“No,” he said, and something in his tone cut through the haze of lust in her head. People never said no to Hilda. “I need to tell you now.” He took both her hands and stopped halfway up the stairs. “It’s important. Let’s sit down.” He settled on the step above hers. She looked up at him, trying to detect some sign of their usual warmth, but his head was turned to the side. “You know I love you, honey…” He stopped, cleared his throat.
Her stomach felt like it was full of angry wasps.
“The thing is,” he said, “I never thought I’d meet someone like you… You’re so beautiful, and young, and oh, so”—he shrugged helplessly, like he had no choice—“and I’m…”
“Whatever it is, Nelson,” she had said, leaning forward, now full-blown scared, “just tell me. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”
“Leaving.”
“You…what?” Of all the things he could have said, this was the last thing she had expected. They were going to be together; he said so all the time. She had put a hand to her face, so sure was she that he had slapped her.
“Hilda, I never meant to stay so long. I was just passing through that day. Then you appeared on the sidewalk like a vision… What’s a man to do?” Again the helpless look. “But I’ve got business up in Miami, long overdue now, thanks to you.” He stroked the side of her face. She jerked away from his hand. “Oh, don’t be like that, sugar. We had a good time—”
“What about our…our plans?” The tears came, big sobs that fractured her words. “You said…you said you loved me.”
“I do, honey, I do, but we cain’t be together, not like that. Your daddy has big things in store for you. You could do anything, get outta Heron Key, go to New York. You don’t need me. And I’ve… There’s stuff I gotta do.”
“Take me with you.” She clutched his leg. Miss Palmetto, two years in a row, was begging, and she did not care one bit. Her life would end when he walked out that door. “Oh, please, Nelson, take me with you. I’ll do anything—”
“I cain’t, baby girl. I’m sorry, but I cain’t.” He looked away again, and she realized that some part of him had already left.
“You mean you won’t!” After all the weeks of feeling so grown-up, she suddenly felt like a helpless child.
“All right,” he said and looked at her, but his eyes saw somewhere else, someone else. “You gonna make me say it.” That look made her feel so cold and alone. “Someone’s waitin’ for me in Miami. I’ve dawdled here too long.”
That’s all I’ve been to him, a dawdle. “Oh, no,” she sobbed. “No, no.” She hugged her knees, wished her parents were there. Daddy would make it right. Nelson’s promises had all been lies, all the whispered endearments, just so much malarkey.
Then she looked up at him again and the tears stopped. His black hair had fallen forward over one eye. His lips were moist. She could see right down the open neck of his shirt to his bare chest, which moved with each breath. She felt the heat from his skin, imagined the taste of his mouth. Tobacco and the cinnamon chewing gum he liked so much.
“I’m sorry, darlin’. I’m—” he began.
“Can she do this?” She pushed him back on the stairs, tore open the front of her dress. His expression changed. His eyes danced with excitement, pupils blacker than black. She unzipped his pants. His breath quickened. He groaned at her touch. She rubbed against him, used her hands, her mouth, used everything he had taught her over the past weeks. She felt powerful, womanly, to have him on his back. Under her control. He would not forget her so easily.
But then with a roar he was on top of her, the edge of the stair hard in her back. His mouth was hot on hers, her hands pulled him closer, ever closer, and with every thrust, she knew they would be together always.
When finally he rolled off her, his face was closed. “Oh, Hilda,” he breathed, “what have you done?”
Her pregnancy had become apparent almost immediately. There was just time, before Daddy died, for him to meet Nelson. It was not a success. Daddy just sat in a corner with his oxygen, too weak even to rage, the room filled with the gasps of his ruined lungs. He was gone by the time of the hastily arranged wedding. Momma had given her away, and she was gone too by the time Nathan arrived. Without Missy, whose services she had inherited with the house, Hilda would have had a nervous collapse.
