Eddie said to his son Henry: “You got a girl, no? That why you don’t want to get cut up?”
“I ain’t turn chicken,” Henry said, “don’t you sweat about that.”
But just then Robby came running up and Eddie turned away to shadowbox with him. When his wife wasn’t around, he was always happy to see his bastard.
All that afternoon, until long past suppertime, Mamere Terrebonne hung around the grocery. It was hard to tell exactly what she was doing, but whenever anybody saw her she was busily walking around the building, or digging in the heap of glass on the front porch. She circled the building at least three times, moving slowly and carefully, looking at almost every board in the walls. Then she poked around with her cane in the heap of glass on the front porch, until she had sorted it all out into four piles, according to size.
During the afternoon there were plenty of people there, but around suppertime they left. And only the kids came back later.
But it wasn’t until about eight o’clock, just when it was getting good and dark, that Mamere Terrebonne pulled her hat down, low so that it almost covered her eyes, and started home.
Maybe it was all the excitement. Or maybe it was just the way things fall out. But that night Mamere Terrebonne had another one of her attacks. And the worst one yet.
She lived alone, in the same house she had lived in ever since she was married, in the cluster of houses that belonged to her relatives, her children’s children. (Her children had grown up and died, some of them, and her husband too, and even some of her grandchildren.) She cooked for herself—she ate very little now, and that mostly fish, like a seagull. And she cleaned house for herself, and she padded around in the little front-yard garden, not growing much, hardly doing more than stirring up the soil with a stick.
At night she would light the lamp (she had never had the house wired for electricity), and she would sit under it, making flowers of the fins of shrimptails, twisting the flowers into wreaths and bunches.
She was never alone at night. Her family saw to that. After all, who would know if the old woman died during the night, or needed help? Every night one of her great-grandchildren slept there.
There were plenty of them, half grown, from six to twelve. And they took turns. All day long they played and ate at their own houses. But at bedtime they headed for the little canvas cot in the corner of Mamere’s bedroom, next to the big old feather double bed that she slept in, the one that had belonged to her mother. And they would go home for breakfast.
They were company for her too, those nights when she’d napped so much during the day that she wasn’t at all sleepy. Then she would put away her flower-making and take the lamp and go into the bedroom, where the kid was already asleep. She would wake him up, prop him up in bed, and talk at him. If he fell asleep in the middle she didn’t particularly seem to care.
It made her family feel better to know that the old woman had somebody with her. And she got on a lot better with kids than with adults. They had more patience with each other.
Mamere had had her first attack two winters back, when she fell out of bed and lay on the floor stiff as a board and not able to say a word. Steve St. Martin was sleeping there that night and he sat up, holding the cover around him, because it was a cold night in February and there was a little skim of ice on the fresh-water pans left on the back porch. He stuck out one toe and gave the figure on the floor a little prod. Then he hesitated for a minute, chewing on one corner of the quilt, not quite sure what to do. And anyhow he was so sleepy, his eyes kept closing. He lay down again but didn’t sleep. He kept seeing the figure half wrapped in the covers lying on the bare floor boards. He reached over and touched one hand. It felt cold.
He got up, dragging his quilt with him, and lit a fire in the round barrel-shaped kerosene stove. The wick smoked; it was too high. And the crank stuck. He had to use both hands to turn it down. The quilt fell off his shoulders. Though he slept in a pair of cotton overalls and a sweater, he began to shiver. He pressed his hands to the outside of the stove. The tin was still cold; there was only a faint beginning tinge of warmth. He looked again at the blanketed figure alongside the bed. And backed out of the bedroom. The front door was closed and latched against the cold. He couldn’t manage it alone. So he climbed on a chair and opened a window and pushed back the shutter. He clambered through it and dropped down on the porch.
It was so different at night. He stopped for a minute and looked around, trying to be sure of his directions. There wasn’t a thing stirring; it was only cold and dark. A single bright star was caught in the top of the oak tree.
He ran all the way home. And inside of ten minutes there were flashlights and lanterns coming from all sides and somebody had started out to get the priest from Petit Prairie. By mid-morning, by the time the priest had come, Mamere was sleeping quietly with a little smile on her face. She had won. Only sometimes she muttered something about M’sieu Mort.
That was the way it happened the first time. And the second time was just like it. Except that it was late summer. And the kid was Addie Monjure.
He woke up when he saw that the lamp was still burning. And he took a good look at Mamere and went racing out of there. He’d always been a kind of nervous boy, and this upset him so that he began to scream. He had the whole end of the island up in no time at all. Some of the men came out with their shotguns; they hadn’t been exactly sure what was happening.
Perique Lombas took his little launch, the Tangerine, and went off to fetch the priest, while the women did what they could for Mamere.
And Addie Monjure, he ran right straight home, and got under his own bed, though it was so low you wouldn’t have thought that there was room for a single living thing underneath. He stayed there, scared and sniffling a little. And nobody could get him to come out. And his mother finally couldn’t take the sounds any longer. So she got his father and his biggest brother to lift the bed right off from on top of him. And a tough time they had of it too, for Addie got hold of the slats, and held on with all his strength. And when they finally got the bed up, he came with it, hanging like a crawfish under a log.
