Under a Dark Summer Sky

by Vanessa Lafaye

  The first term would start in a few months. The building would not be ready, of course, and classes would have to be held on the beach to begin with, but that was okay. It was nearly impossible to tear Missy away from her lesson plans, which were strewn across her desk under the window. The desk was one of the first things he had made for her, out of wood taken from Mama’s old house.

  There were times when his pride in her nearly overwhelmed him. This was one of those times. She looked so fine in her new green dress, another present from Hilda. He just wanted to stand and stare.

  “You doing it again,” she said fondly.

  “I cain’t help it.” He still sometimes found it hard to believe she had been returned to him. The Coast Guardsmen who found her and Nathan still sent them Christmas cards. They had just been so delighted to find anyone at all still alive on that spit of sand, especially a woman and a baby. But because Nathan was in such peril on the flight back, no one had realized until they landed just how badly Missy was hurt. For the first few months in the hospital, Henry had just sat by her bed and kept watch, reading her stories, getting fresh food, until finally he brought her home, to the house he had made for them.

  Sorrow shadowed her face. “She should be here,” Missy said and cast her eyes to the window that overlooked the beach. The waves sparkled in the clear morning light. “It ain’t right, without her.”

  “Yes,” he said. There was nothing else to say, no words that they hadn’t said over the previous two years.

  Another long silence while they both stared at the sea that looked so calm and inviting on this hot day. Then she curled her hand inside his. “Come on, Mr. Roberts, let’s go.”

  He released the brakes on her chair. “Yes, ma’am, Missus Roberts.”

  • • •

  They gathered in the center of town, where Jenson’s store had stood for so many years. The monument was a handsome obelisk of creamy yellow stone, inset with a stylized carving of windswept palm trees. Its contours were covered by a pale drape, the hem stirred by a slight breeze that did nothing to cool the air. The sun was directly overhead, the time of day when shadows disappeared.

  Henry wiped the sweat from his face. He was pleased with the final result. He and Doc and Dwayne had wanted to include a list of names on the monument, but it wasn’t possible. They would never be sure of all those who died, because so many bodies were taken by the wind and the sea. Many of those found were unidentifiable, once the intense heat and the huge swarms of flies did their work. But not the carrion birds. The flies feasted on their carcasses too.

  For days and days, Henry and the other survivors had collected the rotting corpses, whose flesh came away in their hands like soft cheese. He had prayed to find Missy—and also not to find her—as he looked into each face, swollen beyond recognition. The stench was overwhelming, not even dented by the disinfectant they washed in every few minutes. Some of the National Guardsmen wore gas masks, which put the final seal on it for Henry. He had thought there could be nothing worse than his time in the trenches, but this had been many, many times worse. The decomposing bodies had been robbed of their very identities.

  At first, they had tried to make coffins for each but quickly realized that the scale of death required faster measures. So they began to burn them all, without pause or ceremony, in huge pyres, blacks and whites, old people and children, townspeople and veterans. Some were mangled, unidentifiable lumps of meat, and others were completely intact. The sky had turned black with the smoke, the sea stained gray with ash.

  And as the burning continued, he had searched for her, inside every ruined building, under every tangled heap of wood or metal, inside every crushed car. He had found only carnage or, rarely, folks like Doc and Hilda, still breathing. It was about five days after the storm that he collapsed, from lack of sleep, food, and water and the infection raging in his wounds. Waking up in the hospital, his only thought was to go back to the search, but he could not even get out of bed. When he could finally walk again, he had trudged up and down the corridors to build his strength, and it was on one of these excursions that he heard a nurse mention a familiar name.

  It seemed incredible, standing there in the gentle breeze with the glint of sun on calm water and the soft swish of the palms, that this was the same place that had resembled the worst battlefield imaginable, that had reeked of death for weeks as the town staggered back to its feet. He looked around at the few others who, like him, had lived through that night and what followed and saw the experience engraved on their faces.

  Violet and Franklin stood together, unconsciously leaving a space for Abe. Even now, Violet still retained the hunched posture of grief, as if winded by a blow. Her boy had died of blood poisoning from the wound in his arm while waiting to be evacuated.

  Zeke kept himself apart from the others. He looked tiny, very much diminished by Poncho’s absence. It was the first time Henry had seen him wear a shirt.

  The American Legion band arrived and began to unpack, their white uniforms and silver instruments flashing in the sun. Henry put a hand up to shade his eyes from the glare and spotted the Legion post commander, Leonard Goodchild. “Good to see you, Leonard,” he said and shook his hand. “A mite different to last time.”

  “You could say that, Henry.” Goodchild’s men had been among the first relief workers to arrive after the storm. Some of them had never recovered from what they saw during those days.

  Cars and buses pulled up, disgorging scores of people Henry had never seen before. There were a lot of Florida license plates but some from out of state too. And they just kept coming.

  “Who are these people?” he asked Goodchild.

  “Folks who want to pay their respects. This made the national news, Henry.” He tilted his head to one side and shaded his eyes with a hand. “You look surprised.”