She looked again at the enemy in the mirror, cheeks flushed, eyes bright in some cruel parody of her old self. Her once-fine figure, now buried under mounds of fat. It was no wonder Nelson preferred to sleep alone.
She was hungry, always hungry. There would be such a feast tonight. And she would take a tiny plate and pick at it all evening, while others piled theirs high and went back for seconds. The food called to her like a lover, promising pleasure and comfort and an end to sorrow.
With a last flick of her still-shiny blond hair, she prepared to face the stares, the ridicule, the barely concealed contempt for the oddest couple in town. She planned to get very, very drunk indeed.
Chapter 5
By the time Henry finished helping with the gator cleanup, it was late afternoon. They had left no trace of the butchery on the lawn and dispersed just as the big Cadillac carrying Hilda Kincaid crunched down the drive. Missy’s secret was safe. Selma had taken the meat home to prepare for the barbecue, trying as usual to persuade Henry back to her house. “Why you want to go all the way back to camp?” she had asked. “You can get washed better in my bathtub. Just look at you; you need a good soak. And I got some of Jerome’s clothes to fit you.”
“You make good sense, as always, Sister,” he had said as he wiped his machete on the grass. “But I got to go back. It’s important I be there, for the men.” He slipped the machete into his belt.
Her mouth was set in a disapproving line. She seemed to have aged fast while he had been away, but then, he reckoned, eighteen years was half her life so far. At the same age, his mother had seemed like an old woman. There was gray in Selma’s hair and tiredness in her walk. He leaned in to kiss her cheek, which she accepted with a glare. He whispered, “See you later…Sunny.” The choice of this relic from their childhood was deliberate, what he used to call her whenever he was in her bad graces, which was often. It almost never failed to deflect the worst of her ire, like throwing sand over flames. But he always knew they were not extinguished, just smoldering, and could rise up again at any moment.
The muscles in her face fought against the smile. “Git.” She slapped his shoulder. “You got a lotta walkin’ to do.”
• • •
Henry headed for the coast road, where there would be a breeze to dry the sweat on his face. The sun was still fierce and seemed to get stronger as it sank toward the horizon, on its way to the sudden, spectacular tropical sunset. He had forgotten the way the sun seemed to laze all afternoon in a slow arc toward the ocean and then, around supper time, drop the world into night like a rock into a barrel.
He was tempted to jump straight into the ocean, clothes and all, it looked so cool and inviting, but this stretch of beach was for whites only. Families had already begun to set up their picnic stations. Fathers fought with beach umbrellas, mothers flicked sand off the blankets, children ran screeching into the waves. A few of the parents eyed him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion, as if he were an exotic but dangerous animal at the zoo. A little girl sped over to him, a brown ring of melted chocolate around her mouth, stubby legs making hard work of the sand. She offered him her bright red bucket and a shy smile. Right behind was her mother, out of breath and windblown. She grabbed up her daughter roughly and marshaled her back down the beach. He heard the little girl cry, “Why, Mommy?” “Because he’s a bad man,” hissed the mother, with a backward glance at Henry. “That’s why.” Her glance took in his blood-soaked T-shirt and filthy pants. He tipped his hat, but she had already rejoined the husband who stood on their blanket, alert, hands on hips.
Henry stepped up his pace, eyes narrowed against the glare off the water.
He fell into the familiar rhythm that had taken him on foot across the country and back. The soft crunch of his boots freed his mind like nothing else. A pelican skimmed the water in an effortless, silent glide alongside him. He realized there was a debt to be paid, to Selma, to Missy. A debt of explanation, for why he had stayed away so long, why he had chosen to ramble aimlessly around the country after the war rather than return home to his people. And why, even after he came to the camp, it was months before he made contact, and after that, only venturing into town rarely. He was grateful Selma had not demanded payment of this debt, but everything in her voice and body said to him, “We have unfinished business, you and me.”
