The Hard Blue Sky

by Shirley Ann Grau

  “We got to,” he heard his mother telling him, “or the roof or maybe the whole house goes.”

  They caught at the flying things, odd bits of cloth and paper. Nothing looked familiar to him or felt familiar. The vigil light had gone out; there was only the peculiar color of the sky. Only the rain pouring in through the open windows and his clothes sticking to his body. He thought for a minute that the whole island had slipped into the Gulf and he began to whimper.

  He thought his mother said something to him, but he couldn’t make out the words. The vent pipe from the cook stove fell clattering to the floor; they began to cough from the soot that sprayed upwards. And very distinctly, far off somewhere, he heard a cock crow.

  His sisters were scrambling around the room, hunting for a place to hide. Even in all the noise he could hear their fierce little scurrying as they tried to wedge themselves behind the big old oak armoire.

  He was standing in the middle of the floor, crying, with rain so hard in his face he could not catch his breath, when the armoire toppled over.

  For that half-second he heard it falling, heard something falling, and would have run but wasn’t sure of the direction. And caught his breath to scream but didn’t have time: one of the wide-flying doors clipped him across the back of the head.

  He still had that scar, a thick gray line. It was sensitive to the sun and tender; he had let his hair grow long and heavy over it.

  His father looked up briefly. “Except you hold the net, I will not finish this for two or three weeks.”

  “Okay,” Hector said; “okay.”

  A yellow and black cat that has been fishing under the pier paddled lazily out to an isolated post—all the island cats swim—clambered to its broad top, a couple of inches above the water, stretched, shook, and settled down, eyes half closed but watching the water.

  “You remember old Isabelle Guillot?” Hector asked.

  “Perhaps. Maybe. She been dead a long time.”

  “Sure,” Hector said, “back in that storm.” They’d found her under the smashed cistern in her yard.

  And the Guidry boy, there wasn’t even a trace of him. He was just gone. Nobody ever did know what had happened.

  Hector shifted on his feet, but held the net steady. “I have made up my mind fast. They coming with me.”

  “Oui?” his father did not look up from the work. “Wait anyhow until the radio tell us what is there.”

  When all the nets were finished, they went over to the grocery and sat on the porch there, drinking beer. There were some other people: Al Landry, Perique Lombas, a couple of the Arcenaux boys. And after a while Story LeBlanc came by. Therese Landry was there too, sitting very still and not making a sound, only now and then she would peep, out of the corners of her eyes, at Perique.

  The radio was on full blast, hillbilly music and every hour a weather-news broadcast.

  In an hour or so Ozzie Pailet came up on the porch. “I seen the boats from the other island going in.”

  “That don’t mean nothing,” Archange Boudreau said.

  “I’m just telling you,” he said. “What the radio say?”

  Archange shook his head.

  “You going hear soon enough,” Perique said.

  At four o’clock the crisp voice read off the formal hurricane-warning and gave the last course of the storm. Without saying anything, they went inside the grocery, over to the north wall, where there was a government navigation chart. Julius snapped on the little light he had pinned over it. A little lamp with a wood ship’s wheel for a base and little sailing-boats around the shade—Hector jerked his eyes back to the chart.

  Julius was saying: “Halfway between Point Sarrat and Lost Bay,” he put his finger down, “here.” Right under his finger was the island.

  The radio voice was still repeating, emphasizing the words in a flat unconcerned way, “We repeat, hurricane precautions should be taken in this area. The course of the storm is estimated …”

  Hector did not bother to listen any more. He went outside. There were things to be done now.

  The church bell had begun to ring. The minute word had come Perrin’s daughter had scurried off—she was part crippled at birth. She jerked the rope unevenly so that there was a kind of choking clang.

  The light top sand of the road was blowing like smoke along the ground.

  Without turning Hector asked: “You going with me?”

  His father was trying to light a cigarette in the wind, leaning with one arm wrapped around the porch post. “Why you think I ain’t going with you?”

  “Don’t know, me.”

  Perique shouted: “Hector, hey, what you say?”

  “What?”

  “You going right away?”

  He nodded.

  He and his father began to walk along the path to their houses. The wind was not any stronger, yet. There was never a slow rise. But all of a sudden when the storm was very close, the winds would come swirling down out of the clouds. And that would be it.

  His father turned aside and pushed open the gate to his house. Hector went on to his own place, close by. One finger rubbing the thick whitish scar, he climbed his steps. The house was empty. “Hey,” he called, “hey.” In the crib in the bedroom the baby answered with a squawk. Hector studied the angry little face.

  “You look like an old man,” he told the child, “just like an old man, you.” He walked through the living-room again and then into the tiny half-room that was the kitchen. “Cecile, hey!”

  A scuffing sound right under his feet—he stuck his head out the window, looking down, studying it as if he’d never seen it before.

  His house was built off the ground, not as high as most old places but four feet or so on brick foundations. Under it were the things they wanted to keep but were not using just then—nets that were too old to be patched (bits of them could be used for kids’ crab nets). Two pirogues that he used when he went hunting (he hadn’t been in over a year, the fishing had been so good). Some empty barrels he forgot just why he was keeping. A tiller from a dinghy that had gone to pieces long ago. Some washtubs and washboards and a charcoal pot. All of them with the white streaks of spider webs.

