She reached the hollow chinaberry trunk. In it were the heavy wood shutters from her house. She peeped in, her eyes blinking from the dustiness. They were there, the shutters with their wood so worn that the grain stood up in it like veins. She took one and tried to drag it out; it was too heavy; there were warnings twanging up and down her back. She turned away with a sigh. She would have to wait until somebody came to fix it.
Not ten minutes later her grandson Ferdinand came. And inside an hour, he had all the shutters up and the big storm doors too. She sat on her porch and watched. When he had done, he came over—the brown-black mud spattered to his waist—and talked a bit to her.
“Some fighting, no?” he asked.
She shrugged. She wasn’t sure she was going to talk to him.
“What you think of all the fighting?”
“Me?”
“Yea,” Ferdinand said, “I was just asking.”
“I think maybe it is a good thing for men to fight. They got to fight.”
“It could be,” Ferdinand said.
“They like to fight.”
“I got everything up,” Ferdinand said, “and I braced up the chimney.”
“Always fighting,” she said.
“I got to get going,” Ferdinand said.
She closed her eyes and listened to her words echo round and round in her head.
“Even me,” she called out after him, “even an old one like me.”
When he was gone, she walked once around the house to be sure that everything was snug. It was getting cloudier now and the wind was cooler. She pulled the sweater up around her neck. Then she went into her house, closing the shutters and locking them from inside.
BY SATURDAY MORNING AL Landry had almost finished fixing the worst of the burned side of the house. He had been working fast and he was tired. So that when he saw his wife come back from the grocery, he stopped and followed her inside, looking for a cold beer. She was just putting the basket down on the table and she said to him over her shoulder: “You finish?”
“No,” he said and got a can out of the icebox, “but it won’t rain through.”
“You think it blowing harder?”
“No,” Al said.
“Seems like it is.”
Al shook his head. He punched a hole in the can and began to drink directly from it. “That is real fine,” he said.
“Mamere Terrebonne’s is all shut up, like nobody lived there.”
Al looked at her in surprise. He forgot sometimes that she hadn’t come from the island, that she’d only been there a little over a month. He couldn’t remember when he wasn’t married to her. …
“What so funny?”
“Nothing,” Al said, “I forget you didn’t know.”
“About Mamere?”
“She stay inside from the minute it get a little cool.”
“With the shutters closed and all that?”
Al nodded and smoothed out the curve of his mustache. “She stay like that. And at night the kid that going to stay there slips in. And her family bring her food and oil for her stove. And sometimes they go visit her.”
“All the time?”
“Nobody making her,” Al said. “This here is her idea, plain and simple.”
“Oh,” Adele said. She began to pat her hair into place, her sleek smooth brown hair that never moved.
“A funny island, che’,” Al said.
She began digging among the groceries in the basket. “While I was by Arcenaux’s, there was this mail.” She found it finally and gave it to him.
It was a postcard, from New Orleans. On one side a picture of a single big oak tree. On the other, four lines of writing: “A real great town. Nothing like it. Annie.”
“So,” Al said, “you have read it?”
Adele nodded. “It don’t say if they are married.”
“Same thing as.”
Al went into the living-room and propped the card up on the mantel. He felt a little lost.
By the time he went back to the kitchen, Adele had the groceries put away.
She asked him: “If there is a big storm coming, you will take the boat away?”
“Got to,” he said.
“Oh.”
He wondered for a minute what she meant by that. Then he thought he understood. “You come with me, no?”
“And who will stay with the house?”
“House don’t matter.”
“What do people do?” she asked. “Didn’t hear any talk of leaving.”
“They stay,” Al said. “But nobody think bad of you for going. When you never been in a storm out here before.”
“They stay, all of them?”
Al nodded.
“And if you got to go,” Adele said, “I will stay here. And watch out for things. With everybody else.”
Philomene Arcenaux sent word to two of her sons, Placide and Florian, that she had need of them.
The three of them went over to the Livaudais place, walking very slowly—because of Philomene. Even so, though it wasn’t more than a hundred yards or so, she was puffing like a porpoise by the time she heaved herself up on the porch.
Belle was working in the back yard. She was alone: Eddie was still in Port Ronquille with Pete. She came around the corner of the house to see who was there—and she was so covered with mud it almost seemed that she had slipped down in it. Even her hair was caked.
“I been getting the shutters out,” Belle said. She sat down too, put a hand on each knee and swung her body’s weight over against them, sighing a little. Robby peeped around the corner of the house. Mud was dripping off his arms and legs like water.
“We come for that,” Philomene said.
Belle shook her head.
“Your men,” Philomene said, “they are not here.”
“The boy,” Belle said, “he is here. And we got no need of help.”
Story LeBlanc and his three sons were clearing the burned house. They had been working all morning and they had a pile of studs cleared out. It was hard going. The timbers were burned and ruined, but they were still solidly set. They had to use crowbars and axes. They didn’t talk at all. But each time they put their muscles into an ax swing or bent their backs over a crowbar, they’d get a peculiar light in their eyes. It was the other island they were thinking about.
