Al looked at them, and clucked his tongue in admiration, and called for Adele. When Annie tried to gather up the pages quickly he stopped her. “Look at this, che’,” he said to Adele. “Look what our girl, she is doing.”
Annie had to stand quietly by while they went through the pictures again.
“And there’s another one,” Adele pointed to a sketch held to the walls with straight pins: a girl’s head.
“Didn’t notice that,” Al said.
“That’s me,” Annie said.
“Says who?”
“Inky did that.”
Al squinted at it. “Only it don’t look like you.”
“Sort of,” Adele said quickly. “Look around the mouth there.”
While they were arguing, Annie picked up the pad, walked around them and out the door.
That evening Inky said: “Twenty-five pictures at five bucks is over a hundred.” She nodded. “All while I been sitting on this boat.”
She nodded again.
“Funny the money you can make out of a pencil and a couple pieces of paper.”
“I won’t be able to sell mine,” she giggled.
“No,” he said, “bet you don’t.”
“My old man didn’t like the picture you did of me.”
“You know what he can go and do.”
She just giggled. “Keep your head still.” She was sketching him. She had covered a sheet with small heads, and now she was trying a large one.
“I’d do some more,” he said, “only it’s no fun without a model.”
“No,” she said.
“You can keep right on sketching, while I’m making some money.”
“I told you no.”
He got up and turned on the radio, grinning over his shoulder. “You think your papa will find out.”
“No.”
“Bet that’s it.”
“I don’t care what he thinks.”
“Then you’re ashamed to have me look at you.”
“I don’t care.”
“Okay,” he said, “don’t do it, just because I ask you.” He found the station he wanted and turned it on loud. “Don’t do anything I ask you. I don’t need it.”
Over the noise of the radio he didn’t hear her answer. But he did see her walk over and pull closed the curtains on the land side.
The sketches were good, among his best. And he had even got a face that looked like her. When she had gone he sat smoking and looking at them.
Boy, he told himself, you wouldn’t make a bad artist.
He lined them up on one bunk and sat down on the one across from it. He closed first one eye, then the other, studying. Ought to get more than five bucks for those, he thought. But it wasn’t likely. It wasn’t that kind of a business.
He snapped off the radio and stretched out on the bunk. The figures watched him.
“Too hot down here,” he said aloud and taking a pillow tossed it up to the cockpit. He had started to follow it, had one foot on the ladder, when he turned back to the pictures.
For the first time he noticed, really noticed, what a good body it was. Legs you’d see on a calendar. And a pointed behind. But the face now, it was a child’s yet. Well, not a child’s, but a young girl’s.
Alone, Inky laughed. Imagine Annie, now, little Annie, looking as seductive as Eve herself.
He went up to the cockpit, under the mosquito net, put down his pillow and stretched out. But for the first time, for the very first time, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Once he even got up to lean down the hatch and shine a flashlight on the pictures to see if he’d remembered correctly. Annie, undressed, undressing, raced through behind his closed eyes until he finally fell asleep.
In the morning he gathered up the pictures. Maybe, he thought, he wouldn’t sell these. Maybe just these, he would keep for himself. He could do others.
All day long he was quite irritated, though he couldn’t figure out why.
And then one Friday night, when he and Annie were down at the Rendezvous (it was still early and there weren’t many people yet), Perique and Therese came in. They just waved and went to stand at the bar.
Inky found himself staring at their backs, at the tall thin figure of Perique in its faded jeans, at Therese in jeans too, tight jeans that creased over her large rear. A good figure all right, heavy hips, heavy breasts and a small waist in between—she didn’t look as bad in pants as you’d thought. The sort of figure a guy’d gone nuts about fifty years ago, but it didn’t do so well right now, Inky thought.
Then, as he watched, he saw Perique’s arm slip around that waist, and his hand come to rest lightly on the broad hip.
