The Hard Blue Sky

by Shirley Ann Grau

  The night was hot and still. The roosters had got mixed up: they were strutting and crowing just as if it were dawn.

  “Mammyjammer,” Perique muttered to himself, “getting talked into something when I’m beat up enough.”

  His mother had made some fresh coffee. It was standing on the back of the stove. He took the pot and a cup over to the oilcloth-covered table and sat down: he’d have this much in peace, for sure. He drank two cups and was pouring a third when he remembered something.

  All the houses had lights on, except one. Except one …

  He was sure of that. He had noticed it, but it hadn’t meant anything to him at the time. One house where nobody was up: the Livaudais house.

  He turned it over in his mind. Eddie Livaudais, now, he’d be still down at the boat, or talking with the people along the wharf. They hadn’t come back more than ten minutes ago. But there was Belle, and there was Pete. And they were, neither of them, ones to miss an excitement.

  Perique finished his fourth cup of coffee. Maybe he should go see … but it wasn’t any of his business.

  He headed back to the wharf.

  Even as he climbed down in the skiff and yanked at the cord of the outboard, Perique kept wondering about that dark house where the people were such hard sleepers. …

  There were five outboards bobbing in the little pass off Caminada Point. Perique headed over for them and cut the motor. They sat watching silently for a while. There was a little current here and the skiffs were drifting slowly back into the bay, but it was so slight a movement you hardly noticed it. And behind them, on Caminada Point, some kids were yelling. “They run all the way down here just to see,” Cecile said.

  After half an hour they turned and went in, all the skiffs together.

  By this time most of the people had gone back to bed. Only some of the older kids, the ones in their teens, were still wandering around. And they wouldn’t be likely to go to bed at all.

  Perique noticed that the lights in the Livaudais house were on now, every single one was blazing out.

  And the surrounding houses were beginning to go dark.

  They just didn’t seem to catch up, Perique thought.

  He would have to go over tomorrow and see if anything was wrong. But right now he was too tired. And so he forgot.

  THE KIDS WHO WERE still up did not pay any attention to the outboard. They heard it, they remembered later, but they hadn’t been interested. It was a hot summer night and they had a bottle of whisky—and they were more interested in each other. They felt excitement burn between their legs. And so most of them crossed over to the south shore to build a big bonfire on the sand.

  Inky heard it too. He was almost asleep under his netting-tent in the cockpit. But he listened carefully: that outboard wasn’t too far off. By its sound it would be running in fairly small circles: the rudder must be jammed over.

  “Jesus God,” he muttered, “what’s the damn fool trying to do?” He lifted himself on one elbow and stared out. But he couldn’t see much through the white netting. And he didn’t lift it to have a better view: the mosquitoes were bad out that night. And enough of them got through the netting without any help.

  He stretched out again. In a few minutes the motor sputtered and stopped.

  Eddie Livaudais heard nothing—he was on the other side of the island, over in the Arcenaux Grocery. The fire had him excited so that even before he went home he stopped and had a drink with Mike and Julius. They were playing Black Jack when Guidry Olivier stuck his head in.

  “Too late for you, kid,” Julius yelled at him.

  “Lay off,” Guidry said, scratching the mosquito bites along his arm. “But all the lights is on in Eddie’s place.”

  “So?” Julius lifted one eyebrow in the way he had.

  “So nothing,” Guidry said. “I’m just telling you what I seen.”

  “The old lady,” Eddie said, “is waiting up for me, and wondering where the hell I got to.”

  “Prenez un coup!”

  And Eddie poured himself another shot.

  In half an hour or so, they went home, Eddie and Mike together, feeling their liquor a little, because they were so tired.

  “Jesus,” Mike said, “the place is lit up for sure.”

  Eddie squinted. The windows were yellow.

  “I turn them out, me,” Eddie said, and turned in the gate. Mike plodded along, putting his feet down heavily, lifting clouds of white shell dust after each step.

