The Hard Blue Sky (27 page)

The water was very warm, he noticed. If you swam too hard, you could feel yourself begin to perspire. So he turned on his back and floated, trying to see if he could lift both his feet clear out at the same time.

In a few minutes he was winded. Jesus, he thought, the damn cigarettes. So he headed in. This time for fun he swam as high up the beach as he could. His ankle hit something, and he turned to see. The little surf was too muddy. But he felt by the way the water moved that there was something beneath him. A porpoise, maybe, playing games with him—a few strong strokes sent him up on the sand. He was walking out hitching up his pants, when he noticed the tall thin man standing and watching him.

“Water’s on the warm side,” Inky said.

“Bet it is for sure.”

He wasn’t a man, Inky thought, just a boy. Very tall, very thin, with a long thin face and a heavy black beard that showed through shaving.

“Why don’t you go try it?”

The boy shook his head. “Go swimming a couple times a year.”

“Yea?”

“When I fall over.” The small pointed white teeth laughed.

“I been seeing you down at the dock,” Inky said.

“Name’s Inky,” the boy said. “I know. Mine’s Perique.”

“I left my cigarettes back on the boat,” Inky said. “You got one?”

“Don’t smoke,” Perique said. Though there was the shape of a half-full pack in his shirt pocket.

Inky didn’t look. “Won’t kill me to wait.”

“Not many people around here go swimming.”

“Wonder why?” Inky said. “Water’s good.”

“Work on it all week,” Perique said, “and you don’t want to go floating around in it on your day off.”

They stood and watched the empty expanse of Gulf, bright blue. The porpoises were back; there were three this time.

“What’s that?” Inky pointed to the flurry of white caps off the west end of the island.

“Shallows.”

“No pass there?”

Perique shook his head.

“It makes it look pretty, all right,” Inky said. “All that white water off to one side.”

High overhead, a hawk and a catbird were fighting and screaming. A couple of feathers floated down and settled in the surf.

“Funny thing,” Inky said, “coming in just now, thought I kicked up against a rock.”

“Didn’t know there was a rock anywhere along this coast.”

“Okay,” Inky said. On his wet body the sun was burning hot, and in the glare he could hardly open his eyes. “So what’s out there?”

“Timbers, I reckon.”

“There?”

Perique nodded and scratched his upper lip.

“Ship went ashore?”

“Charlotte L.
”

“Musta been a long time,” Inky said, “Sand’s most covered it.”

“When it blows the right way sometime,” Perique said, “you can see the hull stick up.”

“Took a blow to put her up there.”

“Did, for sure.”

“Kind I don’t mind missing,” Inky said. “Be seeing you.”

He went back to the boat and began to fix supper. And he cut himself three extra slices of bread; he was planning to do some drinking that night.

He had switched to whisky. Lacy Livaudais just grinned. He had on a different cap, Inky noticed, a school beanie this time in dark green with the initials TU on the front.

“You doing serious drinking tonight, beau,” he said.

“It’s been coming for some time,” Inky said.

“Get a bottle,” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the rows of pints and fifths. “I’m thinking it going to be cheaper for you.”

“Okay,” Inky said, “and no charging for the water.”

“What label you want?”

Inky squinted at the names. “No Scotches?”

“Sure.” The head turned so that Inky was staring at the thick white-scarred back of the neck. “There.”

“Just one bottle?”

“Who going to drink Scotch?”

“Not me,” Inky said. “Gimme the P.M.”

The room was noisier than the night before. It was the band: the piano and the accordion from yesterday, and a guitar, and a set of drums, and a violin.

Inky found himself listening to the violin. “Jesus,” he muttered under his breath. There wasn’t a string that was tuned right. Sounds like that were enough to twist your ears off. … But nobody seemed to mind or even notice.

He was sipping away at the whisky, drinking it neat. He’d always liked the blends better than the straights. It was a matter of what you got used to first. …

Even now when he was spending Arthur’s money. He slipped one finger over his wallet in his shirt pocket, a good fat wallet, fatter than he’d ever had in his life; all of it to take care of a boat, a narrow mean hull and some canvas overhead. Boat that had more care than most people, he thought.