The clouds were much lower today and grayer. But none of the LeBlancs looked overhead.
DOWN AT THE DOCK Hector Boudreau stretched himself full length on the Hula Girl’s deck. Even in the shade from the cabin it was hot: with one shirtsleeve he wiped the sweat off his chin.
For a minute he stared straight up into the bright gray cloud-filled sky. Far up, under the smeared gray clouds were four birds, big birds with angled tails and black wings, moving fast. They were man-of-war birds and they always headed in before a storm.
He’d come down to the boat very early, and tinkered with the engine and cleaned out the tiny cabin. He’d dragged the little mattress from the single bunk out on the deck for airing: it smelled faintly of mildew. He’d taken the stripped cover off the pillow, the cover that was stained with greasy fingers and smelled strongly of hair oil. He’d tell Cecile to wash that some day or other: not that it was going to do much good, with the couette so dirty. But, maybe. …
He dozed for a moment, but so lightly that he knew he was dozing. Then he was wide-awake again, the hot day burning in the back of his throat. He was worried.
It was the feel of the water under the hull, the nervous movement of even the sheltered waters of the back bay.
“It does not need my knowing of it,” he muttered aloud.
Stan Schesnaydre, loafing on the Star of the Sea, not twenty feet way, called: “What you say?”
Hector did not answer. He looked up at the sky, at the steady high band of clouds and the low bits of racing ones.
“You studying something, no?” Stan persisted.
“Maybe.”
“You ain’t working.”
“I ain’t loafing, me.”
Stan shrugged. A thin stream of saliva shot over the side from the gap between his front teeth. The cigarette in the corner of his mouth did not move.
Hector rested his chin on his palms. There was only the soft plop of a fish jumping and the faint creak of the mooring-lines and the sound of water on wood, on the hull, on the pier. And still he couldn’t rest.
They said, some people, you could tell how far a storm was and how bad it was just by looking at the waves. I can’t, me, Hector thought, though I seen plenty.
Almost the first thing he remembered—the morning after a hurricane when his mother gave him a boost up to the roof to see what had been torn away. He’d seen how the wind had peeled back strips of tin-like pieces of cardboard or tin foil. He’d stood and stared and very slowly he’d put out one bare toe and touched the crinkled strips. And the inside of his stomach was just as crinkled.
A hurricane once every seven years, people said.
It was past due, Hector thought.
He stared down at his oil-streaked sneakers.
The clouds had a funny color, he thought. A funny color. …
His ears singled out two new echoes on the wood pier: the light barefooted scampering of his son and the irregular but quick step of his father.
Hector grinned as the old man came aboard. “You ready for work, no?” It was funny how a crippled man could walk that fast, be that light on his feet.
The little boy giggled and Hector glared at him. “You go see what you mama doing, you.”
The boy did not move. He stood shifting from one bare foot to the other, his small close-set black eyes glinting.
Hector lifted his arm. “Fi’ toi!” And the kid was gone with long leaps down the pier, all the time looking back to see if he was followed.
The old man leaned against the cabin, to take the weight off the bad leg; he had gotten that habit: almost like a big cat rubbing up against things.
“You rip up the nets this last time I am not with you.” He’d gotten a belly since the accident. The top button of his pants was always open.
Hector put out the mending equipment, the heavy shuttle and the ball of tarred twine.
“This going to be some storm, for sure.”
His father did not answer. His fingers fumbled for the twine; the ball dropped and rolled across the deck, unwinding a little as it went.
“Better a man dead than a cripple,” his father said. He’d been saying that for the last two years, and he did not mean it. His hold on life was as tight as an old crab’s on bait.
“Maybe,” Hector got the ball and put it in place; “and maybe not.” He picked up the net. “Here, see?”
His father did not look interested; he stared off down along the bay where there was nothing but a fringe of marsh grass and a couple of brown pelicans fishing and way high up, a man-of-war gliding with wings straight out.
“There plenty of wind in those clouds.”
“I said that, me.”
“You got to have somebody hold the other side, if I going to fix it.” His father nudged the heap of nets with his toe.
“I going to hold, like this here.”
“You can stand with you arms out like that for a long time?”
“For long enough I can.”
His father threaded the heavy bobbin and his fingers began the quick intricate knotting that would repair the net. Hector had never had the patience to do that himself. He held up the nets and let his eyes wander around the boat: overhead the draping black nets, their lines wrapped around the winch, lead weights swinging in the wind; and underfoot the paint-chipped deck.
He wished he had an arm free to wipe his face. He could feel the little trickles of sweat working down his cheeks, through the stubble of his day-old beard.
“There always storms in September.”
His father’s fingers did not stop moving as he clicked his tongue between his teeth.
“This time it will be a hurricane,” Hector said flatly.
“You have said that before,” his father reminded him. He let his eyes wander around the boat, but his fingers still did not stop the knotting.
Hector said: “I will take Cecile and the kids with me.” He dropped the net from his fingers.