Alongside him Inky felt Annie stiffen. And he sat back in his own chair, surprised: she was jealous. He was almost sure of that.
“You want him back?” he said in a whisper.
Annie jumped—like she’d been slapped, almost—and yanked her eyes back.
“You can go see about getting him back,” Inky said, “when I’m gone.”
Before he knew quite what had happened, he was furiously angry. He sulked all evening, until Annie went home very early, almost ready to cry.
She’ll be back, he said silently to the empty cabin as he gathered up the empty paper cups and the cigarette butts to toss them into the bay. She’ll be back.
And if she isn’t, he thought, and then pushed that answer away. … She’d be back.
WEST OF ISLE AUX Chiens, over a mile of shallow water, speckled here and there with tufts of weeds and filled with whitecaps at the slightest breeze, is Terre Haute. A small island, not quite two miles long, a ridge of shells sticking up like a turtle’s back, and covered thick with little oak trees and hackberries and oleanders. Thirty or forty people live there, in tight little unpainted houses under the trees, people with names like Svboda and Tortorich and Pivach. They are oystermen, all of them; they keep the boats at a little dock behind the island. On a Saturday night, when they are drinking, you can hear them over on the nearest point of Isle aux Chiens. On Caminada Point, which is nearest, you can hear the accordians and the singing, so clearly that you could make out the words, if you knew the language. Kids sometimes memorize the sounds and yell them back across the pass. And once the people from the other island got so mad that they sent out a skiff—with an outboard—and a couple of men with shotguns. But they hadn’t dared come close enough, they’d just gone cruising up and down in the pass, cursing. And finally they’d pointed the shotguns to the island and pulled the triggers. The shot spattered down in the water. The kids, who hadn’t moved—they knew the range of a shotgun—hissed and laughed and yelled: “Sal bougre-là!”
And sometimes there would be fights at Petit Prairie when both groups went in for a big week-end. It was after one of these, not three years past, that the icehouse at Isle aux Chiens burned down. And there were those who said they saw a pirogue moving rapidly out the harbor and across the pass. And sometimes kids from Isle aux Chiens would go out and, just for the hell of it, churn up the oyster beds or steal some oysters. They’d come home drenched with sweat and tired as puppies, but they’d be grinning. And those same kids sometimes would think it fun to dare somebody to sneak over to Terre Haute and peep in the windows of the houses and maybe kill a dog or a chicken. And the kids from Terre Haute, they would come over too, when it was a dark night, or a stormy one. They stayed to the western end of the island, pretty much, not daring to come down to the end where there were houses and shotguns. They’d build big fires on the west beaches with gasoline they’d brought over and then slip away before the men could get there. Once Yvonne Meynier, who knew better, saw the pirogues coming over, and instead of getting the hell out of there, she’d slipped behind a clump of hackberry bushes to watch. Only, they’d brought a dog with them, and the wind was right, it caught her scent in no time at all. They sent her running back without a stitch of clothes on. They took her clothes to Terre Haute and hung them on the outhouses. That was maybe ten years past
, and Yvonne Meynier was an old maid. Though she swore they hadn’t touched her, nobody believed it. And there wasn’t a man on the island wanted to come after a Yugoslav kid.
It went on that way. And during the war, people at Petit Prairie used to grin and say that they hadn’t heard of a fight with the Germans. The only war they knew about was the one going on across the pass. One thing just led to another, that was all.
Hector Boudreau, who was loafing near the chute of the icehouse, pretended not to notice that morning, along toward noon, when Anthony Tortorich, from Terre Haute, edged his outboard up to the wharf at Isle aux Chiens. Tortorich tossed a line around one of the posts, made a quick knot, and stepped to the dock. He stretched and hitched up his pants. He was a short man, with a very heavy body and very thin arms and legs. His pants didn’t close in front; he left the top three buttons open and hung them under the curve of his belly by a pair of checked suspenders. But across his chest and his slightly hunched back was the thick band of muscle the old oystermen had—from a time when oysters were raked up by hand.
