“What the matter, bébé?” she asked. “Why you pull back from m??”
The piano started again.
“Hey, look,” his papa said.
One of the dancers, a short thin man with a tumbled mass of black hair, a little black mustache, and a receding chin had put a drink on his head and was waltzing his partner in tight fast circles. The girl was giggling so that she could hardly keep step with him. “Watch it, che’,” he told her, “or you make me waste this here good whisky.”
The girl only doubled up more with laughter. But she did not once lose the beat. And the level in the glass hardly moved. They ended with a tight whirl; the music stopped. He carefully finished the glass at a single gulp. The girl sat down right where she was on the floor.
Claudie pulled away from his mother and backed up until he felt the wall behind him. Then he let himself slide along it until he was sitting down on the floor too.
They had forgot about him. So he sat there, his knees drawn up under his chin, and watched.
Once his mother came over and stooped down beside him and said: “You got to go to bed.”
He shook his head and flattened himself even more against the wall. “No,” he said and pulled away.
“Al,” she said, “I can’t do nothing with the boy.”
“Let him be.”
She stood up. “He ought to be in bed.”
“Us too,” he said. And everybody howled. Even the piano stopped for a minute when the player took time out to laugh.
Claudie pushed himself along the wall until he had wedged himself against a big red plush upholstered chair. There was a man sitting in it with a girl in his lap. Her legs hung over the arm. She had nearly kicked off her shoes: they dangled from her toes. Claudie stared at the dirt-streaked inside of the shoe.
Somebody put a half-empty beer bottle down right along side him, and patted the top of his head. He did not look up. Carefully, his left hand reached out and got the bottle and put it to his lips. He rolled the warm bitterish liquid around on his tongue before he swallowed it. After that he drained all the bottles he could reach.
When he got so sleepy that he knew he could not hold his head up any longer, he crawled behind the chair, between it and the wall.
The lights were all out. For a minute he couldn’t tell whether his eyes were open or shut, so he fluttered them to make sure. He still could not see a thing. He felt the chair on one side and the wall on the other pressing him, catching him. He scrambled out as quick as he could, scuffing his knuckles against the rough plaster of the wall. He saw light then, the soft blue light of a night sky beyond the opened window.
He stopped and stood very still, catching his breath, both hands holding his stomach, to try and stop its twitching.
There was a soft rustle on the floor over in the corner: too light for a rat. A couple of big roaches must be running there.
He stood on a chair and put his head out the window. The porch was black shadow, deep and thick. Only one of the ladder backs of the chairs stuck out against the moonlight. You couldn’t see very far, not much beyond the white shell path which was so bright that you could tell when a rabbit flashed across it.
Claudie took a deep breath of the sour-sweet swampy air. The rabbit set his body tingling, even down to his fingers. If he had a gun, he could go get the rabbit or maybe two or three and then he would have them for dinner tomorrow. If he had a gun … he would have to get one soon, one of his own. His fingers tingled even more when he thought of touching the barrel, so smooth and cold. This man now, maybe he would let him have one tomorrow.
A mockingbird stirred sleepily in one of the bushes and a sudden light breeze blew the curtains out around his head.
He got down and, walking carefully, made his way to the hall. Once he tripped over a glass or a bottle: he couldn’t tell which, and he didn’t stop to see.
The first door he tried was locked. He pushed and jiggled the latch hard as he could. Then he stopped and listened: heavy slow breathing.
The next door was ajar. He went in. The moon was coming in through both windows and he stared around. It was the same room he’d wakened in. There, hanging by its string from the footpost of the bed was his model boat. He turned it carefully over and over, to be sure that it was all right. He ran his fingers along the hull. Somebody had whittled it for him, a long time ago; he’d forgot just who. He unwrapped the string from the post and carried the boat over to the window sill. He put it in the exact center, very carefully, and climbed into bed.
He lay watching the shadow his boat made on the floor. The bright moon through the window only made the far corners of the room darker. He tried to keep watching the boat but his eyes began to swing over to the dark corners, the corners he had never seen by daylight. His stomach started to twitch.
He got up and went back to the window: the moonlight was warm and the night smelled good—there must be a night jasmine somewhere close.
And by the open window he could hear clearly: somebody crying, very softly, as if they had been doing it for a long time and were tired out. He stood on his tiptoes and listened. There was some sort of a box at the corner of the window: he climbed up on it and stuck his head out. The sound came from the window right next to his.
He jumped down and scooted out the room. That next door was closed. He took a deep breath and jumped at the latch. It lifted and the door swung open.
Annie said: “What do you want?”
He did not answer. Her bed was right under the window, right in the light. The moon made a kind of a halo around her hair.
He could see the outline of her head and when she bent forward to whisper to him, he could see the outlines of her face.
“Let me alone.”
The room smelled good; she must be using some sort of perfume, spicy and soft and faint.
He climbed into bed alongside her. She rolled away, and then turned, pushing him out, hard, so that he landed with a thud on the floor.
