The Hard Blue Sky (58 page)

Five shutters had taken them nearly half an hour. His throat was aching from the strain.

Inside his two little sisters were crying. “Shut up,” he told them sharply. They had crawled up in a corner of the bed, the two of them and they were sobbing open-mouthed.

Inside there it was dark, only the faint hairline of light around the edges of the windows and the one strip down the middle where the shutters met. “Fix the door, che’,” his mother said; her voice was deeper than usual, breathless and panting.

There were iron hooks on the door for a crossbrace. And over in the corner was the bar, an old piece of iron that his grandfather had found years ago on the beach at Isle Timbalier, a thin flat bar of iron, rusted but solid, that might have been almost anything. Hector would spend hours sometimes staring at the bar, trying to imagine what it was from, and how it had got on the beach at Timbalier, where there was only white driftwood and sand crabs scuttling like white shadows across the sand.

He got the bar and dropped it into place and then carefully, because his eyes had not yet got used to the dimness, felt his way over to a chair. It was a rocker. He began to tip it softly back and forth, dipping his head up and down, resting it on his chest, then throwing it back as far as he could.

They sat there, the four of them, with just the sound of his rocking and the rattle of the wood beads of his mother’s rosary. They did not make a light; the dark seemed safer.

Outside was the sound of thousands and thousands of bushes rubbing together, being pulled and twisted together; and the plopping of heavy drops of rain into the sand; and farther, the sucking of the water at the beach. His mother lit the vigil light in front of the statue of St. Christopher.

By eleven or so the tone of the wind began to change; it got higher and clearer too, like a bell almost, or a set of bells. There were small sharp crashes when flying things—branches or bits of wood or pieces of other houses—smashed into the walls.

“It is here now,” his mother said.

The wind seemed to be scratching against the outside of the house. They could hear it run up and down like fingernails on a washboard.

The chimney went; the bricks rattled down along the roof. The house was swaying. On the south side a shutter gave way. It didn’t blow in or hang rattling. One of the wind’s fingers found it and pried at it. Like a cork out of a bottle, almost, it popped open and was sucked away.

All the loose things in the room rose up toward the ceiling in the flood of wind. The house was quivering, the roof straining at its beams.

“Hector, open the windows,” his mother shouted. “Vite!”

He clambered across the bed and smashed his fists at a shutter until it flew open. He realized he was kneeling on his sister, which one he couldn’t tell. She was wailing. He slapped at her, clambered down and threw himself at the last closed window.

“We got to,” he heard his mother telling him, “or the roof or maybe the whole house goes.”

They caught at the flying things, odd bits of cloth and paper. Nothing looked familiar to him or felt familiar. The vigil light had gone out; there was only the peculiar color of the sky. Only the rain pouring in through the open windows and his clothes sticking to his body. He thought for a minute that the whole island had slipped into the Gulf and he began to whimper.

He thought his mother said something to him, but he couldn’t make out the words. The vent pipe from the cook stove fell clattering to the floor; they began to cough from the soot that sprayed upwards. And very distinctly, far off somewhere, he heard a cock crow.

His sisters were scrambling around the room, hunting for a place to hide. Even in all the noise he could hear their fierce little scurrying as they tried to wedge themselves behind the big old oak armoire.

He was standing in the middle of the floor, crying, with rain so hard in his face he could not catch his breath, when the armoire toppled over.

For that half-second he heard it falling, heard something falling, and would have run but wasn’t sure of the direction. And caught his breath to scream but didn’t have time: one of the wide-flying doors clipped him across the back of the head.

He still had that scar, a thick gray line. It was sensitive to the sun and tender; he had let his hair grow long and heavy over it.

His father looked up briefly. “Except you hold the net, I will not finish this for two or three weeks.”

“Okay,” Hector said; “okay.”

A yellow and black cat that has been fishing under the pier paddled lazily out to an isolated post—all the island cats swim—clambered to its broad top, a couple of inches above the water, stretched, shook, and settled down, eyes half closed but watching the water.

“You remember old Isabelle Guillot?” Hector asked.

