The Heaven of Mercury by Brad Watson Page A

had made, her slightly hoarse voice rising in high laughter, and when she glanced over at Finus he gave her a little smile, and she gave him a big broad one back in just the moment before her eyes registered all their troubles again swiftly like some hole in the sky sucking day into dusk, their dimmed and diminishing happiness, what little there was. She turned back to Earl somewhat sobered.
    Though Earl already had turned away and gone down to the lake bank to check on something in the johnboat he used to fish for bass and crappie in the lake. Avis stood there all alone for the moment, no doubt feeling slighted, feeling cheated by Finus for distracting her from one of the few openly pleasurable moments she’d had in some time. She came over and stood next to where he sat on the little parapet wall around the patio. And was about to say something to him when she looked over his head at the children and saw Eric out in the water up to his knees, his sailor-suit shorts rolled up high to keep them from getting wet.
    Finus turned as Eric looked up toward the sound of his name, his mother’s voice. He looked shocked, as if he hadn’t expected to get caught. Then he called out in his own defense, -I took off my shoes and socks!
    Avis set her can of beer down on the wall, stepped over it, and strode down the bank toward him even as Eric, a mild child’s panic causing him to hold the rolled ends of his shorts between his thumbs and forefingers almost as if they were a skirt, started pulling his feet out of the muck and high-stepping toward the bank himself.
    -Avis, Finus said, hoping to check her.
    But to his horror she met the boy as he came out of the water and had him by the ear pulling him up the bank, everyone on the patio now stopped to watch them. Finus saw her let go of his ear and get down in his face. He saw Eric bunch up his face in a frown and say something and stomp his foot, big mistake. He saw Avis’s hand draw back and slap him across his cheek, and then Eric opened his mouth wide and closed his eyes tight and let out a heartbreaking wail, and that’s when Finus went over the parapet himself, grabbed up Eric in his arms, muttered a furious Let’s go to Avis’s astonished face, and headed for their old Ford, whether she would follow or not. She barely had time to get into the car, mute and furious herself, almost didn’t get in at all when he hissed at her torso through the open passenger side window where Eric sat sniffling, You ride in the back . He popped the clutch and tore out of the gate and down the dirt road back to the highway. On the way home no one said anything until Eric, still sniffling, asked, as children will do when they know the advantage is in their court, -Could we stop at Brookshire’s and get some ice cream? Finus almost laughed, and said finally, -Later on this afternoon, I’ll take you. And he could feel the waves of intensified outrage from Avis in the backseat that he would take one step further to ostracize her in this situation.
    Later, after he had taken Eric to get ice cream and had sat with him in the parking lot eating it, tall fountain glasses of ice cream and nuts and chocolate sauce and pineapple pieces and a cherry on top of whipped cream—Cupid’s Delights, the shop called them—and after he and Eric had driven out to the airport and watched an old biplane come in to land over the roof of the car, its wings wobbling slowly to stay on the center-line track of the runway, and they’d gone home with dusk approaching, Avis had come up as he sat reading the paper and drinking a bourbon and water in the den and stood there.
    -I know I was wrong to do that, she said.
    He looked up at her over the paper without replying.
    -But you have no right to shame me for it, she said. -You know I love him as much as you do.
    -Then why don’t you show it? he’d said.
    She stood there a moment, her eyes moving back and forth between his