The Hard Blue Sky (38 page)

Hearing the baby for the first time, she stopped and picked him up. His cries trailed off to hiccups.

“I ain’t going to let you go out alone,” she said, “no matter how much you want to. Not as long as I can stop you.”

A big brown pelican flew clumsily across the sky and landed with a splash on the bay. A couple of mockingbirds squaaked and fought in the twisted limbs of the chinaberry.

“He ain’t coming back,” Cecile said slowly. “He’s dead right now. And nobody can find him—except the gars.”

The baby hiccupped. She lifted him to her shoulder and patted him gently. She went on whispering to herself.

“It don’t matter why. It end with the gars working on him.”

Her lip began to tremble. She rubbed the back of her hand against it hard as she could.

“It don’t matter that we get caught and die, us.”

The baby gurgled and burped and began to cry again. The lugger was closer now: she could make it out: the
Belle Helene.
She watched the little white bow wave.

“It don’t even matter that we been alive.”

The baby was wailing steadily now. She swung on her heel in a circle, squinting as far as she could in all directions. Her jaw was trembling and she was beginning to cry. The tears were running down the side of her nose and putting their salt taste in her mouth.

“Damn,” she said, “damn, damn, damn.”

With the tears she couldn’t see clearly. Her whole body was shaking. The baby began to scream. She bent down and searched until she found the largest rock around: a half-brick. She rubbed her eyes against her shoulder. “Damn, damn.” She threw the brick hard as she could, at the sky, then turned and ran home, not waiting to see it fall.

A
FTER THAT WEEK-END
everybody went back to work.

When he was unloading at Petit Prairie, Hector met three men from New Orleans. They chartered his boat right then and there. He charged them nearly twice what he could have made fishing. That was what the rest of the island called Boudreau luck. But they weren’t starving either, just then. It was almost as if Henry’s death had brought good luck to the island—but people didn’t let themselves think of that.

And there were things happening; there always were.

Robby Livaudais fell out of a tree behind the LeBlanc house and twisted his ankle and broke three fingers of his left hand. And Stanley Bechet was cleaning out his big cistern (it was the time: everybody was doing that; at the end of the summer half the cisterns were stone-dry) when he thought he’d have a look at his second cistern, to see just how much water there was left and how clean it was. He took the cover off, to let the sun in a little. And he fell in. He wasn’t quite sure what happened himself. Only he nearly drowned before anybody found him, for the water was so low he couldn’t reach the top to pull himself out, but it was deep enough to be over his head. And this small cistern had no ladder nailed to the inside. So he yelled and treaded and stared at the small wigglers that scooted like lightning through the water. It was an hour before anybody found him, and he was getting pretty tired by then.

They got the cisterns scrubbed out just in time too. A couple of afternoons later the thunderheads moved over and dumped a couple of inches of water into them. And during the lightning one of the tall palms got split right clean to the bottom so that there was a smell of burning all over the island. By the next morning the sun came up bright and hot again and the wet ground and leaves steamed away until they were bone-dry.

The day after this storm Inky was running up his main—to let it dry—when his fingers slipped off the winch handle. He’d forgot to put on the brake too—he was just careless that day, all around. The winch spun free, the sail dropped—the halyard ran in evenly and did not jam—the handle, whirling around, slipped off its pin. It missed Inky’s jaw by a fraction of an inch and whirled in a long arc down the dock, smacking finally into Perique’s leg and knocking him down flat on the
Hula Girl’s
deck.

That was a day’s excitement. They thought at first his leg was broken. But after a couple of hours of hot towels the pain was mostly gone. By the next morning there was a tremendous bruise. But even that went away when they put a couple of leeches to it.

But that one night, Inky drank coffee and stayed awake, his revolver close at hand. Annie laughed at him. “Nobody going to think it’s deliberate,” she said. And they didn’t. But Inky was not sure. And he didn’t want to take any chances.

The next morning Inky went down and called Arthur in New Orleans, while the grocery listened. And explained what had happened to him.

Two days later there was a check for fifty dollars. Inky brought it over to the Lombas house himself. “Hell,” Perique said, “for this I go do it every day.”

