The Hard Blue Sky

by Shirley Ann Grau

  They passed a mass of seaweed drying and smelling in the sun. And a small dead starfish.

  “Man,” she said, and stopped and stared out at the little surf. “I’m seeing things, maybe.”

  Inky sat down on a half-buried piece of driftwood and rested his head on his hand.

  Cecile watched for a few more seconds, then walked out into the surf. She bent forward, peering, and walked a few more feet down the beach. Then she reached forward and picked up something and dragged it back to shore.

  Maybe it’s the short hair, Inky thought, or the way she moves, but how the hell can she look so much like a boy.

  She had the object out on the dry sand now and was standing over it. “Sal au pri!”

  Inky looked away. Bending over like that she didn’t look like a boy, for sure.

  They’d been on the boat for a week now the three of them. And all that time there’d been Helen, in shorts and a halter, or sunning herself on the forward deck with nothing but a towel. Arthur hardly able to keep his hands off her.

  It bothered a man after a while.

  “Look here.”

  He got up and walked over. “Looks like a hunk of wood.”

  She clucked her tongue. “Talking about chairs, I come to seeing them. … This piece now, looked like a chair.”

  “Yea,” Inky said.

  “The kind with no back.”

  “I saw it,” Inky said. “It looked just that way.”

  She kicked at it. “Maybe it dry out and be good for firewood.” She curled her toes over the smooth round edges. “Ain’t good for nothing else.”

  She grinned again, her bright hard animal grin. Her eyes crinkled up so that she looked more fierce than amused. Inky wondered what it would be like to have her in bed.

  “Oh hell,” he said aloud. She probably wouldn’t be any good, just put her hands behind her head and let him. “Hell,” he said again, aloud.

  She reached out and patted his shoulder. He almost jumped. “You find somebody to take your boat in, for sure.”

  “I’m not so sure,” he said.

  “I can get my husband do it.”

  “You promising for him?”

  “Pay him?”

  “Sure,” Inky said, “it’s not my money.”

  “He do it, if nobody else will.”

  Inky stared off at the gray-blue Gulf. The Pixie was far down to the east now. You couldn’t make out the figures any more, just a hull and sails.

  “The charts say there’s plenty water down there,” he said. “That right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Jesus,” he said, “all we got to do is go aground.”

  “Somebody would pull you out.”

  “And pull the keel out too, I bet.”

  She looked up, squinting her light eyes in the glare. Crinkling up her face made her look old, very old.

  He thought: She going to make one of those round-faced old women, with round cheeks and a little round mouth all run together with wrinkles and folds, like a kewpie doll that’s been left too close to the fire.

  A couple of kids passed them, walking down the beach, feet in the last edge of the surf. They were carrying crab nets, and they looked so much alike they might have twins.

  “What you say?” Cecile said to them. A mosquito lit on her knee and she smashed it. “Look at that there,” she said, “he’s full of blood—been chewing on somebody else real hard.”

  “He bite you?”

  She shook her head hard, so that the short black hair fell in her eyes. She didn’t bother pushing it away.

  Just back in the trees some kids were screaming, and a dog began to howl.

  Inky squinted one eye in that direction.

  “It’s the Roualt kids,” she said, “they pestering the dog again. In a minute or so you’ll hear them yeowl too, when they mama comes out and belts them one.”

  “There’s another piece of driftwood,” Inky said.

  “Nothing but an old plank.” She sniffed. “Where do you reckon all this stuff comes from?”

  “The driftwood?”

  “What do you reckon it comes off?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He glanced up at the small white spot of sail and wondered if Arthur and Helen were getting impatient.

  “And I heard you can tell what the weather is, miles off, from the way the waves come in. From the way they move.”

  “You can?”

  “I was asking you.”

  “I heard something like that,” Inky said, “but I don’t remember.”

  She clucked her tongue. The dog stopped yelping and a kid began to scream, and then another one.

  “See,” she said, “I told you—their mama got around to giving them a belt.”

  “You were right on the nose that time.” Inky said.

  Cecile dusted the sand off her legs, then she began walking slowly down the beach. He got to his feet, brushed off his pants and followed. When he had caught up she said: “That building down there, the one that’s kind of sticking out on the beach, kind of half in and half out the trees.”

  “Yea.”

  “That’s where we going.”

  “You sure there going to be somebody there?”

  “If there ain’t,” she said, “Hector do it.”

  “I’ll remember that,” he said.

  They walked rapidly toward the building. Inky began to feel the suspicious ache in the back of his calves. Damn the sand, he thought.

  “How do you do it?” he asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Her heels did not sink deeply in the sand: he turned and looked back at the tracks. She walked markedly slue-footed, but she scarcely seemed to brush over the sand.

  He was getting winded when they came to the Rendezvous. It was a narrow long wooden building and not more than twenty feet wide. From the arrangement of the windows he could tell that there was a large front room and then two smaller back ones. In front was a porch.

  “This didn’t used to be on the beach,” Cecile said.

  “Where was it?”

  “It hasn’t moved. …” For the first time she sounded annoyed. “But the beach come in to it.”

  “You’re not old enough to see things like that.”