He looked around, saw Hector and went slowly over, walking like a potato on toothpicks. “Hey,” he said. Hector turned around. “You tell me where old Livaudais house is?”
“Why?” Hector said. The old fellow was alone, he could see that.
“I got talk to him.”
“What for?”
“I got talk to him.”
“What business you got over here?”
Anthony Tortorich walked away. At the end of the dock, he hesitated a minute and then turned to the left. Hector followed right along beside him.
Some kids who were playing catch stopped and stared. “Sal cochon!” Tina Roualt yelled.
The old man looked sidewise out of his eyes and spat a yellow stream of tobacco juice down at his feet.
Hector said: “You don’t know where the house is at, but you sure going in the right direction.”
The old man stopped and turned. “I go all right?”
“You know for god damn sure you are.”
“I ain’t come to have fight.”
“No, huh?”
Anthony Tortorich shifted his tobacco slightly and sucked on it with a plopping sound. “I am old man.”
“What you come for?”
“I want talk with the old Livaudais.”
“You keep telling me that.”
“I want talk to him.” He began walking again, slowly putting his heels down hard, the way old men do.
The kids were following behind them, at a little distance, giggling and scuffling.
Tortorich said softly, almost to himself: “I talk to him about his boy.”
Hector stared at the broad hunched back under the faded plaid shirt. He looked at the little puffs of dust the old man’s heels raised. “What you know about the boy?”
Anthony Tortorich turned very slowly; but this time he kept walking, speaking over his shoulder. “I want talk with him.”
“Okay,” Hector said. “And I hope you ain’t starting nothing.”
“I am old,” Tortorich said. “I have my belly full with fighting.”
Hector pointed out a house to the left. “The white painted one, there.”
They walked together to the gate. Hector called, “Eddie, hey man, come here.”
And Tortorich planted his elbows on the gate post and called, “Old man Livaudais, I got something say to you.”
Belle came and stood in the screen door. Then Eddie pushed her aside and stepped out on the porch.
“Look who just come here,” Hector called.
Eddie came down the steps, scratching his chest slowly through the thin undershirt he wore. His wife followed him.
“What you want?” Eddie said.
“I got something say to you.”
“Huh?” Eddie reached inside the undershirt, to scratch better.
“He just come in,” Hector said, “and I fetch him here.”
“Your boy,” Tortorich wiped the dribble of tobacco from the corner of his mouth, “he is gone.”
Belle was standing without moving a single muscle, her hands folded across her stomach.
Tortorich leaned harder on the fence post. The wood creaked lightly.
“He know right where you live,” Hector said.
Still leaning on the fence post, old Tortorich pushed up the brim of the baseball cap he wore. It was an old cap, stained by sweat and faded by sun, the sort cafés all along the bayou sold. They kept long lines of them hung over the bar on clotheslines and pinned with clothespins.
“Who?” Eddie said.
Tortorich did not answer, he stared off into space, his brown eyes squinting just a little in the glare. He pursed his lips until they stuck straight out. “I got a son.”
“So?”
“And he got a girl, name of Niccolene.”
“That is a stupid name for a girl,” Belle said. “For sure.”
“You cannot shut up for nothing, huh?” Eddie said without turning his head.
“And Niccolene does not come home either.”
It was so quiet then that they could hear the old man’s heavy wheezing breathing, slow and even. Eddie’s fingers had found a tear in his undershirt; they were twisting and pulling at it. The sparrows fluttered and squaaked in the mulberry tree.
“Belle, hey,” Eddie said, “go get us some chairs.”
She got two cane chairs from the porch and carried them out to the front yard. She plunked them down behind Eddie. “There,” she said.
Eddie opened the gate, pushed it open wide. Then he took the chairs by the backs and put them down, facing each other, about four feet apart on the shell walk that led to his front door. He sat down in one. Tortorich pushed the baseball cap even farther back on his head, came in the yard and sat down.