  He had only expected a few visitors, figured the unveiling was of little interest beyond the environs of the Keys despite all the press coverage. It was astounding that such a tiny place, unknown to almost the whole country, had become a focus for national outrage over the botched evacuation of the veterans. He heard that the northern papers carried stories for months after the storm, going almost as far as accusing President Roosevelt of manslaughter. At last, it seemed there was to be a public debate about how they had been treated after the war. In death, they had achieved what they never could in life.

  For a long time, Henry had followed the investigation into how they came to be abandoned, why so many had died so needlessly. But it was like trying to catch hold of smoke. Each time they seemed close to an answer, those in charge got diverted by more official hand-waving. And as time passed, so the outrage waned and the world moved on.

  He straightened his shoulders. In the end, he had realized that having someone to blame helped no one. It didn’t bring them back, all those who had been lost. What mattered now was this group of people who stood quietly, fanning themselves in the heat. They still had so much work to do, to rebuild and restore the community. And some things would never be the same, could never be rebuilt.

  Ken and Moses arrived. Henry strode to greet them. “Thanks for coming, fellas.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” said Moses.

  “This is Jimmy’s uncle,” Henry said. “Dwayne, this is Ken and Moses, from the train.”

  “He was a good kid,” said Ken and shook Dwayne’s hand. “I’d have been happy to have him in my crew.”

  “Thank you for coming,” said Dwayne. “And thank you for… Jimmy always loved trains. Here,” he said. “He’d want you to have this.” He handed Ken a faded, stained John Deere cap. “There was this one time when he—hey, come back here, Roy!”

  Roy and Nathan had climbed onto the monument steps and were taking turns jumping off. Doc picked up a giggling Nathan. Henry could tell from his expression that his back was bad again.

  “Is everyone here
yet?” Leonard asked, unfolding his speech.

  Jeb strolled up, a fat cigar between his teeth. “The important people are. Hey, Boss.” He had yet another new girl on his arm. He had found work in a Miami cigar factory and was on track to become a supervisor. Although Lemuel had survived the storm, according to Jeb, he was lost in the confusion and chaos that followed. Henry and Jeb never saw him again.

  It was time.

  Dwayne stepped forward to leave a scarf on the steps, patterned with honeysuckle. Zeke placed a single bright blue feather, gave a stiff salute, and disappeared into the crowd. Doc placed Jenson’s barometer, its glass panel fractured, its gauge forever frozen at the impossibly low reading of twenty-six inches.

  Henry waited his turn. No trace of Selma had been found. And yet there were times, usually at sunset and sunrise, when he felt her presence so strongly, right by his side, that he had more than once turned to talk to her. Missy did not find this strange one bit, said she had long conversations with Selma all the time. She had told him, “When so many souls get taken all at once like that, bound to happen that one or two fall out the bucket. And Selma, she ain’t gonna move on till she good and ready.” The old kitchen table from Selma’s house had washed up on the beach, legs broken but top intact. Selma’s initials were still visible on the underside, right next to his. He and Missy ate dinner on that table every night.

  He knelt at the monument steps and placed his hand against the stone. It was warm, almost skin temperature. He said quietly, “See you later, Sunny.”

  The slow trickle of survivors kept coming. Each person left something of meaning to the dead. Soon the piles of mementos spilled down the steps and onto the ground. And still they came.

  Henry looked at Jeb and Franklin and remembered his boys on their homecoming parade up Fifth Avenue. They had been so proud, so bursting with hope and promise. Sonny. Lemuel. Sammy. Tyrone. Li’l Joe. All gone. Gone too were Sick Bay, Two-Step and Carl, Stan and Tec. And Trent Watts, who was never found. Hundreds more. Far from home, in a place they never wanted to be.

  He took a crumpled, faded photo of a little boy in a cowboy hat from his pocket and studied it for a long moment. Then he placed it alongside the other tokens on the monument. Rest in peace, Max Hoffman.

  Missy rolled her chair forward. She leaned over to set Mama’s hat on the monument steps, grayish blue with red flowers. Then she sat there for a long moment, head bent, eyes closed. It was strange: ever since she and Nathan were taken by the wind, she’d had the feeling of moving through the air whenever she closed her eyes. Terrifying though it was, while the wind carried them farther and farther out to sea, there was a kind of freedom to it, unlike anything she had ever known.

  And when the wind had finally dropped them on that barren sliver of sand and she lay there in a broken heap beside Nathan, who was even too worn out to cry, the fear had drained from her. She used the very last bit of her strength to drag them clear of the water. There was no more. She had done everything possible and found some comfort in that. The pain receded. It was like a blessing to feel the sun again and hear only the quiet lap of the waves. She had laid her cheek on the warm sand and closed her eyes and was at peace…so much so that the rumble of the Coast Guard spotter plane engines, faint at first, then loud overhead, had sounded like the hurricane coming back to finish its business with her. Nathan had screamed in terror at the noise. It was only when a seaplane landed later that she had understood.

  Since that day, every time she needed to feel that sense of peace again—and there had been many after she first opened her eyes to find Henry by her hospital bed—she took herself back to the tiny atoll in her mind.

