The Hard Blue Sky

by Shirley Ann Grau

  “And there is something I can help?”

  “In a way,” Eddie said slowly.

  “If you don’t tell me I’ll never find out.”

  “I’m trying to,” Eddie said, “only my mind don’t work so fast when I got to walk too.”

  The priest stopped dead in his tracks. In the close ranks behind, the men scuffed toes, bumped into each other and stopped. “Now tell me.”

  Eddie took a deep breath. “I got two boys. One of them standing back there, right back there.”

  The priest turned around. “And where is he?”

  The other men stepped aside to the edges of the path, and Pete Livaudais was hustled up through the passage. The boy kept looking at the ground, but he stuck out his hand.

  “A fine boy,” the priest said, noticing the carefully ironed shirt and the black hair plastered to the skull with water and oil.

  The hand he shook so heartily was cold and damp—on a steaming day.

  “Another Livaudais,” Eddie was saying, “name Henry.”

  “Sure, sure, sure, sure,” the priest said. “Though I haven’t caught sight of him in some little time now.”

  Eddie shook his head, silently.

  “He ain’t been seen,” Mike Livaudais answered for him, “for eight days now.”

  The priest put his black satchel down on the shell path. “What?”

  Mike took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “He gone hunting. He take his shotguns and his pirogue.”

  “So that’s it.” The priest’s voice was hollow, all of a sudden, and flat.

  Mike nodded. “And he don’t come back.”

  “God have mercy on him,” the priest said automatically. He turned and stared, through the riggings of the luggers, over the expanse of bay, to the saw-grass prairie, greenish yellow under the hot sun. “And does nobody keep the kids at home?”

  “A boy sort of got to go out and look around,” Eddie said, and the group mumbled agreement.

  “He wasn’t even a man.” The priest got a handkerchief and mopped his face.

  “He got lost, him,” Phil Livaudais said softly—sadly but without anger.

  Damn their resignation, the priest thought.

  “A boy got to look around,” Chep Songy said.

  “And does he have to go killing himself.” The priest slapped at the circling flies with his handkerchief.

  “We got to die,” Mike said, “for sure.”

  Father Ryan rubbed his face again, even harder.

  “Maybe,” Eddie said quietly and almost patiently—as if he were explaining something to a very young child. “But we been living like that all our lives, and we ain’t like to change now.”

  “Maybe he ain’t dead,” Pete said softly.

  Nobody answered. And nobody looked at him. It was all very still—just the jays screaming at each other in the mulberry trees. Then the priest picked up his satchel quickly and walked down the path.

  They followed him without saying a word—only the far-off crying of kids, and the squaak of a cat—until they had got to the wharf itself.

  “Who is it now,” the priest said, “to take me back?”

  “He wasn’t married, for sure,” Chep Songy said, “but he got a family.”

  “And why do they always go?” the priest asked and his voice shook. “Only a month ago, there were three of them in the swamps around Petit Prairie.”

  “Got to die, one year or the other.”

  Stanislaus Ryan shook his head. And turned to the line of moored boats. “Not so many of you are working on a Sunday,” he said.

  “We stay home,” Chep Songy said, “to look. …”

  That was just so much money less, the priest thought with a start, for the living. So much less for the living to eat because of the time it took to find the dead.

  And none of this was thoughts he should be having. …

  “You talking like he’s dead,” Pete said. His voice, normally high-pitched—the voice of a boy—was squeaky and shrill. “Maybe he ain’t.”

  A little more, the priest thought, and the boy would be hysterical.

  Mike reached one hand up, scratching in the hair that grew so low it gave him only an inch of forehead. “We come to ask you something.”

  “I will say a Mass for him in the morning.”

  Eddie waved an impatient hand at the interruption. “We got to die,” he said, “but we don’t got to leave ourselves lay out in the swamps.”

  The men murmured agreement.

  Mike said: “My nephew, he was young and he make a mistake, but he don’t have to stay out in the marsh like a muskrat.”

