The Hard Blue Sky

by Shirley Ann Grau

  Pete went over and patted her shoulder, letting his hand rest there for just a minute. “Don’t knock youself out.”

  “The pants is torn.”

  He glanced down at his knee. “They been torn.”

  “Why you ain’t said something to me?”

  “They all right.”

  “Ain’t no son of mine going to walk around with his skin showing.”

  “Make it cooler,” he said.

  She glanced up at his face, saw that he was teasing. “Go on,” she said, “go back to what you was doing.”

  “Your water ain’t boiling.”

  “Ain’t no water boil in a minute.”

  He squinted up into the sky. “Jesus,” he said, “look at that hawk there.”

  “Where Henry go to?”

  “How’d I know.” The hawk had disappeared, but he kept squinting, trying to see it.

  “He didn’t say?”

  Pete laughed. “He don’t ever.”

  “Why he ain’t told me he was going?”

  Pete grinned. “You was down at the church.”

  “He like to be alone sometime, him.”

  “He want to be alone a long time, this time,” Pete said. “I seen the load of stuff he took.”

  “Maybe he get us some deer.”

  “Yea,” Pete said.

  “Be nice to have some deer, no?”

  “Yea,” Pete said.

  “Shake up the fire some, che’.”

  He did, and then headed back into the house.

  She called after him: “Maybe this time I cook it with wine, no?”

  THAT WAS THE NIGHT it rained—a short, hard storm, with little square stabs of lightning and a stiff, chill wind.

  Old Boudreau shook his head and said that it felt like a little hurricane and that meant a bad September for sure.

  Eddie Livaudais, when the thunder woke him up, thought of his son (safe up in the marsh he would be, sheltered from the waves, but wet anyhow). And he chuckled to himself—teach the kid to stay home, maybe.

  Down in the brakes and the hackberry thickets around the houses, the dogs began to howl. And Rita Monjure who was staying with Mamere lit all the lamps in the house, and looked at the clock every ten minutes to see how much longer it was to daylight.

  When morning did come, the wind was still blowing hard, but it was bright and clear—just some little straggly bits of cloud that disappeared in an hour. And the wet ground and the leaves steamed under the sun.

  Around noon, in the hottest part of the day, Mamere began to stir around, and to mumble. And Rita Monjure, who was going home just then, dead tired from no sleep, walked the extra distance over to the grocery to tell the people there that the old woman was pulling through. Then she plodded on home, chased the kids off her front porch with a mop and a series of yells that scared even them, drank four cups of cold coffee and went to bed herself.

  Mamere Terrebonne opened her little eyes that were tucked way back in her wrinkled brown face (for all the world like the face on a gingerbread doll), and she called for some anisette. When the women who were watching up with her—Cecile Boudreau and Justine Landry—said no because the doctor had told them so the last time, the old woman fell to swearing softly.

  Cecile clapped her hand over her mouth and went over to look out the window. She found it funny—this old woman who had been almost dead, and who was lying in the middle of her bed now, covered with quilts in August, and cursing in the old fashioned roundabout way.

  Justine Landry was shocked. “You been so close to God,” she told her grandmother, and went to get some of the medicine the doctor said to give if she got excited.

  The hands were curled on the edge of the bedsheet. One on each side, Justine thought, like the claws of a bird that was lying on its back, dead.

  “God, He is close to me,” Mamere said, though she was panting just a little. “He never leave me, Him.”

  Justine got one hand behind the old head. “Take this, Mamere.”

  The old woman made a face and then drank. “Tastes of the henhouse. …”

  “And only day before yesterday,” Justine said angrily, “the priest was here for you.”

  Over at the window, Cecile turned around sharply. They had agreed not to tell the old woman that.

  “Ha!” Mamere said explosively.

  Justine looked over at Cecile and shrugged. “I forgot. …”

  “Ha!” Mamere said, “if he had wait, just a little, I could have a drink with him.”

