The Hard Blue Sky (44 page)

They tried to carry all six lamps at once. The sponge fell overboard. They stood and watched it float on the surface of the water and giggled.

“It ain’t no good,” Annie said. “Let the gars have it. … This deck is burning my feet off.” She ran down the ladder hastily. “Owwwww.”

“Take the damn lanterns.” He handed them down to her, two at a time. Then he swung down himself, not touching the ladder, but lowering himself by the arms. His leg brushed by her shoulder. She stepped aside.

They hung the lamps in their gimbals. “Now,” Annie said, “that looks nice and neat, no?”

“Shipshape, all right.”

“I wonder, me, sometimes, what you can do on a boat like this all day.”

“Me?” He scratched his head. Little trickles of sweat were running along his scalp. The cabin was hot and close. “Let me see. I fixed up that air scoop, over the forward hatch, so I could breathe down here better. Then I cleaned up the lamps.”

“Those old lamps was just sitting on the dock when I come along. I cleaned them as much as you.”

“You win.” He started to pass her; in the narrow way between the bunks, he brushed hard against her, his shoulder against her breast.

For one minute she wondered if he felt that as much as she.

He was stooping down opening the little refrigerator door. “Can I get you a beer?”

“I don’t want anything, me.”

His face was so close that she could see the little flecks of black in his blue eyes. “Have some brandy … I’m not paying for it.”

She pulled away and sat down on the bunk, tucking her feet under her, keeping her thighs pressed tight together.

“Ever taste brandy?”

She shook her head.

“Here.” He poured an inch or so in the bottom of a tumbler and handed it to her. “Taste it.”

She took a mouthful, swallowed and sputtered. Two tears came to the corners of her eyes. She brushed them away and rubbed at her throat.

He was laughing. “I didn’t tell you to go take a big mouthful.”

With one hand still rubbing her aching throat, she threw the rest at him. He caught the glass neatly. But the brown liquid formed a trail across the polished floor, up the blue-and-white-striped cover of the bunks. Some even splattered the portholes and ran down the white-painted wood.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “The varnish!”

“Clean that up, Mister Funny Rabbit. I got other things to do.”

She had one foot on the ladder when he grabbed her around the waist. “Honey, if I wasn’t crazy about you, you’d end overboard, for sure.” He backed up, holding her, and sat down, still holding her so that she sat in his lap.

She laughed, a short quick little giggle. “You never got that drink.”

“Nope.” He was nibbling at the back of her neck, pulling the hair between his teeth.

“Lemme get it for you.”

“Hell, no,” he said, “I got enough to clean up now.”

“Crazy old man, I ain’t going to spill nothing.” She pulled free, and getting the brandy poured it out in the same glass. “Like this?”

“Plenty.”

“And I got to fix one for myself,” she said. She mixed a little Bourbon with a glass of water and bounced down on the opposite bunk.

“That all?” he frowned. “That wouldn’t make a baby high.”

She giggled again, the same way. All her laughs sounded exactly alike.

“Come here.” He patted the bunk alongside him.

She shook her head.

“Okay,” he said.

“I was planning to do just exactly that.”

He swallowed the brandy. “Be a good girl and reach me that bottle.”

She brought it. He yanked her down beside him. “You’re the damndest girl. A guy’s got to play tricks to get ahold of you.”

She settled back against the pillows, smiling. “I didn’t want you getting any ideas.”

“I got them already.” Outside a gull gave its wailing open-throated call. “I just got to look at you wiggling that behind when you walk, and I get ideas.”

She giggled again and leaned farther back. Since he kept his arm around her waist, she leaned in a semicircle over it.

“That all you got to say, just giggle?”

“Sure I got something else to say—lemme go.”

He closed one eye. “Honey, you don’t mean that—right now you’re leaning back like that so I can see your tits through your shirt.”

She sat up abruptly.

“I like you anyway,” he said. With one hand he held her head steady, as he kissed her. “Tastes like sugar to me.”

She tried to pull and squirm away. Her body only rubbed more closely against his.

“Honey,” he said, “the tips of your nipples are real sharp.”

“Lemme go.” She slapped him.

