 130-yarder. Then later on a seven. Then he gave in and went on up to the five. He had no backswing to speak of anymore. Hell, if he kept playing, he’d be using a driver here before long. Took his best swing with the five now to green it, and that was rare.
He teed up a new Titleist and straightened up, hand to his lower back to assist the move, and stepped back from the ball. The flag was close today, near the tee side of the green, down from the little rolling rise in the middle. The hazard, a little pond laced with water lilies and a few cattails, stood unrippled by nary a breeze.
He stepped up to the ball, waggled the club, an old Hogan with a sweet spot the size of a dime at best. Squared off. Looked pinward, back down at the ball. Took a breath, hauled back, and hit.
Not a good one, toward the front of the club face. He felt it wobble when he hit. Looked up to see the ball go right of the green and low, roll toward and into the little dry trap there. All right, then, a mulligan.
He reached into his pants pocket and got out a second ball, a fairly new Pinnacle he’d found in the rough on 18 that winter. He looked around, found a tee broken near the point, that’d do. Teed it up and stepped back. Concentrate, he told himself. He took a look at the pin, squared up, and addressed the ball. Said, -Only you, you white and dimpled spherical son of a bitch. You were made for this hole only. He focused all his mind on the ball, on the club face resting perfectly before it. He drew back slowly, his feet planted firmly, and stroked through it, a nice smooth swing. A nice click he hardly felt in the shaft. Looked up then to see the ball arcing high and beautifully straight up into the cerulean blue. He sang in his mind to himself. Down it came, and he lost sight of it in the glare of noon and the backdrop of pale green washed-out summer foliage.
By God. By God, he thought, it might have gone in. Finus’s blood ran hot and thrilling to every little vein end in his body. Like a mild induced electric current to his brain. He wanted to jump in the air with excitement. Held the club up in the air with one hand, a victorious gladiator with his weapon. By God.
He dropped the club where he stood and scurried, or something like that, down the tee slope to the cart and got in, cranked it. He hit the brake with his foot to unlock it. Hit it again. Stubborn brake didn’t want to let go. He gripped the wheel and leaned down to check the brake pedal with his free hand. Wasn’t thinking clearly. When he leaned down he accidentally braced his right foot against the accelerator pedal, which disengaged the brake and the cart shot forward, nearly tossing Finus out onto the path. He yelped and yanked on the steering wheel trying to right himself, and the cart veered, at out-of-the-gate speed, off the path, bumped down the front tee slope, and splashed at around ten miles per hour into the pond at a sharp angle and turned over. Finus, gripping the steering wheel with both iron hands, was trapped there on the muddy bottom of the pond in three feet of water. He’d had a leg out of the cart while trying to free the brake and the side of the cart now held it, not too painfully because of the soft mud, fast to the bottom of the pond.
He’d involuntarily closed his eyes upon impact. But now, in a panic at realizing he was under water and pinned there, he opened them again. He could see nothing for a second or two, with the mud swirled up in a cloud, but then it cleared and he could see his situation. His leg beneath the overturned cart. The dappled surface of the pond just out of reach of the hand he stretched tentatively toward it, as if he could grip the water’s surface and thereby pull himself to air and safety. But before he realized he was suffocating for sure, the knowledge that this or no other miracle would save him settled in and he somehow received it calmly. All right, then. As good a death as any other, better than some. Only a few seconds more in these old lungs. He saw the pale and shadowed undersides of the lilies. The rippled and shimmering blue sky just beyond the still disturbed but settling surface of the pond. The ethereal limits of this beautiful world. A hole in one, by God. He had to believe, in this brief and finite moment, that he had put it in. The little projectile launched from his Ben Hogan five iron in a perfect arc into the realm of what we considered was no longer the firmament but an unfixed and evolving and volatile environment, that followed its planned, theorized journey down to the surface of green 13, to the little red-and-white pin with the yellow flag, and into the little hole with a sweetly satisfying earthly cluck. Birdie never gave a damn about golf, but still he wished he could have had her with him to see that.