His mother looked at the amount and then shook her head. “For a bruise.”

“He’s loaded,” Inky said. “Anyhow you could sued him.”

That was the end of that. Except that Perique stayed home for four solid days, sitting on his front porch with his leg propped up. And Therese Landry stayed with him.

And that, Ferd Lombas said, was real tough living.

Another thing the island took calmly—the way Annie slipped down to the
Pixie
every night. They hardly noticed any more. And they didn’t even talk.

Annie ate supper at home, early and by herself. Sometimes Inky came and stood at the front gate waiting (he never came in, though Adele had once or twice asked him: Annie had made him promise not to). Sometimes they met down at the Rendezvous. And sometimes she went down directly to the boat.

Annie was almost never in the house any more, except to sleep. And whenever she went out she carried a large pad of white paper and a couple of pencils stuck over her ear. Al asked about that once.

“I’m learning to draw,” she said. “Inky, he’s teaching me.” And when he insisted, she showed her sketches—some were of the island, the twisted oaks and the palm trees; and some were things she had carried in her head from the novels she’d read at the convent: castles perched high up on hills above a river that was broad and smooth as a ribbon, and little houses almost buried under their climbing roses.

Al looked at them, and clucked his tongue in admiration, and called for Adele. When Annie tried to gather up the pages quickly he stopped her. “Look at this, che’,” he said to Adele. “Look what our girl, she is doing.”

Annie had to stand quietly by while they went through the pictures again.

“And there’s another one,” Adele pointed to a sketch held to the walls with straight pins: a girl’s head.

“Didn’t notice that,” Al said.

“That’s me,” Annie said.

“Says who?”

“Inky did that.”

Al squinted at it. “Only it don’t look like you.”

“Sort of,” Adele said quickly. “Look around the mouth there.”

While they were arguing, Annie picked up the pad, walked around them and out the door.

That evening Inky said: “Twenty-five pictures at five bucks is over a hundred.” She nodded. “All while I been sitting on this boat.”

She nodded again.

“Funny the money you can make out of a pencil and a couple pieces of paper.”

“I won’t be able to sell mine,” she giggled.

“No,” he said, “bet you don’t.”

“My old man didn’t like the picture you did of me.”

“You know what he can go and do.”

She just giggled. “Keep your head still.” She was sketching him. She had covered a sheet with small heads, and now she was trying a large one.

“I’d do some more,” he said, “only it’s no fun without a model.”

“No,” she said.

“You can keep right on sketching, while I’m making some money.”

“I told you no.”

He got up and turned on the radio, grinning over his shoulder. “You think your papa will find out.”

“No.”

“Bet that’s it.”

“I don’t care what he thinks.”

“Then you’re ashamed to have me look at you.”

“I don’t care.”

“Okay,” he said, “don’t do it, just because I ask you.” He found the station he wanted and turned it on loud. “Don’t do anything I ask you. I don’t need it.”

Over the noise of the radio he didn’t hear her answer. But he did see her walk over and pull closed the curtains on the land side.

The sketches were good, among his best. And he had even got a face that looked like her. When she had gone he sat smoking and looking at them.

Boy, he told himself, you wouldn’t make a bad artist.

He lined them up on one bunk and sat down on the one across from it. He closed first one eye, then the other, studying. Ought to get more than five bucks for those, he thought. But it wasn’t likely. It wasn’t that kind of a business.

He snapped off the radio and stretched out on the bunk. The figures watched him.

“Too hot down here,” he said aloud and taking a pillow tossed it up to the cockpit. He had started to follow it, had one foot on the ladder, when he turned back to the pictures.

For the first time he noticed, really noticed, what a good body it was. Legs you’d see on a calendar. And a pointed behind. But the face now, it was a child’s yet. Well, not a child’s, but a young girl’s.

Alone, Inky laughed. Imagine Annie, now, little Annie, looking as seductive as Eve herself.

He went up to the cockpit, under the mosquito net, put down his pillow and stretched out. But for the first time, for the very first time, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Once he even got up to lean down the hatch and shine a flashlight on the pictures to see if he’d remembered correctly. Annie, undressed, undressing, raced through behind his closed eyes until he finally fell asleep.