And his mother had to sit and hold him in her arms all the rest of the night and promise him that he wasn’t ever going to die. She didn’t have a minute to get over to Mamere’s until the morning came.
By that time Perique had come back with the priest. And it was just the way it had been before. Mamere was alive and asleep. So the priest gave a long look at Perique, and thought of his lost sleep, stifling a yawn.
And Perique shrugged, for he knew what the priest was thinking, and he said: “If you had seen her when I leave here—you think she would be dead by morning too.”
So the priest opened the door of the bedroom and peeped in. Rita Monjure, who was watching alongside the bed just then, stood up and bowed politely to him. He said a quick prayer and made a quick sign of the cross and closed the door.
The priest was a young man, named Ryan, from New Orleans. He had a square head on a thick neck, and legs that were so far apart that he rolled when he walked. He had been to the island before, many times. He was the youngest and the huskiest of the priests over at Petit Prairie, and he always got the distant night calls.
But he was a good-natured man, and he didn’t mind. And anyway he was young and very strong and sleep didn’t mean too much to him. So he came out on the porch and took off his coat, because already the day was getting hot, and took out his handkerchief and wiped the dust and the sand off his black bag which contained the holy oils and the holy wafers. Then he ran the handkerchief over his own face which was turning sweaty-red in the heat. And went across the way to Ferdinand Lombas’s house, and had a few whiskies with the men there.
THE LIVAUDAIS WEREN’T RELATED to Mamere Terrebonne—not directly anyhow—so that when she had her attack, their living wasn’t changed much. The whole family went to the house the following morning and asked after her, but that was all.
When they p
assed by Marie Livaudais’s yard and saw Robby playing there, the four pretended not to see him. The kid ducked around under the porch: he would always disappear when his father’s wife came by.
Eddie was going straight from Mamere’s down to the boat. Pete was going with him, and Chep Songy was all ready and waiting at the dock.
“You change you mind, huh?” he asked Henry.
Henry shook his head. “Going home with Ma.”
His father took off his cap and scratched his bald top. “You got so much money you don’t have to work anymore?”
Henry grinned. His teeth were narrow and pointed and slightly irregular. “Maybe,” he said. It going to be a good day.”
“I’m tired working,” Henry said.
Belle Livaudais chuckled. “Livaudais men,” she said, “stubborn like crabs.”
Eddie looked annoyed. “When he running lucky …”
“Me, I was born lucky,” Henry said and put one arm around his mother’s shoulders. “And I’m going home with my girl here.”
Belle smiled more gently and her thin, almost Indian face cracked into wrinkles. “Crazy,” she said, “all the Livaudais. …”
Eddie shifted from one foot to the other. He wanted Henry with him. Needed him on the boat. But he was a man now, for all that he still lived at home. … Eddie was hesitating on the edge of ordering him to come. …
“Oh hell,” Pete said, “we get along without him.” For all that he was sixteen—two years younger than Henry—Pete was broader in the shoulders and weighed a good twenty pounds more.
“Sure you do,” Henry said, “You get along fine without me.”
“Oh hell,” Pete said and scratched his underarm, “you come along.” His thin pimply face sulked.
“Not this time, man.”
His father shook his head and didn’t argue. The boy was a strange one, for sure. Always was. Wanting to go off and be by himself. A kind of wild one.
“Jesus,” Eddie said, “leave the son of a bitch here. And let’s us go make the money.”
Grumbling, Pete followed his father down the path. He stopped once and looked back at his brother, hopefully.
Henry and his mother went home. They did not talk much on the way. They didn’t have to.
On the porch, with the screen open in her hand, Belle said: “That Pete now, he going to miss you being with them.”
“Maybe,” Henry said.
“You feel all right, no?”
“Sure.”
“I hear about the way you don’t want to fight down at the dock.”
“Jesus,” Henry said.
“So,” his mother said.
“I ain’t been scared,” he said.
“So.”
“Look, I been telling you. I ain’t scared.”
“I been hearing you.”
With the Arcenaux the Livaudais had always been the roughnecks of the island. All those who had the name, right down to second cousins, were always the first men in a fight, always loving it.
“Hell,” Henry said, “I’m plain tired being tough. I’m gonna rest up and then I’m going out hunting.”
His mother shrugged. “All stubborn too. They got to do what they got to do.”
“Yea,” Henry said. “That’s me, for sure.”
He spent most of that morning right in the side yard, under the mulberry tree, cleaning and fixing his two shotguns. And he spent most of the afternoon sleeping stretched out full length in the front-porch shade. He ate supper early—his mother fixed it specially for him—and he went upstairs straight after, pulled off his pants and his shirt and went to bed. He didn’t even stir when his father and his brother came in around eight o’clock, yelling at each other and furious after a bad day.
Pete finally climbed up to the attic where they both slept and stuck his head inside the little partitioned cubbyhole where Henry was. (Henry had built that himself not two years ago. He had wanted a room for himself. So he had divided the attic exactly in half. He had even painted the wall—one coat of pale yellow.)