  Cecile grinned. “You don’t get none now.”

  “You been sick,” Justine said, “you got to keep still.”

  “Which one it was?”

  “The one named Ryan.”

  “Sal au pri … and he come to bury me.”

  “No,” Justine said.

  “And him he come to put me in the ground.”

  “You got to keep still.”

  “Sal au pri … he come all that way. Maybe got wet too. And he got all that trip for nothing.

  “Mamere,” Cecile said, “how you know it was raining?”

  “I got ears. I can hear. … Son of a bitch …”

  “She couldn’t hear nothing,” Justine whispered. “She was like to dead.”

  “How’d she tell?”

  Justine shrugged.

  “I bet she smelled it,” Cecile said, “smelled it in the air this morning.”

  “Son of a bitch. …” Mamere said. “But somebody gave him a drink, no?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised, me,” Cecile grinned. “Over by the Lombas place.”

  “You didn’t go with him?”

  “We was busy with you,” Justine said.

  Mamere clucked her tongue. “I need none of you … when you could have been having a drink with that handsome priest. …”

  “You were sick, old lady,” Cecile said. “No matter what you tell us.”

  Mamere stared at her and grinned, suddenly, a toothless happy grin.

  “You sneaked by,” Cecile said, “now don’t go making so much noise or maybe he come back for you.”

  “Raide comme une babiche,” Mamere muttered.

  “Maybe so. Maybe not. You got to stay where you’re at.”

  “And that Ryan, he could not even stay to pass the time of day with me.”

  “Maybe,” Cecile said.

  “Comme une babiche.”

  “Ain’t no whisky or nothing in the house,” Justine said.

  And the old woman fell back to cursing under her breath, softly, until her eyes closed and she was asleep.

  Cecile said: “Henry went hunting.” It was late afternoon and on the porch rail the moonflowers were beginning to open.

  “Henry who?”

  “Ain’t but one Henry around here.”

  “I forgot that,” Justine said.

  They had moved away from the old woman out to the next room, which was the parlor.

  “Something smells funny in here.”

  Justine pointed to the picture of St. Joseph. The candle burning under it had fallen over into a little bunch of shrimp-tail flowers.

  “Shrimp shells burning,” Justine said.

  “Anyhow,” Cecile said, “ain’t no son of mine ever going to do that. And leave me wondering where he’s at.”

  “How you going to stop them?”

  “I’m going find a way.”

  “That what my mama say when my little brother he starts coming up,” Justine laughed. “She didn’t have no chance.”

  “I’m going find a way.”

  “First it was like: Mama, can I have a BB gun? Mama, all the other kids, they got BB guns. … And from the minute they get that, there ain’t no keeping them in the house. They got to be out getting something.”

  “If you ain’t careful you going to be waking the old lady.”

  When Mamere woke up her mood had changed. She was not cursing nor grinning anymore. When Justine and Cecile peeped in, she was staring at them with solemn eyes.
“I want the priest,” she said.

  “You feeling worse?”

  “I want the priest.”

  She closed her eyes and would not say a word more. Justine raced out of the house to the Lombas place.

  The house was empty except for Perique on the back porch. “Go get you papa,” she said breathlessly.

  In half an hour or so, the porch of Mamere’s house was crowded with people, while their kids played in the yard.

  Nobody went in until Ferdinand Lombas arrived. And he was slow coming. Perique had hunted for almost an hour before he located him, clearing the eels out of his traps on the north shore. He came just as he was, sweaty and smelly, and with the white slime from the eels on his pants and shirt. He only stopped in the front yard long enough to take a drink of water and wipe the sweat off his face. Then he went inside to talk to his grandmother.

  “Mamere,” he said softly, and her little brown eyes popped open.

  They were bright little eyes staring at him, bright as a crab’s eye is. And mentally he crossed himself—some people said she could do gris gris.