  His wife was emerging, rear end first, from under the house. Without looking up at him, she began to pull out a heavy storm door, cross-braced. His son scrambled out, pushing on the other end.

  “This kid here is screaming his head off,” Hector told her.

  She looked up, her eyes bright green-blue and startling in her brown face. “I got plenty enough to do out here.”

  He stared at her, not moving.

  “You heard the hurricane bell same like me.” Her face was streaked with dirt; there were gray shreds of spider webs in her black hair. “You got nothing to do but stand there? Ain’t you got a boat to take out … ain’t you got the bars to put up or you house goes blowing away?”

  “The kid is shouting like he is going to die.”

  “You nurse him.” She bent to her work again, dusting the cobwebs off her feet and ankles. “If I going to do your work.”

  But she came in anyway, walking like an angry cat, stiff-legged. The baby was tiring from his yelling already. She tucked a sugar-tit into his sagging mouth.

  Hector followed her, admiring the set of her broad hips.

  “I got no time to be thinking like that,” he said aloud.

  “What you muttering about?”

  “We got to get the storm door up.”

  “I been telling you that.” She stomped down the steps and around the side of the house.

  “We got to get it up because we are leaving.”

  “What you saying now?”

  “You coming with me.”

  “And leave the kids here?”

  He sighed patiently. “You coming. All of you coming.”

  He lifted the door into position.

  “No.”

  “Huh?” He turned and looked at her. “Let’s us fix the back door now.”

/>   She did not move. “I ain’t going.”

  “Gimme a hand.”

  They put up the back door in silence. In a space between the trees they could see the black-squared hurricane-warning flag go up on the flagpole in the middle of the island.

  Inside again, he took down a large zipper canvas bag. “You can just put the kids’ stuff in here.”

  “No,” she said. “Somebody got to stay and take care the place.” She turned around, looking at the room, with the new red upholstered living-room set they had bought only one winter past.

  She had half finished tucking canvas over the chairs. “Somebody got to stay or water ruin everything.”

  “You going,” he said, “if I got to take you by the seat of the pants and throw you in.”

  She sat down, so hard that the springs made a little squeaking sound. “Everybody else, they going to stay.”

  “Everybody else is crazy.”

  Al Landry went home, almost running, stopping only once to talk to Therese. His own house, shuttered tight, looked strange and different. He tried to get in the front door, but that was barred. He had to go around to the kitchen.

  The first thing he noticed was his little bag in the middle of the table. It looked like it was stuffed full. Adele was sitting in a chair right next to it, waiting.

  “We got to take the boats,” he said.

  “I hear the bell.”

  “So. …” He wasn’t sure what to say or what to do. “Therese, she will come over to stay with you.”

  “You ask her?”

  He nodded.

  “I can manage alone, me.”

  “Sure,” he said, “but you ain’t used to it yet.”

  “I been in storms before at Port Ronquille.”

  “Well,” he said, “I feel better with somebody extra here.”

  “I fix you some sandwiches,” she said quietly, “and some coffee.”

  He squeezed the canvas bag.

  “And some sweaters, that I find.”

  There was some extra coffee on the stove. He poured some and tossed it off, like likker, neat. Not because he wanted it so much, but because he was nervous.

  “You going right now, no?” Adele asked.

  He kissed her on the top of the head, and left. She did not get up until Claudie, who had been playing in the parlor, upset the tabouret. Then she got the broom to sweep up the pieces of the ash tray.

  Hector Boudreau went out on the porch and sat down. The chairs had all been taken in, so he squatted on his haunches, his back against the wall.

  “I’m through talking, me,” he said. “You coming.” She did not answer, but he knew that she had heard, even though he did not turn his head. “I’m waiting here, me, for five minutes. Then we going to lock up all the doors and go.”

  He heard a few soft movements, then nothing.

  Over beyond the trees, men were shouting, but so far away he couldn’t make out the words. Funny, he thought, the way trees muffled sounds. He hoped the storm did not blow down too many of them.

  That other hurricane—when he was a boy—had swept some places clean, like a thousand people had gone through with knives and brooms. And at some other places there were heaps: against a tree that had been too strong or too lucky to go; or against a house that was still standing. He remembered following the sound of dogs—he’d run to keep up with the others, his legs had been dropping off, but he’d kept going, not knowing what they were after, but going all the same. The dogs had gone yapping around one of the piles of brush and wood, where a big chinaberry tree had been torn up from the ground. And his mother got him by the shoulder and pointed him home and gave him a swat on the rear end to help him along. It had taken him two days to figure that out. Nobody spoke of it before him. He’d heard the kids whispering about it, whispering about the people under there. And when he understood, he began to shiver all over, so much that his mother thought he had malaria and gave him a big dose of whisky and quinine and put him to bed.

  Hector rocked back and forth on his heels and toes. “You near ready?” he called.

  Over to the left, somebody was hammering, boarding up windows: that would be Julius at the store.

