The Heaven of Mercury by Brad Watson Read Free Book Online Page B

colored baby?
    Vish said nothing for a moment.
    -Something like that, she said.
    They made their way back north of town to the ravine, Dan clopping carefully down the narrow trail. She wanted to ask why the white home would take in a colored child. She unhitched Dan and led him to the little shed Aunt Vish kept for him beside the creek. When she came back up Aunt Vish reached into the pocket of her dress, fiddled there a second, peering in, and came out with a paper dollar, handed it to her. It was more than Aunt Vish had ever given her at one time.
    -I give you that. You going to have to go to work soon, though. Getting old enough.
    She nodded.
    -Thank you.
    Thinking of what she might buy.
    -You going out in the world, such as it is, Aunt Vish said.
    Vish was looking at her.
    -Don’t you ever let no man mistreat you, now. Long as I’m around, no man ever going to mistreat you. You just come to me.
    -Yes’m.
    Aunt Vish smiled her black-toothed smile at her. Creasie looked up at the awful teeth in wonder.
    -Why your teeth so black, Aunt Vish? she had once said to her.
    Aunt Vish had cocked her head at her like a sleepy-eyed owl.
    -Cause my heart’s clean and white, Aunt Vish said. -Count your blessings it ain’t the other way around.

Birdicus Urquhartimus
    S IN WAS EVERYWHERE and serious for Mrs. Urquhart. She was a scrawny and sallow woman, set upon by demanding spirits, a tight brown bun in her hair like an onion God drew forth from her mind, a punishment and reminder of evil’s beautiful, layered symmetry. Her heart though good was a shriveled potato, with sweet green shoots of kindness growing from it, a heart gone to seed.
    -As long as Earl has to work that job in New York, she told Birdie, you’re welcome here, and I’ll love you like my own. But you have to pull your weight.
    That meant most of the cooking and cleaning, as Mrs. U was always off to some camp meeting or another, rolling in the dirt and speaking in tongues, for all Birdie knew. Something far from the Methodist mumbling she grew up with, anyway, or even Pappy’s odd way of seeing the world.
    The Urquharts had moved into town, to a two-story Victorian near the hospital, so that Earl’s younger sister and brother could go to the town schools. Earl had insisted Birdie stay with them while he had to work in New York with his new job. He didn’t say it, but Birdie figured he worried she’d get too fond of her own family again, if she stayed with them, and would leave him.
    She could stand on the porch balcony in the evenings and watch cars and wagons go down the hill to the center of town, see the smoky outline of the buildings there, and the sun’s glow sink and fade behind the bluff to the southwest, inflaming the distant sandy ridge full of beeches, white and blackjack oak, mockernut hickory, hemlock, and pine. She tried to get a few minutes to herself every day, before suppertime in the winter, and after supper in the summer, after Earl’s family had settled into the living room to listen to the radio and talk. She didn’t separate herself rudely but when she could get a moment alone she did.
    When she could get away to town with Ruthie in a stroller, she pushed her down the hill to the drugstore or maybe to see a picture show at the Strand, stop in at Loeb’s department store to look at clothes. Sometimes when Earl’d had a good month she bought a little outfit for Ruthie or herself, but not too often, as Mrs. Urquhart would frown on her vanity, say she ought to be sewing her own. Merry tagged along some days, usually when they were going to see a show, and when Birdie would stop afterwards to look at a dress Merry would make a face, standing there with a hip stuck out, not unlike a pretty version of her mother’s bitter Holiness wrath.
    -You just don’t have the figure for that dress anymore, Birdie, she’d say. -It’d look a lot better on me.
    She was just fifteen, just