The Hard Blue Sky

by Shirley Ann Grau

  When he got to the house, his wife was out on the back porch, cleaning shrimp. He could see the shells flipping over into the yard, where the chickens and the cats fought for them.

  He knew it was his wife; not many people on the island could work that fast.

  He felt his feet get heavy and just scuff the ground. He put the shotgun and the cartridge belt on the front porch. He stood for a while chewing on his lower lip and scratching his jaw: the two-day stubble was beginning to itch.

  “Maybe Pete, he seen me come in and he already told her,” he muttered to himself.

  Then he went around the house.

  Pete was there all right, sitting in a corner of the porch, back to the railing, smoking a cigarette.

  “I told you,” Eddie Livaudais said, “you too young for that.”

  “He ain’t all that young,” his wife said.

  He was standing staring down at this woman he’d lived with for thirty years. This tall, thin woman with olive skin and straight black hair that was beginning to turn gray on top. Just on top, like a gray cap.

  “Let me handle the boys, my way.” He was angry at her. Angry at the way her face was so calm.

  “You done handle the boys your way, all this time, and I ain’t said nothing.” She didn’t stop with the shrimps, twisting off the heads, popping the meat out of the shells and flipping the rest over the railing to the yard.

  Eddie took off his cap and hung it on the back of her chair.

  “Only now,” she said slowly, “you ain’t got but one son.”

  He could feel that hurt, somewhere in his chest.

  “Pete done told you.”

  “He don’t got to tell me,” she said, still slowly. “I got so I can feel it in my blood, me.”

  Eddie walked over and with a quick move of his hand yanked the cigarette out of the boy’s mouth and flipped it over the railing with the shrimp heads.

  The kid half rose, then stayed where he was, his knees bent. His father reached out, taking his shoulder, pushed him back down on his heels.

  The head of a shrimp flashed by Eddie’s nose, not two inches away. He jerked his head around, but his wife was working quietly. Only, she was flipping the shells to the other side.

  “You taking to pushing kids around?” she asked without moving her eyes from her work.

  “If he old enough to smoke, he old enough to get pushed around.”

  “Hey …” Pete said.

  His father looked down at him, drawing back his hand. “If there is just one more single line out of you, I going to twist your head around, just the way the old woman there does with them shrimp. And that is for sure.”

  “Look at him,” she said, “Eddie Livaudais, done lost one son, and getting ready to beat up the other.”

  “Maybe he ain’t the only thing around here I got to lick back in place, me.”

  “Listen at him, Pete,” she said, “him that comes back empty-handed. Listen at him.”

  “Quit that,” Eddie said.

  “He don’t come home with Henry. He don’t even come home with a dead body, him.”

  Eddie sat down on the top step and began to take off his shoes. “This here is the first time I had my shoes off in near three days now.”

  “We are right sorry for you.”

  The boy Pete stared at him from under his eyebrows. He looked so much like his brother there for a minute that Eddie had to shake his head.

  “Why you come to quitting?” his wife asked softly.

  “I ain’t quit.”

  “You come back, didn’t you?”

  He shook his head.

  “That’s quitting, ain’t it?”

  He put an elbow on each knee and rested his weight on them. “You get tired, going for two days and nights.”

  She sniffed.

  “With hardly no sleep.”

  “Henry, he ain’t sleeping neither.”

  He looked down at the ground. There was a doodle bug working his way across the bare sun-cracked stretch. He stared at it hard, at the funny ridged shell and the little horns: he hadn’t really looked at one since he was a kid.

  “Me, if I’d stayed a couple of hours longer, I never would found my way out. I’d been too tired to figure.”

  She didn’t answer, just whistled through her teeth.

  He put his shoes one alongside the other on the edge of the porch. Then he began to pull off his socks slowly. His back was hurting him, in waves, like. It was the paddling.

  “I ain’t so young,” he said, “not any more.”

