Under a Dark Summer Sky

by Vanessa Lafaye

  She looked out from under it. “Who gonna be in charge of story reading here till you come back?”

  “That you, Missy,” he had said and retrieved his cap. “That you.”

  He had looked so strange that day, so grown-up, his uniform beautifully pressed by his mother, Grace. She stood close by, her hands shaking with the effort not to cry, flanked by Selma and Mama. Mama whispered something in Grace’s ear. Henry sweated in the heat, unwilling to loosen his tie or roll up his sleeves as some of the others had done.

  The train had lumbered to a stop in a blast of steam and a shriek of brakes. Day-trippers and returning shoppers filed off with curious glances at the black man in uniform.

  Henry bent down until their eyes were level. “You be good, Missy, and mind your mama.” She flung her arms around his neck.

  “Come away now, Missy,” Mama had said with a hand on her shoulder. “Time for Henry to go.”

  Grace had gripped him to her, bunching the uniform in her fists. Gently he separated himself, flung the duffel over his shoulder, and boarded the train. Just as it pulled away, Missy had run after it and yelled, “When you comin’ back?”

  The wind had whisked his words away, but it sounded like he said “summertime.” Well, she had thought, left alone at the platform, waving until the train shrank to a black speck that got swallowed by the sky, that’s not long. Already been my birthday, which comes in April. Already plenty hot. Summertime not far away. Won’t be long.

  Eighteen years. Eighteen summertimes later, and here he was, at last.

  She had waited. Grace and Selma had waited. Mama had waited. When the war had ended in 1918 and Doc Williams and the others came back, Grace had fainted right there on the same platform when Henry was not among them. There was no explanation, no dreaded official telegram from the army. They knew he had left France at the end of the war. Sporadic postcards had come from Texas, California, Washington State, enough to confirm he was alive but little else. The years passed. Grace died, like she had been holding on to something and one day just decided to let go. Selma blamed him for that, Missy knew, and a reckoning would take place, at a time of Selma’s choosing. But for now, she was just so glad to have him back…

  In the meantime, there had been suitors for Missy, the few not put off by her reputation for being headstrong. After all, she was a hard worker, had learned her cooking from Mama, whose food was famed over the whole county, and she had a good, steady job. Her rounded, sturdy build, inherited from Billy, was suited to heavy lifting, and her ample hips, swaying beneath her white uniform, had prompted more than one hopeful local fella to ask her for a stroll on the moonlit beach. But after a few such outings, which always ended in sandy wrestling matches, she had declined the propositions of Heron Key’s young men.

  And then, finally, the moment arrived, the one she had waited for all that time. He stood there, just a few feet away, hands in his pockets. “Hello, Henry,” she said. “Nice to see you.”

  He had a rather sheepish, tentative look, and she wondered what Selma had said to him. Probably told him what would happen if his boys acted up tonight.

  “Hello, Missy. You look very pretty.”

  She felt his eyes on her. For so long, she had dreamed of him being there, right where he stood, looking at her like that, on a beautiful night like this. Only now did she realize she had absolutely no idea what to do or what to say to him. “Oh, this old thing…” She laughed self-consciously, thought of all the high-toned fancy women he must have known, and felt very, very foolish. Was it true that even the white women in France went with the soldiers? An image of Henry in a creamy-limbed embrace sidled into her thoughts.

  “Let’s walk,” he said and took off his boots. He kept his eyes on the surf curling white around their toes.

  They strolled to the end of the beach where the fishing boats were pulled up on the sand, washed by the waves and the warm light from the torches.

  “Is Missus Kincaid always like that?” he asked.

  “No, she used to be gorgeous, like a movie star. Then Mr. Kincaid came along and knocked her up. She started to eat and ain’t really stopped. She pretty much stays in the house since Nathan was born, and in the meantime, Mr. Kincaid… Well, you seen it. She been good to me, though, and Nathan is a little cutie.”