  “Animals eating his clothes and his skin and his meat.”

  “My bones,” Pete said, and his voice was quavering like a woman’s. “I can feel it like it was me.”

  Somebody mumbled a reply.

  “Stop it,” the priest said and swung with his satchel at the big green flies. “If he has died, God will take care of him.”

  “When old Anton, he drowned,” Eddie said quietly, as if he had not heard, “they went back into Orange Bay, you remember?”

  The priest shook his head.

  “Maybe that was before you come … and they took candles and a priest with them.”

  The priest smashed a fly against his trouser leg, leaving a smear of blood.

  “And they put the candles on squares of wood and lit ’em and set ’em adrift,” Chep Songy said. “And the candles they draw Anton up from the bottom. They draw him right up to them.”

  “And maybe, they don’t do that, they show us which direction we start looking in,” Phil Livaudais said.

  “Such a big prairie to find a man in,” Ray Songy added. And that was the only word he said the whole time.

  A gull circled overhead and gave its long trumpeting call.

  “The candles showed them where he was.” Pete’s body was shaking all over, like a malaria chill.

  “Ferm’ ta babeche!” somebody muttered.

  “And you want me to do that?”

  They nodded.

  “And if there was any use to it,” Father Ryan said, “I’d stay and do it. … But it can’t work. And there’s the CYO meeting tonight that can’t go on without me. … And there’s no use in any of this,” he added.

  Eddie, Phil Livaudais, and his three boys turned and walked away, without a look over their shoulders, without a word.

  Their silence bothered Stanislaus Ryan. “I’m not telling you no,” the priest said. “The poor boy’s got a right to rest in holy ground.”

  Chep Songy left. One arm over Pete’s shoulder, he turned him around gently. The boy was still shivering.

  “If God wills,” the priest said, “you will find him, right here, without any candles or any hunting.”

  Jerry and Ray Songy turned off and disappeared around the icehouse. Only Mike was left.

  “And you’re the one to take me home,” the priest said.

  Mike nodded. They went to his boat. The priest put his bag in the wheelhouse and looked around expectantly. Mike had gone over and lifted the cover of the engine hatch. His chin on one hand, he was looking inside.

  “What’s the matter, man?” Father Ryan said.

  “Nothing,” Mike said, “only I got a bit of trouble here.”

  The priest went back to the wheelhouse and sat down. Mike studied the engine for a few more minutes, then got to his feet.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Maybe it the battery,” he said. “I got to go see about getting it checked.”

  He jumped over to the dock and hurried off. It was then about one o’clock.

  IT WAS AROUND ONE o’clock too when Annie finally got out of bed. She picked her good dress off the floor where she had dropped it and she put her shoes under the bed. The slip in which she had slept was wet through with perspiration. She took it off, yanking it roughly when it stuck over her shoulders. She hung the slip and bra by their straps from the loop of the window shad
e. Maybe they’ll dry out fresh enough, she thought. Probably won’t, she answered herself.

  Annie went and looked out the window. She put both hands on the sill and leaned her weight on them as she stretched out the window. There was nobody in sight. Even the hens had gone into the shade.

  If there was anybody there, she thought, they could see me. Wouldn’t they be shocked to see me, standing in the window naked on a Sunday afternoon.

  There was a wide slant of sun just barely touching the sill. Thrusting out her chest she touched her nipples to the white warmth. It tingled, way up under her armpits. She tried to touch her breast with her mouth. She doubled her neck and craned her tongue and pushed up with her hand. If they were just bigger, she thought, if they just were …

  Nose to shoulder, she sniffed at her skin. A faint odor of sweat, and saliva and a heavy sweet odor, mostly tobacco. She crinkled her nose. That was enough to make you sick. If bodies just didn’t smell so. And if you just didn’t have to keep taking baths. Back at the convent there had been a long room, white tiled, walls and floor, with a row of white tubs, five of them. Every day she had gone in, carrying her towels and piece of soap. She could tell in a second if the tubs were busy or not; she did not even have to look in them. She was too shy to look directly, but she could tell in a second if there was an empty tub. Her eyes would flick down the wall at the row of black nuns’ robes hung on white hooks against the white tile. If there was a vacant space in the row she scurried down and took it. She only felt relaxed when she was stretched out in the tub, staring straight at the ceiling.