  “But my old man, he say that when he was a boy, there was a little clump of oaks right out in front of this porch. He used to have a swing on them, that’s how big they was.”

  “They’re sure not here now.” Inky scuffed his toe in the sand.

  “There been two or three hurricanes since then, and no mistake about it.” She laughed, softly and differently. Inky looked at her curiously. It wasn’t a laugh of amusement at all.

  “Pieces of the beach goes all the time,” she said, “with the water sucking away at it. And when it comes to a hurricane, big chunks of it goes. All the trees that used to be out here went with one of them, my papa says. And then it wasn’t no time till the sand moved up, right up to the porch.”

  She reached out and patted the bleached, sun-split boards, patted them the way you would a dog or a horse.

  Inky said: “I sure wouldn’t want to be in this place when a hurricane’s around.”

  “I don’t know, me,” she said. “I seen old things not lose a shingle and new things get smashed into pieces and sunk in the bay.”

  “I still wouldn’t want to be here.”

  Cecile shrugged. “I don’t reckon it matters much what place you in.”

  “Hell,” Inky said, “I sure think it does.”

  “Well,” she said, “you go see who you can find inside. Just wait around and you find something.”

  “It’s sort of funny to think of Arthur sailing up and down out there.”

  “You work for him?”

  “In a way?”

  “You crewing for him?”

  “Yea.”

  “You never did say where you was going.”

  “Just over to Galveston, that’s
all.”

  “Why’d you come to stopping here?”

  Inky squinched his eyes tight shut. “Her god-damn teeth.”

  “His wife?”

  “You shoulda heard her moaning and yelling every wave hit the bow,” Inky said, “and wanting us to call the Coast Guard or the Navy or somebody to fly out and get her.” He scratched his chin and propped up one foot on the lowest step. “And then it comes out that she was having trouble with her wisdom tooth back in New Orleans a month or so ago, but she couldn’t stop to do anything about it. Hell, no.”

  Cecile said: “So you want somebody to take her over to Petit Prairie too, no?”

  “You’re right, honey. You’re absolutely right.”

  “You better call the dentist there, account of he goes fishing for days on end.”

  “Now, honey,” Inky said, “she wouldn’t go to him. They going over to find somebody there to drive them all the way into New Orleans.” He watched the sharp bright white points of light on the waves. “The god-damn tooth,” he said very softly.

  “You stay here with the boat, no?”

  “Smart like a schoolteacher. Sure I do. Until they make up their god-damn mind to come back, or send me somebody to sail it out with.”

  “You give us the most excitement we got in months.”

  “Hell,” Inky said.

  She pointed to the front door. “I see Dan Rivé in there. By the back of his head and the way his ears wiggle while he listening to us.” She picked up a bit of shell and threw it with all her strength against the wall. “People can be real nice,” she said. “For sure.” She began to walk away.

  “Hey,” Inky said, “aren’t you coming in?”

  “What for? I showed you where it was.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”

  “You going to be around,” she said without turning. “I’ll be seeing you, one place or the other.”

  He watched her for a minute, watched the steady wide roll of her hips. Damn, he said to himself, god damn.

  He wondered if he’d been propositioned. For the first time in his life he wasn’t sure.

  PERIQUE LOMBAS CUT ACROSS the island, walking fast in spite of the heat, heading for the wharf on the north side. Only one of the little fleet there was in, on its high white bow the red-lettered name, Hula Girl, the Boudreau boat. Hector Boudreau and his father, Archange, got it cheap ten years before over at Mobile. And when an accident crippled the old man’s hip, Hector bought him out too. That made the Hula Girl the biggest boat on the island to belong to a single man. So Hector was proud of her, kept her cleaner than most of the other boats, even scrubbed out the wheelhouse every month or so.

  When they worked, the Old Boudreau still went out with them. For a cripple he could move fast—and there were those who hadn’t given him much of a chance to walk again. It was two years ago now that he’d got caught between hull and dock. They hadn’t thought he’d live when they took him over to the hospital at Petit Prairie, him conscious all the way, but not making a sound, not answering anybody, not seeming to hear, but all wrapped up in a tight little cocoon, just him and the pain.

  He was tough and he could still work, but only the light stuff. Perique was the regular crew. He was just twenty, taller already than any man on the island, and very thin, with a long thin face, close-set brown eyes, and a heavy black beard that showed through shaving.

  The engine hatch was open now. Hector was squatting in the little patch of shade from the wheelhouse, splashing his face and neck with water from the bucket he had set there.

  “Where the hell you been at?”

  Perique shrugged. “You shoulda wait for me.”

  “I can’t wait around all day.”

  “Lets us see what you got.”

  “Man,” Hector said, “not me.”

  “You don’t want to do nothing more this evening?”

  Hector’s face was streaked with oil and his eyes were bloodshot. “I been at it an hour, and I’m ready to quit.”

  They put the cover back on the engine hatch. Hector emptied the bucket of water over the side. “Here it come—look out, you fish!”

  “Bet the heat don’t bother them,” Perique said.

  “How Annie doing?” Hector winked.

  “I don’t know, me.”

  “Hell, man,” Hector said, “don’t let it get you down none.”