  The words seemed to run off and echo on the hot afternoon air.

  “I’m getting on to be old,” he said, and he shivered. That meant somebody was walking over his grave spot. “Getting old.”

  One of the chickens spotted the doodle bug and gulped it.

  “Haaaaa,” Eddie hissed. The chicken fluttered away. He put a hand to his back and straightened up. “I should have took you,” he told Pete.

  “I ask you,” Pete said.

  “He did, for sure,” Belle said.

  “Shut up.”

  The boy looked at him without blinking.

  Eddie looked from one to the other. “What you got against me?” he said. “I ain’t told him to go out.”

  The brown stubby fingers cleaned the gray, almost transparent shrimp. “You ought to stopped him.”

  Eddie rubbed his back. Funny how he hadn’t noticed it until now. Not until now. “He wasn’t no little kid that you could lock up in a room till he forgot.”

  The cats were fighting for the shrimp heads. There was one down there he hadn’t seen before, a small torn, black and white.

  “Where that one come from?” He pointed.

  Neither answered for a while, then the boy said: “Where they all come from, I reckon.”

  “I ain’t never seen him before.”

  “We heard you,” Belle said.

  Eddie rested his head in his hands, and bent his body forward a little to try and relieve the ache in his back.

  “Pete,” he said, “go see if we ain’t got some liniment.” He began to rub the small of his back with both hands. He stopped, hearing no sound of movement behind him.

  “Enfant garce!” he said softly. He plopped his hands on his knees but did not turn around. “Go get that there stuff.”

  He cocked his head, listening until he heard the soft pad of the boy’s feet as he got up and crossed the boards, and then the creak of the spring on the screen door.

  “Why I got to fight for everything?” he said aloud.

  His wife did not answer. He heard her shuffle the cleaned shrimp in their big iron pot. He rested his head in his hands. The afternoon sun made a long black streak of shadow from the house. There wasn’t a bit of breeze; long strings of spider webs hung straight down from the edge of the porch railing.

  Pete came back with the bottle of liniment. He put it next to his father on the floor, then went back to the corner of the porch and sat down.

  Eddie picked up the bottle and held it out at arms’ length, reading the label carefully.

  “That’s it, ain’t it?” the boy asked.

  Eddie put the bottle down, stretched his back slightly, arching his neck, then bent forward again, elbows on knees. He closed his eyes, but all he could see was the swamp: the edges where the roots and grasses came and disappeared into the water. He’d looked at miles of it, carefully, keeping his eyes moving slowly along, the same speed as the boat, looking almost from blade to blade, jumping each time a fish broke water or a frog splashed, jumping when a turtle craned its head or a bird squeaked, and hunting all the time for something that would be a trace. …

  He rubbed the back of his neck. He was getting old, for sure. Or he wouldn’t be so tired.

  Behind his closed lids, the grasses kept slipping past, one reed after the other. He shook his head and opened his eyes: he’d have to keep awake then.

  “Get me a drink,” he said.

  In the pause
one of the cats yeowled. Then his wife said: “You want a beer or whisky?”

  He tapped his open palms on his knees. “I ain’t said that. I ask for water, me. Plain water out the cistern.”

  He heard the boy get to his feet.

  “Why you send him all the time?” he asked. “Why you ain’t gone to get me something?”

  She spat noisily into the side yard. “With my hands smelling from shrimp? You wouldn’t do nothing but scream louder.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay. So Pete go.”

  The spring on the screen door creaked.

  “Don’t brace it that way,” Belle said. “The house fill up with flies.”

  When the boy had come back, a couple of minutes later, she said: “I hope you fixing to catch all the bugs you let in.”

  “Oh sure,” he said, “sure. … Here, Pa.”

  He reached the glass over his shoulder. Eddie took it, started to drink, then stopped, looking at it.

  “What is the matter now?”

  “It ain’t got no ice.”

  “It ain’t supposed to have none,” she said. “You too hot for it to be good for you.”

