The Hard Blue Sky (34 page)

B
EFORE LIGHT THE FOLLOWING
morning, Hector Boudreau and Al Landry were down at the dock. And a few minutes later Eddie Livaudais came, a gunny sack of food over his shoulder, a shotgun in his hand. He was dressed for a long day’s sun too: a long-sleeved heavy white cotton shirt, a pair of white cotton pants and a wide-brimmed straw hat.

And not three steps behind him came his brother Mike, his wife’s brother Chep and Chep’s son, Jerry.

Al and Hector moved over to meet them. Eddie was walking along with short jerky steps, his eyes on the ground right in front of him; so he didn’t see them until he almost walked into them. Then he looked up sharply and waved his hand. “No,” he said, “we don’t need no help.”

Al Landry pushed back his own cap. “Me and Hector was just wondering.”

Eddie shook his head sharply. “Four do much as six or eight.”

“No offense,” Hector said.

“Hell, man, no,” Mike said, and glanced at his brother. Eddie was terribly nervous; he could hardly stand still at all. “If we need any, we call for you sure.”

“Look,” Hector said, “lemme run you over to Catfish Bay. … I been wanting to try out that engine.”

“That’s an idea, for sure,” Al said. “And it save you that much paddling.”

“Maybe …” Mike turned to Eddie, “you the boss.”

“You going to paddle far enough,” Hector said, “once you get there.”

“That’s the idea,” Al said.

“You got enough paddling,” Hector said, “without making more.”

Eddie’s eyes were bothering him. He kept blinking very fast. “Okay,” he said.

Hector got the blowers going. Chep and Jerry put their shotguns and their gear on board and then went to get lines to the two pirogues.

Eddie did not offer to help. He just stood and watched, blinking.

“You don’t want to put the sack on board?” Al asked. And Eddie was surprised to find he still had it slung over his shoulder.

“Hot as hell,” Jerry said.

Mike chuckled. “You ain’t seen nothing, kid,” he said. “That bothers you, you might just go home straight off.”

Jerry tested the muscles in his right shoulder. “Don’t reckon I will.”

“You ain’t seen nothing,” Mike said. “Vieux couillon! But this ain’t nothing at all.”

Annie Landry sat in front of the mirror and undid her curlers. She brushed out her hair carefully—the shampoo gave it red tints, all right, she thought, but that wasn’t bad either. Then she made up, very carefully, even to the mascara.

Earlier that morning, she had climbed up to the top of the largest oak tree, the one that grew way in the back, by the pigpen. And from its top she could see the wharf—the boats were all out working, except for the Livaudais’s two, and the
Pixie.

She finished her make-up and stuffed the shirt down into her pants. She ran one finger testingly up and down her legs: she had shaved this morning and her skin still prickled a little.

Then she walked slowly across the island.

Inky was in the little clump of trees that reached right down to the wharf. He had got a canvas chair from somewhere, and he was sitting and reading.

“Well, hi!” he said. “I was beginning to think you’d disappeared for good.”

“I’ve been around.”

“Not down here, you haven’t.”

“I was down yesterday,” she said, “but you were busy washing …” she stopped, remembering she shouldn’t have mentioned that.

“You damn right I was.” He began laughing, slapping his knees. “That was one on me,” he said. “Spent all yesterday morning washing.”

Already she was wishing she had not come. But there was no way back, so she went on recklessly. “I’m real sorry,” she said, “but it never happened before.”

He laughed harder. “You damn right it didn’t.” The book fell off his lap and he stopped to pick it up.

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Oh hell,” he said, “tell me what’s going on around here.”

“Nothing,” she said, “nothing ever does.”

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll tell you the news … the bastards I nearly had a fight with—what’s their name?”

“Livaudais.”

“Well, they went out somewhere in Hector’s boat, with a couple of pirogues. And then, maybe a couple hours later, Hector comes back alone, and picks up his crew. You know, the crippled man, and your boyfriend, with the tobacco name.”

“Not my boyfriend,” Annie said.

He lifted one eyebrow and winked.

She was uncertain, so that it was an actual pain. She could not look at him. “I got things to do,” she almost whispered and turned away.