  They sat on the end of an upturned boat, let their feet dangle in the water. The breeze brought the sound of laughter, children whining, the clink of beer bottles. The soft voice of Larry Adler’s “St. Louis Blues” came from the gramophone. It all felt so normal and yet so strange, like waking from a dream to find it was real.

  All the lines she had prepared to say just melted away like her footprints in the sand. Heat radiated from his skin and a musty smell he never used to have. Like something washed but not clean. His eyes, with those same curled-up lashes she always envied, were fixed on the horizon. His arms were corded with thick veins. He rubbed the scar on his neck. There was tension in his shoulders, and she realized he was nervous too. The scene suddenly struck her as too funny.

  She laughed out loud. “Look at us, Henry Roberts, acting like we two strangers!” She squeezed his hand.

  He exhaled. “You right! How you been, girl?” He squeezed back, friendly like.

  She had held his hand so many times in the past, but this was different. “Oh, you know, nothin’ ever changes in Heron Key. You could come back in another twenty years and the place still look the same.”

  There was an awkward silence, occupied by the ugly, lumpy truth of his long absence. All those summertimes he had missed. She felt the empty years collapse inside her. His hand was rough, crisscrossed with shiny scars.

  “Yeah, but not the people,” he said. “The people ain’t the same, none of us.” His expression darkened again.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She jostled his shoulder. “Maybe on the outside we different, but not on the inside. That don’t change, not really. We still the same people.”

  “You is, Missy,” he said. “You still the same sweet girl that I left, but I’s different. Don’t you see?” He turned to face her, his features twisted in shame. “I messed it all up. Got nothin’ but the clothes on my back, nothin’ to show for all those years. Nothin’ to offer…anyone. I let everyone down: Selma, my mother…you.” He turned his face to the sea again.

  “Henry Roberts,” she said, “look at me. I said, look at me.” He turned back, and in his eyes she saw lost years and infinite loneliness. “I ain’t the same,” she said. “I ain’t a girl no more. You think you the only one who messed up? I done nothin’, been nowhere. I wasted my whole life so far, and ain’t nobody’s fault but mine. I still take a damn encyclopedia to bed with me every night.” Missy never cussed. The word felt good in her mouth. It unlocked other words, long held back. She sat up straighter, tried to make him see what she saw. “You been to war, you been to France. The way those boys looked at you tonight…they’d walk right into the mouth of hell if you were leadin’ them. You got them home, Henry. The rest, that don’t matter. I proud to know you.” She suddenly felt embarrassed. It was more words than she had spoken together for quite a while—perhaps ever. “I talk too much. You didn’t come all this way to hear me flappin’ my gums.”

  There was a long pause. The waves whispered to the sand, tickled her toes. Only at this moment did the realization strike her, with the force of a hammer. All these years, she had thought of herself as powerless, no more than a leaf on the wind, but the truth was a lot worse than that. She was scared, pure and simple. Scared to take a chance, scared to leave behind the familiar contours of Mama’s house and Heron Key. Just plain scared. The things she might have done, places she might have seen…they flickered before her now like an old-fashioned lantern show.

  He stared at the surf where it nudged the boat. The tide was coming in fast. When he looked at her again, something was different. It was like he saw her, really
saw her, as she was now, for the first time.

  “You think…?” he began, then stopped himself and started over. “You think it might not be too late? For an old soldier to make a new start?”

  “I know it ain’t too late.” She looked at the water, where the moon made silver ripples on the waves. “Only too late when you dead.” Another thought came to her: Maybe it ain’t too late for me neither.

  Another silence while he thought about this. “Why there ain’t no Mr. Missy?”

  Don’t you see? It only ever been you. Only you. “Oh, I just ain’t found the right fella, I guess,” she said breezily, “and I is really, really fussy.”

  “Well, I’ll have a think about that for you. I might know someone.”

  “Much obliged.” She had to look away.

  “In the meantime”—he seemed to choose his words carefully—“what you say we get reacquainted, away from all…this?” He cast his eyes up the beach, where Selma had them under surveillance. “You can show me what hasn’t changed around here? We could go for a walk one evening?”

