HE WAS GRAVITATED in a light atmosphere of aftershave down 5th toward the little hummock upon which old McLemore Cemetery received the earthly elements. A single small cedar tree remained on the downslope beside a family plot circumscribed by a low and time-scoured brick parapet, an undermined and sunken little wall. A solitary water oak, somewhat stunted but thick with limbs and hard green little leaves, hung on in the far corner. It must be old, Finus thought, left from when this little hummock clearing was edged by the woods around, out on the southeast outskirts of the town. The yard’s old iron rail fence crooked along the borders, arthritic. He’d buried Avis there, along with his mother and father. Of course this became the last thing for which she could never forgive him. He knew he should have laid her out in Magnolia, the newer cemetery on the north end of town, where her own mother and father had bought a plot that sat waiting near their own, and where he and Avis had buried Eric. But at the time his thinking was her old man had held enough claim on the poor woman, right down to the way she could never trust a soul, could never open up and feel anything much beyond suspicion and disappointment and smoldering rage. Well, they could lay him out here in the plot next to her, let her complain throughout eternity, if she liked. He’d had Eric’s grave moved over here after Avis’s funeral. He lay beneath the cedar down below.
He opened the creaky gate and stepped through onto the dry, mown grass, its blades crunching beneath his shoes even this early, dew sucked in long before. They kept the grounds up but never watered. There’d been little rain. And this was the high ground here, nothing to drain down into the little hummock, a lone green patch in this neighborhood, with a view of the new overpass, the railyard, and beyond that downtown, looking small and upcropped and hazy. Just a short walk from here, where homes and little groceries and laundry and seamstress shops had cobbled up in the forties and fifties, the neighborhood had now declined: the shops empty, the homes listing with the topography, and housing what seemed the invisible poor. Their bare yards were littered with no broken wagons and Big Wheels, no rusted Pontiac hulls on concrete blocks. Old men and old women, probably, he didn’t even know anymore. He’d known poor Jane Caulfield, a sexless maiden who’d lived with her aunt and her aunt’s lover and partner in the dry cleaning business, until the aunt had died and Jane had been discreetly and kindly moved to a nursing home out on 39 North and stayed there until she died and was buried here in McLemore Cemetery, down the slope next to the big Schoenhof plot. She’d been a pretty young girl and no one knew exactly why she became almost a recluse and certainly an old maid after a lively youth of dances and running about, if not actual dating. Her wan smile had driven boys to fall in love with her, the first whiff of which sent her into a retreat so swift and silent it generally took them a year or two to get over it and date some normal girl.
He went to Eric’s grave first. He’d refused the military marker the army offered, and put a nice modest stone down flat at its head. The boy was mute in there, a young voice now old in time and distant, the stone nothing to Finus but cold marble etched with what might as well have been Greek or Arabic, he couldn’t read it anymore. After a minute or so he walked up the hill to see Avis. A wiry strange cat approached to arch and rub its side along the edge of her headstone, tail up and quivering while the cat turned its strange gaze upon him. The cat had an odd mouth, looked like, a cat with an underbite, you never saw that.
— You’re an odd one, Finus said, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his khaki trousers.
You’re an odd one, said the cat, its mouth quivering in the way a cat chirkling at birds will do.
— Copy cat, are you.
The cat said nothing then. It was an old tomcat he could see now, and its haunches quivered again as it sprayed a little urine on Avis’s stone.
You tainted me off men forever, the cat said then.
Finus cocked his head for a new angle on it.
The cat said, Why’d you marry me, anyway, if you never loved me?
— Don’t blame me for all that, Finus said. -You hated your old dad before you ever met me.
The cat stopped, still arched, and stared at him.
— Just because you could never stand up to him, Finus said, so you took it out on me.
You’ll never be the man he was, the cat said, its underbite forcing the odd, high-pitched chattering of a cat longing to sink its teeth into some taunting bird.
— And I thank the gods for that, Finus said. -Poor old miserable son of a bitch, no wonder he went on those drunks, and no wonder he got mean and violent when he did. Scratching a living and then a fortune out of brambly land and marginal cattle, trading on his wits and growing hard-hearted just to feed all you young’uns, and your mother got the worst of it.
Don’t even speak of my mother, the cat said. You cannot comprehend a strength like hers.
— No, Finus said after a moment, I’ll give you that. She was an amazing, sweet woman, as sweet as he was hard. I loved her, too.
You never loved anyone but yourself.
The cat lay down on the grave, its back against the headstone, and began to groom itself.
— You’re one to talk, Finus said. -You never even had that.
A little warm gust, the afterthought of a breeze, nudged his ear, an almost imperceptible rustle in the hard green leaves of the oak. Finus snorted in disgust.
— Old Mike was here, he’d shake you like a rag doll.
The cat said nothing, just stared at him. He sighed.
— I’ll get some flowers out here, he said, as much to the empty granite vase at the stone’s base as to the cat. The cat merely paused a moment, one paw suspended before its odd-shaped mouth, then resumed licking and combing its ears with the paw. Finus sighed again, wished for the first time in some fifteen years he had a cigarette, and turned back toward town.
The cat, its paw suspended midlick once again, watched him until his head disappeared beneath the cemetery’s knoll, then settled in to see what else might flit or wander into the grounds. Squeezed its indifferent eyes together and began to purr in the delicious warmth of the morning.
Finus Impithicus
THE CUSHMAN GOLF cart seemed to sag half-melted in the hard overhead sunlight on the steaming asphalt there. Its white vinyl seat was hot as a woodstove through his britches but not unbearable. And it cranked right up, stuttering to life sounding as much like a gas-powered generator as ever, and it jumped as lively as ever when Finus kicked off the brake and whipped it back out of the space and down toward the doughboy soldier monument, his old Ben Hogans rattling in their bag on the back at every bump and turn. The accelerator pedal needed a good greasing, it was sticking and he had to give it a good pop to release it, and the cart would shoot ahead, but the governor kept the speed down once he got going. He kept both legs inside the cart. Wasn’t one of those who liked to hang the left leg out, as he’d seen more than one idiot’s knee turned that way. Seemed like fat men did that more than others, why was that? Lazy? Didn’t want to have to swing more than one leg out when they stopped for the ball? Not enough room on the seat? Finus hadn’t even taken up the game until Avis died, hadn’t gotten the cart till he turned eighty, was holding up the other players, walking so slow. Turned out to be a good way to get around town on a hot, or a cold, day, too.
It had the old shaft-type steering mechanism, which Finus loved, was painted a plain off-white, no roof like the newer electric E-Z-GOs, and the biggest difference from them was its motor, the little two-stroke gasoline job that announced to anyone, on the course or on the streets of Mercury, that Finus Bates was rounding the bend.