by Brad Watson
The floor of the little bay there was full of sweet oysters you could scoop up in your hands, and the wild ducks came in the fall and stayed all winter long, part of the Lord’s bounty. In the evenings in good weather the young people made fires of driftwood on the beach and gathered to sing songs and talk and to hunt for the sea turtles when the moon was full, and the ones in love would walk the sandy paths among the dunes. We had dances for them. It was an innocence.
We truly were a happy people. Some said they didn’t miss it after it was gone but I did, aye, I still do miss every leaf and little grain of sand. We were three generations here, going on four, and most of us bar pilots. We moved by water, every boy sailing small boats as easy as breathing, came natural to us. This is where we belonged, see. It was like being made to leave paradise and the only life we knew, when it was destroyed. But we couldn’t go back for the very land itself was washed away, nothing left. Wiped off the face of the earth. Nothing to do but find another life somewhere. That’s why we moved inland.
It almost seemed it was a punishment. Like we had grown proud and inward. You can have a little world of your own but you cannot be so proud that you shut out the rest of the world entirely. Cousins marrying, such as that. A taking advantage of the bounty, it seemed it was. I don’t know. A vague corruption, child. And then come the flood. It seemed like something terrible from the good book, to me.
The day before the storm it was raining hard and steady, and there was a blow. We watched it from the south beach and went home. Late in the evening there was a terrific crash in the sky, and a flash of light. We tried to go to the south beach again but had to take a rowboat where we’d walked earlier, the water was already so high. And by three or four in the morning it was blowing so hard the houses shook, and the water rushed beneath the houses, and the driftwood logs it carried bumped and crashed against the pilings and the floors.
Those who’d been back to the south beach later said the water had been like a great gray wall coming toward the shore, and it was all about us in that blackness later on. Not another flash of lightning, no more thunder, just a terrible roaring and howling of the wind. I and your father made our way to the Dixons’ next house down to see how they were faring, pulling our way by the limbs of strong shrubs and the smaller trees. And when we arrived there we could see a lantern light in their upper floor and their faces in the dormer windows, and as we approached their gallery the whole house gave way and floated into the bay like a doomed ship departing, their hands reaching out the windows for salvation where there was none.
We made straight back to the house and gathered you all up, and lashed ourselves together with rope, and when we stepped off the gallery we had to hold you above our heads as the water was then shoulder deep. There was an old longhorn there at the edge of the gallery and we held to his horns and drove him to the edge of the yard towards high ground, to the fence, where we let him go and he was washed away. We knocked down the fence to get to the little hill where there were four strong oak trees, and when we got there we lashed ourselves to them, and each to the other. And others arrived there in the storm, finding some way, and they lay flat on the ground, and clutched onto us, trying not not to be blown away by the wind. McCutcheon was struck in the face by a flying piece of driftwood and died there on the spot. Something struck me in the chest and your grandmother held me up as I was unconscious for a while, else I’d have drowned then as the water was for a while even up over the little hill itself.
We held on there through the night, and when dawn came the water had gone down some and the gale died a bit, though it was still strong. Still we found oranges lying about that had been knocked from trees in the grove, and we found potatoes there, and a single egg lying there, a single egg! On the ground. When the water had gone down a bit more we dug up fence posts that were miraculously dry and managed to make a fire and roast that egg and feed it to you and the other two young ones there with us. We found jars of preserves floating in a few inches of water in the kitchen and ate them from the jars with our fingers, they was the best thing we ever tasted. I’ll bet you remember that.
After the soldiers came in their rowboats to rescue us and take us to the fort, after the waters had finally subsided, we returned to search for the dead. But all we could find was the body of poor Agnes Drummond, whose children and husband were lost and not to be recovered, in the ruins of her home, her hair which had been beautiful and rich in color now a tangled gray and matted about her stricken face and shoulders.
And where our home had been there was nothing but a little body of water, a still pond, and the high dunes were gone save the one that saved us. And the only home of the dozen or more that had stood there was the little plank house John Keesler had built with his own hands, and it skewed and bent like a freak house at the fair, you couldn’t stand on its floors and keep your balance.