“You have a mean hangover?”

“No,” she said.

“Man, I did.”

She was moving quietly away when he said: “You want to have a drink with me tonight?”

They had a drink at the Rendezvous, which was almost empty on a Monday night—only Story LeBlanc playing a game of pool with Lacy Livaudais.

“You’re extra pretty,” Inky said, “when you don’t have that scared look.”

“They listening over there.”

“Okay,” Inky said, and stood up. “I know another place.”

T
HEY WERE GONE, THE
two Livaudais and the two Songy men, hunting for Henry, nearly three days. First the
Hula Girl
took them across the bay, then up a small deep bayou to a second smaller one, and finally to Catfish Bay—they had taken the priest there only the day before; and if they had looked they could have found some of the floating blocks of wood with bits of candle still stuck to them.

They changed to their pirogues. And the
Hula Girl
turned back. From here on, it would be too shallow for the lugger.

They paddled up through the low salt marsh, looking for some sign, all the way up to the heavy swamp. They spent the night there on the edge. And in the morning, soon as it was light, they went in far as they dared. They went in far as they knew, any of them, and then a little farther, marking their own way carefully. And every hour or so, they fired the shotguns in the air or down in the water. There was never an answer. That night, they lit the cypress torches they’d brought. And Mike Livaudais sent up the flares. They all watched the red and white colors stream out, way, way over the vine tangle tops of the big cypress trees. And they’d waited.

Mike sent up four different flares, all that he had. And there was only the faint hissing and the sharp searing smell.

Chep Songy scratched his chin. And in the swamp silence the finger over his beard made a rasping sound.

And finally Eddie Livaudais lowered his head from the empty night sky where the flares had been. “Let’s us go back,” he said.

They took the shortest way, and they paddled all night, taking turns now, for they were dead tired. But more than that, they wanted to get out of the swamp—out of the stifling, sulphur-smelling air, the slime-coated water.

By daylight they were back in the marshes behind Isle aux Chiens. The cranes were still asleep in the little ponds in the grasses: eight or ten white shapes clustered together.

The still heavy water streaked back from the paddles in a long v. … When they got near the end of the marsh Chep Songy grunted to his boy to stop paddling and motioned toward the shotguns in the center of the pirogue. He fired both barrels from his; the boy added a third.

“Maybe,” Chep said, as much to himself as to anyone else, “it is three shells wasted, but maybe somebody, they hear and come.”

Perique Lombas heard them, and got his own boat, the
Tangerine,
and crossed the bay to meet them. He got there first, cut his motor and sat down to wait. While he waited, he changed the plugs, which had needed doing for some time.

Perique and Robert Cheramie had built the twenty-foot hull a couple of years ago. They’d worked at it all one summer, getting up before daylight so they’d have a couple of hours cool. And Perique had taken the engine out of his old Ford, which he’d kept for a while on the island, and spent nearly a month working on it, tuning it up, in the shade of the chinaberry tree in his back yard.

The rest of the car he had pushed back up against the little chicken house, way back in the hackberry bushes. And a storm that September had torn off a limb of the old oak there, and smashed it down on top the car and jarred the doors all open. During the winter storms the grasses blew in and made drifts on the floor that went halfway up to the windows. And that spring, his mother moved some of her hens in.

He saw the two pirogues finally, put on his motor and went over to pick them up. He didn’t ask once about Henry. And they didn’t mention it. They all knew that he didn’t have to, that he had his answer already.

When they came into the dock, there was a kid, standing back a little, by the icehouse, watching them. Only before they had landed, he turned around and disappeared. And they weren’t surprised about that either. It was Pete Livaudais.

The
Tangerine
swung into the dock. Perique left the wheel and grabbed the mooring-lines.

“I’m going back, me,” Eddie Livaudais said. The other men were ashore now, but he hadn’t moved.

“Ain’t no use,” Chep said.

The two other men were so tired they didn’t bother talking. They picked up their shotguns and the empty sacks which had had food and water in them, and moved off, dragging their feet and stumbling on the uneven boards.

Eddie started to get up from the deck. He put his hands on his knees and pushed. But he slipped sideways. Perique put the last loop in his mooring-line and jumped back aboard.