And he thought of Helen and the bottles of perfume that were still on the boat. She’d left a heavy musky woman smell around the cabin for days.

He closed his eyes and sniffed the whisky and tried to imagine her. Maybe it was the sharp smell of the whisky or maybe it was the noise in the room behind him, but he couldn’t seem to manage.

I came real close to getting stuck on her, he told himself. And he answered himself: What else was going to happen, shut up in a boat with her like that.

“God-damn bitch,” he said aloud.

The bartender heard him and leaned over in his direction. “Who that?”

“Girl I used to know.”

“Good looker?”

“Man,” Inky said, “you’d dream about this one for a piece of strange.”

The bartender chipped a sliver of ice and dropped it into Inky’s water.

“Only she was fooling,” Inky said.

“Huh?”

“She wasn’t all that fond of her husband.”

“Never are,” the bartender said.

“Hey, Petie, hey!” somebody shouted in the room.

“She wasn’t having anything to do,” Inky said, “not with anybody.” Man, she lay herself out on the deck, smearing oil all over herself. And you’d see her put it on and rub it all over and turn around and take off her bra. And you could tell by the way her back moved that she was rubbing it in her breasts—she’d rub herself all over and squirm because it was so good. She didn’t need a man nor anybody else.

And Inky turned around and leaning back on the bar, began to watch the room.

Julius was waving at him. Inky nodded back.

Julius came up to him. “I been calling you. You gone deaf?”

“I didn’t hear nothing.”

“Sure I call you. I say: ‘Petie, hey.’ ” Julius stopped and began to grin. A little grin that began at the corner of his mouth and kept spreading until it turned into a laugh and he had to bend over and slap his knees. “That ain’t your name!”

“What?”

“Petie.”

“No,” Inky said.

A girl passed within arm reach. Julius patted her behind. She spun around. And glared at Inky for a minute.

“Look, lady,” he said, “it wasn’t me.”

Julius chuckled. Her eyes swung over to him and hung still for a minute. Then she began to giggle as she backed safely away.

“How’d you keep from getting your ears flattened?”

Julius waved his fat pink hands. “Me? Nobody going to take old Julius serious. Not no young man, he ain’t going to get mad.”

“I take you serious,” Inky said. “I wouldn’t let you get in ten feet of any woman of mine.”

The little hands folded together solemnly. And Julius pursed his lips.

Inky worked away at his bottle steadily, not slugging himself all at once so that he would turn groggy. He was working himself into a beautiful glow. He hadn’t had a good drunk like this in months.

“You getting a load there, man,” Hector said.

“Don’t you worry about me,” Inky said.

“Long as you ain’t a mean drunk.”

“Me?” Inky said. “Who’s drunk?”

“Okay,” Hector said.

Cecile came up and rubbed her chin on his shoulder. “How’s he making out?” she asked Hector as if Inky weren’t there.

Inky said: “Ask me.”

Those light-colored eyes of hers crinkled up in a grin. “How you doing?”

“Just great,” he said. “Just plain great.”

“Yea, I can see … you sure you don’t want to dance?”

“How many times I got to tell everybody …”

“Okay,” Hector said.

“If you do,” Cecile said, “there’s them around wouldn’t find it any great trouble.”

“Yea,” Inky said. “I noticed one eying me for size.”

Cecile laughed, out loud. “He don’t need us,” she said. “And I got to dance, me,” Cecile pulled at Hector’s arm. “Can’t keep still.”

They sidled away through the crowd. Inky went on drinking, carefully, building his glow.

That one girl, the one he had noticed, kept finding excuses to walk back and forth in front of him, never looking at him, but always looking him over. Inky tried to catch her eye, but she was far too quick.

She was good-looking: dark hair, dark eyes, and dark olive skin. There’d be Negro blood in her somewhere, Inky thought. She was wearing an orange dress—bright orange, the color of life-jackets—cut very full, so that it was always moving around her, always swirling, as if she were just stepping out of it.

One of the neon signs began flickering. Lacy Livaudais shook it, hard as he could. Steve, the other bartender, went over too, and tapped it with his fingernail. Nothing happened. So they both shrugged and forgot it.

The uncertain light made Inky’s eyes twitch and burn. A tear went dripping down his left cheek. “Jesus,” he said softly. He started outside, remembered and reached back for his bottle and took it along.