In the morning he gathered up the pictures. Maybe, he thought, he wouldn’t sell these. Maybe just these, he would keep for himself. He could do others.

All day long he was quite irritated, though he couldn’t figure out why.

And then one Friday night, when he and Annie were down at the Rendezvous (it was still early and there weren’t many people yet), Perique and Therese came in. They just waved and went to stand at the bar.

Inky found himself staring at their backs, at the tall thin figure of Perique in its faded jeans, at Therese in jeans too, tight jeans that creased over her large rear. A good figure all right, heavy hips, heavy breasts and a small waist in between—she didn’t look as bad in pants as you’d thought. The sort of figure a guy’d gone nuts about fifty years ago, but it didn’t do so well right now, Inky thought.

Then, as he watched, he saw Perique’s arm slip around that waist, and his hand come to rest lightly on the broad hip.

Alongside him Inky felt Annie stiffen. And he sat back in his own chair, surprised: she was jealous. He was almost sure of that.

“You want him back?” he said in a whisper.

Annie jumped—like she’d been slapped, almost—and yanked her eyes back.

“You can go see about getting him back,” Inky said, “when I’m gone.”

Before he knew quite what had happened, he was furiously angry. He sulked all evening, until Annie went home very early, almost ready to cry.

She’ll be back, he said silently to the empty cabin as he gathered up the empty paper cups and the cigarette butts to toss them into the bay. She’ll be back.

And if she isn’t, he thought, and then pushed that answer away. … She’d be back.

W
EST OF
I
SLE
A
UX
Chiens, over a mile of shallow water, speckled here and there with tufts of weeds and filled with whitecaps at the slightest breeze, is Terre Haute. A small island, not quite two miles long, a ridge of shells sticking up like a turtle’s back, and covered thick with little oak trees and hackberries and oleanders. Thirty or forty people live there, in tight little unpainted houses under the trees, people with names like Svboda and Tortorich and Pivach. They are oystermen, all of them; they keep the boats at a little dock behind the island. On a Saturday night, when they are drinking, you can hear them over on the nearest point of Isle aux Chiens. On Caminada Point, which is nearest, you can hear the accordians and the singing, so clearly that you could make out the words, if you knew the language. Kids sometimes memorize the sounds and yell them back across the pass. And once the people from the other island got so mad that they sent out a skiff—with an outboard—and a couple of men with shotguns. But they hadn’t dared come close enough, they’d just gone cruising up and down in the pass, cursing. And finally they’d pointed the shotguns to the island and pulled the triggers. The shot spattered down in the water. The kids, who hadn’t moved—they knew the range of a shotgun—hissed and laughed and yelled: “Sal bougre-là!”

And sometimes there would be fights at Petit Prairie when both groups went in for a big week-end. It was after one of these, not three years past, that the icehouse at Isle aux Chiens burned down. And there were those who said they saw a pirogue moving rapidly out the harbor and across the pass. And sometimes kids from Isle aux Chiens would go out and, just for the hell of it, churn up the oyster beds or steal some oysters. They’d come home drenched with sweat and tired as puppies, but they’d be grinning. And those same kids sometimes would think it fun to dare somebody to sneak over to Terre Haute and peep in the windows of the houses and maybe kill a dog or a chicken. And the kids from Terre Haute, they would come over too, when it was a dark night, or a stormy one. They stayed to the western end of the island, pretty much, not daring to come down to the end where there were houses and shotguns. They’d build big fires on the west beaches with gasoline they’d brought over and then slip away before the men could get there. Once Yvonne Meynier, who knew better, saw the pirogues coming over, and instead of getting the hell out of there, she’d slipped behind a clump of hackberry bushes to watch. Only, they’d brought a dog with them, and the wind was right, it caught her scent in no time at all. They sent her running back without a stitch of clothes on. They took her clothes to Terre Haute and hung them on the outhouses. That was maybe ten years past, and Yvonne Meynier was an old maid. Though she swore they hadn’t touched her, nobody believed it. And there wasn’t a man on the island wanted to come after a Yugoslav kid.