How could he explain when he did not really understand it himself? Where to begin? How could he make her feel what it was like, when men you’ve trained with, lived with more intimately than any woman, get mashed to gristle, their blood in your eyes, your nose, your mouth? What it was like to harvest body parts, instead of cotton, from the fields? What happens to your feet when they’re immersed for weeks in a trench filled with mud and shit?
Equally, he lacked the words to tell her about the thrill of fighting alongside white soldiers as valued comrades—French soldiers, because his own countrymen would not have them, but still. The French locals had treated them like heroes, like their own brothers. His boys had played “le jazz” to ecstatic, gyrating crowds in packed clubs. And the women…the women. He thought of Thérèse, the last morning before he was shipped home. Her red hair shining in the sunlight on the pillow, the smell of fresh bread from the boulangerie below. How to explain that he could step out with her in any bar in town and be greeted with cheers and free drinks, rather than the lynching rope?
He pulled his hat down to shade his eyes and loped on. At first, the homecoming had seemed to meet all his expectations. It looked like everything was really, finally going to be different, just as they had hoped. Even now, he had to smile at the memory of that parade, right up Fifth Avenue. His men had marched proudly in step, exchanged slightly disbelieving glances, nervous grins saying, “Is this for real?” Happy, flag-waving crowds lined their route, the cheers ricocheted like bullets off the tall buildings. There was Li’l Joe, and Franklin, and Sammy, Tyrone, Lemuel, and Jeb. Jeb’s little legs had to make two strides for every one of the bigger men’s. Together they had marched in hopeful formation toward their future. Henry’s plan afterward had been to visit the folks in Florida, but then come back north—to do what, he was not exactly sure, but opportunities for someone like him seemed to ooze from the sidewalks. He would make enough money to give Grace and Selma a comfortable life. Then he would go back to Thérèse, to the room above the boulangerie that always smelled of warm bread.
A fine plan. When did it first go wrong? he wondered. When the killings started in Washington and Chicago, the very places where he had thought to try his luck? They heard that Li’l Joe got strung up in Mississippi. Sammy was dragged to death behind a car in Illinois. Tyrone was burned alive for taking part in a labor rally. So he and Jeb had started to walk, away from the riots, away from the burning smell of hate and the rank terror of change. They had worked in fields, slept in barns, sometimes hopped a boxcar, but mostly walked.
During those lost years, he often thought of his mother, his sister, and Missy and the others in Heron Key. If he tried to imagine going back, it was Missy’s face he saw, the day she waved him off at the station. The shock and disappointment in her eyes if she could see what he had become—gaunt, weathered, in shabby clothes stiff with dried sweat. He had let them down, all of them. The proud officer, in his shiny shoes, who they had seen off at the station all those years ago, was dead. He sank into the clammy embrace of failure. It was best for everyone if he stayed away. He no longer had a plan. He and Jeb simply existed. They slept in vacant buildings, scavenged in garbage cans for food, did odd jobs. And then one day, while they were in Georgia on a fruit-picking crew, came the call to march on Washington. The government had decided that it would not, after all, pay them the long-promised bonus now, when they really needed it, but rather in 1945, which seemed a century away. This final insult had provoked a reaction, even from the weary veterans. A protest had been organized to explain why this was not acceptable. And so they trekked north to join in.
He could still feel the anger, after all these years, like the smell of smoke that just won’t go away. When he and Jeb had arrived at the marchers’ shantytown in Washington, it was thick in the air. Thousands of veterans, with their families, had pitched tents in front of the White House. When the army troops arrived to disperse them, at first the veterans milled about in confusion at the sight of their old comrades. Then the soldiers began to fire gas grenades at them, and mounted troops moved in to slash with bayonets, led by a major who someone said went by the name of Patton. The Washington skyline turned orange with the fires of burning tents. Henry saw women and children trampled beneath the horses’ hooves. And finally, when it was clear they had lost, he and Jeb joined a slow-moving river of dejected, defeated humanity heading back across the Potomac. Hope gone, faith gone. Only anger remained.