  Belle was lying in bed. Only instead of her nightgown, she was fully dressed.

  Eddie stood in the doorway. “So,” he said, “you go to bed with the clothes on now. And the lights on in the house, burning up money.”

  She glanced down at him without moving her head and then back up at the ceiling again.

  “You know maybe it is not an hour until daylight?”

  “Tant pire,” she said quietly.

  Outside a rooster began to crow. “See,” he said, “what I tell you?”

  “Near morning.”

  “You gone ga-ga? Burning lights all night.” He walked over to the foot of the bed and stared at her. “Who going to have need of all that light?”

  “Pete.”

  “Hell,” Eddie said, “where’s he at?”

  “Over there,” she said. “The other island.”

  THEY GOT UP AGAIN, Mike Livaudais and Chep Songy and Jerry, got up slowly and heavily from beds that weren’t even damp from their sweating bodies. They gulped left-over coffee while the kids woke up and screamed and their wives slapped them into silence. Then they followed Eddie down to the dock.

  Christine Bartels and Charlie D’Abadie were still on the wharf, arms wrapped around each other. They looked up when Eddie came along, slowly got to their feet, and disappeared into the trees. Charlie looked back over his shoulder once, mad at having been disturbed.

  Eddie had not even seen them.

  The red glow over at Terre Haute was gone now, and the sky was a steady, even black. The four men found some kegs and settled down to wait. It was the only thing they could do—no use trying to find anything in the dark.

  Chep Songy noticed the skiff first. It was just barely beginning to be dawn and he had to blink his eyes and shake his head to be sure. And then he yelled and pointed.

  The skiff was a couple of hundred yards out in the bay, motionless on the dead still water in the flat gray mist of the first light.

  He yelled to the others, and he swung himself down into the skiff and picked up the oars. He had just fitted them into the locks when Eddie dropped down into the bow.

  Julius, who’d been out for a walk, heard the shouts (he’d had a restless night and he was up far earlier than usual) and he went hurrying over, almost running, so that his paunch jogged up and down and he had to hold it in his hands, the way a woman holds her breasts. By the time he got there Chep had already got the skiff a hundred yards out.

  It was getting steadily lighter now. In just a little while you’d see the sun swing up, white hot, over the rim to the east, and it would be full day.

  Chep was rowing fast, pulling so hard on the oars that the bow went lunging up at each stroke and then smacked down again, sending the water flying off in flat sheets.

  “And he went slower,” Mike said softly, “he go better.”

  Inky had heard the yelling and he stuck his head up out of the cockpit, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Hey,” he called, “what’s happening?”

  Nobody answered. Julius went rushing right past to join the other group.

  “Wasn’t hard to find,” Jerry said. “Leastways.”

  “Lucky he didn’t run straight into the pilings,” Mike said, “and drown.”

  Inky left the Pixie and stood at the edge of the circle of men. No one talked to him, or gave any sign of noticing. It was something in their faces and their bearing that kept him from coming closer or repeating his questions. It was the same sort of feeling that sometimes told him to keep away
from neighborhood gangs, back in the hibiscus-lined streets of New Orleans. That there was something going on in which he could have no part.

  Inky stood and waited. The two skiffs were closing now. Chep had softened his stroke, and the boat moved more smoothly. Eddie got to his feet and bent forward, straining to see better.

  The two skiffs came abreast. Chep glanced over his shoulder, briefly, then pulled hard on one oar. His bow swung around and touched the other. Almost before the wood had touched, Eddie Livaudais was across.

  “Hope they ain’t killed him,” Jerry said.

  “Yea,” Al Landry said.

  “Damn fool … crazy jackass of a damn fool.”

  Eddie Livaudais gave a wordless shout of relief.

  Mike said: “Hear him?”

  Eddie tipped up the outboard and got the oars in the locks, and headed back.

  “He ain’t dead,” Mike repeated. And the three men on the dock looked at each other and grinned.

  “Ain’t so bad, man,” Julius said.