  Nathan clambered onto her lap. He was growing into a sturdy, bowlegged little boy. The bond between them, already strong, had been forged into iron by that terrible night. Now, when the bad dreams came, he called her name, not his mother’s. Hilda was saddened, but she understood that no one except Missy shared those memories with him.

  Missy still saw him every day, and each visit always ended the same way. The only story he wanted to hear, over and over, was how he and Missy had flown way up into the sky like birds, very far away. When she got to the end, he would say the final line with her, which never varied: “And then Missy and Nathan went home again together, safe and sound.”

  He bounced now on her useless legs. “Wanna play cars!” He liked to ride along with her in the chair and pretend he was driving. He still had trouble understanding that she could not get up and chase after him. She caught him staring at the chair sometimes in an angry confusion, like it was personally responsible for spoiling his fun.

  Henry went to remove him, but Missy said, “Let him stay.” She rested her head against his neck until he grew bored and ran off to find Roy.

  Henry leaned down and said, “He be too big for your lap soon.”

  “I know,” she said and stroked his hand where it lay on her shoulder. According to Doc, the damage to her insides, and the surgery that followed, meant she would never have a child. When it happened, she was too overwhelmed with trying to adjust to everything that had changed in her life. It was just one in a long list of losses. But after she and Henry married, the hard, cold truth of it had landed like a boulder on her heart. Even with all she had to be grateful for and Henry by her side, it had pained her worse than anything, even the loss of her legs.

  It was only when Henry outlined the idea for the school that the fog of hurt had started to clear. It would be filled with children, he had said, children who needed what she could give them. At first, the doors of her mind had stayed firmly closed, bolted shut by her misery, but over time, he had painted a picture with his words, of these children learning from books, in a real classroom, even one day going to college. As he had spread the plans on her desk by the window, his face all excited, his voice was like a rope dangling down into the pit where she had fallen. She only had to grasp it in order to climb out. And so she did, hand over hand, one agonizing inch at a time.

  It felt like so long ago—and like it had only been five minutes. Something strange had happened to her sense of time that night. Before the storm, she could always tell the present from the past. It was like there was a solid wall that kept them separate from each other. No longer. That solid wall had become more like a fisherman’s net, allowing the past and present to mingle together constantly. One minute, she could be sitting at her desk, working on a lesson, and the next be back there again, up to her armpits in dirty water, dragging Violet and Abe toward the station. Or she could be having dinner with Henry, and then Mama would appear beside her, shelling peas and complaining about the price of flour at Mitchell’s store. There were occasions when she felt so adrift on the current of time that she had to clutch the wheelchair to keep from losing her bearings completely. The only constant, the only thing that anchored her, was Henry.

  She looked up at him now, squinting into the glare, and knew he read her thoughts. We somewhere now.

  The sun was hot on her shoulders. Henry shifted position so his body threw a cool shadow across her. A hush fell over the crowd.

  “Ready?” Leonard asked, reading glasses on his nose, ready to remove the drape. The band leader was poised, baton raised, forehead beneath his cap beaded with sweat.

  Missy surveyed the assembled locals and visitors, standing patiently in the humid sunshine. The scores of the lost shimmered among them. She heard their whispers in the breeze. They crowded closer, waiting to be remembered.

  Doc and Dwayne nodded at Henry.

  “Yes,” said Henry with a glance at the vast, indifferent blue sky. “Time to begin.”

  Reading Group Guide

  1. Henry has always had a plan for his life, which the whims of history ultimately force him to abandon and just live in the moment. He finds this very difficult, Missy less so, because her expectations are so low. Which way of living leads to greater happiness? And whi
ch do you use in your life?

  2. Both Missy and Henry feel that they have failed in their lives. Does this do more to draw them together or push them apart?

  3. A key theme of the novel is the question “What makes us human?” At several points in the book, characters mention the difference between humans and animals, e.g., the townspeople view the veterans as subhuman, Henry comments on the difference between the human beings and “giant cockroaches” like Two-Step. Then we see how the storm makes some people abandon their humanity, while others rise to the occasion. What do you think makes us human? And is it just a “thin veneer” as Henry thinks? Or does it go deeper?

  4. The storm pushes everyone to the limits of their endurance, where they find out who they truly are. What extreme life event have you experienced, and what did you learn about yourself as a result?

  5. Another important idea is that of perception versus reality. Dwayne allows his prejudices to blind him to the evidence of Hilda’s attack. Several times, Henry comments that “people see what they want to see” rather than what is really there. Do you agree with this? How much of Henry’s view has been affected by his experiences?

  6. How much or little has the treatment of traumatized military veterans changed since 1935? Do you think it’s possible that such a group could be so treated by today’s officials?

  7. Hilda worshipped, and was worshipped by, her father. How has this affected her relationships with other men? Do you know any women whose lives have been similarly influenced?

  8. The opening chapters show each character getting ready for the Fourth of July barbecue. Compare this scene to the epilogue, where we see each one preparing for another important event. How has each been changed by the storm? What have they gained and lost?