The Hard Blue Sky (59 page)

Hector rocked back and forth on his heels and toes. “You near ready?” he called.

Over to the left, somebody was hammering, boarding up windows: that would be Julius at the store.

Two kids ran past, one of them with an air rifle. “You going to shoot a hurricane?” he called to them and they giggled.

His father came ambling down the path, the printed cloth bag in his left hand swinging even more sharply with his uneven walk.

“You need some help?” Hector slapped his hand to his forehead. “Mary Mother, but I just forgot to ask if you and the old woman needed some help over at the house.”

His father dropped the bag and leaned against the porch railing. “Non,” he said, “the shutters is all closed and the plants in off the porch and the old woman, she is lighting a candle next to the holy palm. Let’s us go.”

“Cecile,” Hector called, “let’s us go.”

She turned up in the doorway so suddenly they both knew she’d been standing just behind it, waiting. “I ain’t going.”

“God almighty, woman,” Hector said, “ain’t I got enough to do without dragging you to the boat?”

He went inside, checking all the windows; she stood without moving in the middle of the door. “There stuff in that there bag on the table for you, if you want it.”

He looked inside the bag briefly and then picked it up. “Least you ain’t so lost you senses, you forgetting food.”

She came into the living-room and sat down on the edge of a chair, her hands still on her hips.

“Okay,” he said. She did not move. “Get the kid before I lose my temper and bat you over.”

“He ain’t here.” Her face was perfectly blank. “Ain’t neither of them here.”

He glanced in the crib: it was empty; and he shouted out the window, “Don!” There was no answer, just that hammering far off.

“What you done with them?”

She shrugged.

“Where you put them, you?”

“Where you ain’t ever going to think to look for them.”

“You want the boat gets smashed to pieces, with us all wasting time hunting for the kids?”

“You leave me here to look out for things.”

“You crazy. You crazy.”

He spun on his heel and dashed down the steps to take a few steps in the trees, shouting: “Don!” There were so many places she could have hidden the baby, any place inside half a mile.

Perique passed. “Hey, boy,” he called. “We got to be going.”

“Jesus Christ!” Hector jammed his hands in his pockets, “ain’t you got nothing to do but pester me?”

Archange said: “Don’t pay a mind to him.” He took Perique by the arm and whispered in his ear: “Don’t get hot with him. He don’t mean what he saying, him. He got wife trouble.”

Perique grinned shyly. “I be down at the boat, me.”

The old man followed Hector who was walking back and forth peering in each clump of hedge and oleander. “You got no reason to talk to Perique like that. What we do, us, if he got mad and wouldn’t come out with us? What we go and do then?”

“We ain’t going out.”

His father did not answer.

Hector turned around. His face was flushed with anger. He kicked at a small white periwinkle plant. “I told you we ain’t going out.”

“I ain’t saying nothing.”

“I ain’t going to let nothing happen to those kids, me.”

“Oui.”

“And her, she can go drown in the bay, for all I care, her.”

“Oui.” His father was still following him. For all that he was a cripple, he could move fast on the uneven ground.

“I don’t care none if the boat get smashed.”

“You ain’t going to eat then.”

“I going to take them with me.”

They had stopped walking abruptly. “You hear something?”

They were in the middle of an oleander patch. In the wind the leaves and branches bent and lashed down in their faces.

“No,” his father said, “you ain’t ever going to find them in time.”

Hector leaned against one of the largest oleander trunks. “That kid got to get hungry and then he going to start to yell, and then we know.”

His father thought about this for a moment. He caught one of the branches that pounded his face and pulled it off. “Jesus God,” he swung the twig like a switch in the air around him, “that kid ain’t going to get hungry for three hours or four maybe. And the longer you wait, the rougher it get.”

Hector was staring at the ground, rocking back and forth on his heels, just a little.

“So.” His father rubbed the side of his nose with the little twig.

“You wait any three or four hours, or any time like that, and I ain’t going with you. And Perique ain’t neither, him. Then it just too late. Ain’t neither of us that crazy.”