Some said we should find another place like this and rebuild, all together, those that survived, but we hadn’t the heart to do it, child. This place itself was gone, disappeared, wiped off the face of the earth, and we couldn’t help but see it as a sign that a time and place had ended and we should move on. That’s when the Bateses helped us move up to Mercury. And so it’s been, so it was.
If we have faltered as a family it is my fault, for letting the loss of this life I knew discourage me, so that I lost something of my sense of who we were, and I could not see life clearly from the new place that we came to live. I lived in confusion for some time, and was not wise as I should have been. If we had been here you never would have married Earl, though I think still he was not a bad man, he just had no vision, he plowed headlong into life like a man afraid, and I think most men are afraid. I cannot fault him for that for after we left here I knew some of that fear and lack of vision. It’s the age, it’s the way we live, it’s difficult to overcome. I lost faith for a time in the ability of God to lead us, to give us that vision. I closed my eyes to his sight, and lost mine own.
Nobody faulted you, Pappy.
It’s for no one else to do, Birdie. I fault myself. I don’t condemn myself. I was human, like anyone else.
Where are you going? she said to him then. He was walking down a twilit white sand trail into the dense pine woods east of the house. He only raised his hand and was lost in the grainy light there. She was tired. She was drifting herself with a northern breeze to the Gulf side where gentle waves flopped and crushed themselves against the sand stained wet and draining. Two ladies lay on towels on the beach nearly naked, their skin glistening with oil. They seemed strange and familiar, too, like people she’d once known in a dream, and forgotten. Birdie went down and lay down on sand between them. They were sleeping. She looked up toward the deck of the beach house behind them and a young boy stood there, looking at her. She waved. He merely stared at her, and so she approached him and was there before him in the buffeting Gulf breeze. He was not afraid. He knew her, somehow. He put out his hand, and when he touched where she was he gave a start, and she wanted to say, it’s only electricity, child, but she could not, and she rose away so that he would wonder for the rest of his life about the presence of this angel who visited him as he stood on a deck overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, when he was a just a boy.
Grievous Oscar
THERE WERE CARS everywhere, from the carport and down the driveways on both ends. Finus drove along the grass beside the driveway and parked by the sidewalk to the front door. But he chose to walk around back and go in the kitchen door, the familiar entrance, and avoid whoever might be playing gatekeeper at this event. Didn’t really want to talk to Birdie’s kinfolk or some righteous church woman full of baloney and saccharine goodwill. He went through the little archway between the carport and the kitchen door, opened the screen door, mounted the steps, and pushed open the stubborn door to the kitchen.
It was crowded, even in there, but at least those standing there were eating, occupied, and at best looked around with a chicken leg poised at their teeth and
nodded, grinning at him, and kept eating. Howard Feckman did actually take a chicken wing from between his teeth a millimeter from biting in, set it down on the plate long enough to shake Finus’s hand, then picked up another piece and bit on into it. In spite of all the congregated living bodies, which hovered over and around the tables of food, Finus could see and take in the impressive spread: dishes of broccoli and cheese casseroles, French green bean and mushroom soup casserole, apple crunch desserts, a coconut cake, several crusty pound cakes, large plates of cold fried chicken covered with plastic wrap, a massive ham, the cooling meat drawing up around a shank bone big as a severed sapling. Large aluminum pitchers of ice tea frosted with sweat, ice tinkling in tumblers as the tea was poured in. Sweet potato pudding with melted marshmallow topping. Dishes of snap beans cooked down and dark, sweet, and tartish. Baked squash with onion, soft as pudding. And tall slim sweating steel crankbuckets of homemade ice cream, vanilla and fresh peach, beside at least a dozen pies: glazed pecan, lemon icebox, sweet potato, custard, apple, chess, and what looked like a blackberry cobbler. The din from conversation and eating was considerable, almost made him smile.
He felt someone brush his elbow then and saw old Creasie standing there, eyes limpid and tired-looking, looking up at him. She wore a pretty pink dress with a clover print on it, and Finus was fairly sure it had been Birdie’s once.
