Sweet Mercy

by Ann Tatlock

  “Really, Uncle Cy?”

  He looked at me with his large brown eyes. “Of course.”

  “Well.” I picked up a pebble and tossed it in the water. “Why didn’t we? I mean, I know you and Daddy had a fight about something at the wedding, but it seems like it shouldn’t have kept us away.”

  “Did Drew say that?”

  “What?”

  “Did your father say we’d fought?”

  “Yes. Although he doesn’t remember what the fight was about.”

  Two long pulls on the cigar. Then, “Funny. I don’t remember fighting.”

  “Really?”

  Uncle Cy shook his head. “We’ve had plenty of arguments in our time, but I don’t remember a fight at the wedding. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, though. But as far as you not getting back here sooner, I think there might be something else involved. Drew . . . your daddy . . . he never really felt like he fit in here. He was always comparing himself to me and Luther and feeling like he came up short. Of course, it’s a bunch of poppycock, his feeling that way. Drew’s as good a man as ever lived and better than most. He just doesn’t believe it.”

  For a moment I couldn’t speak. I felt a rush of love for Uncle Cy that sent me up on my toes so I could plant a kiss on his sweaty cheek.

  “What was that for?” he asked with a smile.

  “For believing in Daddy.”

  “Well, he’s a Marryat, isn’t he?”

  I nodded. We Marryats, with a few exceptions like Cassandra, were cut from good cloth. “Uncle Cy?”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “The other day when I was out boating with Jones, we saw a couple of bootleggers on the river. Did you know there are bootleggers around here?”

  “Sure.” He squinted against the setting sun as he looked upriver. “But we don’t have anything to do with them. We mind our own business, and they mind theirs. It’s best that way.”

  “They won’t bother us?”

  “Of course not. Why would they?”

  I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant, trying not to let Uncle Cy sense my fear. “Where is Jones, by the way?” I asked. “Shouldn’t he be here?”

  “Jones?” Uncle Cy frowned as he exhaled a long stream of smoke. “He doesn’t much care for social gatherings like this. Last I saw him he was working on his radios.”

  “Oh.” Of course, I thought. Had I really needed to ask? “Maybe I’ll take him some watermelon. Do you think he’d mind?”

  “I think he’d like that. He—”

  “Cy!” A heavyset man approached us, waving an arm. His unkempt moustache wiggled like a caterpillar while he spoke. “Beg pardon for interrupting, but I got a bit of business for the town council. We can bring it up at our next meeting, though I’m not sure it can wait that long. Granville tells me we’ve got the gopher problem again.”

  “The gopher problem, Stan?”

  “They’re back digging their tunnels in the graveyard and scattering bones around the grounds. Someone found a shinbone far away as Water Street. We all got family buried there, and we can’t have them being dragged hither and yon, Cy. We got to get this thing under control.”

  Uncle Cy sighed. “All right, Stan,” he said. He tossed what was left of his cigar on the pebbled beach and ground it out with his shoe. “Maybe we can call an emergency meeting. . . .”

  As Uncle Cy drifted off with a hand on Stan’s shoulder, I went to get a plate of watermelon for Jones.

  Chapter 11

  He was sitting at the table with all the radios. None of them was turned on and the room was quiet. Jones was bent over some papers spread out on the table, one index finger guiding his way as he read.

  I knocked on the doorframe with my free hand. “Jones?”

  “Yeah?” He looked up, white brows raised.

  “I brought you some watermelon.”

  He didn’t move, not even his eyes. They stared at me from behind his dark-framed glasses.

  I said, “You don’t like watermelon?”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, yes. I do.”

  I lifted the plate a little higher. “Want it?”

  “Um, sure.” He turned the papers over on the table, then took off his glasses and laid them aside. “Come in. Have a seat.” Rising, he pulled a chair around from the end of the table and waved me into it. “I’ll be right back.”

  I sat and looked over the tangled mess spread out before me. The gutted radios, the coils, tubes, and wires all made me think of Dr. Frankenstein putting together his monster. The only orderly section of the desk was the upper left corner where Jones had neatly stacked a half dozen books—a couple of encyclopedias, volumes A and R; some books on radios and radio repair, and an illustrated book about the Alaskan Territory. I was about to reach for the Alaska book when Jones returned with another plate. I withdrew my hand and smiled at Jones as he sat down.

  “So how’s the fish fry going?” he asked as he divided the watermelon between us. He picked up a slice and took an enthusiastic bite, unmindful of the seeds.

  “Everyone’s having a good time, I guess.” From where I sat, I could see out the window to the service station across the street. I wondered whether Marcus was there working, but no cars were at the pumps, and the place looked quiet. “What have you been doing?”

  “I’ve just been reading another letter from my mother.” He nodded toward the stationery he’d turned upside down. “She has a lot of time on her hands. She writes me a lot of letters.”

  “I see.” I tried to take dainty bites of watermelon, but it was hard to keep the juice from running down my chin. I had to wipe it away with the back of my hand. “How’s she doing?”

  He shrugged. “She’s all right. She misses me and Cy. She’s anxious to get home.”

  “I hope it’s soon.”

