The Hard Blue Sky (52 page)

“Sure,” he said and rubbed her shoulder, very gently.

“I won’t fall apart.” And she was surprised how her voice whined and complained.

He pulled his hand away.

“You can’t expect people that haven’t had more than a minute’s sleep to make perfectly good sense.”

“Sure, honey.”

The rain had driven the ants inside. There was a train of black ones around the door frame. When she was little, she’d liked to take a lighted match and hold it right in the path.

“When you leaving?” When she was this tired, she had the accent of the island.
Cap-cap,
she thought with a sneer at herself.
Parle cap-cap.

“Along about one.”

She nodded and took her fingers from her eye. It slid closed. She lifted it open again.

“You sure you’re not sick, huh?”

“Tell you what … I don’t make it down there by one, you go ahead.”

“It won’t make a difference if we got to wait a little while.”

“I’m not down there then, you go ahead. Account of I won’t be coming.”

“I don’t get it,” he said, “you wanted to. Why’d you change your mind?”

“Don’t wait for me, that’s what I said.” She turned herself around and stretched out on the tumbled clothes. “Only I think I go crazy if I got to stay awake much longer.”

“Listen,” he said. “What’s the matter? What changed?”

She stretched on her side, feeling the cold hard floor through the little heaps of clothes. She patted it with one hand, vaguely. Nice floor, she thought. Nice old floor.

“Nothing,” she said, “nothing matters. Not now. Not one bit.”

“You get hurt?”

She crooked her arm under her head. “Nothing. And nobody.” She could tell she wasn’t making sense. So she said: “I got to get some sleep.” And she stopped fighting and let her eyelids slip closed again.

When he had gone—in spite of what she had said—when she’d heard the outside screen slam shut, she did not go to sleep. She lay without moving because it was easier that way while her mind turned over and over slowly. Like a turtle dragging along through the marsh grass.

I could go now, she thought. If I’m going at all, I’m going now.

That was it. It came on you all of a sudden. And it wasn’t the way you thought it was going to be. There wasn’t anything wild about it or strange. It was just there, like lots of other things. And you took it. Or not. And only looking forward or back you saw how important it was, really.

Now, she thought, either I put my stuff in a suitcase or I don’t. It’s that simple. Now. Only when I look back on it tomorrow, I’ll see that it wasn’t.

The room was making small tight circles. She was thinking, I’m going to throw up, when she fell asleep.

She could hear the rain still and smell the damp coming up from under the house through the floorboards. And Inky was back.

“You just stay here, waiting for me to doze off?”

“It’s near half past eleven,” Inky said.

She sat up and began to rub her jaw. There was a pimple there and she scrubbed at it.

“You awake?”

“Sure,” she said, “sure I am.”

“Just want to tell you,” Inky said and stared at the things jumbled on top of her bureau. He picked up her powder puff and dusted it against his fingers nervously. “If you want to get married, it’s all right with me.”

Again there was that faint far-off tingle that would have been a shock if she hadn’t been so tired.

She stared at his dripping raincoat, and at the little puddles beginning to form on the floor. And when she spoke, it wasn’t her speaking at all.

“I got one bed full of rain water,” she said. “Don’t wet up my other one.”

“I forgot,” he said. “I’ll take it off.”

He put it in the hall and was back in a few seconds. “You hear what I said?”

“I’m beat but not deaf.”

“Jesus,” he said. “I think you musta got hurt last night.”

“No.”

“You didn’t get hit by anything? Or fall down?”

“I smell coffee now, for sure.”

“She’s out in the kitchen, your stepmother.”

“Oh,” Annie said.

“I said it’s all right with me.”

“I heard you.”

She got up and stuffed the shirt inside the jeans. “I had a belt somewhere. …”

Inky found it and handed it to her. Then she began brushing out her hair in front of the little bureau mirror.

“I had a …” She forgot to finish the sentence. She turned slowly on her heel, looking around the room. She found it on the little table by the bed, a bottle of cologne. She sprinkled some on the brush and went back to brushing.

“Maybe this’ll get the smoke smell out.”