And then, when it had seemed they could sink no lower, a lifeline had found its way to them in the form of a letter from Lemuel. He wrote that a government construction project in the Florida Keys was hiring, for real pay. Not as good as the bonus, it seemed, but better than picking fruit. More than that, Henry decided the location of the project was a sign that the universe wanted him to go home. If it was going to work that hard, he figured, then the least he could do was see what purpose it had for him.
But when he arrived back in Heron Key, he was unprepared for the shock of so many familiar sights and smells, having long ago given up on ever seeing the place again. It looked exactly like it had all those years ago, as if he had only stepped away for a few minutes. He half expected to see his younger self stroll by. It was eerily disconcerting, like an endless attack of déjà vu. He felt like a ghost, haunting a former life where he didn’t belong anymore. His men went to town, especially on payday, but he made up excuses to stay behind. The months went by, and still he made no contact. Although his cowardice shamed him, he could face no one from the past, no one who had known him as he was. The extra shame barely registered, just got added to the great big well of it inside him. He was unwilling to face the questions and curious stares of the people he had left behind, even the ones he cared about. The only place he had felt at home was in Doc’s kitchen, drinking bourbon after dark. Only Doc, who had served and understood. So once in a while, he snuck into town like a thief.
And then it happened. One night, on his way back from Doc’s, he saw her. At first he thought it was a drunken hallucination. Missy passed by in the direction of her Mama’s house, head down, weary feet shuffling on the dusty road. Although she hummed under her breath, it was not a happy sound. And then she was gone around the corner. Suddenly he felt completely sober…and very, very foolish. The next day, he had presented himself at Selma’s house, as protocol demanded. Reporting for duty.
He thought back to the scene at the Kincaids’ house. So now Missy was all grown up. His little Missy, no longer little. She used to leap into his arms each time he arrived to help with her homework, fairly vibrating with the excitement of learning. Even smeared head to foot with gator gore, she was still pretty. And the embarrassment made her prettier still. She was a girl no more, not even a young woman. He had missed all of that. Still working for the Kincaids and living with Mama, Selma had said with a sad shake of her head. He ran his dirty cloth around his neck. Missy could have been something. There had even been talk of her getting a scholarship to college at Howard. And then her useless daddy got himself drowned. Still, where was her husband, her babies? He had wanted to ask Selma, but that would have alerted her extremely keen senses to an interest he was not sure he felt…or even deserved to feel.
The coast road bent around the curve of the point that brought him within sight and smell of the camp. The sulfurous stink of the latrines caught in his throat. On the colored side, he could see Jeb sluicing his skinny torso at the pump. The last of his men were here. His men. There was Jeb and Franklin, Lemuel and Sonny. That was all.
Henry noticed that his shadow had lengthened on the walk from town. He marched faster, boots kicking up puffs of coral dust. There was just enough time to get clean before they would need to turn around and go back for the barbecue. He did not mind the walk. It was something he knew well how to do. It seemed he had done little else than walk for years and years—always away, never toward anything.
Jeb looked up as he approached.
“Hey, man.” He straightened with a grin. “You look like shit.” Jeb, whose survival was down to one part blind luck and three parts Henry’s protection, was the smallest of them. He joked that he had lied about his height to enlist. By all rights, he should never have even passed basic training, much less been deployed to France, yet he turned out to be fearless in combat and a great comfort to the dying. When Henry caught the shrapnel in his neck, it was Jeb’s small hand that stopped him bleeding to death, under fire so intense that it kept even the medics away.
Henry peeled off his shirt. “Guess who’s having gator steaks tonight? I had to help Selma get him ready for the grill. Outta the way, Shortstop.”
Jeb nudged the discarded shirt with a disdainful flick of his boot. “Might as well burn that thing. It ain’t never comin’ clean.”
“No chance—that’s my best one. My sister can work miracles.” Henry stuffed the shirt under the side of their cabin. “She’ll be there tonight.”
Under a Dark Summer Sky Page 5