“You get back in the house,” Eddie said to Belle. She did not even move. She stood behind the chair, hands folded on her stomach, her eyes jumping from one to the other. Hector squatted down on his haunches.
“You got ears, you can hear,” Tortorich said, “but you got minds to think?”
The kids came close up to the fence, giggling and kicking at each other. They had long daisy chains around their necks and they were chewing on the heavier reddish flowers.
“Fi’ d’ici!” Belle yelled at them. She bent and scooped up a handful of gravel and threw it. They scattered in all directions and disappeared.
“Niccolene she does not come back,” Tortorich said. “We find this out.”
Loretta had said nothing about her daughter that evening. She went quietly about her business, tending the baby and washing the clothes and cooking. Nick, her husband, was working very hard then in the oyster beds over in Marsh Bayou. He came home so tired that he could hardly lift up his arms or see. And when he had eaten, he wanted nothing more than to lie down on the front porch where the night was a little cooler. She sat alongside him, fanning him with a palmetto leaf. Once she started to tell him about Niccolene, but he fell asleep in the middle of her first sentence.
So she left him there on the porch and went to bed herself.
And that night her second to the youngest who was called Josef woke up with a malaria chill. When she saw him there, shaking so hard that his teeth clacked together like an old man who is dying, she wrapped him in a blanket and held him tight in her arms. And she forgot everything else. She began to yell for Niccolene to get out the other blanket and heat some water.
Nick went into the little back room to wake the girl. He came out with a hard look on his face, saying: “She ain’t here.” And then Loretta remembered and clapped her hand to her mouth.
He lit the stove and got the blanket himself. He didn’t ask Loretta anything until nearly an hour later, when the spasm had passed and the boy was asleep again.
“I ask you,” he said, “and I still continue to ask you. Niccolene, is she living in this house no more?”
Loretta wiped her hands on the apron she had tied over her ni
ghtdress, very slowly. “I have meant to tell you.”
Nick waited.
“She go this afternoon.”
Nick said: “Where she go?”
“She tell me not to say nothing at all.”
“Where she go?”
Loretta shook her head. “My heart been aching with her gone and never coming back.”
Nick lit his pipe silently. No one had ever seen him angry. “She ain’t coming back?”
“She gone with the boy.” And Loretta bent her head over into her apron and wailed.
“What boy?”
Loretta tapped her heels on the floorboards and sobbed. “She gone for good.”
“What boy?”
“She meet him at Petit Prairie. And she never say his name.”
“She ain’t never told you?”
“It ain’t a boy from this place,” Loretta said.
Nick’s pipe went out.
“One from over there.”
He kept turning the black stained pipe in his thick calloused fingers. Finally he put it away.
“You see why she ain’t told me,” Loretta said.
He stood up.
“But they ain’t there now,” Loretta said.
He leaned against the door frame and waited.
“I know you want to get her back.”
His face did not move. “Where they go?”
She shook her head. “Isle aux Chiens, no. She know you come for her there.”
“What did she do?”
“Not to the other island … but you know the little bayou that is back of there, the one they call the rabbit?”
He nodded.
“She meet him there.”
“And how she got there?”
Loretta ducked her head. “I ain’t ask her.”
Nick squatted down and began to tie the laces of his shoes.
“What I could do,” Loretta said, “is nothing.”
He finished the knot methodically, stood up and lit a cigarette. “I come back to deal with you.”
He went down the steps very slowly and walked away, the cigarette in his hand now. She sat and watched the yellow glow swing back and forth until it passed the bushes and disappeared.
Henry was at Rabbit Bayou early. There was a little half-circle in the marsh there, where the bayou drained into the bay. He slipped his pirogue out of sight, backing it in through a passage so narrow the reeds brushed hard on each side of the shell. And he settled down to wait.
The Hard Blue Sky Page 31