III
A Pair of Boots
LATE AFTERNOON, A flurry of people coming to rap on the back door to the kitchen and dropping off cakes and pies, Lord knows where they come from, must have had them just waiting for Miss Birdie to die, and then a little later come hams and casseroles and extra coffee percolators, the big kind like little upright tanks, and plates of fried chicken and bowls of potato salad and big pitchers of ice tea. And for a while Creasie stayed in the middle of it all, shuffling here and there in her bare, dry, flattened feet, handing this and that, being handed, and then it got so crowded she had to get away and sit down.
She sat in her chair in the pantry sequestered from the buzz and clatter of the chattering, munching mourners, drinking a cup of coffee, and except for the little turn of her bent wrist that moved the cup to her lips, and the little pooch-out of her lips she’d make to meet the cup, and the slurping sound that came thereof, she was silent and still. And she wasn’t thinking about all these white people milling around at all but about old Oscar the electric colored dummy Mr. Earl had owned when she was just a girl working for them early on. She was wishing she had asked Miss Birdie one more time about the dummy before she passed, but it wasn’t something she could explain too easily because Miss Birdie would’ve never understood about Frank, because she couldn’t have sensed the spiritual warp and weave that connected Frank and the dummy Oscar in her young and terrified mind at the time, and so now had her half hoping for some strange miracle that would make the world more alive than she’d come to fear it was, with just us flatfoots moping around day to day.
After the baby potion hadn’t taken, just before Frank left, she’d stayed away from the ravine for two years. With Frank gone, she tried to resign herself to this fate, this life that was to be hers forever, as far as she could tell. She stayed her Sundays even in the cabin, sitting on her porch, took up dipping snuff herself, went to town sometimes when Mr. Earl would go in to check on his inventory, riding in the backseat of one of his new cars, closing her eyes so she wouldn’t be scared half to death by the way he would speed.
The hardest times were when Mr. Earl would go to get his father, Mr. Junius, on Fridays and bring him over for the weekend. Old Mrs. Urquhart had died and they felt sorry for him. Creasie didn’t. She wished him dead. She wished him pain and suffering. She wished she could administer such an end, herself.
He’d gotten older, fatter, balder, paler. No meaner-looking than before, really, still with his pale, pig eyes, thin lips, pointy head, foul mouth. Wandering from the guest room in the back in his suspender pants and T-shirt and house slippers, seemed stiffer, like age finally catching up to him all of a sudden, wouldn’t be catching no girls alone in a shed no more, now. Couldn’t bend his neck good, but would watch Creasie with those pale pig eyes when she had to pass him in the den or the living room, or bring a plate of food to the table when they ate.
Just a little simmer inside her, began to grow, till she was so angry it was into a boil. Hatred for that old white man. Hatred for what he’d done to her. He looked like some big boil himself, full of ugly, full of poison. That was what made her think of Vish again. She sat out on her porch Sundays,
when she didn’t have to go over to the house, and watched them load him in the car to take him back to his empty home in Alabama. And finally one Saturday night before she went home to the cabin she said to Mr. Earl that if he was going into town for inventory the next morning she’d like to get a ride to the ravine.
The old man rode along, sitting up front with Mr. Earl, Creasie rode in the back. She sat just behind the driver’s seat, and though the old man couldn’t turn his head to look back at her she could see his eyes cutting left trying to. Once he turned his shoulders and glanced at her, and she was looking at him. He scowled and turned back to face forward. Said not a word when Mr. Earl dropped her off, said he’d be back by around five that afternoon.
She carried a large bag with her, a tote bag, and stuffed in the bottom of it beneath some old clothes Miss Birdie had given her was her real gift for Aunt Vish.
It was early November. She made her way down the trail, still leaved but thinning, trees looking puny but arcing up scary and their colors darkening away from October bright. But morning sun sleeving through them fuzzy yellow and cheerful enough, though it was hard for this to warm her heart, bent on a purpose.
Vish was sitting on her porch in her rocking chair, saw her walking up and kept rocking, working her lip on the snuff. Didn’t look a bit different, old woman was ageless. Time passed just through her, moving on, leaving her toughened and unmoved, she’d beaten it, looked like. Wearing a colorless old dress, a yellowed old piece of sackcloth looked like wrapped around her head, so she looked like some kind of black Arab, rocking and watching her. Creasie reached into the tote bag, pulled out the paper sack, and set it down beside Vish’s old dusty bare feet, there like the roots of a blackened cypress pulled up and dried hard in the dry air. Toenails like black bark chips on burnt sticks.