Hector squinted up into the sky, one eye closed. His father whistled softly and tunelessly between his teeth.

Hector swung his eyes slowly back to his house. “Jesus!” Following the path of his eyes he walked back, slowly, until he took the steps in a single jump.

Cecile was just where they had left her, sitting on the arm of the living-room chair that was covered with canvas. She half closed her eyes when he came in; her heavy underlip was curled and pouting.

“You so crazy you don’t go hide from me.” He slapped her across the cheek. She was up in a second, kicking at his stomach, reaching for his eyes. Very carefully, using his left arm to shield himself, he beat her. He used only the flat of his hand.

He finished with a push that sent her slamming back into the chair and the chair smashing into the wall. She sat quietly, glaring at him.

“Eyes of a bitch.” He was panting. “Ain’t going to let you ruin my boat, me.”

Archange stood waiting outside, swinging the little bag from his left hand.

“She ain’t even had sense enough to run and hide from me. …”

His father tucked his upper lip inside his teeth and whistled.

“It is the same to me.” Hector yelled as he picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “But I will come back, me, as soon as I can, and if the kids, they are not all right, I will take you to little pieces and feed the crabs with you.”

She hissed through the door after them.

Therese let herself drop full length across her bed. She had just been down to the dock: the
Hula Girl
was gone. And Perique had not come to tell her good-by. … She cried until her head hurt. Then she got up, washed her face, put fresh make-up on, and, with a piece of tarpaulin over her head, started for Adele’s. The cool wet air made her feel better.

Claudie was nervous. He held on to his mother’s leg and whimpered.

“Quit,” she said, “this ain’t the storm.”

He only held her tighter.

“Look,” she said, as much to herself as to the boy, “we ain’t going to be alone. And even that ain’t so bad … nothing to it. Just a little wind and some little rain.”

The boy was listening to her carefully. She loosened his fingers and walked around the rooms, which were almost pitch-black with the shutters closed.

Claudie began to wail, frightened at being left in the kitchen alone. She ran back there, and because the sound made her skin creep, she slapped him, harder than she would have used to do.

For the very first time, she saw fear, and then hate come into his eyes.

“I never tell you it was easy,” she yelled at him. “I never did, me.”

When Therese came, she felt calmer. She even gave Claudie the couple of Tootsie Rolls that she’d been hiding in the china jar on the top shelf of the pantry.

Julius put down his hammer and took the remaining nails out of the corner of his mouth. He’d finished boarding up the new big front window, the one he should have had sense enough not to buy. He began to take things off the floor and pile them on the higher shelves. He put the sugar and the rice and the flour on the very top. You could never tell when you’d have water inside.

From the rooms at the back he heard Philomene puffing as she pushed things around. It struck him all of a sudden that he was winded—he had put up the storm door but he hadn’t barred it yet—so he went out on the front porch for some air.

It was blowing about the same. The clouds seemed a little darker, but that might be imagination. It would be four, five, six hours before anything much happened.

It was beginning to rain, you could smell it. Julius sniffed at the air. It gave him a funny feeling, this standing on his porch and knowing that he was just about the only able-bodied man on the island. He liked that very much.

His daughter came along the path; she waved briefly at him and went around to the back. She had left her two kids there, not much more than half an hour ago. …

And now so soon. … He ducked back through the store to talk to her.

She had the baby in one arm, and Don was already down the steps.

“Hey,” Julius called after her.

She turned and he saw the cut at the corner of her lip, which was beginning to swell, and the bruise on her cheekbone.

“What happen to you?”

She grinned with the good side of her mouth. “Shutter fell down on me.” She left with a wave.

Julius said to Philomene: “You don’t reckon Hector done that?”

“And would she look so happy, if they had a fight?”

Julius had to scratch his head and admit that was true.

The
Hula Girl
was the last boat out. The harbor, when they had left, was like the harbor that Hector remembered from his childhood—empty posts and lines dangling down into the water, and splintered, weathered boards that looked worn almost through.