  Sometimes when the room was empty she’d spent half an hour in the tub, stretching and sloshing the water over her body. … But here on the island she didn’t like bathing at all; she did no more of it than she had to.

  She sniffed again at her skin. And now she would have to.

  Her father called at the door: “Game’s on.”

  “No thanks,” she said, “I’m busy.”

  “You used to like it.”

  That was true. She’d always listened with him on a Sunday afternoon.

  “I got plenty to do,” she said.

  He put his head in the door.

  “Hey,” she said, and felt her ears go red, “get out of here.”

  “What eating on you?”

  “Get out,” she yelled, “I’m dressing.”

  “Jesus God,” he said quietly, “I been seeing you without no clothes ever since you was a baby.”

  She rushed at the door and slammed it closed. There were no locks in the house, so she leaned against it.

  “Jesus God,” he said again slowly.

  “I ain’t a baby,” she yelled through the door, “you got to remember I ain’t a baby. … You got to quit walking in … I’m getting a lock.”

  He went back to the porch: she heard the rocker begin.

  She stood leaning with one shoulder against the door—she didn’t know how long. She wasn’t thinking of anything. She was just listening: to the little house sounds, to the sounds of the still afternoon, to her own heart pounding. Finally she heard the quick light steps of Adele.

  If she comes in, Annie thought, I’ll throw her out. And she’s not so big I can’t do it either.

  But the steps stopped still out in the hall. “Annie?”

  Annie let her call two or three more times before she answered. “What?”

  “Are you sick?”

  “Jesus!” Annie leaned her head back against the door and shrieked. “Jesus Christ … there’s nothing wrong with me. Nothing at all.”

  “You going to eat dinner with us?” Adele’s careful speech did not change. She did not seem the slightest annoyed or upset.

  “Sure,” Annie said. “I got to eat. … Don’t I live here? … Don’t I get to eat here?”

  “We getting ready to eat dinner.”

  “You inviting me?”

  Adele did not answer. Annie listened while she walked away. “Al, I’m putting dinner out,” she heard her say.

  Annie turned back in the room. And put on a pair of shorts and a shirt. Without washing her face she dabbed on some powder and lipstick, gave her hair a quick brush. Then she closed the door very carefully behind her and went to the porch.

  They were there and seated at the table, the boy Claudie between them. He was the first one to see her; he flashed his wide baby-tooth grin, and they looked around.

  “Hey there,” her father said, “we didn’t think you’d make it until tomorrow.”

  “I thought she would,” Adele said quickly. “I told you she’d make it.”

  “I owe you a nickel,” Al said.

  “Don’t put any money on me,” Annie said and swung her leg over the back of her chair. “Jesus … chicken!”

  “Thought you liked that,” Al said.

  “Now I just thought of something,” Annie said. “All our names begin with A … excepting frog-eyes here.”

  “That is right, for sure,” Al said. “And we all got the same last name.”

  “Haven’t we got any coffee?” Annie asked.

  “Right in front of you,” Adele said.

  Her father laughed and bending over whispered loudly in Claudie’s ear: “She’s got herself a hangover.”

  “Maybe.” Annie sipped the top of the coffee, loudly.

  “You have a bit too much?”

  “It wasn’t too much,” Annie said.

  He chuckled again. He was in fine humor.

  Claudie laughed too, imitating him.

  Annie finished the cup and reached across the table for the blue enameled pot. She knocked over the jar of peppers.

  “It’s all right,” Adele said. “The top was on.”

  “Wouldn’t care if it wasn’t.” Annie poured the coffee in a thick splashing stream.

