— Well other than all that, how you getting along, Parnell? he finally said.
— Oh, fine, in general, Parnell said. -You? How’s your health, Finus?
Always an ominous question from his ilk.
— Well as can be expected, Finus said. -Get much worse and I expect you’ll know it.
They laughed.
— I was just thinking about your missus, gone all these years, Finus said. -I’m sure you still miss her.
— Yes, Parnell said, nodding, looking down for a moment, as you miss your loved ones, I’m sure. Then he said, — Sometimes it seems like she’s not really even gone, even now.
— I know what you mean, Finus said.
— Do you? Parnell said with a little smile, looking up.
— Probably not the same thing, Finus said.
Parnell gave him a curious look, the smile gone and the old look of grief returning, except it looked like the real thing now and not his practiced expression, but said nothing.
— Mrs. Bates and I were not much the lovebirds, Finus said.
— Ah, Parnell said, nodding with a sad conspiratorial smile. -I heard you on the radio this morning, saying Miss Birdie had been your childhood sweetheart.
— An exaggeration common to the neglected, Finus said with his own sad conspiratorial smile.
Parnell added an actual wink to his own.
— I’m surprised, then, that you two never became the item in your later years, her a widow and all.
— Mrs. Bates and I never divorced.
— Yes, but after her death, Parnell said.
— Well neither of us was that keen on marriage, after our firsts, Finus said. -Poisoned by it, you might say.
— Yes. That old business, Parnell said, and the moment, somehow, turned inexplicably awkward. -Well, he said, with a nervous laugh, I’m certain Mrs. Urquhart wasn’t poisoned.
— As opposed to Earl, you mean? Finus cocked his head.
— Ha ha! Parnell said. His smile tightened and he raised his brows.
— Something funny about all that, even now, ain’t it, he said to Parnell, giving him the stare. -You know I always wondered if that man’s goddamn crazy family didn’t really do him in, you know, and giving Birdie all that grief about it. They’re all gone, now, of course. Birdie outlived them all.
Parnell only pursed his lips and nodded shortly. Only glancing to meet Finus’s gaze.
— Birdie always said the only way to get along with your in-laws is to outlive them, Finus said. He allowed a little smile to Parnell, which seemed to ease him a bit. But then it wasn’t an easing. It was something else, like a heaviness descending on the strange little fellow. He took on an almost maudlin look. Guess that shouldn’t be surprising, Finus said to himself, given his trade.
— Well, maybe it was just as well you and Miss Birdie never married, Parnell said then, meeting Finus’s gaze in a way so open and uncharacteristic, so free of his professional demeanor, Finus felt he was seeing him for the first time.
— How do you mean?
Parnell sat there looking at him frankly, and seemed as if something like grief and regret rested solidly in his features. It made Finus feel oddly vulnerable, himself, just sitting there looking at Parnell looking that way. He wanted to look away from it.
Parnell got up after a moment and opened a filing cabinet drawer. He drew a file from the front, laid it on his desk, sat down again, and rested his short blunt fingertips on it.
— Off the record, of course. Finus nodded. -And just between us. If I share this with you, Finus, it is not for publication nor for any other sort of dissemination. My father’s reputation, as well as Miss Birdie’s, depends on it. It’s weighed on my conscience, though, as I expect it weighed on hers.
Finus leaned forward now. He looked at the file, but couldn’t read its subject heading from where he sat.
— This is a collection of articles and information I gathered over some years on the Atomic Energy Commission, Parnell said, and settled his own gaze on Finus then, as if he’d said something final. Finus looked at the file a moment, looked back at Parnell, then picked up the file and skimmed through it. From what he could gather, going fairly quickly through it, there had been a long-running government project to collect dead bodies and body parts, on the sly, for use in testing the effects of atomic radiation on the human body. He looked up after a minute.
— I’ve read a little about this, over the wires, he said. Parnell said nothing.
Finus said, — What could this have to do with Birdie?
The men sat silently a minute, looking at one another.
— This information, Parnell said, the possibility that my father was doing this, selling bodies and body parts to the Atomic Energy Commission in the early phases of that program, was used to blackmail me. The state forensics lab wanted to take a closer look at Mr. Earl’s heart, after seeing the sample I sent them. He paused. -I talked them out of it.
— Are you saying you had sold them Earl’s body? That makes no sense. He was in his casket till you closed it and put it in the ground, as I recall.
— I’m not saying that, Parnell said.
— Well what does this have to do with Birdie, then?
Parnell shook his head. Then he told Finus what had happened the night Creasie came to get Earl’s heart. And told him about the sample he sent to the state lab, and his putting them off. About everything.
Finus looked down at the file in his hands. When he looked at Parnell again, Parnell’s face seemed collapsed in a kind of baffled relief.
— What I don’t understand, Finus said, is how in the hell Birdie would or could have known anything about all this — he tapped the file with his fingers. -That’s what doesn’t add up. Aside from the general macabre absurdity of the whole story.
Parnell sat down in his chair and blinked his eyes like a confused child.
— Finus, I have no idea. That, I have never understood.
— It was Creasie, her maid, who came by to get it.
Parnell nodded.
— And kept saying she said this and that.
Nodded.
— But never said Miss Birdie said.
— No, Parnell said. -She didn’t.
— So maybe she didn’t mean Birdie.
— Who else, Finus?
— Hell, Finus said, taking out his handkerchief and blowing his nose with a flatulent honk, I guess that’s the question, all right.
Ten minutes later Finus let himself out, and stood on the sidewalk in a wind buffeting him and the Cushman sitting impassively at the curb, both bathed in fleeting shadows of something in the sky. He looked up. Dark baby cumulus drifting from the south as if in search of their mother. And there to the east beyond the Dreyfus Building’s radio tower the mother cloud rose up like a billowing anvil, an atmospheric god.
Finus Magnificus
HE DIDN’T KNOW what to do with himself, where to go. The Cushman sat there, mute and pale off-white. He heard the low loud drone of an old Stearman crossing town to land at the airport, some ex — fighter jock turned crop duster at the stick no doubt. At the stoplight a single car sat awaiting green. A new station wagon, windows rolled up and air-conditioned, vacation luggage strapped onto the roof. He couldn’t tell what model car it was since they all copied the Japs in design, could’ve been a Ford or a Mitsubishi or a Mercedes for all he knew, and two nice-looking young ladies in big sunglasses and hair pulled back were chattering away at one another, the driver pointing at something down the street, and in the backseat a boy of about ten or so, looking straight at Finus, the boy’s hair combed neatly as if he’d just been to the barber though that was unlikely, his face a small pale oval making his dark eyes seem large. There was no expression on the boy’s face beyond frank curiosity over Finus, an old man standing on the corner looking lost. The light turned green and the car turned left toward the viaduct under the train tracks, no doubt headed for the beach highway south. Finus felt a nerve kick in his pelvis and could move his limbs again, unsure if he’d seen this boy or if he was a vision and having nearly forgotten him again anyway, lost in more reverie of his own son at a little less than that age, looking down at him from the crook of a muscular live oak where Finus had constructed a railed platform with a rope ladder which little Eric could haul up after him to keep all others out, and seeing in the boy’s eyes that fascination with power and height.