The Hard Blue Sky

by Shirley Ann Grau

  “Listen to the radio.”

  “Besides listen to the radio.”

  “Think.”

  “About Inky, I bet.”

  “No.”

  Cecile bent and pulled up one of the long thin grasses and stuck it between her teeth, sucking. “Always did like the taste of these things, here.”

  “Yea,” Annie said.

  “Always taste sort of good—green and tart. You wouldn’t think eating grass would be so fine.”

  “I wouldn’t think nothing,” Annie said.

  “Oh lord, lord,” Cecile said with a grin, “if you ain’t in the lousiest humor this day here.”

  Annie did not answer. She concentrated on a little piece of dirt under her fingernail. She fished in her pocket and took out a pocket knife.

  “You know,” Cecile said, “when I was a kid, we used to come here too.”

  Annie did not answer or move.

  “And you know, Mamere Terrebonne … that old woman, she told me once that when she was little they used to come here, too. Ain’t that something?”

  Annie looked up. “Here? You come here?”

  “Oh sure,” Cecile said, and waved out her hands. “Only I forgot about it, it been so long ago … or anyhow it seem that way.”

  “And what you do?”

  “Oh nothing very much … we didn’t have a radio, like you. We just sort of come and hid out.”

  “Right here?”

  “Sure,” Cecile, said. “You had to pull aside the oleanders and then slip through quick, before they snapped back together. They grow in a circle around here, almost like somebody planted them … but they were thicker when I was coming here. There was a freeze once, I remember, that burned them out.”

  “I like it,” Annie said, “because its the one and only place where you can’t hear anything.”

  “The trees do that,” Cecile said.

  “Today’s been real quiet anyhow.”

  “I reckon,” Cecile said, “they don’t feel like yelling and horsing around with the news about Henry.”

  Annie began to rub the cream off her face. “You think he’d have better sense than to go getting so far in he couldn’t find his way out.”

  “I don’t reckon he intended to go get lost.” Cecile sucked the piece of grass in and out of her mouth, thinking.

  “He was the ugliest guy,” Annie said, “long, with big old saucers under his cheeks and pimples all over his chin that’d all bleed when he tried to shave.”

  “Look,” Cecile said, and she threw down the little weed she’d been chewing, “nobody asked you.”

  Annie did not answer or move.

  Cecile turned to push aside the bushes. “You said what you think. … But just quit screaming.” She stepped through the branches and let them pop back together.

  Her mother had the baby out on the front porch, in the little cradle they had all used when they were that size too, and she was rocking it slowly with her foot—one nudge to the cradle for every two rocks of her own rocking-chair. Cecile swung astride the porch rail and sat there, grinning.

  “You just ought to have some more kids, Ma, you like them all that much.”

  Her mother laughed, the soundless wheezing, and her three chins bobbed up and down, one against the other. “Been a long time since I could have a kid, me.”

  “I don’t know,” Cecile said.

  “Don’t go laughing at me. I am an old woman, for sure.”

  “Take one of my kids.”

  “Sure … if you are willing to let them go, I will take him, this one right here.”

  Her mother was so fat, the least little movement in the heat made the sweat pour down her face. Just standing up and bending down to the baby’s crib and clucking her lips in the sleeping face—and she had to wipe her face off with the handkerchief she carried in her bosom.

  Cecile said: “You heard about Eddie coming back, no?”

  “Sure,” her mother said, and slipped the handkerchief inside the top of her dress and wiped around.

  “You got a coke, Mama?”

  “There is coffee on the stove.”

  Cecile grinned.

  “Now what is so funny?”

  “Mama … you’d have coffee on the stove if the whole place was blowing over with a hurricane.”

  Her small mouth grinned in its heavy fat cheeks. “Maybe that be the time you want some most, no?”

  Cecile threw up her hands. “I give up,” she said. “You want me to get you some coffee, when I get mine?”

  “If you are going back there …”

  “Okay,” Cecile said, “I bring you some.”