  I never believe that, he told himself. But he crossed himself again, to be sure.

  “Mamere,” he said, “you want something?”

  “I want the priest, me.”

  Ferdinand stopped and scratched his head. “You feel weaker?”

  “I want the priest.”

  Ferdinand rubbed his hands together. The smell of the eels began to fill the room. “But the priest has just been here.”

  “He did not come in the room.”

  “He look in the door,” Ferdinand said, “and you was sleeping and better, so we took him home.”

  “Go get him.”

  “We should get the doctor too, no?”

  She clucked her tongue and it rattled like the shell of a crab. He had heard of crabs sometimes that lived to be nearly a hundred. Like her.

  “The doctor, no?”

  “I have no need for the doctor.”

  “But why the priest?”

  The eyes blinked. “You go get him.”

  Ferdinand rubbed his hands together harder. The water he had gulped down in the front yard was beginning to pour out of his body. “But we just took him home not hardly more than a day ago.”

  There was a crowd of faces in the doorway now, reaching almost from the top to the floor. Those who had got there first squatted down to make room for others behind them. “What she saying?” somebody whispered.

  Ferdinand thought for a minute.

  “For what do you need a priest,” he asked finally.

  The little black eyes moved on him. “He leave without a blessing.”

  “But you are better?”

  “Enfant garce,” she said. “How can I get better without a blessing from a priest. How can I never leave my bed without I have it?”

  It was very quiet, except for the hoarse breathings over in the door and the muffled giggles of the kids outside.

  “You don’t feel yourself sinking?”

  Mamere lifted her head on its skinny neck. “Everybody pushing me,” she said, picking her words carefully and slowly. “Pushing me, pushing me down in the ground, down-down, until I got nothing to do but make grass.”

  Ferdinand waved his hands again.

  Mamere’s head stuck up even more sharply on her neck and her voice got stronger. “I ain’t going down there.”

  “Nobody say …”

  “Now you ain’t getting me a priest.”

  “Nobody …”

  But Mamere had put her head back and closed her eyes.

  Ferdinand backed away until he got to the door, then he turned and pushed through the people.

  Ferdinand went over to the Arcenaux grocery and had two beers.

  “They on the house, man,” Julius Arcenaux told him. “You got enough to worry about.”

  “I got troubles all right,” Ferdinand said and belched because he had gulped down the beers so fast.

  “And what you going to do about them?”

  Ferdinand shook his head. “I got to think about it.” He reached in the cooler and got a third beer.

  “Now that ain’t on the house,” Julius said. “I roll you for it.”

  They were making a couple of tosses, lazily, just warming up their arms, when Ferdinand’s wife, Carrie, found them.

  “You old Mamere dying and you playing … son of a bitch!”

  Ferdinand held the dice behind his back. “We was thinking. She say we got to get her a priest.”

  “So you are getting her a priest, sitting here?”

  “Look,” Julius said, “your cousin, he’s the pastor.”

  She frowned at him.

  “You got to ask him.”

  She scowled.

  “Now that is a first-class idea,” Ferdinand said and rubbed his hands on his stomach. “A first-class idea.”

  “Mother Mary,” Carrie said. “I got to go all the way over to Petit Prairie?”

  “No,” Julius waved his hands around his head. “You forget.”

  “What?” Carrie asked suspiciously.

  “The telephone,” Julius said.

  There was one phone on the island, and that was hardly used. Nobody quite knew why the telephone company bothered to run a line out to the island, except maybe to say that they had. Julius Arcenaux had built a little lean-to at the back of his grocer and had a pay phone put there. People used it occasionally. Julius would telephone his orders to Port Ronquille because he hated writing letters. When Hector Boudreau’s sister over at Biloxi had twins she called her mother. And when Stanley Waguespack was in the army and away at Fort Dix, he’d call his mother the first Sunday in every month, and talk for a little while, though he hadn’t much to say ever, because he hadn’t got on with his parents, and it was strange that he called at all. And from New Orleans the afternoon of every Christmas Day, Sister Mary Margaret called her family. Since she was related to so many people, and didn’t particularly care which one of her family she talked to, nearly anybody could answer that call.