Inky had forgotten to take off his cap. He wore it backwards like a catcher’s, and water was still running down the long bill and dripping to the floor. “That all you got to say?”

She took her lower lip in her teeth and held it.

“I thought maybe that’s why you weren’t coming.”

“I wasn’t thinking about it,” Annie said.

“I’d like for you to come.”

She began to clean the brush of loose hairs.

“And I thought you wanted to live in New Orleans. Or did you change your mind?”

“No,” she said.

“This is what I was figuring.” He scratched his ear. “Soon’s we get there, we borrow this car from my brother and head for the Coast and get married right there. And I got my back pay from Arthur and we drive anywhere we want to.”

She held very still listening.

“Sound good?”

“I’da wanted to do that once.”

“Not now?”

She put an elbow on the bureau and leaned her head against her hand. “Things change and I feel all thick and heavy.”

“You don’t want to come?”

“My throat’s so dry,” she rubbed at it, “I’m going get some coffee. You know your dinghy?”

“The lost one, sure.”

“Nothing.” She shifted her head so that her forehead touched the wood.

“If you don’t want to, that’s all there is to it.”

She didn’t lift her head. “I don’t know what I said.”

“Look,” Inky said, “we got to leave by two, the latest. And I’ll come ask you just before we leave.”

Annie nodded, feeling that her head was moving through a mess of cotton. “I’ll get some coffee.”

“Never thought to see me proposing to a girl,” Inky laughed nervously. He came up behind her back and hugged her, hard, his hips pressing into her behind. “Never thought of an answer like this, either.”

She felt a responsive quiver begin in her. The wire-thin twitch.

“Quit,” she said.

“Hope you come along. I’d miss you for sure.”

“Quit,” she said.

He stepped back. “Settled, huh? I come back and ask you before we go.”

She lifted her head just enough to nod.

When he had gone she moved out into the center of the room and looked around. There wouldn’t be much to take, she thought. If I went. If.

And why didn’t he come looking for me last night with the fires?

And she could feel her face turn heavy and sullen, like a bad make-up.

I don’t know, she thought. I don’t know. …

There was that time Claudie had followed her. And Inky had yelled at her to go home.

Not the marrying kind, she thought. And where’d he be next week? And why’d he ask? And why’d he ask?

And she remembered Julius, remembered seeing his black slicker, that pulled tight across his belly, come popping out the mist. And he hadn’t believed about the dog. And he’d gone and poked around, for sure. And he was a sharp one; maybe he put some things together.

Though there hadn’t been any signs, she thought. But maybe he could guess.

And if they guessed. …

I need some coffee, me, she told herself.

She moved steadily, putting one bare foot in front of the other.

She moved straight through the kitchen to the stove. The pot was there, and a cup too. She poured, noticing without particular interest that there was a puddle of sugar left at the bottom of the cup.

“Wait,” Adele said, “and I’ll get you a clean cup.”

Annie had not noticed she was there. “Look, I’m all right.”

“I been using that.”

“You got anything contagious?”

Adele put a clean cup out.

“Okay,” Annie said, “you drink this one.”

She poured another cup, feeling for the first time against the warm handle how very cold her own hands were. She filled the cup and then held her hands to the blue enamel sides of the pot

“Hands cold?” Adele asked.

“I just like to feel the warm.”

“You getting sick?”

“I’m just beat.”

“Sit down.”

“No.” Annie stayed leaning against the stove, warming her hands.

“Your papa didn’t get to bed at all.”

“Tough luck.”

“He had something to eat and went right back. … They looking to see if anybody’s hiding still.”

“There’s nobody around.”

“They’re looking.”

“Wouldn’t be so stupid to stay around.” Annie lifted her head with difficulty and stared out the window. The chinaberry trunk was black with rain, its mold splotches bright yellow-green. “Still raining.”

“Didn’t you notice when Inky come in he was dripping wet?”

Inky. … “Come to think of it, guess I did.”

Cats were yeowling under the house. Annie stomped on the floor and they were silent.

“He was telling me,” Adele said, “how they finally got fixed up to leave.”