  The smile disappeared. Mike said: “Leave us wait and see how bad he is hurt.”

  The skiffs slid under the wharf. Eddie Livaudais stood up, holding to the piling for balance. “Gimme a line.”

  “What happened to him?” Mike said. “Leave Julius here have look.”

  The men squatted down, peering over the dock. A little to the back and to one side, Inky squatted down too, without quite knowing why he did.

  Eddie Livaudais took off the baseball cap—the one he always wore, that had been white once but turned almost brown from sweat and rain and dust—and he fanned himself with it, two or three times.

  Julius stared down, trying to see. In the half-light he could hardly find the boy. The bottom of the skiff was shadowy and his skin seemed to have turned dark, like a Negro’s.

  “Get him up here,” Julius said.

  Eddie got up on the wharf and stood back. Chep let himself down into the boat gently; Jerry followed him. Together, easily as they could, they lifted the boy up to the dock. His head swung down, loose, almost as if his neck were broken. Mike slipped one hand under it, steadying it as they lowered him down to the boards, and the boy groaned.

  Chep and Jerry scrambled up and stood around while Julius got down, slowly, and wheezing as his knees dug into his stomach.

  He saw now why the boy’s skin looked so dark. He had covered himself with black axle grease, and he wore a pair of black bathing-trunks.

  Julius bent down until his nose was only a couple of inches above the boy’s body. And he caught the sharp clear odor of blood.

  There was a cut across the forehead and down past the ear. Looked like a piece of that was gone. The loose flap of skin had fallen back into place, making a puffy fold. Blood was clotted into crusts all around it.

  Blow like that, Julius thought, a man was lucky to live through.

  He couldn’t see too much with all the grease. There was a deep cut along the ribs, the kind of crease a bullet or a shotgun pellet would make. And lower, on the side, that was some kind of shot wound, for sure.

  Julius put out one finger and then drew back. He was afraid. “No job for me,” he said. “You got to get him to a regular doctor.”

  Eddie stood by swinging his head from side to side, not seeming to hear. Mike said to Jerry: “You go get the shotguns and some bread and sausage and a bottle of whisky. And you go by and get the purse and money from Belle.”

  “Hell,” Jerry said softly, “all I get to do is run around.” But he went.

  “I get the blowers going on the Captain Z,” Mike said.

  Pete was talking to himself now and moaning. They had to lift him up again and put him on board, on the little bunk in the wheelhouse. They did it gently as they could, all of them together. Just as they got him down on the bunk, his moaning stopped. They stood without moving for a minute, scared, all of them. Julius bent his head and listened, and whistled with relief. “Ain’t done nothing more than pass out.”

  Eddie had stood on the dock watching, and not moving. Julius left the boat and walked over to him. “Ain’t bleeding too much,” Julius said, “leastways not that I can see.”

  Eddie just nodded.

  Julius said: “You want me to get the doctor on the phone, while you going?”

  Eddie looked surprised. “I had forgot that, me. I had forgot clean about it.”

  “You coming?” Chep called.

  Eddie did not seem to hear.

  Julius took his arm and started him walking to the lugger. “Come on, man. You got to get going.”

  Eddie stumbled when his toe brushed the cap rail.

  “Watch it, man, watch it.”

  “Ain’t had no sleep this night and I’m falling on my own feet.”

  “You go be with Pete,” Chep said, “soon as Jerry come we shove off.”

  Julius went and released the bow and the springline, then held the sternline, waiting.

  Eddie had gone into the wheelhouse and perched on the edge of the bunk. He was staring straight ahead.

  Mike and Chep stood on the forward deck. Mike said: “No use both of us going.”

  Chep nodded.

  “If Jerry, he come with me, we can manage.”

  Chep nodded again and stepped to the dock. “And I come in, when?”

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “I be there.”

  Jerry came back at a run, carrying a couple of paper bags. “You going,” his father said. The kid nodded and grinned and jumped aboard.