“Perhaps. Maybe. She been dead a long time.”

“Sure,” Hector said, “back in that storm.” They’d found her under the smashed cistern in her yard.

And the Guidry boy, there wasn’t even a trace of him. He was just gone. Nobody ever did know what had happened.

Hector shifted on his feet, but held the net steady. “I have made up my mind fast. They coming with me.”

“Oui?” his father did not look up from the work. “Wait anyhow until the radio tell us what is there.”

When all the nets were finished, they went over to the grocery and sat on the porch there, drinking beer. There were some other people: Al Landry, Perique Lombas, a couple of the Arcenaux boys. And after a while Story LeBlanc came by. Therese Landry was there too, sitting very still and not making a sound, only now and then she would peep, out of the corners of her eyes, at Perique.

The radio was on full blast, hillbilly music and every hour a weather-news broadcast.

In an hour or so Ozzie Pailet came up on the porch. “I seen the boats from the other island going in.”

“That don’t mean nothing,” Archange Boudreau said.

“I’m just telling you,” he said. “What the radio say?”

Archange shook his head.

“You going hear soon enough,” Perique said.

At four o’clock the crisp voice read off the formal hurricane-warning and gave the last course of the storm. Without saying anything, they went inside the grocery, over to the north wall, where there was a government navigation chart. Julius snapped on the little light he had pinned over it. A little lamp with a wood ship’s wheel for a base and little sailing-boats around the shade—Hector jerked his eyes back to the chart.

Julius was saying: “Halfway between Point Sarrat and Lost Bay,” he put his finger down, “here.” Right under his finger was the island.

The radio voice was still repeating, emphasizing the words in a flat unconcerned way, “We repeat, hurricane precautions should be taken in this area. The course of the storm is estimated …”

Hector did not bother to listen any more. He went outside. There were things to be done now.

The church bell had begun to ring. The minute word had come Perrin’s daughter had scurried off—she was part crippled at birth. She jerked the rope unevenly so that there was a kind of choking clang.

The light top sand of the road was blowing like smoke along the ground.

Without turning Hector asked: “You going with me?”

His father was trying to light a cigarette in the wind, leaning with one arm wrapped around the porch post. “Why you think I ain’t going with you?”

“Don’t know, me.”

Perique shouted: “Hector, hey, what you say?”

“What?”

“You going right away?”

He nodded.

He and his father began to walk along the path to their houses. The wind was not any stronger, yet. There was never a slow rise. But all of a sudden when the storm was very close, the winds would come swirling down out of the clouds. And that would be it.

His father turned aside and pushed open the gate to his house. Hector went on to his own place, close by. One finger rubbing the thick whitish scar, he climbed his steps. The house was empty. “Hey,” he called, “hey.” In the crib in the bedroom the baby answered with a squawk. Hector studied the angry little face.

“You look like an old man,” he told the child, “just like an old man, you.” He walked through the living-room again and then into the tiny half-room that was the kitchen. “Cecile, hey!”

A scuffing sound right under his feet—he stuck his head out the window, looking down, studying it as if he’d never seen it before.

His house was built off the ground, not as high as most old places but four feet or so on brick foundations. Under it were the things they wanted to keep but were not using just then—nets that were too old to be patched (bits of them could be used for kids’ crab nets). Two pirogues that he used when he went hunting (he hadn’t been in over a year, the fishing had been so good). Some empty barrels he forgot just why he was keeping. A tiller from a dinghy that had gone to pieces long ago. Some washtubs and washboards and a charcoal pot. All of them with the white streaks of spider webs.

His wife was emerging, rear end first, from under the house. Without looking up at him, she began to pull out a heavy storm door, cross-braced. His son scrambled out, pushing on the other end.

“This kid here is screaming his head off,” Hector told her.

She looked up, her eyes bright green-blue and startling in her brown face. “I got plenty enough to do out here.”

He stared at her, not moving.

“You heard the hurricane bell same like me.” Her face was streaked with dirt; there were gray shreds of spider webs in her black hair. “You got nothing to do but stand there? Ain’t you got a boat to take out … ain’t you got the bars to put up or you house goes blowing away?”