  Cecile walked back through the house that had not changed since she was a child. Even the bunch of yellow straw flowers in front of the picture of the Sacred Heart was the same. She poured the two cups of coffee, put three teaspoons of sugar in each of them. She stopped a minute to admire the new washing-machine. Maybe, she thought, her father chased the girls, but he was good to his wife too. There weren’t many people on the island could afford a machine like that.

  She brought the cups to the porch. “That is sure a pretty machine, Mama. You still like the way it works?”

  Her mother’s eyes slanted a little, the way they did each time she thought about her husband. “At my age it is a great pleasure.”

  Cecile patted her mother’s shoulder. “Stop talking like you an old decrepit woman.”

  “I am old,” her mother said. “You the baby and you got children. Five sets of grandchildren I got—they growing up and pushing me into the cemetery.”

  “Mama, you don’t feel good, or you ain’t started off talking this way.”

  The woman sighed, a hissing wheezing sigh. “You get heavy sometimes and tired of living.”

  Cecile threw back her head and laughed, loud, so that the birds in the chinaberry tree started up, leaving a flurry of feathers drifting to the ground. “If you ain’t the darndest one. … Now I plain know you don’t mean that.”

  The woman looked hurt. She began to fan herself more rapidly.

  “You think they ever going to find Henry?”

  “No.”

  “Well …” Cecile was silent, staring down at the coffee cup and the brown stain around the rim.

  Her mother tapped the fan gently on the tip of her nose. “I seen it before.” She finished the last bit of coffee and rested the cup on her thick high breasts.

  “Maybe,” Cecile said.

  “I seen it before, more than I remember, me.”

  It was funny, Cecile thought, talking to her mother she could hardly wait to get away. But when she got home, she could think back and remember her with affection, tenderness even.

  Her mother repeated: “More times I seen this.”

  Cecile nodded. “I reckon you are right.” She picked up the baby, who gave a single sleepy cry. “I left supper sitting on the stove, me.”

  “You don’t want no more coffee?”

  Cecile shook her head. “I ain’t got the time now.” She picked up the cradle in her free hand.

  “Just leave that be,” her mother said. “I will take it in when I go.”

  “I can set it inside.”

  “I am not that old,” her mother said.

  “Okay,” Cecile said. “I bring you some of the crabs tomorrow.”

  Her mother patted her forehead with the fan. “I got no need for crabs.”

  “They look like good fat ones.”

  “Your papa, he always bring plenty food to the house.”

  “I didn’t mean anything like that,” Cecile said, “and you know it.”

  “If you got any left,” her mother said, still tapping the forehead with the corded edge of the fan, “you make gumbo, hear?”

  “Sure,” Cecile said, “I can always use them.”

  “So don’t be giving them away.”

  “I’ll be darned,” Cecile pointed to one of the little banana trees, “you got some bananas.”

  Her mot
her wrinkled her nose. “I done tried one of them yesterday.”

  “What’s wrong with them?”

  “They don’t taste like nothing. They ripe but they don’t have no taste.”

  The baby burped on Cecile’s shoulder. She flicked it off with the tips of her fingers and grinned at the little pinched face. “I ain’t got a single shirt that don’t smell sour from you.”

  She looked up at her mother and was astonished to see what a perfect pyramid her figure was: the enormous legs, the heavy hips that hung over the rocker like folds of cloth, the enormous breasts like a solid shelf (she had rested the coffee cup there, while her hands were folded on her stomach) and the small head with its tight, high knot of hair.

  “Seems like he know when I got a clean shirt on,” Cecile said. “He go and spit all over it. Keeps me washing.”

  Her mother said: “Bring the stuff over here and use the machine. It don’t get used enough as it is.” The cup perched on her bosom vibrated with each word.

  Cecile hefted the baby to her other hip. “Maybe I will,” she said, “but I ain’t got too much to do now.”