He stayed there for a minute, sniffing: there was the same odor his mother had, but fainter.
He went up to the bed and started to climb back. She kicked at him. He stepped away and waited, rubbing the tip of his nose. When she had stopped sobbing, he tiptoed over, and very carefully, so that he should not shake the springs, he climbed in.
She pulled away, taking the sheet and the pillow with her. He did not mind. He grinned into the dark, put his head on his bent arm, and went to sleep, balancing himself on the very edge.
BY SEVEN O’CLOCK THE following morning, Annie was on the back porch, eating a watermelon. She was blowing the seeds out over the railing into the yard—there was a trail of shiny wet seeds to her chair. And there were a couple of big wet stains on the front of her yellow shorts.
She’d found the melon in the kitchen when she’d gone looking for breakfast, and she’d just about finished it in the two hours she’d been alone, sitting in the little spot of sun that came through the thick mulberry trees.
Though she rarely did, this morning she’d put on make-up—she’d spent nearly an hour at it. And it was a good job. Only in the bright hard light, if you looked close, you could see the dark circles and the puffy eyelids.
It was the beginning of another hot summer day, but she stayed in the sun, even moving her chair about as the rays shifted and changed. She’d felt chilly that morning, and she’d been shivering until she’d come outside.
Every once in a while she squinted up at the bright white light streaking between the leaves—and blew a watermelon seed up at it.
By nine o’clock only one person had passed down the path that went by the house: Cecile Boudreau, wearing a big floppy straw hat and carrying a fishing pole. She waved and called softly: “Want to come with me?”
Annie shook her head.
And Cecile had laughed, softly too, so she wouldn’t wake any sleepers. “I ain’t going to catch nothing, but I got to try.”
While Cecile was there, a couple of kids passed. An
nie didn’t see who they were. She just noticed the shiny black tops of their heads go past the bushes.
There’d been lots more people, Annie thought, if it hadn’t been for the party. It had been a good party, she admitted, with everybody drunk, and all the island there.
Annie hadn’t been there herself. She’d spent most of the night wandering around—down to the west end of the island, all the way down to the sandbars, where you could see the lights on Terre Haute; over to the wharf, where the Mickey Mouse was tied, her decks still piled with tarpaulin-covered boxes and furniture. And around and around all night, until she couldn’t stand up anymore. And then she had sneaked into her room, though the party was still going on in the front of the house.
She threw the rind of the melon down into the yard and the chickens came to peck at it.
It was so quiet, nothing moving or stirring, except the birds and a couple of dogs. It’d be a day lost. …
Annie cut another slice of the melon. Small black ants were beginning to come. She stepped on them.
The smooth cool stuff slid down her throat. Her eyes burned a little, but she didn’t feel bad, she noticed with surprise.
“I don’t feel anything, me,” she told the morning.
The sun shifted slowly, leaving her in shade again. She heard the scraping of a chair and the splashing of water inside the house.
She lifted one leg straight out and stared at the toenails.
“It is nothing to me,” she told herself.
A gull wailed overhead. Annie picked the seeds from the last piece of melon and threw them at the hens.
Adele came out on the porch behind her. “You been up early?” she asked.
“I like to,” Annie said. I got to find a place and take a nap, she told herself.
“You can see the paths now,” the woman said and pointed. “Last night it look like there was nothing but woods back there.”
“Sure there paths,” Annie said, “and houses too.”
“You can’t see them from here.”
“They’re there all right, whether you see or not.”
“Lots?”
“A good many,” Annie said.
Al began to whistle inside.
“He’s shaving,” Annie said.
“While he’s whistling?”
“He always does that,” Annie said and she could see him, standing in front of the little mirror, his face white with lather, moving the straight razor carefully, trimming his mustache just so.
“You like the mustache?” Annie said.
“Yes.”
“It’s getting gray.”
“Everybody’s hair gets gray.”
“Not niggers.”
“Yes, they do,” Adele said.
“You seen them in Port Ronquille, huh?”
Adele nodded, her eyes searching around in the trees and bushes.
“Way back there we got a couple pigs.”
“I can smell,” Adele said.
“You ought to smell it sometimes,” Annie said.
“Ummm,” Adele said.
“Hey there,” Al called, “there is no breakfast.”
“There’s coffee dripping on the stove,” Adele said. “And I be there in a minute.”
“Je peux pu ’ttendre.” He was chuckling.
“I be there,” Adele said, more softly.
“Everybody got up late today,” Annie said, “I been watching and hardly nobody passed.”
“Account of the party?”
“They were all here,” Annie said.
“Not everybody.”
Annie stared across the parched bleached ground of the backyard. “That’s all there is on this island.”
“Everybody?”
“Except Mamere Terrebonne who don’t go out at night. And maybe some more old women.”
“Oh,” Adele said.
Annie gouged out a few more seeds and tossed them at the hens.
“How many hens you got here?”
“I never counted,” Annie said.