He only grinned. “Nothing I like more than a woman fighting mad.”

She slapped him again.

“Now quit,” he said. “You’re beginning to hurt.”

She drew back her hand again. He caught it.

“When you start scratching like a cat, that’s no fun.”

“Enfant garce,” she said and blew in his face. “Lemme go.”

“I don’t know what that means. But I can figure it’s no compliment.”

She got one hand free and jabbed for his eyes.

“Jesus Christ,” he grabbed her, “I’m likely to end up tying you down.”

She was quiet. A little shudder she couldn’t stop ran along her back. Her body quivered and twitched.

He laughed, so hard that he had to lean back, and release his hold. She scrambled up.

“You little bitch … that’s what you like.”

“No,” she said, panting. She stood across the cabin, one hand holding to the railing on the other bunk.

“Come here.”

She shook her head.

“You’re dying to come.”

“No.”

“Okay.” He stretched out on the bunk and, reaching one hand back into the little bookshelf, got a copy of
The Saturday Evening Post.
“See you.” He flipped a couple of pages, found a story and settled down to read.

A couple of gulls were fighting. And the water sucked very quietly at the hull.

“You mad?” she asked finally. She hadn’t moved.

He did not look up from the magazine. “Hell, no.”

“You are.”

“I learned never to bother about a woman.”

She came and sat beside him. “I don’t want you to be mad with me.”

“I’m reading.”

“Stop and listen to me.” He did not move. “Stop, huh?” She pushed down the magazine.

He looked up, squinting one eye. The radio station was not quite clear and he lifted one hand over his head, adjusting it. “First you throw alcohol all over the varnish, then you try to jab my eyes out—why don’t you just try letting me alone?”

“I don’t want you to be mad.”

“Look,” he said, “go home.”

“No.”

He pulled the book back up over his face.

“I can’t go nowhere, with you feeling like this.”

“How’d you expect me to feel?”

“I don’t know,” she said miserably.

He dropped the magazine, grinned up at her. “Baby, you sure don’t know how to take a joke.”

She was still hesitating, when he pulled her down and kissed her.

“I thought you was serious.”

“No.” He nibbled gently on her lower lip, found her tongue and bit it softly. His hand began to move up and down her leg, brushing back and forth.

She pulled herself upright. “I can’t do nothing like that.”

He smiled wearily. “Why not?”

“I couldn’t do anything with anybody watching. Not even a kid.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“With Claudie sitting up there, and making faces at me, I just couldn’t.” She pointed up to the hatch. He twisted his head around and looked, just in time to see a faded pair of pants disappearing.

“Jesus Christ!”

He jumped to his feet and was up the ladder in a minute. But even as he was climbing, he heard the quick sound of the little feet as they flashed across the carriage roof, under the boom, and then the rattle of the boards on the dock.

By the time he had got topside, the boy had disappeared. Only, the shells around a half-dozen or so kegs were still rattling and rolling. He stared at the barrels for a while. Then he went slowly down the ladder again.

He sat down and put a hand on each knee. “Why the hell did you bring him?”

Annie sniffed. Her eyes were heavy with tears. “I didn’t. He just come along. And there ain’t nothing I could do about it.”

He sucked back his lips and whistled. They waited. There was the faintest little whispering sound, hardly a sound.

“There he is again.” And the little face peered in the window.

Inky got to his feet and went up into the cockpit. Not bothering to hurry this time. He stared at the kegs, at the tool shed, at the heap of old lumber.

“Which one do you suppose he’s hiding behind?”

Annie had followed him up. “I don’t know.”

“Oh Christ.” He threw himself down on the cockpit seat, propped up his legs and reached in his shirt pocket for his pipe.

“I guess I go home.”

“Might as well,” he said.

“I couldn’t help Claudie following me.”

“Sure,” he said.

“I’m going.”

“See you around sometime.”

When she was halfway down the dock, walking slowly, curling her bare toes at each step, the little boy slipped from behind the farthest of the kegs and followed her, his skinny legs moving rapidly.

She heard him, spun around, stamping her foot, and lifting up her right arm, with its fist clenched. He veered off, still at a trot, and ducked around the tool shed.