  “Since when you know what good for me?”

  She tossed a whole shrimp down into the yard and bent over the rail to watch the cats fight for it.

  “That little black and white, he a scrapper for sure.”

  “Where he come from?” Eddie said, “I ain’t never seen him before.”

  She threw another whole shrimp, high this time. The cat leaped after it, arching his small body, and missed. She laughed shortly, a snort, more.

  “You throwing away good shrimp there,” Eddie said.

  “I know it, me.”

  “You losing your head to be throwing out shrimp.”

  “It ain’t all I’m losing.”

  Eddie opened his mouth to answer, but heard someone walking around the house. So he just rested his chin on his hands and stared straight ahead.

  Story LeBlanc came and put one foot on the bottom step. He held a duck in each hand, cleaned and pink.

  “I come on these this morning,” he said.

  Eddie closed one eye and looked at them. “They look fine, for sure.”

  “Man,” Story said, “there ain’t nobody on this here island like duck much as you.”

  “Well,” Eddie said, “I don’t know that’s a fact, me.”

  “Sure … ain’t nobody.”

  “They out of season,” Pete said, from his crouching position in the corner of the porch.

  Story grinned: the front teeth were missing. His tongue rubbed back and forth, very quickly, fluttering in the opening. “And who going to tell the government?”

  “I didn’t say nothing like that,” Pete said. “I just said they was out of season.”

  “These here was two of the prettiest pintails I never did see.” Story put them on the railing. They hung over the wood bar, dripping a little blood. The cats circled around, their eyes big and flat.

  “They going to get them,” Pete said and giggled, like a girl; his voice was still changing.

  “Not while I’m sitting here,” Eddie said.

  “Man,” Story said, “I never did see a man like duck much as you.”

  Eddie threw out his hands, “Maybe … it is good, for sure.”

  “So I give it to you. The both of them. Because you enjoy it most.”

  Belle flipped the last of the shells into the yard and got to her feet, carrying the half-full kettle. She snorted loudly. “Lose his son, and he get him a pair of duck.”

  She slammed the screen after her. They could hear her in the kitchen, banging the pots around.

  Eddie did not move. He sat staring straight ahead. Story started to say something, then changed his mind, and stood with his mouth open, the tip of his tongue just sticking through the hole in his teeth. Pete got to his feet, swung over the railing and, almost without a sound, dropped to the ground. One of the cats jumped up to the porch and crouched, tail over nose, eying the ducks.

  Eddie said: “They look real fat.”

  “They was the first pintails I seen this year.”

  “They real pretty, for sure.”

  Inside they could hear her begin to sing: “Mary Mother, pray for me. …”

  “You know,” Eddie said, and he rested his chin on his hands, “you know I done everything.”

  Story nodded. “Sure,” he said.

  “Kept going out there, until I couldn’t stand it no more.”

  “Sure,” Story said.

  “Any farther, I’d got lost too, and not come out.”

  “I know that, me.”

  “And she know that. She know it like any of us.”

  “See you,” Story said and walked around the corner of the house.

  “She know that,” Eddie said to the cats. They sat and looked at him, the tips of their tails twitching.

  “She got to know that.”

  A mockingbird came down and sat on the edge of the roof, squaaking. Eddie lifted one eye and squinted sidewise at him. “What’s the matter with you?” The bird hopped up and down, sliding along the gutter.

  Eddie got to his feet, very slowly, and stood for a minute looking out across the back yard, hitching up his pants, tightening the belt. He’d knocked the bottle of liniment over, but he didn’t stop or notice or look down. He turned and opened the screen door, then stepped back again and grabbed the ducks off the railing. “You ain’t going to get them yet,” he told the cats. He went inside, letting the door slam after him.

  His wife was right there, on the other side of the small kitchen. He blinked for a few seconds until his eyes got used to being inside. She was chopping up some onions, holding the big heavy blade of the knife in both hands.