“I brought three or four—big reds.”
Annie rubbed the tip of her nose.
“They were in a crate on the boat.”
“Then I reckon they still there.”
“Somebody ought to feed them, or bring the cage up here.”
“Ask him,” Annie said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder to the house.
“They were talking about a sailboat last night.” Adele leaned on the railing and stared into the trees.
“You won’t find no sign of it there.”
Adele let her eyes run around the fenced in yard, at the chickens pecking away at the shell of the watermelon, at the bicycle wheel that had been leaning so long on the side of the house that the spokes had almost rusted away.
“There is one here?”
“Yea,” Annie said, “down at the dock. You didn’t notice it, coming in?”
“All the time it stays there?”
“Just came in two weeks ago.”
“Oh,” Adele said, “I thought somebody here had a sailboat.”
“Wouldn’t nobody on the island have a thing like that.”
“Oh,” Adele said.
Inside Al was saying: “Hi, boy, boy, boy.”
“I’ll fix breakfast,” Adele said.
“Not for me.”
“You haven’t had any.”
“Yea.”
Adele looked at the last piece of melon. “Just that, no?”
“I don’t want anything.”
“You got to eat something.”
Annie stared at a mamselle that perched on the railing. “If he was just a little lower down the chickens get him for sure.”
“I fix you something.”
“Look,” Annie said. She caught the mosquito hawk and threw it down to the chickens. “Let me alone.”
“I find Claudie asleep in your bed this morning.”
“Nothing bothers me,” Annie said, “because I don’t care.”
Adele went inside, slowly and without another word.
Annie listened to the clatter of pots and two voices talking, and the high-pitched patter of the boy. Then she got to her feet and stretched herself all over, like a cat. She took a running start and jumped the low yard fence. She followed the path for a little while, but the crushed shells were too hot to her bare feet. So she cut back into the trees, walking slowly, and looking for a cool place to have a nap.
After just a couple of minutes she heard somebody else, heard them whistling away behind her. The man from the sailboat was coming along the path too: she caught a glimpse of him first. So she stopped at a tangle of muscadine vines, waiting for him to catch up.
“Hi,” he said.
She turned and grinned.
“I know you,” he said.
“I reckon so.” She went on searching for the round grapes—the birds and the worms hadn’t left many.
“You were down with Cecile—what’s her name? The first day.”
“It’s a mighty fine boat you got.”
“Isn’t mine,” Inky said.
“Same thing.”
“Hell, no.”
She had a palm full of grapes and she began to eat them slowly.
“What’s that?”
“You never saw muscats before?”
“Oh sure,” he said, “my sister’s got a back yard full of them.”
“You never ate them?”
“Never thought about it.”
“Taste one.”
He reached for her hand. She jerked it away. “Pick your own, mister.”
“She called ’em scuppernongs.” He reached up, took one and squashed it on his tongue.
“How’s it?”
He made a face. “Sour as hell.”
She laughed and, cupping her hand, rolled the grapes into her mouth. “No such thing.”
“My sister used to cook them up.”
“Where she live?”
“New Orleans.”
/> Annie nodded and began picking among the higher clusters. She could feel him looking at her and she wondered if the make-up had smeared in the heat.
“Toucher Street.”
“Oh sure. …”
“Know where it is?”
“Yes,” she said. Pretending to brush away a gnat, she ran her fingers along the side of her face. The make-up felt smooth.
“You used to live there?”
She nodded.
“Where?”
“I was staying in a convent.”
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “You don’t look like the type.”
“What type?”
“That goes in a convent.”
“What do I look like?”
“I don’t know … a good type.”
She giggled and popped away some nubby green grapes between her thumb and finger. “I was just staying at the convent. … I wasn’t studying to be a nun.”
“Well,” he said, “that makes me feel better.”
“It was fun,” she said.
He rubbed his chin. “I heard about all the fun that goes on in convents.”
She shrugged, not understanding and not wanting to admit it.
“You have a boyfriend used to sneak in at night?”
“My roommate did.”
“Tell me.”
“Nothing to tell.” She tucked her blouse inside her shorts. “I couldn’t even get to watch them.”
“Bet nothing went on.”
“I don’t know,” she said, “I never did see.”
“You didn’t have a boyfriend?”
She looked at the ground. “That’s nothing to talk about.” She hoped her voice sounded right.
“Tell me about that.”
There was an old brown leaf on the ground, all shriveled and curled like a cocoon. When I’m old I’m going to look like that, she thought, and she shivered.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“You shivered like you had malaria.”
“I was thinking.”
“About the guy?”
“Yes,” she lied.
She leaned back against a mulberry tree, not bothering with the big black ants that were crawling up the trunk. “He was nice,” she said.
And her mind began to form a picture: he would be only middle-size, he’d have black hair and blue eyes and he’d look sort of Irish, only he’d be German. “His name was Warren,” she said. And was a little surprised that lying came so easy.
The Hard Blue Sky Page 19