  She did not go home. Her legs felt cramped and tingling. She began to walk, using a long, slow loping stride that made the little shells of the path rattle off behind her feet. She kept going until she got to the little shell ridge at the north edge of the island. She scrambled up through the long tough grasses and then sat down, cross-legged, at the top. A couple of mosquitoes sang around her legs but did not bite. She waved her hands limply at them.

  The baby burped again, this time down his chin and on his own shirt. “Miss me this time,” she told him. “This time you got you own self dirty.”

  She settled him on her lap and looked around. Behind her was the island. From this angle you couldn’t see any of the houses: just trees and bushes, green-brown in color, all burned by the salt spray, and all twisted and stunted by the wind. Ahead of her the ground fell off into a short little marsh, not more than a couple of hundred feet of grasses; beyond them was the bay. She squinted as she looked out across it. There was a boat over there, coming in. It was too far away to see clearly.

  A big red ant crawled over her toe and she flicked it away. She leaned back on her hands so that the grass prickled her palms. And she tipped back her head until she was staring straight up into the sky, the hard blue sky, whitened a little by the sun. She stared at it, thinking how hard and solid it looked, like a blue cup put over the ground. By tilting her head way back she could see the thunderheads that sat on the rim of the Gulf, black heaps with little lightning flickers. They seemed to stay there—never coming closer—day and night.

  She sat up straight again, rubbing her eyes: the bright light had hurt them.

  When she was little, very little, she had seen a face peep out now and then from behind clouds: the same face, which she knew was God’s. Sometimes she’d lain flat on her back staring up into a clear sky, staring at one patch, staring and staring, trying to make her eyes reach through the solid blue and see what was behind it.

  And sometimes when she had reached through a great distance she would catch just a glimpse of that face, before it vanished a thousand miles ahead.

  She stared off across the bay at the fringe of salt marsh, and just barely in sight beyond that, the swamp. And she thought of Henry Livaudais, and how he had nothing to look at but alligator grass and salt cane and oyster grass and cattails waving in the wind. And how there were mosquitoes that came in clouds and moccasins that swam through the water without a sound. And the sour-sweet odor was so strong it made you dizzy.

  And she thought how Henry had seen all these things and how he was seeing them now—in the hot bright sun. If he was seeing anything. …

  She scrambled to her feet. Her sudden movement woke the baby, who began to cry, short peevish wails. Cecile did not notice. She stood, trembling slightly, turning her head from side to side, looking first across the bay and then over the island. And then she lifted her head and stared straight up in the sky: it was clear and empty and flat.

  Hearing the baby for the first time, she stopped and picked him up. His cries trailed off to hiccups.

  “I ain’t going to let you go out alone,” she said, “no matter how much you want to. Not as long as I can stop you.”

  A big brown pelican flew clumsily across the sky and landed with a splash on the bay. A couple of mockingbirds squaaked and fought in the twisted limbs of the chinaberry.

  “He ain’t coming back,” Cecile said slowly. “He’s dead right now. And nobody can find him—except the gars.”

  The baby hiccupped. She lifted him to her shoulder and patted him gently. She went on whispering to herself.

  “It don’t matter why. It end with the gars working on him.”

  Her lip began to tremble. She rubbed the back of her hand against it hard as she could.

  “It don’t matter that we get caught and die, us.”

  The baby gurgled and burped and began to cry again. The lugger was closer now: she could make it out: the Belle Helene. She watched the little white bow wave.

  “It don’t even matter that we been alive.”

  The baby was wailing steadily now. She swung on her heel in a circle, squinting as far as she could in all directions. Her jaw was trembling and she was beginning to cry. The tears were running down the side of her nose and putting their salt taste in her mouth.

  “Damn,” she said, “damn, damn, damn.”

  With the tears she couldn’t see clearly. Her whole body was shaking. The baby began to scream. She bent down and searched until she found the largest rock around: a half-brick. She rubbed her eyes against her shoulder. “Damn, damn.” She threw the brick hard as she could, at the sky, then turned and ran home, not waiting to see it fall.