  He nodded, said nothing. We ate in silence a moment. Finally he said, “Listen, about the other day, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  I looked away. “I wasn’t crying.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “I heard you sniffling.”

  I felt the color creep up my cheeks. “Forget it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry. I’m . . . I don’t spend a lot of time with people. I probably say stupid things sometimes.”

  “It’s okay. I understand.”

  “I don’t think you can. Understand, I mean.” He stared at me intently then. “I mean, you’re . . .”

  “What?” I asked.

  But he didn’t respond. He lifted his shoulders again, dropped his eyes, and took another bite of watermelon. I think he wanted to tell me that I was like other people, that I looked like other people, but he couldn’t say the words.

  I said, “I guess, out on the river, I probably sounded silly and idealistic to you.”

  He smiled at that. “Silly, no. Idealistic, yes.”

  “Well . . .” I looked toward the window again. Jimmy was out at the pumps washing the windshield of a Chevy, but still no Marcus. “I don’t know, Jones, I just feel like the whole country’s gone crazy. A whole lot more people drink now than before Prohibition.” I turned back to Jones. “Why do you suppose that is?” I asked.

  “Simple,” he replied. He spat a seed into the juice on his plate. “You know what they say about forbidden fruit.”

  I cocked my head. “No. What?”

  He looked at me, amused. “It’s the sweetest, of course.”

  I thought about that a moment. “You mean, tell people they can’t have something, and all of a sudden everyone wants it?”

  He nodded. “We’re a stubborn lot. We won’t be told what to do.”

  “Not even if it’s for our own good?”

  “Especially then.” He laughed. But only briefly. In the next moment the amusement slid off his face and he looked serious. “You know, you’re a strange bird, Eve. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone quite like you.”

  �
��Is that good or bad?”

  “Good,” he said. Then he added, “I think.”

  “Well, thank you, then. I think.”

  “You know that saying about lips that touch wine will never touch mine?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “You’re probably the only person around who would say that and mean it.”

  I glanced away. “Maybe I am,” I said quietly.

  “In a way I feel sorry for you.”

  “You do? But why?”

  “Because that makes you all alone in the world.”

  Until that moment, I wouldn’t have put it that way, but I knew Jones was right. I harbored a sense of aloneness, of being different, of not fitting in. But surely Jones . . .

  “Maybe that’s one thing we have in common,” I said.

  He opened his mouth, closed it, looked away. He finished the watermelon and wiped at his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.

  “Jones?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You grew up in Chicago. Right?”

  He nodded. “Till I was fourteen. Then I moved here.”

  “When you lived there, did you ever see any gangsters? Did you ever see Al Capone?”

  Jones sniffed at that. “Al Capone? No, I never saw him. Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering.”

  He gingerly pushed his plate aside on the table, careful not to spill any of the juice. “Well, let’s see. I did know a guy who was arrested a couple of times for burglary and safecracking. He always got off on time served, though.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. But he made most of his money from bootlegging, and he was never once arrested for that.”

  “Really? How’d he get away with it?”

  Jones shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “He must have had connections.”

  I chewed thoughtfully as I pushed the watermelon rind around on the plate. “Where did he make moonshine in the city?” I asked.

  “Moonshine? Oh no, he never made his own stuff. He dealt in the real deal—Scotch that came in from Canada, rum that came up from the Bahamas, sometimes even champagne from Europe. The good stuff, none of this bathtub gin or rotgut that’s made out in the woods like the stuff around here.”

  “It seems funny you would know a man like that.”

  “Yeah? How so?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never known a bootlegger personally. How did you know him?”

  “He was a friend of the family.”

  “You didn’t . . .” I dropped my eyes to my plate. “You didn’t buy booze from him, did you?”

  Jones laughed loudly. “No. Though sometimes we bought flowers from him.”

  “Flowers?”

  “Yeah. He was a florist. That was his legit profession. He owned a flower shop that served as the front for his bootlegging business. Funny thing about him, though, was that he really did love flowers. I mean, he was crazy about them. He was all the time saying his second biggest joy in life was making floral arrangements. You’d almost always find him wearing a sprig of lily of the valley in the buttonhole of his jacket. He was funny that way.”

  “If that was his second biggest joy, what was his first?”

  “His family. He had a wife and son, and he was crazy about them both. Never cheated on his wife. Was a good father to the boy. Every evening when he closed up the flower shop he went straight home. He didn’t go out to the saloons after work like other men. Far as I know, he didn’t drink. He even went to Mass every day.”

  “He did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He sounds like two people in one. You know, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where the same man is both the good doctor and the crazed killer. They just made a movie of it with Fredric March. Have you seen it? That’s what your florist sounds like.”

  “No, he’s not like that at all.” Jones shook his head. “A lot of gangsters go to Mass and even have a great respect for the church. A lot of them are faithful to their wives, and there’s not a one of them that doesn’t love their kids. When it comes right down to it, they’re just like anybody else, really.”

  I thought about that but couldn’t make sense of it. “What was his name?”

  Jones pressed his lips together, as though he didn’t want to tell me. Finally he said, “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Just curious.”

  “Oh.” He lifted his chin in a small nod.