It was a hot night, moonless, with stars so bright and low that you’d think they were caught in the trees. It was still too, all you could hear was the high singing of mosquitoes and the little sucking sound of the surf, not fifteen feet away. The steps of the porch went down into the sand.

It’ll go in a hurricane, Inky thought.

But what about the whole island, he wondered. There wasn’t any height or real-looking substance to it. The wind and the Gulf together could lift it right off and scatter it all up and down the coast in a million billion pieces. But it hadn’t gone—and nobody remembered to count the hurricanes that had passed while people were living here.

It made you dizzy, Inky thought, all the generations that had lived here and all the wind that had blown over them. … It was thoughts you never had unless you had a few drinks too.

Inky scratched his head and half sat on the railing. Over in the far corner of the porch on a little wicker settee a couple was necking. They did not seem to notice him.

The Gulf had turned black. Where’d the porpoises go, the ones that he had seen playing in the afternoon. Maybe some bigger fish was chasing them. He tried to remember. Maybe a barracuda.

The screen door opened behind him, but he did not bother.

“Man, you are a foxy one,” a woman’s voice said, “don’t even leave his bottle out on the bar while he’s gone.”

The words and the voice registered slowly. When he looked there was only the back of the bright orange dress.

Son of a bitch, he told himself. And went back inside to the bar.

His glass was still there. And standing next to it was the tall thin boy he had met on the beach. Inky said: “You know anything that eats a porpoise?”

“Huh?” Perique just stared.

“Nothing,” Inky said and felt his ears go hot, “I was just talking.”

“What eats what?”

The ice was melted. Inky leaned across the bar. “I need some of this, might need a chaser.” And to Perique he said: “I was just talking crazy. Forget it.”

“Sure,” Perique said.

There was a girl with him too, Inky had noticed her trim form. And now he noticed her face, and shook his head and looked again. “I sure do keep running into you.”

Annie said: “You look like you having a good time.”

“Come on,” Perique said, “have a dance with me.”

“Quit ordering me around,” Annie snapped. “I didn’t come with you.”

“Who’d you come with?” Inky asked.

“Nobody,” she said, “I’m big enough to find my way home.”

Inky took another sip out of his bottle. “I guess you can if you want to.”

She turned away from him, abruptly. “Let’s try one,” she said to Perique.

The girl in orange kept crossing back and forth.

She was alone too. Or at least, she was never alone. But she was never long with any one man.

The dress was cut low in back. You could see the two little points of her shoulder blades.

Inky finished his bottle. Lacy asked: “You want another?”

“Hell,” Inky said, “I don’t want to pass out.”

“You got work to do yet tonight?” He scratched his bald skull through the felt cap.

“Maybe,” Inky said.

A big brown hard-shelled beetle bumbled into his shirt and hung there. Inky flicked it down to the floor.

“Hey,” Lacy said, “don’t step on that. It’s a stink bug.”

“Get me a drink,” Inky said.

“A bottle?”

He shook his head.

“Man, you losing ground,” Lacy said.

The girl passed back again. Her legs were a little too thin. She was getting rid of her dancing partner.

“I got to get home,” she was telling him. “I got to sleep sometime.”

He was tugging at her arm, a thin wiry fellow. “C’mon, no? Best dancer in the place.”

She pulled away. “Where I leave my purse?”

It was down at the far end of the bar. As she headed to it, Inky tossed off his drink and ducked out the door. He moved into the dark clump of little trees to the left of the building. Then he squatted down on the ground to rest. His head was singing, just a little.

She came out, finally, brushing back her hair with one hand. She came down the steps, and then stopped and took off her shoes. She giggled softly to herself as she walked along, holding them one in each hand.

Inky got to his feet very slowly.

“I’m coming,” she said, “don’t hurry me!”

How can she see me, Inky thought, unless she’s got eyes like a cat. But he stepped out and touched her arm. She jumped back, gasping.

Inky stood looking after her, trying to understand, shaking his head slowly. “Wha’s the matter,” he asked her. “Wha’s the matter?”

She took a couple more steps back until she brushed against a hackberry. The swirling skirts caught up on the heavy thorns.