“The kid is shouting like he is going to die.”

“You nurse him.” She bent to her work again, dusting the cobwebs off her feet and ankles. “If I going to do your work.”

But she came in anyway, walking like an angry cat, stiff-legged. The baby was tiring from his yelling already. She tucked a sugar-tit into his sagging mouth.

Hector followed her, admiring the set of her broad hips.

“I got no time to be thinking like that,” he said aloud.

“What you muttering about?”

“We got to get the storm door up.”

“I been telling you that.” She stomped down the steps and around the side of the house.

“We got to get it up because we are leaving.”

“What you saying now?”

“You coming with me.”

“And leave the kids here?”

He sighed patiently. “You coming. All of you coming.”

He lifted the door into position.

“No.”

“Huh?” He turned and looked at her. “Let’s us fix the back door now.”

She did not move. “I ain’t going.”

“Gimme a hand.”

They put up the back door in silence. In a space between the trees they could see the black-squared hurricane-warning flag go up on the flagpole in the middle of the island.

Inside again, he took down a large zipper canvas bag. “You can just put the kids’ stuff in here.”

“No,” she said. “Somebody got to stay and take care the place.” She turned around, looking at the room, with the new red upholstered living-room set they had bought only one winter past.

She had half finished tucking canvas over the chairs. “Somebody got to stay or water ruin everything.”

“You going,” he said, “if I got to take you by the seat of the pants and throw you in.”

She sat down, so hard that the springs made a little squeaking sound. “Everybody else, they going to stay.”

“Everybody else is crazy.”

Al Landry went home, almost running, stopping only once to talk to Therese. His own house, shuttered tight, looked strange and different. He tried to get in the front door, but that was barred. He had to go around to the kitchen.

The first thing he noticed was his little bag in the middle of the table. It looked like it was stuffed full. Adele was sitting in a chair right next to it, waiting.

“We got to take the boats,” he said.

“I hear the bell.”

“So. …” He wasn’t sure what to say or what to do. “Therese, she will come over to stay with you.”

“You ask her?”

He nodded.

“I can manage alone, me.”

“Sure,” he said, “but you ain’t used to it yet.”

“I been in storms before at Port Ronquille.”

“Well,” he said, “I feel better with somebody extra here.”

“I fix you some sandwiches,” she said quietly, “and some coffee.”

He squeezed the canvas bag.

“And some sweaters, that I find.”

There was some extra coffee on the stove. He poured some and tossed it off, like likker, neat. Not because he wanted it so much, but because he was nervous.

“You going right now, no?” Adele asked.

He kissed her on the top of the head, and left. She did not get up until Claudie, who had been playing in the parlor, upset the tabouret. Then she got the broom to sweep up the pieces of the ash tray.

Hector Boudreau went out on the porch and sat down. The chairs had all been taken in, so he squatted on his haunches, his back against the wall.

“I’m through talking, me,” he said. “You coming.” She did not answer, but he knew that she had heard, even though he did not turn his head. “I’m waiting here, me, for five minutes. Then we going to lock up all the doors and go.”

He heard a few soft movements, then nothing.

Over beyond the trees, men were shouting, but so far away he couldn’t make out the words. Funny, he thought, the way trees muffled sounds. He hoped the storm did not blow down too many of them.

That other hurricane—when he was a boy—had swept some places clean, like a thousand people had gone through with knives and brooms. And at some other places there were heaps: against a tree that had been too strong or too lucky to go; or against a house that was still standing. He remembered following the sound of dogs—he’d run to keep up with the others, his legs had been dropping off, but he’d kept going, not knowing what they were after, but going all the same. The dogs had gone yapping around one of the piles of brush and wood, where a big chinaberry tree had been torn up from the ground. And his mother got him by the shoulder and pointed him home and gave him a swat on the rear end to help him along. It had taken him two days to figure that out. Nobody spoke of it before him. He’d heard the kids whispering about it, whispering about the people under there. And when he understood, he began to shiver all over, so much that his mother thought he had malaria and gave him a big dose of whisky and quinine and put him to bed.