  He walked over and put the ducks in the sink. She did not say anything.

  “Couldn’t do nothing more,” he said.

  She did not lift her head.

  “You know it.”

  “Can’t even find his boy’s dead body.”

  “You know why.”

  “Comes walking in here, bringing some dead birds with him.”

  “I hunt until I couldn’t stand up no more.”

  “Don’t come crying to me.”

  He flopped the ducks in the sink.

  “It ain’t my job, to go find him.”

  “I done tried.”

  “I drop down dead, before I come back with no sign, me.”

  “Leave the shrimp alone,” he said, and wiped his bloody hands on the seat of his pants, “and let’s us have the duck tonight.”

  “You want a party too?”

  He stared at her, his head bent very slightly, and wobbling just a little bit on his neck.

  “I’m glad I’m bushed out,” he said. “I’m right glad.”

  She kept chopping the onions, short even movements.

  “Or I twist you head right off.”

  She put the knife down and with the flat of her hand swept the onions from the board into the pan. “Talking,” she said, “seems like that all you can do.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Now you go round thinking about food, like nothing happen.”

  “I know something happened, me, only I don’t see no reason to starve to death.”

  She hissed at him, between her teeth.

  “We going to eat them duck tonight.”

  He walked out of the house, and she shouted at him from the window. The words were so blurred he did not understand.

  He went down to the Rendezvous, dragged a chair over by the front window, under the fan where it was cooler, and had two beers.

  “You look green, man,” his cousin Lacy said after a few minutes. “Come here in the back.”

  Eddie got up, swaying a little on his feet.

  “Man, you don’t look good for sure,” Lacy said and scratched his scarred, naked head. “Stretch out there on the bed.”

  Eddie’s back was hurting him so, from all the steady p
addling he’d done, that he could hardly talk. And he wasn’t sure which hurt more: lying down straight or sitting up and hunching over.

  Lacy called his wife, Andrée.

  “Mary Mother!” she said, “go get a bottle of whisky.”

  There was a pint bottle on the dresser, next to the picture of the Infant Jesus of Prague. Lacy held it to Eddie’s lips. He swallowed, choked, and began to hiccup.

  “Pull off his shirt,” Andrée said, “and grab some of this stuff.” She poured some liniment in the palm of her hand.

  While they were working, Perique Lombas came in and began to pound on the top of the bar with his fists, whistling.

  Lacy Livaudais lifted up his head without stopping what his hands were doing and he yelled: “Get your own stuff and leave the money on the counter. I got all I can do back here.”

  His wife got some towels and wrung them out in boiling-hot water and put them still steaming on Eddie’s back and chest.

  When Lacy finally went back in the bar, his face was bright red and dripping with sweat. Perique was still there, with two empty bottles on the counter.

  “Jesus Christ,” Lacy said and tried to wipe his face on his shirtsleeve.

  “Now who you got back there?”

  “Eddie.”

  Perique whistled softly. “I seen him when he come back.”

  “Lacy, hey.” His wife stuck her head through the screen door. “Come here quick and talk to your cousin.”

  Eddie was sitting on the edge of the bed, swaying back and forth a little. They had taken his shoes off when they put him on the bed, and he was trying to find those shoes now: he swung his feet in big uncertain circles, the toes pointed down, hunting. “I got to get my shoes,” he said, but the words didn’t come out clearly.

  Perique had followed Lacy. He stood just inside the screen door that led from the bar to the Livaudais’s bedroom and kitchen.

  Eddie saw them, and blinked his eyes rapidly. “Perique, boy,” he said, and lifted up one hand to point at him, “I got to go out again and hunt … you going to come help me, no?”

  “Sure,” Perique said, “I come with you.”

  Eddie’s head was so heavy he had trouble keeping it straight. It kept falling to one shoulder or the other. “I ain’t going to ask Lacy here, account he too old. Don’t want no old men.”