  Two kids ran past, one of them with an air rifle. “You going to shoot a hurricane?” he called to them and they giggled.

  His father came ambling down the path, the printed cloth bag in his left hand swinging even more sharply with his uneven walk.

  “You need some help?” Hector slapped his hand to his forehead. “Mary Mother, but I just forgot to ask if you and the old woman needed some help over at the house.”

  His father dropped the bag and leaned against the porch railing. “Non,” he said, “the shutters is all closed and the plants in off the porch and the old woman, she is lighting a candle next to the holy palm. Let’s us go.”

  “Cecile,” Hector called, “let’s us go.”

  She turned up in the doorway so suddenly they both knew she’d been standing just behind it, waiting. “I ain’t going.”

  “God almighty, woman,” Hector said, “ain’t I got enough to do without dragging you to the boat?”

  He went inside, checking all the windows; she stood without moving in the middle of the door. “There stuff in that there bag on the table for you, if you want it.”

  He looked inside the bag briefly and then picked it up. “Least you ain’t so lost you senses, you forgetting food.”

  She came into the living-room and sat down on the edge of a chair, her hands still on her hips.

  “Okay,” he said. She did not move. “Get the kid before I lose my temper and bat you over.”

  “He ain’t here.” Her face was perfectly blank. “Ain’t neither of them here.”

  He glanced in the crib: it was empty; and he shouted out the window, “Don!” There was no answer, just that hammering far off.

  “What you done with them?”

  She shrugged.

  “Where you put them, you?”

  “Where you ain’t ever going to think to look for them.”

  “You want the boat gets smashed to pieces, with us all wasting time hunting for the kids?”

  “You leave me here to look out for things.”

  “You crazy. You crazy.”

  He spun on his heel and dashed down the steps to take a few steps in the trees, shouting: “Don!” There were so many places she could have hidden the baby, any place inside half a mile.

  Perique passed. “Hey, boy,” he called. “We got to be going.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Hector jammed his hands in his pockets, “ain’t you got nothing to do but pester me?”

  Archange said: “Don’t pay a mind to him.” He took Perique by the arm and whispered in his ear: “Don’t get hot with him. He don’t mean what he saying, him. He got wife trouble.”

  Perique grinned shyly. “I be down at the boat, me.”

  The old man followed Hector who was walking back and forth peering in each clump of hedge and oleander. “You got no reason to talk to Perique like that. What we do, us, if he got mad and wouldn’t come out with us? What we go and do then?”

  “We ain’t going out.”

  His father did not answer.

  Hector turned around. His face was flushed with anger. He kicked at a small white periwinkle plant. “I told you we ain’t going out.”

  “I ain’t saying nothing.”

  “I ain’t going to let nothing happen to those kids, me.”

  “Oui.”

  “And her, she can go drown in the bay, for all I care, her.”

  “Oui.” His father was still following him. For all that he was a cripple, he could move fast on the uneven ground.

  “I don’t care none if the boat get smashed.”

  “You ain’t going to eat then.”

  “I going to take them with me.”

  They had stopped walking abruptly. “You hear something?”

  They were in the middle of an oleander patch. In the wind the leaves
and branches bent and lashed down in their faces.

  “No,” his father said, “you ain’t ever going to find them in time.”

  Hector leaned against one of the largest oleander trunks. “That kid got to get hungry and then he going to start to yell, and then we know.”

  His father thought about this for a moment. He caught one of the branches that pounded his face and pulled it off. “Jesus God,” he swung the twig like a switch in the air around him, “that kid ain’t going to get hungry for three hours or four maybe. And the longer you wait, the rougher it get.”

  Hector was staring at the ground, rocking back and forth on his heels, just a little.

  “So.” His father rubbed the side of his nose with the little twig.

  “You wait any three or four hours, or any time like that, and I ain’t going with you. And Perique ain’t neither, him. Then it just too late. Ain’t neither of us that crazy.”

  Hector squinted up into the sky, one eye closed. His father whistled softly and tunelessly between his teeth.

  Hector swung his eyes slowly back to his house. “Jesus!” Following the path of his eyes he walked back, slowly, until he took the steps in a single jump.

  Cecile was just where they had left her, sitting on the arm of the living-room chair that was covered with canvas. She half closed her eyes when he came in; her heavy underlip was curled and pouting.

  “You so crazy you don’t go hide from me.” He slapped her across the cheek. She was up in a second, kicking at his stomach, reaching for his eyes. Very carefully, using his left arm to shield himself, he beat her. He used only the flat of his hand.

  He finished with a push that sent her slamming back into the chair and the chair smashing into the wall. She sat quietly, glaring at him.

  “Eyes of a bitch.” He was panting. “Ain’t going to let you ruin my boat, me.”

  Archange stood waiting outside, swinging the little bag from his left hand.

  “She ain’t even had sense enough to run and hide from me. …”

  His father tucked his upper lip inside his teeth and whistled.

  “It is the same to me.” Hector yelled as he picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “But I will come back, me, as soon as I can, and if the kids, they are not all right, I will take you to little pieces and feed the crabs with you.”