Annie was still looking at the splotches of mold. “Who?”

“Inky.”

“Oh, sure … he wants me to come.”

She said it so flatly she surprised herself. She hadn’t intended to say anything. “But that’s nobody’s business.”

Adele reached up both hands to smooth back the hair that was already pulled tight over her ears. “I figured it was something like that.”

“Nobody’s business.”

Adele kept patting back hair that hadn’t moved.

“How’d you get it to stay in place so?” Annie asked.

“What?”

“Your hair.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that,” Adele said.

“I was just wondering.”

Claudie came out on the back porch. You could hear him riding a rocking-chair back and forth, talking to himself.

Adele asked: “You going?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.”

“I was wondering.”

“I’ll be back,” Annie said.

She went back into her room, closed the door carefully after her. She opened the window, held her head outside, and vomited into the swimming mud.

H
ALF AN HOUR LATER,
Annie slipped out the back door. She had not taken a raincoat or a hat, but the rain was beginning to slack off a bit. She hurried. Remembering that she hadn’t combed her hair, she stopped under the shelter of a palmetto leaf and took a comb from her pocket. She fixed her hair best she could, and ran her finger over her lips to smooth her lipstick. And she went on to the Lombas house.

Walking this way, she’d approach it from the side, around by the chickenhouse, she remembered suddenly when she saw the tangle of blackened slats. Carrie and Ferdinand Lombas were working back there, picking around among the ashes. They looked up when they heard Annie.

She thought: I should have come the other way—they’ll all be talking.

But it was too late. So she reminded herself that it didn’t matter. And went over to lean on the fence. “The side of our house got burned.”

Carrie Lombas nodded. “I been by there.”

“Chickens in there?”

“Some.”

“Oh,” Annie said. “Perique around?”

“By the front.”

She walked around, outside the fence. Perique was sawing some boards in the shelter of the front porch. He stopped when she came over.

“Hi,” he said.

“I been looking for you,” she said, and smiled her best smile.

He looked very tired. There was a long scratch across his forehead. “I been here.”

“Where you get that?” She pointed.

“One place or another.”

“Last night?”

He nodded. His hands were dusty with sawdust as he wiped them across his sweating chin.

“I been meaning to thank you for coming to see how we made out.”

“Wasn’t anything.”

“Just last night,” she said and ran a hand over her damp hair that was glued to her head, sleek as a seal’s. “Seems longer somehow.”

“A lot been happening, maybe.”

“Yea,” Annie said.

“You want something from me?”

Annie jammed her hands down in the pockets of her jeans. “Nothing more than talking to you.”

Perique tested the blade of the saw against his finger. And waited.

Annie walked across the porch, wiggling her hips slightly under her tight jeans.

He did not seem to be watching her.

She climbed up on the rail, and glanced toward him. He was squinting down the blade.

It was so quiet, just the rain, and the little shuffling sound, muffled from the back yard, of things being dragged and dropped.

Annie stared down at the faded knees of her jeans, and waited for Perique to say something. Finally she gave up. “I got to decide something,” she said.

He put the saw down and came and sat astride the rail, a few feet from her.

“Something real important.” She turned facing him. She’d left the two top buttons of her blouse open and she wasn’t wearing a bra. She hunched her shoulders just slightly so that the breasts would swing forward and push against the cloth.

She couldn’t tell whether he noticed or not—he used to. Once. But today his eyes were absolutely steady, looking into hers. His eyes were milk-chocolate colored.

Still he might be looking. …

She had to go on. “Real important,” she said finally.

“Like what?”

That she’d got him to answer at all made her feel better. “If I’m going to New Orleans.”

She didn’t know exactly what she had expected. But it wasn’t this.

He didn’t so much as blink. There was lots of yellow in his eyes, she noticed, pointing out from the pupils like sunrays. It was funny she’d never noticed that before.

“Thought you want to go to New Orleans, me,” he said.

“Maybe,” she said automatically, “maybe not.”

“I was plain sure you want to.”

The brown eyes turned away from hers and reached out into the gray day.