  “It ain’t bothering me.”

  “They get like that sometime.”

  “Yea,” Perique said.

  “Only thing you can be sure of, it ain’t going to stay that way. They never stay one way.”

  “You don’t see me crying none.”

  Two small brown pelicans were swimming in a wide circle around the boat. Perique whistled at them.

  Hector said: “I seen you over there one day, day before yesterday maybe.”

  “Lay off,” Perique said flatly. And after a pause: “You sure you want to leave them nets like that?”

  “Yea,” Hector said, and rubbed the back of his neck. “You see the kids down by the cleaning-shed?”

  The shed was right on the end of the wharf—just some two-by-fours and a low roof built onto the side of the icehouse. Fish were gutted there, at a big long wood table. And there was a hand pump and a hose that went into the bay about fifty feet away—so the place could be washed clean in a minute, even if it only was with salt water.

  There was a bunch down there, in their mid-teens, most of them. Some were cleaning fish, the rest were watching and giggling and slapping each other on the back or trying to get a hand on a girl’s breast or thigh.

  “Look at the bucket there,” Hector said. “They got some croakers they don’t want. And they been putting lye in ’em and throwing it to the pelicans.”

  “Fi d’poutain,” Perique said softly.

  “I ain’t right fond of it neither.”

  “That plain make me sick,” Perique said, “when he swallows it and goes flopping around in those big old circles.”

  “You did it when you was a kid.”

  “Don’t make me like it more now.”

  The giggling got louder and the group crowded around the table.

  “Fi d’poutain,” Perique said again.

  “Sound like Charlie Alain,” Hector said, “and I bet he stuffing that fish right now.

  They saw the group step back. They saw the fish’s silvery underside glint for a second as it went sailing out into the waiting beak of a pelican.

  Perique turned away and began to pull at the heap of nets. “You want to do something about these, no?”

  “In a while, man.” Hector kept rubbing at the back of his neck: that was where the sun got you first, sometimes so hard it felt like a rabbit punch.

  “I come down here to work,” Perique said, “And I ain’t gonna sit on my ass all day long.”

  Hector shifted and stretched and scratched through the buttons of his shirt in the thick hair of his chest. “Go on ahead.”

  “Why don’t I run ’em up, so we can see how bad they torn.”

  “I know how bad,” Hector said.

  Perique dragged at the heap of nets. His sweat-soaked shirt stuck to his back and shoulders. He straightened up. “Enfant garce!” He unbuttoned the shirt and threw it to the deck. His body was brown and very thin; the edges of the spine stuck up like knuckles, and the muscles were like cords. There was a tattoo high up on his left arm, almost to the shoulder: an eagle with a flag in its mouth.

  “You fixing to get sun stroke for sure?” Hector asked.

  Perique did not answer. By the time he’d fastened the net and cranked it up, man-high, by the little hand winch, he was covered with sweat.

  All of a sudden Hector looked over the rail and grinned. “Hi, what you say?” He got up and sat astride the rail. “Perique man, look who we got here.”

  Annie Landry took her pirogue within ten feet of the lugger, and then with a single quick stroke, turned it sideways and stopped it dead on the wa
ter.

  “See that?” she grinned up.

  “Always did say you could handle a pirogue like a man.” Hector took a cigarette from his pocket.

  “Me, too,” Annie said.

  Hector tossed one. She caught it with a quick downward motion of her hand. The pirogue bobbed lightly but steadily.

  Perique came and stood just behind Hector. “Where you going?” he asked her.

  She ignored him and was looking at Hector from under her lowered lids. “No light?”

  “Come get it.” He pulled a box of matches from his pocket and held them out.

  She was looking at Perique now, fluttering her lids. “You want me to fall in the bay, huh?”

  “I don’t want you to do nothing, me,” Perique said. “You was yelling for matches and he’s giving it to you.”

  “How I’m going reach it?”

  “That your problem,” Perique said.

  “Think I can’t get it?”

  She shifted her paddle and dipped with it. The pirogue jumped almost sideways. The water swirled to the top, but not a drop splashed in. She flicked the paddle dry and laid it across the narrow boat. She waited until the water was quiet and the hull had stopped vibrating. Then she put out her hands, one on each gunwale and lifted herself to a crouching position.

  “Sure glad you know how to swim,” Hector said.

  She shifted her feet slightly; the pirogue swayed.

  “If anybody come along now,” Perique said, “you go over for sure.”

  “Bet I can do it.” She stood up finally, one foot on each side of the sloping shell. Her head was just above the deck of the lugger.

  “Look at that,” Hector said, “no hands, even.”

  She stuck up the cigarette between her lips. Perique struck a match. “Not you,” she said. “I wouldn’t trust you.” The cigarette dropped down again. “You likely to burn my nose off just to get me to fall in the water.”

  “Me?” Hector asked.

  She stuck the cigarette straight out again.

  “Okay,” Hector said. He snapped a match against his fingernail and, leaning down, lighted the cigarette.

  She puffed at it, hard, the way a beginner always does, her eyes squinted against the smoke.

  “If you old man knew you smoked,” Perique said, “he’d take a couple pieces of skin off you.”