Even the sheltered waters of the bay were rough. The hull shuddered and rolled. They headed straight across, the wind astern.

Perique sat down on the little bunk next to Archange Boudreau and let his body shift back and forth with the boat’s motion. There was nothing more to be done for a while. Now that he had time to catch his breath he remembered Therese. … Jesus, he thought, Jesus Christ. …

He’d have to bring her something, a present from Petit Prairie. That would make it all right again.

And all of a sudden he found himself wondering what a hurricane was like in New Orleans, where Annie was. …

He shook his head and got rid of the thought.

Archange Boudreau eased himself into a comfortable position on the bunk, stretched himself carefully, tucked a fresh piece of tobacco in his cheek and began to chew it gently.

A flock of gulls passed overhead, coming from the south, their feathers a dull white gleaming. They were riding the wind, hardly moving their wings.

“Là-bas,” Archange said, pointing.

Through a break in the mist, a boat, almost out of sight in the beginning dark.

“Was wondering where they all got to, me.”

“Can’t tell who it is, this far.”

“They must about turning up the bayou right now, this minute.”

“We ought to be up there with them.” The mist blew back and the boat disappeared.

“We going to get there,” Hector said. “We got the wind running with us.”

“All the same,” Archange shifted the tobacco, “we can’t go no faster and I wish we was there right now.”

Perique laughed and crinkled his little eyes. “We going to make it. Or maybe we drown.”

The old man pulled a knife from his shirt pocket and began to clean his fingernails.

Hector motioned Perique to take the wheel. He went on deck. They were taking a little spray; there was a trickle running out the long slit scuppers.

With one hand for balance on the lifeline they’d rigged around the cabin, Hector stared back the way they had come.

“Hey, boy,” Perique called, “ain’t nothing you see out there you can’t see from in here.”

“You go over,” his father said, “and there ain’t going to be any use even trying to find you.”

“Why she stay, in place of hiding with the kids? Why she didn’t save herself no beating?”

Behind them the island was just a clump of trees with a clump of storm-colored clouds resting right on top of them. The heavy rain was almost there, too; you could tell by the color of the haze. The trees would be lashing around like crazy, he thought, and for a minute he saw it all clear: the people running for cover, slamming doors after them, putting in the bolts. She’d be doing that too. He could see her; she’d have stayed on the porch until the last minute, after she’d sent the kid inside. Maybe she’d even stay out in the rain for a while, because it would be cool.

But she wasn’t one to do that, he thought. She’d be inside, making sure the covers were tight under the furniture, and that the kids were in bed. And then she’d sit down, rocking and waiting.

He cocked his head at the gray clouds streaming overhead and listened to the wind that was carrying them.

He was grinning when he turned and closed the cabin door behind him.

T
HE KIDS WERE THE
last ones inside. They had been running around, excited all of them, in groups, like packs of dogs.

They had been yelling and singing all through the little drizzle. When their mothers came out on the porches and called for them, they paid no attention. None at all.

The first drops of rain sent them scurrying home for cover. By this time most of the doors were closed and bolted. And their mothers weren’t in any hurry to open them up. … Let them stay out a while, they thought, get soaked to the skin, be a good lesson. And so the kids kicked at the doors and screamed with fear before they got inside.

From the Gulf rain moved in on the island, gray and thick.

The wind whipped it around corners and across open places like streams from a fire hose. Stripped leaves flew by in bunches, like handfuls.

There was a little rattle of slamming shutters all over the island—all of a sudden. Those were the people who liked fresh air, who hadn’t closed up until the very last minute. Until the rain began coming from every way all at once—so that even the undersides of the porch roofs got drenched.

It slacked off finally after an hour or so, and then the whole sky filled with a network of lightning threads, like a spider web. The gray air was fresh with the clear odor of ozone. On Isle Cochon the one dead tree was split open and two parts fell away so that there was only a splinter left standing, like a toothpick. The dogs down at the western end were howling without a pause—you could hear them over everything else.