  She knew by rights it was a mistake to make it too easy but didn’t care one bit. Her mouth opened to accept, but the sound of breaking glass and a woman’s cry of fright startled them both. They ran back up the beach to find a scene of destruction in progress.

  • • •

  Dwayne stood at the edge of the mayhem, thumbs hooked in his belt, assessing the situation. A big, sunburned guy with malice in his pale eyes was engaged with six pals in a spree of demolition. They smashed a bunch of bottles, turned over picnic tables. They helped themselves to the booze with the clear intention of draining every last drop. One of them pushed Mabel’s bowl of potato salad into the sand. Women pulled their children close, and men shuffled around impotently. It was exactly, down to the last detail, what he had expected to happen.

  He had left the extra manpower back at the jail with a case of beer as a thank-you, figuring the night’s main event was over after the fight. Although he was armed, he did not like the odds against him. The wild look in the veterans’ eyes told him that he might have to shoot every one of them. He was perfectly prepared to do this, but it would mean endless paperwork.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the big one with the pale eyes announced, as he kicked over a table covered in glasses. “On behalf of all of us who fought for you in the filth of France, we have this to say.” And he belched long and loud. Another doubled over with laughter. His pal drained a bottle of rum and smashed it against a palm tree. The others dispersed to find their own amusement amid more sounds of destruction.

  Henry raced up to him. “Enough, Two-Step. You got no cause to act like this.”

  “You in charge of these men?” asked Dwayne. “You best get them under control or it’s on you.”

  “Him? He ain’t in charge of jack shit,” sneered Two-Step. “Nobody owns us, not anymore. Right, fellas?”

  One of Two-Step’s crew tried to pull a struggling woman into an embrace while the others slurped down more liquor. Dwayne figured he had maybe sixty seconds before the whole situation got completely out of hand. He had no intention of letting that happen.

  An odd assortment of men approached Henry: a big man with a lazy eye, another guy with only one eye, a shambling fellow with a Bible clutched in his hand, and a little guy who looked about twelve years old. “Trouble, sir?” asked the little one.

  “Nothin’ we cain’t handle, Jeb,” said Henry. “These,” he said to Dwayne, “is my men. Sonny, Franklin, Lemuel, Jeb.”

  “We’ll swap business cards later,” Dwayne said. He stared hard at Henry, tried to focus on the job and only the job. He considered what the sheriff would want him to do, he in his fancy office two islands over. Dwayne had had one hell of a day and really, really wanted to hit someone.

  “Looks like you need one more, Henry.” A well-muscled veteran with a blond crew cut approached.

  “You sure, Max?” asked Henry with a glance at Two-Step. The outcome of the next few minutes was only half of it. What mattered was later, once they were all back at the camp. Things would go very badly for Hoffman.

  Max shrugged it off. “I reckon so.”

  “You siding with the niggers, Kraut?” growled Two-Step. “Why ain’t I surprised? Well,” he said and rolled up his sleeves. “I’m gonna enjoy this even more.”

  And with that, fists began to swing.

  They were fairly evenly matched, and neither side seemed to make much headway. Although Two-Step’s gang had the weight advantage, Jeb was surprisingly effective for a small person. And for a guy with only one eye, Franklin had a vicious right hook. Lemuel was yelling random Bible verses, timed with haymaker punches. Sonny sat calmly but firmly on top of someone, like the man was a park bench. Max and Henry each had their hands full.

  Dwayne was just about to resort to his pistol to bring things to a close when a strange sound came toward them from the water. It was a loud hissing, like a dozen bad-tempered snakes.

  The explosion was enormous, deafening, brilliant. All the rockets fired at once. The sky was filled with a cacophony of colored light. Huge blooms of red, orange, blue, green, and white covered the treetops and rained down little sparks everywhere. Along with the big bangs were pops that sounded exactly like rapid gunfire. Children broke out of their parents’ grip to race with delight down to the water, squealing with excitement.