“My legs, they cramped from being in the pirogue this long,” Eddie said.

“Sure,” Perique stuck out his foot for a brace and got one arm around the older man, and heaved him to his feet.

“Got to get some sleep,” Eddie said. “Then I’m going back.”

Perique got him to the dock. “Leave the stuff,” he said, “I got to go right by you house anyways.”

Eddie held out his hand, motioning for Perique to pick up the sack. “I be back by morning, me.” He lifted the almost empty sack across his shoulder. “Vec tou mo drigail,” he muttered.

“Lemme bring that,” Perique said. “I’m going right by you house.”

Eddie did not seem to hear. Perique followed him down the wharf a little, not quite sure what to do. Finally Perique stopped and stood watching him—moving rapidly, with short little steps like a woman’s, and leaning forward at such an angle you thought he was going to fall any minute.

He went out again the next morning alone. Like he said he would.

H
E HAD FOUND NOTHING,
when he came back two days later.

He dragged his pirogue only half out of the water and left it. (The Songy boys came down later and carried it the rest of the way up the shell ridge.) He didn’t bother with the gear either, taking only the shotgun and the shells. It was all he could carry. His arms had turned weak as a woman’s. And he had to go home.

When he got to the house, his wife was out on the back porch, cleaning shrimp. He could see the shells flipping over into the yard, where the chickens and the cats fought for them.

He knew it was his wife; not many people on the island could work that fast.

He felt his feet get heavy and just scuff the ground. He put the shotgun and the cartridge belt on the front porch. He stood for a while chewing on his lower lip and scratching his jaw: the two-day stubble was beginning to itch.

“Maybe Pete, he seen me come in and he already told her,” he muttered to himself.

Then he went around the house.

Pete was there all right, sitting in a corner of the porch, back to the railing, smoking a cigarette.

“I told you,” Eddie Livaudais said, “you too young for that.”

“He ain’t all that young,” his wife said.

He was standing staring down at this woman he’d lived with for thirty years. This tall, thin woman with olive skin and straight black hair that was beginning to turn gray on top. Just on top, like a gray cap.

“Let me handle the boys, my way.” He was angry at her. Angry at the way her face was so calm.

“You done handle the boys your way, all this time, and I ain’t said nothing.” She didn’t stop with the shrimps, twisting off the heads, popping the meat out of the shells and flipping the rest over the railing to the yard.

Eddie took off his cap and hung it on the back of her chair.

“Only now,” she said slowly, “you ain’t got but one son.”

He could feel that hurt, somewhere in his chest.

“Pete done told you.”

“He don’t got to tell me,” she said, still slowly. “I got so I can feel it in my blood, me.”

Eddie walked over and with a quick move of his hand yanked the cigarette out of the boy’s mouth and flipped it over the railing with the shrimp heads.

The kid half rose, then stayed where he was, his knees bent. His father reached out, taking his shoulder, pushed him back down on his heels.

The head of a shrimp flashed by Eddie’s nose, not two inches away. He jerked his head around, but his wife was working quietly. Only, she was flipping the shells to the other side.

“You taking to pushing kids around?” she asked without moving her eyes from her work.

“If he old enough to smoke, he old enough to get pushed around.”

“Hey …” Pete said.

His father looked down at him, drawing back his hand. “If there is just one more single line out of you, I going to twist your head around, just the way the old woman there does with them shrimp. And that is for sure.”

“Look at him,” she said, “Eddie Livaudais, done lost one son, and getting ready to beat up the other.”

“Maybe he ain’t the only thing around here I got to lick back in place, me.”

“Listen at him, Pete,” she said, “him that comes back empty-handed. Listen at him.”

“Quit that,” Eddie said.

“He don’t come home with Henry. He don’t even come home with a dead body, him.”

Eddie sat down on the top step and began to take off his shoes. “This here is the first time I had my shoes off in near three days now.”

“We are right sorry for you.”

The boy Pete stared at him from under his eyebrows. He looked so much like his brother there for a minute that Eddie had to shake his head.

“Why you come to quitting?” his wife asked softly.