  Mike yelled. Julius released the sternline. The Captain Z swung out and headed across the bay.

  Chep and Julius coiled the mooring-lines and hung them on the pilings.

  “His papa and two men,” Chep said slowly, “the boy be safe enough.”

  They understood. If the boy lived, the people from Terre Haute would try again, almost for sure—if he had done any real damage with the burning. And that wouldn’t be so easy if there was a man with him all the time, sleeping on a cot or on the floor right next to his bed in the little hospital.

  The sheriff at Petit Prairie wouldn’t interfere. He always stayed clear of feuds: a man could get killed meddling.

  THE WAY BACK

  THAT NIGHT THERE WERE two men down at the boats: Stan Schesnaydre and John Olivier. And one had a shotgun and one a deer rifle. They played cards and drank coffee. Every so often one of them would walk down to the end of the brightly lit section (people had strung up some big spotlights on temporary poles) and squint out into the dark. Mostly they sat and cursed the Livaudais boys: Henry for being such a fool over a woman; Pete for getting even.

  When Rose Schesnaydre brought her brother (he wasn’t married yet) more coffee and some cold boiled shrimp around ten o’clock, she found they’d set up a kind of target of an old board propped against a sawhorse. They were tossing knives into it.

  She played a couple of hands of cards with them. But after a while she had to go home too. And there was nothing more for them to do all the night long except walk around a little and listen and be sure the lights were on.

  Annie had come down to the wharf after supper, the way she always did. And she had taken her favorite seat: a pillow up on the cabin top. Inky was stretched out along the cockpit seat.

  “Took me a hell of a long time to find out what was going on,” Inky said. “Wouldn’t anybody talk to me.”

  “They get like that,” Annie said.

  “I was asking them point-blank, and they didn’t give an answer.”

  “Sometimes,” Annie said, “you can’t shake a word out of them.”

  “And they just going to stay there?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  “Looks like the army around here.”

  She slapped a mosquito on her ankle. “I’m sick of talking about the whole thing.”

  “You just can’t keep a guard out.”

  “You know,” Annie said, “Somebody was after the boats in my grandfather’s time, and this was before I
was born or anything near to it, and they had two men out here, and two shifts, just like this, all night long—and there wasn’t near so many people on the island then.”

  “How long?”

  “I forget … couple of years.”

  “Don’t believe it,” Inky said.

  “Okay, mister smart jackass, you go ask my papa.”

  “Oh hell.”

  “Ask him and see what he says.”

  “Okay I will,” Inky said.

  “You forget, I bet.”

  Inky got to his feet. “Right now.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s go ask him.”

  “Where?”

  “He’s home. Let’s go ask.”

  “At the house?”

  “Where else?”

  “No,” Annie said. The word was flat and hollow on the still night.

  Inky hesitated for a minute, remembering Adele with her smooth brown hair and her gentle ways. “She isn’t bad,” he said. “Don’t take her so hard.”

  “No,” Annie said. The tone got flatter and more hollow.

  “Looks to me like …”

  “I can go be alone,” Annie said, “I don’t have to stay.”

  “Jesus,” Inky said and stretched back out again, “okay.”

  “Tell me if you want me to go away.”

  “Christ sake,” Inky said, “stay here, will you.”

  Al was taking a bath in the tin tub in the back yard. He was scrunched up in it, comfortably, and he was smoking his pipe and staring into the quiet dark. Now and then it would go out and he would yell and Claudie would come running to light a match for him.

  Between trips, Claudie sat on the porch with his mother, on the screen porch where the mosquitoes wouldn’t bother them.

  “Now you listen to me,” Adele told him, “you listen to me good. In the daytime, when you go playing around, you know?”

  He nodded, trying very hard to understand what she was saying. The tone already told him it was important.

  “You go playing around and with one thing and another you don’t notice where you going and where you are. …”

  He nodded again.

  “You don’t do that any more.” Her voice was deep and sudden and sharp.