  The explosions had a different effect on the mass of fighting veterans. A big pile of Two-Step’s men were suddenly undone. Stan threw himself to the ground, hands over his head. Tec could be heard to whimper softly.

  “Gentlemen,” said Dwayne as he slipped the handcuffs onto Two-Step, “y’all are under arrest on account of ruining our party.”

  “That ain’t illegal,” gasped Two-Step.

  “It is now.”

  “Thank you,” panted Henry, wiping blood off his nose.

  Dwayne hauled Two-Step to his feet and shot a hard glare at Henry. “Don’t mistake me for your friend,” he said and marched away.

  Chapter 9

  Three hundred miles to the south, a tropical storm passes over the Bahamas. On the verge of dissipating, it receives a sudden, mammoth infusion of energy from the superheated waters below. It gorges on this energy, gaining momentum from the very earth’s rotation, spinning harder and harder, sucking air into its empty heart. It howls toward the still, summer-hot waters of the Straits of Florida, in search of more food.

  • • •

  Doc Williams was dreaming of Cora, as she was that day when Leann took her away. She wore her sundress with the frogs on it, her face shadowed by a white hat. She reached out her arms to him, crying, “Daddy, help me.” He was running after her, on all fours like an animal, but faster than any animal, through the palmetto scrub. Branches flayed his face, his hands propelled him over the sandy soil, and still she flew ahead of him, just out of reach, her face a dark emptiness beneath the hat.

  Something shook him awake. He was sweating, and his breath came in ragged gulps.

  Dwayne’s voice: “Doc, wake up.” Another shake of his shoulder, harder this time. “Come on, wake up.”

  “Wha—time?” It was still dark. I must have dozed off for a few minutes. After he stitched up Ronald’s cheek, Doc had had no desire to return to the party. The evening was soured for him. He figured someone would fetch him if he was needed. Instead he had finished the night on his porch, with only a bourbon bottle for company. The last thing he remembered was the fireworks, which seemed to happen later and more colorfully than usual. Cyril normally only managed a few disappointing fizzles, whereas this was a full-blown spectacular. He had raised his bottle to the lights in the sky but could not think of a single thing to wish and passed out in his chair. Probably Dwayne was there to tell him someone had cut themselves on a beer bottle. If Mabel had poisoned them all again with her potato salad, he was going
to read her the riot act.

  “A little after three thirty,” Dwayne said. “Get up.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m coming.” He struggled to his feet with Dwayne’s help. “Need some coffee. You want some?”

  “No time for that. It’s Hilda.” The big man’s face looked matte white in the porch light, his eyes sunk into shadows. “She’s been attacked. Lionel found her on the road. She’s in my truck. Doc, it’s bad.”

  His tone cut through the alcoholic fog. Doc’s brain cleared, eyes focused on Dwayne. He had never seen him look so worried, not even that time when the Klan announced a rally nearby. “What happened?”

  “We don’t know yet. Lionel was walking home, thought it was a deer in the road. She’s been beaten, mostly on her head and face.” A pause. “I haven’t checked for other…injuries. Leave that to you. She’s been unconscious since Lionel found her.”

  Doc felt around for his medical bag. “What was she doing walking alone at that time of night?” he asked, his sleepy brain two steps behind. “Why didn’t she go home with Nelson?”

  “I’ll fill you in later. I called Nelson. He’s on his way.”

  “Where was he?” Something was very wrong about this. It made no sense.

  “Where do you think?” Dwayne asked on his way back to the truck. “Help me get her inside.”

  • • •

  They laid Hilda on her back on the examination table under a bare bulb haloed with moths. A fan in the corner moved the air in feeble bursts. It took all of Doc’s training to resist the impulse to gasp. She could have been anyone, a stranger, such was the damage to her face. Both eyes were swollen shut, nose obviously broken, one lip torn, and what looked like teeth marks coming through the other. There was a strange pattern across the bridge of her nose. Blood had turned her blond hair dirty brown.

  She moaned softly, and her breath came in uneven gurgles. Doc leaned in close to catch the words but only got, “Make…stop…”