She kept on, walking the full length of the dock. At the end she hesitated a minute, and glanced back over her shoulder at the boat. Inky had not moved: she could see only the back of his head. And there was a brown pelican sitting right on the top of the mast.

She started home. She went along the path, feeling how hot the shells were to her feet. Then she crossed the little fields where the grass was prickly, but cool. She did not look behind her, but she could hear: the little boy had appeared again. And he was trotting along, not ten feet behind.

P
ETE
L
IVAUDAIS STAYED QUIETLY
around the house for a few days, seeming to rest, though he didn’t sleep much: any time of the day or night that you passed the place you could see him on the porch, in a chair, his feet up on the rail. It looked like he was waiting for something.

But when anybody passed, he would look over and wave and give them a big smile. And unless you went over to the front steps to have a word or two, you didn’t notice how deep and heavy the circles were under his eyes.

That Thursday evening three of the luggers were out: the
St. Christopher,
the
Hula Girl
and the
Captain
Z. The
Mickey Mouse,
coming in, said their luck had turned bad. So they’d be staying out until late that night.

It was a thick heavy yellow twilight. Any of the women who had clothes to bleach spread them out on the grass so the very first of the morning sun could get them: best thing in the world for a stain.

The mosquitoes were coming over in waves from the marshes across the bay. The cows snorted and churned their tails around, while the kids drove them back to stalls that were covered with mosquito netting.

Cecile Boudreau had finished feeding the baby and was sitting down to supper with her oldest boy. The table was under the window and when she glanced out she saw Pete Livaudais. He was walking in the slow heavy way he had got, like an old man, bending forward a little from the waist as if his back was hurting. Cecile was surprised. It was the first time she had seen him come off the porch. And the sight of the bending back put a sharp little pain in her stomach—she could almost see the other boy, Henry, going there.

So she yelled out through the window; “Hey, Pete!” And he stopped short, hesitated a minute trying to figure out where the sound had come from, then turned.

She could remember the flash of his teeth in the steadily darkening light. His face was not clear.

“I got a cup of coffee here with your name on it,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said. “Got to get some things down at the dock.”

“No coffee?”

“Promised Ma I’d get straight back.”

“You got to hurry for sure,” she said, “or the mosquitoes drain you dry.”

She waved and sat back down at the table. And yanked her boy’s head up out of his plate. He had fallen asleep, one cheek on the rice.

Al Landry was leaving the
Mickey Mouse.
He was tired, and his luck had been bad, not enough to pay for the gas this time. When he heard the clatter of hollow cans he looked up.

It was Pete Livaudais, dragging a cart, a boy’s wagon with bits of the flaked red paint still on it. There were two five-gallon cans jouncing on the bed.

“Hi boy,” Al said. “What you doing?”

Pete waved a hand. “Got all this.”

“You doing that the hard way, boy.”

“Maybe.”

“Why you don’t bring the engine around to the pump?”

“Never did do things the easy way,” Pete said.

And the rusty mildew-spotted wagon jounced along the uneven boards and right along past.

The kid looked tired, Al thought, real out-and-out tired. Bone-tired.

“Better take it easy,” he said to the blue-shirted back.

And Pete said, soft and whispered, without turning: “Hell. … ”

Fornest St. Clair was reading an old copy of
Good Housekeeping
under the single unshaded globe by the gas pump. “What you say, kid?”

“You want me to fill ’em ?”

Fornest got up and stretched his short stocky frame, carefully. Then he unhooked the hose. He pointed with the nozzle to the magazine he had left, face up on the chair. “Look at that.”

Pete looked but did not answer.

“That what I come to read.”

“Yea?”

“Recipes, and babies … man, I’m an expert, me.” He scratched his chin, long slow strokes, enjoying every one.

Pete waited, stooping a little, his arms hanging straight down at his sides.

“My old lady, she say if I don’t get me a shave, she going to walk straight out the house.”

“Yea?”

“She do it, boy. She go right straight over to her brothers’. … They never did think she shoulda married with me. … Bastards. Like Dagos, man.”