  THE OTHER ISLAND

  AFTER THAT WEEK-END everybody went back to work.

  When he was unloading at Petit Prairie, Hector met three men from New Orleans. They chartered his boat right then and there. He charged them nearly twice what he could have made fishing. That was what the rest of the island called Boudreau luck. But they weren’t starving either, just then. It was almost as if Henry’s death had brought good luck to the island—but people didn’t let themselves think of that.

  And there were things happening; there always were.

  Robby Livaudais fell out of a tree behind the LeBlanc house and twisted his ankle and broke three fingers of his left hand. And Stanley Bechet was cleaning out his big cistern (it was the time: everybody was doing that; at the end of the summer half the cisterns were stone-dry) when he thought he’d have a look at his second cistern, to see just how much water there was left and how clean it was. He took the cover off, to let the sun in a little. And he fell in. He wasn’t quite sure what happened himself. Only he nearly drowned before anybody found him, for the water was so low he couldn’t reach the top to pull himself out, but it was deep enough to be over his head. And this small cistern had no ladder nailed to the inside. So he yelled and treaded and stared at the small wigglers that scooted like lightning through the water. It was an hour before anybody found him, and he was getting pretty tired by then.

  They got the cisterns scrubbed out just in time too. A couple of afternoons later the thunderheads moved over and dumped a couple of inches of water into them. And during the lightning one of the tall palms got split right clean to the bottom so that there was a smell of burning all over the island. By the next morning the sun came up bright and hot again and the wet ground and leaves steamed away until they were bone-dry.

  The day after this storm Inky was running up his main—to let it dry—when his fingers slipped off the winch handle. He’d forgot to put on the brake too—he was just careless that day, all around. The winch spun free, the sail dropped—the halyard ran in evenly and did not jam—the handle, whirling around, slipped off its pin. It missed Inky’s jaw by a fraction of an inch and whirled in a long arc down the dock, smacking finally into Perique’s leg and
knocking him down flat on the Hula Girl’s deck.

  That was a day’s excitement. They thought at first his leg was broken. But after a couple of hours of hot towels the pain was mostly gone. By the next morning there was a tremendous bruise. But even that went away when they put a couple of leeches to it.

  But that one night, Inky drank coffee and stayed awake, his revolver close at hand. Annie laughed at him. “Nobody going to think it’s deliberate,” she said. And they didn’t. But Inky was not sure. And he didn’t want to take any chances.

  The next morning Inky went down and called Arthur in New Orleans, while the grocery listened. And explained what had happened to him.

  Two days later there was a check for fifty dollars. Inky brought it over to the Lombas house himself. “Hell,” Perique said, “for this I go do it every day.”

  His mother looked at the amount and then shook her head. “For a bruise.”

  “He’s loaded,” Inky said. “Anyhow you could sued him.”

  That was the end of that. Except that Perique stayed home for four solid days, sitting on his front porch with his leg propped up. And Therese Landry stayed with him.

  And that, Ferd Lombas said, was real tough living.

  Another thing the island took calmly—the way Annie slipped down to the Pixie every night. They hardly noticed any more. And they didn’t even talk.

  Annie ate supper at home, early and by herself. Sometimes Inky came and stood at the front gate waiting (he never came in, though Adele had once or twice asked him: Annie had made him promise not to). Sometimes they met down at the Rendezvous. And sometimes she went down directly to the boat.

  Annie was almost never in the house any more, except to sleep. And whenever she went out she carried a large pad of white paper and a couple of pencils stuck over her ear. Al asked about that once.

  “I’m learning to draw,” she said. “Inky, he’s teaching me.” And when he insisted, she showed her sketches—some were of the island, the twisted oaks and the palm trees; and some were things she had carried in her head from the novels she’d read at the convent: castles perched high up on hills above a river that was broad and smooth as a ribbon, and little houses almost buried under their climbing roses.