  “Man, man,” her father said, “she sure got herself a bad head this morning.”

  “I can’t do anything,” Annie asked, “without people talking about it?”

  “Bébé, you got to know that much. …”

  From the radio inside there was a burst of static. Al jumped up and went to fix it. Annie chewed on a piece of chicken. “It’s tough.”

  “You got a bad piece,” Adele said, quick and eager, “take another one.”

  “All tough,” Annie said.

  “What we had was fine.”

  “Tough old rooster.”

  “You talking about me?” Al had come back.

  “Annie says the wing is tough.” There was just a little edge of nervousness in Adele’s voice. Annie felt a funny little quiver of satisfaction, and she almost grinned to herself.

  “That right?” her father said. “Wasn’t nothing wrong with mine.”

  “Like leather,” Annie said.

  “Pelicans leading by four runs in the seventh,” he said.

  Adele gave him a quick little uncertain smile and glanced back at Annie.

  “Two out and two on,” he said. “Don’t pay any attention to her, che’. She don’t feel too good this morning.”

  “I feel fine,” Annie said. “Why do people keep telling me how I feel?”

  “You was asking me the other day,” Al said. “Thought we’d go take a look at Bayou Cantaque.”

  “Hell,” Annie said, “I been up there a hundred times.”

  “Wasn’t talking to you,” Al said. “You want to, che’?”

  “I never been up there,” Adele said.

  Al waved his hands, like a priest. “So we go.”

  Annie said: “Thought you’d be sick to death of boats, being on ’em all week long.”

  For a minute Adele looked like Claudie when he was going to cry.

  “God damn it,” Al said, “Don’t nobody ask me? I want to go, me.”

  Annie drank the spilled coffee from her saucer, feeling again the twinge of satisfaction.

  “I don’t think I’m coming,” she said.

  “Okay,” Al said.

  “You sure you don’t want to?” Adel
e asked.

  “Told you I been a hundred times.”

  “She wants to stay and see her boyfriend,” Al said.

  “You don’t know nothing,” Annie said.

  “You think so, bébé?” her father pulled the ends of his mustache, curling them carefully.

  “Yea,” Annie said and licked the last spot of coffee off her saucer.

  “You want me to tell you what I know about what you was doing last night.”

  “Yea,” Annie said and curled up her lip.

  “Okay, bébé,” AIsaid. “George Manint, he been by this morning, asking if you get home all right.”

  “Talk,” Annie said, “all people do around here—talk, talk, talk and talk. Times I think I’ll go to New Orleans to live.”

  “You was asking me,” Al said, “and I’m telling you. … George got a real fine hangover, him. Can hardly open his eyes. And he feel sort of bad … he took a swing at Marie Louise and she’s beginning to get a bruise on her jaw, and she threw a can at him, only it went out the open window instead. Anyhow he’s feeling sick and he don’t see how he can go home, things being the way they are there.”

  “I could get me a job in New Orleans,” Annie said. “Easy as anything. At the telephone office.”

  “And there another thing he feeling bad about. … Seems he nearly cut up you boyfriend account of he thought he was waiting for Marie Louise.”

  Annie was staring up into the blue-white sky, her lips curled back and smiling.

  “So,” Al said. “And when you come home you stumbling around. Nobody got to be smart to put that together. …”

  Annie continued staring up in the sky. “I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care the least bit.”

  Al got to his feet. “If we going, we got to go soon.”

  Adele said: “I’m all fixed.”

  When they were gone, Annie sat lazily following the flight of a green mosquito hawk. He perched finally on her knee and softly she got hold of his wings. She held him up then, close to her eyes, watching the waving legs and the straining arc of the tail.

  “Sh—oo,” she said and blew at him.

  Under her fingers the wings were crisp and fluttery and dry as paper. She stared into his goggle eyes. “Sh—oo.”

  She threw him up into the air. Her aim was bad. He hit one of the porch posts and fell into the yard. A fat jay swooped down and gobbled him in a minute.