  “Never mind,” I said. “You don’t have to say.”

  Jones wiped his mouth again on the sleeve of his shirt. “His name was Michael O’Brannigan.”

  I thought a moment, shrugged. “Never heard of him.”

  “He wasn’t one of the big gangsters like Al Capone or Bugs Moran.”

  “Are you still in touch with him?”

  “No.” He paused. He picked up a pencil and tapped the eraser on the desk. “He’s dead.”

  My eyes grew wide at that. “Dead? What happened?”

  “Shot by a rival bootlegger.”

  At once, I saw the man walking ahead of me, heard the shots, saw the man rise up as his blood rained down over the sidewalk. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to rid my mind of the dreaded image. “That was a terrible thing to happen,” I whispered.

  “Yes it was.”

  I wanted to add, but maybe if he had stuck to the business of flowers instead of booze, he’d still be alive.

  But I didn’t say it.

  Evening was giving way to nighttime. The streetlamp came on over by the service station. Somewhere in the apartment, a clock struck nine. Jones sat up straight, looked at me, reached for a radio, and turned it on. He picked up his glasses and carefully slid them over his ears.

  “Listen, will you excuse me? I’ve got work to do.”

  “Um, sure.”

  I stood. He reached for a notebook and opened it to a clean page. I started to pick up the plates, but he objected. “I’ll take care of those later. I’ll see you tomorrow, Eve.”

  “All right. Good night, Jones.”

  He didn’t reply. A woman’s soft voice drifted out of the radio as I made my way out of the room.

  Chapter 12

  Eve!”

  “Yes, Uncle Cy?”

  “Someone here to see you.”

  I paused in my task of setting the tables for Friday’s lunch. My hands were full of flatware. I dropped the knives and forks in a clattering heap and headed for the front desk.

  I couldn’t imagine who had come to see me, though never in a million years would I have guessed Marcus Wiant. Yet there he stood, in grimy overalls, his cap in his hands, a smear of grease over his left brow.

  Breathless, I stopped in the archway of the dining room and stared. He misunderstood what surely must have been my shocked expression. Running a dirty hand through his hair, he said, “Sorry. I didn’t have time to clean up. I just ran over from the station for a minute.”

  I nodded as I searched vainly for my voice.

  Marcus glanced hesitantly at Uncle Cy, who at that moment turned away and pretended to be busy behind the desk. “Well, see . . .” He turned his cap around and around in his hands.

  “Yes, Marcus?” I said, my tongue loosed at last.

  “Well, the carnival has set up a few miles outside of town. Me and Jimmy and Marlene are going tomorrow, and I was wondering whether you’d like to come along.”

  “Oh?” Something was knocking at my rib cage. It took me a moment to realize it was my heart.

  “We’re going to head out around noon. We can pick you up here, if you’d like.”

  I nodded again. “Yes. I’d like to go. Thank you.”

  His eyes brightened and he smiled. “Great,” he said. He took one step backward. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  “Yes. Okay.”

  Settling his cap back on his head, he took off out the door. My own feet were motionless, as though stuck to the polished threshold between the rooms. I heard Uncle Cy clear his
throat. When I looked at him, he was grinning playfully.

  “Got yourself a date, do you, darling?”

  My cheeks burned and my lips quivered as I tried to suppress the shout of joy that was rising in my throat. I didn’t tell Uncle Cy that it was not just a date but my first date. I was seventeen years old, and I’d never once before been asked out by a boy.

  Uncle Cy gave off a happy sigh. I turned away from him and floated back to work.

  Jimmy drove the four of us to the carnival in the old Model T he’d bought third-hand with money earned at his father’s gas station. He and Marlene sat shoulder to shoulder up front while Marcus and I kept a modest amount of air between us in the back. Marcus had cleaned up since the day before, the only grease visible a few stubborn smudges embedded beneath his nails. He wore a white button-up shirt and a neatly pressed pair of brown slacks. He smelled of something good, though whether it was the pomade he used in his sleek dark hair or a type of cologne he’d patted on his cheeks, I couldn’t be sure. I made a mental note to ask Mother if I could buy some perfume. Wearing some now might have drawn Marcus’s attention away from the faded yellow dress and the white straw sun hat Mother insisted I wear. With my long braid and that silly hat, I felt childish and unattractive. I wasn’t nearly as stylish as Marlene, whose rose-patterned summer dress and broad-brimmed hat both looked brand-new. I noticed too that she wore lipstick, something else I’d never used.

  I squeezed my hands together in my lap as we rode a few awkward moments in silence. Marcus tapped his fingers on his knee as though keeping time to music no one else could hear. Finally he turned to me and asked, “So, do you like living here in Mercy?”

  I felt myself brighten. “Yes, I like it very much. I think it’s a wonderful place to live.”

  Ahead of us, Marlene laughed and said over her shoulder, “You wouldn’t think so if you’d grown up here.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I would, Marlene. Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s so boring. Nothing ever happens in a small town like Mercy. Nothing fun, anyway. That’s why Jimmy and I are going to get out as soon as we can. Right, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy nodded. I sat directly behind him and could see nothing but the back of his blond head. “That’s right, honey,” he said agreeably.