“Jesus Maria,” his father threw down the shuttle. “I say you can’t hold anything steady enough.”
Hector picked up the net again without a word.
“She will not go,” his father said.
“She will go if I drag her.”
“No woman ever goes.”
“They will be safer with me.”
His father grinned slyly. “Do you remember Philippe Robillard?” Heading for the bayou during a small storm, the Bonne Femme had disappeared. There were not even bodies.
“Just because you are not on the island, you are not safe as in a rocking-chair.”
“I will take care of them.”
“Cecile can take care of herself here, if nobody can.”
“No,” Hector said.
His father stopped working and looked up into his face. The corner of his mouth was twisted and his eyes were puzzled. “But you going to need her here.”
“No.”
“You have seen what happens to houses in storms with nobody to watch them.”
“Yea,” Hector said. “I have seen that.”
“She got to stay here.”
Hector said: “If we take the boat, they will come with me.”
His father sniffed as if he had got a cold.
“They coming.”
“It is all equal with me,” his father said.
They finished the work without talking. Hector, with his eyes half shut against the glare, remembered, kept remembering, back to when he was a kid, older than his son now, but not much. Seven or eight at the most, he decided, that September.
There weren’t any radios in those days—just the sky and the wind and the Gulf to tell them what was coming. He’d hidden behind hackberries and scrub-oak bushes, crouched under the planks of the docks where the big cats rubbed and mewed against him, and watched the men, the little groups of men, as they talked and studied and finally one night took the boats away. He was asleep when they left; that next morning he’d waked early and gone sneaking out of the house (he wasn’t supposed to do that; his mother always told him never to go out in the morning damp with an empty stomach). The docks were empty; not even the cats were there, just the big mooring-lines, hanging over the boards, trailing in the water.
At mid-afternoon, when the wind came up sharply and it began to rain, his mother called him and his two sisters inside into the main room of their house that was parlor and kitchen and bedroom for him. They sat, and hardly moved, listening to the sounds outside: the swishing of the oleander bushes and the creaks of the hollow chinaberry trees, and from the windward side of the island, the steady sound of the surf.
At six or so, his mother stood up and beckoned to him. “Come help me.” They went outside in the steady falling rain and pushed closed the heavy wood shutters. The wind was already so strong they had to fight them closed, the two of them, until his sharp wiry shoulder was bruised and cut under the thin shirt. And, with the rain stinging his eyes and the muscles shuddering in all his body, he’d wished that he had a big brother. Thinking that, he felt ashamed of himself and put his weight against the wood and pushed harder.
Five shutters had taken them nearly half an hour. His throat was aching from the strain.
Inside his two little sisters were crying. “Shut up,” he told them sharply. They had crawled up in a corner of the bed, the two of them and they were sobbing open-mouthed.
Inside there it was dark, only the faint hairline of light around the edges of the windows and the one strip down the middle where the shutters met. “Fix the door, che’,” his mother said; her voice was deeper than usual, breathless and panting.
There were iron hooks on the door for a crossbrace.
And over in the corner was the bar, an old piece of iron that his grandfather had found years ago on the beach at Isle Timbalier, a thin flat bar of iron, rusted but solid, that might have been almost anything. Hector would spend hours sometimes staring at the bar, trying to imagine what it was from, and how it had got on the beach at Timbalier, where there was only white driftwood and sand crabs scuttling like white shadows across the sand.
He got the bar and dropped it into place and then carefully, because his eyes had not yet got used to the dimness, felt his way over to a chair. It was a rocker. He began to tip it softly back and forth, dipping his head up and down, resting it on his chest, then throwing it back as far as he could.
They sat there, the four of them, with just the sound of his rocking and the rattle of the wood beads of his mother’s rosary. They did not make a light; the dark seemed safer.
Outside was the sound of thousands and thousands of bushes rubbing together, being pulled and twisted together; and the plopping of heavy drops of rain into the sand; and farther, the sucking of the water at the beach. His mother lit the vigil light in front of the statue of St. Christopher.
By eleven or so the tone of the wind began to change; it got higher and clearer too, like a bell almost, or a set of bells. There were small sharp crashes when flying things—branches or bits of wood or pieces of other houses—smashed into the walls.
“It is here now,” his mother said.
The wind seemed to be scratching against the outside of the house. They could hear it run up and down like fingernails on a washboard.
The chimney went; the bricks rattled down along the roof. The house was swaying. On the south side a shutter gave way. It didn’t blow in or hang rattling. One of the wind’s fingers found it and pried at it. Like a cork out of a bottle, almost, it popped open and was sucked away.
All the loose things in the room rose up toward the ceiling in the flood of wind. The house was quivering, the roof straining at its beams.
“Hector, open the windows,” his mother shouted. “Vite!”
He clambered across the bed and smashed his fists at a shutter until it flew open. He realized he was kneeling on his sister, which one he couldn’t tell. She was wailing. He slapped at her, clambered down and threw himself at the last closed window.
The Hard Blue Sky Page 46