-Hello, Mr. Finus, she said to him.
-Hello, Creasie, he said. Finus wondered where this old woman would go now, what she would do. Maybe she had family somewhere, he had no idea. He wanted to ask her, but he didn’t think he had the energy to listen, and he was certain she didn’t much have the energy or will to tell him everything she could tell him. Same space, different worlds.
-Missed you at the services, Mr. Finus, she said then.
-Yeah, he said. -I wasn’t feeling too well.
-Yes, sir. Better get yourself a plate, then, Creasie said. She reached over to the counter and got him a plate and some silverware. He took it from her hands, dark and weathered on the backs, light-colored in the palms.
-Thank you, Creasie, he said. -I believe I’m about to starve to death.
He got a plate and put some chicken, beans, squash casserole on it, and came back over by the sink and Creasie to eat it. He set the empty plate in the sink.
-You was hungry, she said.
They looked at one another for a minute.
-I was out to your old house in the ravine today.
She looked up at him as if not understanding his words for a second.
-Yes, sir, you was? What in the world was you doing way out there?
-Just exploring, I guess, he said. She nodded. -Had a conversation with old Vish out there. Was talking to Parnell Grimes yesterday, said some curious things, then Dr. Heath said I might talk to Vish about them.
-Miss Vish still alive, then, Creasie said. She nodded to herself and walked over to the sink and stacked a few small dishes in there. Finus followed her.
-I took the liberty of looking around your old place, he said. -Hope you don’t mind.
-Umm, hmm, no sir, she said, running some water over the dishes and turning off the faucet, drying her fingers on the apron she wore over the skirt of her dress. -I don’t never go out there no more.
-I was just curious, Finus said then, if you could tell me what is in that old mason jar in your kitchen. Strange-looking thing, aroused my curiosity.
She looked out the window, working at the snuff in her bottom lip for a second, then her eyes cut over at him.
-Yes, sir, what kind of old jar was it, now.
-A tall kind of mason jar, had some thing in it I can’t even tell what it was. She was holding his eye then. -You know what I’m talking about then?
She nodded. Her attention seemed to wander a little and she sagged a little more in the shoulders.
-Fact, I got it out in the truck, if you’d like to see it, jog your memory.
She nodded again.
-I’ll tell you, Mr. Finus. That was a long time ago. She stood there a long minute, seeming to think about something. -Yes, sir, I can tell you the story behind that jar, you help me do something here.
-All right, he said.
-You got a minute, then?
He nodded.
-Yes, sir, come on with me.
-Outside?
She nodded, motioning him to follow her. They went out the kitchen door, down the steps to the archway, and across the drive in front of the carport to the old shed out by the pumphouse. He followed her up to a door cut into the sheet metal siding, which was fastened to with an old hasp lock. Creasie reached up and shook the lock once, dropped it.
-I need to get in here for something.
-Do you not have the key?
-No, sir. Don’t nobody know where the key to this old shed is. I didn’t want to bust in there. You reckon it’s all right to bust in, now?
She nodded toward the carport. -They’s some tools in there back by the deep freeze, might be something that would work there.
He found a rusty-hinged toolbox and in the top tray a short crowbar, and brought that back over. He jammed the flat end behind the hasp lever and yanked and pried until the screws came out of the old wood, and the door swung free. He took hold of it and opened it wide, revealing a packed dirt floor with an old cylinder lawn mower and rusted child’s wagon there, and shelves beginning chest high on which sat blackened hand tools and moldered collapsed cardboard boxes and wooden boxes topped with miscellaneous junk. On the shelf to their left sat a cobwebbed and rotten-clothed bizarre thing, a dummy of some kind with minstrel features, faded red lips and yellowed teeth and yellowed eye-whites, gazing at the space where the door now stood open, just over their heads. It almost made Finus jump.
-What in the hell is that thing? he said.
Creasie was standing there staring at it, something about her of the bereaved.
-Nothing but an old nigger dummy, Mr. Finus. What everybody done forgot about but me.