  Most of the year people forgot that the telephone was there.

  “I don’t know, me,” Carrie said. She was thinking of the quarters slipping down into the little black box.

  “Call you cousin and tell him to send that young Ryan out here. How we going to work,” Ferdinand said, “if I got to spend all my days here, watching to see if she going to die, or if she ain’t. How we going to eat?”

  “Okay. Okay,” Carrie said. “Gimme the money.”

  “Me?”

  “Gimme.”

  Ferdinand emptied the pockets of the pants. “Two bits.”

  Carrie said: “That all you got?”

  “You got eyes, you can see. …”

  It was a good ten minutes before Carrie came back into the grocery.

  Ferdinand said: “You ain’t been talking all this time?”

  She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and then scratched the top of her head. “You god-damn fool telephoning!”

  “What’s the matter, huh?” Julius asked.

  “Don’t you go soft talking at me!” She slammed the screen door behind her—so hard that the handle which said Bond Bread in big blue letters shook loose and fell to the floor.

  And Ferdinand had to follow her all the way back to the house before she would talk to him. Right at the front gate she turned and said to him: “God-damn telephoning.”

  And Ferdinand looked around quickly at the other people who were listening, and said: “Huh?”

  “He asks, is she getting well? And I say yes, Father. What in god’s name I’m gonna say. … And he say he is pleased to hear that … and all the while I can hear the operator listening. I can hear her breathing, me. … And he say again how glad he is and she is a fine old lady. And I say can he get the young man to come out again. And he say for what I need a priest when she is getting better.”

  Ferdinand leaned on the gate post with a sigh. The circle of listeners was d
rawing up closer.

  “So I say, Father she say she need a priest … and he say why … and what I’m going say then? Am I gonna tell him how the man goes running off without a blessing so he can drink whisky with you?”

  “We ain’t had more than a drink or so,” Ferdinand said.

  “So I tell him. There wasn’t nothing I could do but tell him. And then he says that he can’t send Father Ryan back on account of he’s got to coach the basketball team at the school that’s got a special game coming up and how he got to do the Forty Hours’ Devotion too. And how there’s just old Father Manent who’s up in the years and he gets seasick anyhow. And there’s himself, and he’s got the rheumatism. … And he says there ain’t nobody he can send. And we say good-by. And it cost eighty cents.”

  “Jesus,” Ferdinand said.

  “Go talk to her,” Carrie said. “Maybe she feel different now.”

  So Ferdinand hitched up his pants and slapped a stray mosquito on his ankle and went inside.

  When he opened the bedroom door the old woman did not move or open her eyes. For just a minute he was scared. So he tiptoed closer, the boards sighing and creaking under his weight. And then he saw that while her eyes didn’t move they were only partly closed. From the crack the brown irises watched him.

  “Cecile, she say you been wanting me.”

  “I been wanting you for a long time.”

  He sat down on a little cane-backed chair. “Mamere …” he said.

  “I been waiting.”

  “We call up the priest.”

  She did not answer. The lids did not lift. He wasn’t sure she hadn’t fallen asleep on him.

  “On the telephone, we call him up.”

  One finger moved very slowly, beckoning.

  He leaned over, both hands on his knees.”

  “Fi d’ poutain.”

  He sat back and rubbed his hands up and down his thighs, “I been trying to tell you.”

  Outside a mockingbird was singing at the top of his voice. God-damn bird, he thought, he can strangle and choke on his own tongue.

  “We talk to him on the telephone.”

  Outside a kid yelled and somebody hushed him.

  “What they think I’m doing,” Mamere said, “that a kid, he can’t yell and empty his lungs. What they think I’m doing, dying?”