“Hey,” Pete said, “listen at me.”
Henry, who was sleeping face down, turned over. “Jesus …”
“You shoulda come with us.”
Henry grunted.
“You give us bad luck.”
“Jesus.”
Pete sat down on the edge of the bed. “Ma said you been fixing the guns. … You going out?”
“Yea,” Henry said with his eyes still closed.
“I’m coming too, me.”
Henry shook his head.
“Old man ain’t going out tomorrow,” Pete said. “I got nothing to do.”
“Not with me you ain’t.”
“Aw,” Pete said, “sure I can.”
Henry didn’t answer.
“You think I can’t take it?” Pete asked.
“Sure, kid,” Henry muttered finally.
“Be more fun with two, huh?”
“No,” Henry said.
He had always gone alone, ever since he was twelve and big enough to have a shotgun and handle a pirogue.
“Ah, hell,” Pete said.
“No,” Henry said.
He had never worked on the boats more than he had to. He didn’t like fishing. He was a hunter. Because of him the Livaudais had meat when nobody else did.
He always came home with duck and sometimes with deer, all neatly cleaned and stowed up in the bow of the pirogue and wrapped up, against the flies. When he brought back deer it meant only one thing—that he had gone beyond the salt marsh and into the swamp that lay to the north of it. Very few people ever went in there, and almost none went beyond the edges.
There was some talk when he first brought back a deer. But people got used to it.
After all, they thought, it was the kind of thing you expected of a Livaudais. They were real tough. All of them.
“You said you was going to take me.” Pete sat down on the foot of the bed.
“Get off,” Henry said, “I got a clean sheet.”
Pete hopped up. Henry rolled over on his side and closed his eyes again.
The following morning Henry went down to the grocery to get supplies for his hunting trip. His mother saw him leave with the empty oyster sack slung over his shoulder.
“You don’t got to buy stuff,” she said, “when we got it here.”
Henry put one hand on the door frame and stretched himself carefully. His thin pimpled face looked younger this morning with its high cheekbones and the deep hollows under them in which a definite beard line was beginning to show. “I got money,” he said. “I’m gonna eat it, and I’m gonna buy it.”
The grocery had been cleaned up. It was even hard to tell that anything had been wrong, if you didn’t look too close. Cecile had picked up the glass and buried it. And two of her brothers had come and boarded up the smashed windows. Julius himself had straightened up the inside. He’d spent the whole preceding day in there, clucking and muttering to himself.
“Looks all right, no?” Julius asked.
Henry took the cans he had bought from the counter and dropped them in the oyster sack.
“Man,” he said, “you still hold on tight to them paper bags.”
Julius stopped on his way to the cash register and squinted over his shoulder. “They didn’t send me bags with the last order—I only just barely got enough.”
“Yes,” Henry said, “ever since I remember, you didn’t have enough bags, except when people come in and yell for them.”
Julius rang up the sale and did not answer.
Henry put the last of the cans in the sack and swung it up on the counter. Then he propped his elbows on it and, bending down, put his chin in his hands.
Julius came back with the change.
“I wonder,” Henry said, “how much you make on them bags.”
“I been telling you,” Julius said, “they ain’t sent. …”
“Jesus,” Henry said, “I can go right now and put my hand on a big pil
e of bags.”
“I got to have some,” Julius said, “for big orders.”
“Gimme my change.” He held it in his hand for a minute, rattling the coins, staring straight ahead at the tarnished silver buckle on Julius’s belt.
“I reckon I need some sunburn cream too,” Henry said.
“Huh?” Julius fingers tapped the buckle.
“Tube of sunburn cream.”
“Who for?”
“Who you think?”
“I don’t think nothing.”
“I’m going out for a while.”
“You don’t want it, sure.”
Henry straightened up slowly and went around the counter and took down the lotion. He stood looking at it, turning the box in his hands. “Hey,” he said, “this is fancy for sure.”
Lengthwise across the box was a sticker that said: “Arcenaux Grocery. Always the Best.”
“Bought ’em,” Julius said. “Got to use ’em up.”
“Right glad to see somebody could sell you something.”
“Waste,” Julius said, “sinful waste.”
“How much this?”
“Forty-nine.”
“Vieux couillon … that a dime more than over in Petit Prairie.”
“I got to pay freight.” Julius rubbed his belt buckle. “Couté les yeux d’ tête.”
“Okay,” Henry said and held out a half-dollar. “Quit crying. And gimme the penny back.”
Julius walked heavily across the creaking floor to the cash register.
“I wonder where you got it hid,” Henry said to the thick sweat-streaked back.
“Huh?”
“All the money you got.”
“You talking like a crazy kid.”
Henry sat on the edge of the counter. “Lemme figure now. You don’t go to the bank at Petit Prairie more than once a month, most times. And you must have a heap of money around.”
Julius waved his arms. “Like all the people—telling me, Julius, you got so much money, Julius, what you going to do with it? And me just barely making a living out this place.”
“Yea?”
“And the whole building near to going down with the next strong wind.”
The Hard Blue Sky Page 9