Finus Infinitus
HE SKIPPED THE council meeting that evening, sat at the kitchen table and sipped from a bourbon and water, and looked at the blackened heart inside the jar he’d set down beside his glass. He wasn’t hungry after the plate of food out at Birdie’s.
After staring at the telephone a while, he picked it up, called the press that printed the Comet, and told them not to run Birdie’s obituary.
-Just pull it, he said. -I’ll run it next week.
He took his drink into the living room, thought about turning on the television for late-night crap and decided not to. Mike shambled creakily in and humphed himself to the floor at his feet with a wheeze. About midnight he woke up with his neck in a crick from leaning it back on the sofa in sleep. Mike snored gently on the floor. He sat there awhile working his neck with his fingers, feeling tired to the marrow and last drop of old blood. Then he got up slowly, careful not to wake old Mike, and went down the stairs to the street and got into his pickup. He laid the jar from Creasie’s house on the seat beside him and drove through town past the orphans’ home and turned in at the cemetery, lights off, around to where he knew Earl Urquhart’s grave was.
Wasn’t hard to find, with the earth in a mound over Birdie’s fresh grave. The air was cooler, though there was little breeze. Finus took the jar and walked over to the graves, not sure what he intended to do. But there lying beside Birdie’s grave was a shovel, apparently left there by one of the gravediggers.
He read the stone. Earl Leroy Urquhart, 1899–1955.
-Well, old Earl, Finus said, I don’t mean this as a desecration. Just a restoration, of sorts. If it’s just an old pig’s foot, I’m sorry, no disrespect intended.
He took the shovel and made four neat incisions in the turf at what he figured about chest level for the body of Earl down deep, and lifted it carefully and set it aside. Then he dug enough earth out to place the jar a foot or so deep in the hole. He replaced the dirt, packing it down with the sole of his R
ed Wing, leveled it, then knelt and placed the piece of turf back on top of it, pressing it and shaping it until as best he could tell the surgery wouldn’t be too obvious.
He stood up, brushed his hands off on his pants, knocked the dirt off his boots with the shovel, and laid the shovel back down next to the mound of Birdie’s earth where he’d found it. Stood there catching his breath. For the first time in his life he seemed to feel every one of his true and earthly years. Maybe it’s coming my time, he thought, where my time here and the way I feel about it have come together and will take me out of this light and into another, or eternal darkness. He figured he could take it either way, wouldn’t make much difference to the man he was here and now. That would be that and then, not this and now. He looked about. Down behind him in the area where he had used to park and rut with Merry Urquhart now there were neat lines of headstones just as there were in every other part of the cemetery, the place was about filled up. He looked up. The night was clear, and the nearly full moon he hadn’t noticed but had worked by stood high above the magnolia trees at the cemetery’s summit, between Finus and the dim penumbra of the lights in town. He heard something and saw it moving toward him along the narrow paved pathway from the street. Some kind of dog trotting along, veered away from him and through the stones between him and the magnolias and stopped there when it saw him watching it. It stood stock still, sideways, head turned his way, to see what he was going to do.
Finus stood stock still, too. It looked just like the dog in his death dream, the one he’d told Birdie about, charged with guarding his body while he slept. Though it was clear the dog didn’t know him and feared him. A guilty, negligent dog.
-Hey! Finus called to it. The dog twitched but didn’t run. Both stood still watching the other. Then after a minute or so the dog seemed to relax. He looked away from Finus, looked around the cemetery, feigning a casual manner, sniffed the grass at his feet, as if something interesting there had caught his attention for a second. It was a transparent attempt to look innocent. He looked back at Finus, as if Finus had said something else. He hadn’t. Then the dog trotted on his way, weaving around headstones, crossed the gravel path at the crest of the hill and disappeared over it down into the lower parts of the cemetery out of sight. Finus watched him go. His heart was racing. When it calmed he looked around at where he was, at Birdie’s grave, at Earl’s stone, at the other stones shining dully in the moonlight, at his truck waiting stunned or suspended, incomplete without him.