The Hard Blue Sky (10 page)

Once, years ago, not long after he’d taken over the store, hurricane waters had swept right through the building. There’d been mud a foot deep on the floor: he’d cleaned it up with a shovel. And there wasn’t a label left on any of his stock. But he’d washed the cans off in a big tub of water and went over them with cleanser to make them even brighter and lined them up on the new shelves he’d built and had himself a sale. Mixed-up sale, he called it. And for every three cans he gave one for lagniappe.

He hadn’t lost money that time, he thought.

The dogs were closer now, over to the north. They were running in a circle. He walked over to the door and looked out. You still couldn’t see anything, just the stretch of grass ending at the oak trees; and the dirt road lined with oleanders; and the paling-fence at the back of the Boudreau house.

By the sound of them, there’d be a whole pack. A sudden metallic clanking: they’d upset a washtub or a bucket. A woman shouted.

He chuckled, staring out at the hot dust-fringed afternoon: all that fuss, some dogs after a bitch.

The pan clattered again. That would be over at the Speyrer house. Efetha would be scurrying around the yard, trying to scatter the dogs that were dirtying the wash. She was a short girl with wide-set legs that gave her a rolling walk and put her tight little rear waggling back and forth softly.

One for each hand—Julius closed his eyes, grinning.

He’d been lying that day, a long time ago, when he told his brothers that the girls came down to the grocery to see him. But it had got to be true. His mother had been right, when he’d put some meat on his bones. …

His wife found out about the first girl—he never quite knew how, except that you couldn’t ever keep anything quiet on the island very long.

And that first time he’d been afraid. Philomene had gone out on the porch, though it was a blustery November day and there was a cold wind from the north swamps, and sat there, in the single chair, rocking slowly back and forth. He got a little nervous watching her through the front window and went out for a walk himself—around the beaches, kicking at the pieces of gray driftwood and throwing little pieces of shell at the gulls and wishing to hell he’d never got in the whole business.

But when he came back, there was supper on the table waiting. And though Philomene did not look at him as they sat eating, she did not say anything either.

He’d wanted to tell her: “I ain’t going to do it again.” But he couldn’t somehow. She would just go on looking down and answer: “What?”

So he sat and ate his supper, though the food made him a little sick.

And he wanted to ask: “Who told you? Rosalie herself? Or who?” But he didn’t do that either. Didn’t say one word.

She fed the kids and put them to bed (the oldest must have been nine or ten then) and went to bed herself. He stayed up, smoking one cigarette after the other, huddling next to the kerosene stove for warmth.

He’d been afraid that time and ashamed. After a while he lost his feeling about it. And didn’t care what she knew or didn’t know.

But she always knew. She found out about the other girls too. He could tell when she did; she didn’t have to say. She always sat rocking on the porch a little while, each time. But there was always supper on the table. And they never talked about it.

Sometimes he’d look at his sons and wonder if they had ever had trouble with women, now that they were all married with families of their own. He hadn’t heard any talk about them. And he couldn’t imagine; he’d never even felt related to his three boys. It was only the youngest, the girl Cecile, he was fond of.

A good kid, her, he thought, with more life in her than any of the rest. A good kid.

When she got married—to Hector Boudreau Julius’d gotten drunk, drunker than he’d been since he was a kid. He’d never been much of a man for likker.

They had gone over to have the wedding at the big church at Petit Prairie. They’d had the celebration at his wife’s cousin’s house—their girl, in a pink organdy dress and a wide-brimmed hat, had stood up with his own daughter.

After the ceremony he’d got drunk, on a mixture of beer and whisky and orange wine, so drunk that once he almost passed out. He was dancing. It was fairly late then, and he’d been drinking steadily ever since the ceremony. He didn’t remember who he was dancing with, did not think he ever looked at her face, but from the feel he knew it was a young body he had hold of. The band—a violin, two guitars, a drum and an accordion—began a fast bayou French waltz. He started turning then. And his own grogginess started moving to the beat. He kept going faster and faster, in tight circles. He heard his partner gasp and try to pull away. But he held tight. He felt his head would pop into a dozen pieces and lie spread around on the floor.

The music stopped. And he gave a few more turns, slower and slower, until he stopped too.

People were pounding him on the back and laughing. “Life in this old dog, boy,” they were saying. “Yes, man. …” They shoved a glass of something in his hand. He took it, held it, and put it down on a table untouched. Thinking about it made him a little sick. He wasn’t sober now, but he was clearheaded. He looked around for his daughter. She and her new husband were gone.

Julius did not close his eyes once that night. After the people had gone, he sat out on the porch. And sat until it was morning and time to leave.

From out one window Julius saw a stray dog run across the road: he’d been forgotten or left behind and he was racing to catch up with the pack. A brown long-haired mutt, with a long loping gait.

Julius grinned and fished another piece of ice out of the cooler and tucked it in the exact middle of his tongue. Then he went back to his chair, closed his eyes and began to doze.

He forgot the dogs, forgot them until the bitch dashed in the open door with ten or fifteen males at her heels.

He woke to see the carefully stacked pile of tomato cans crash to the floor and run off to the corners of the room, like water drops hitting the wood. The bitch—for a single second—stared straight at him, her brown eyes wide and a little puzzled. (He thought she was smiling, but it was only a dog.) With a leap she was over the counter, crouching there, hidden. Little bits of splintered china rolled out after her.

Julius rushed at the dogs, swinging his chair in front of him and shouting: “Hi, hi, hi, hi!”

They scattered to the corners of the room but would not get out. They leaped straight up against the walls, dodging the chair, and knocked down the shelves. Already there was a pile of rice like large sand in one corner. The flour bin rolled out of sight; there were tracks in the white dust where the container had been.

He saw a few more come rushing in the door. The whole pack was there now.

He was cursing, using all the words he could remember. He stepped on one of the rolling cans and lost his balance. He fell on a dog. The animal jumped away, yipping and snapping at his shoulder. From his lying position he kicked at it, and missed. He felt something jab the palm of his hand: the keg of tacks was spilled. The animals did not seem to notice, except for one short-haired white dog, who sat in the middle of the floor, chewing furiously at the pads of his feet. Over all the noise Julius could hear his snorting.

The animals ran in circles, looking. Behind the counter the bitch watched. Julius could almost feel her eyes, eager and moist. He got to his feet and, swinging his arms and kicking at the swirling dogs, he made his way over to the counter; his shotgun was hung against the flat inner side.

Teeth tore through one pants leg but he did not stop or even care. He stumbled again and almost fell. From far away, he heard the sound of his own shouting.

He lifted the gun off the hooks—he kept it loaded—swung it around and fired, not aiming, not looking, but firing both barrels from the hip.

He knew better. The instant he pulled the second trigger he knew better. Too late he ducked his head in his arms and hoped the ricocheting pellets would miss. He heard the dogs yipping in high-pitched screaming tones. And he became aware of sharp flashing pain in his arms and the right side of his neck.

And he remembered with relief that he had loaded the gun with birdshot.

One hand holding the side of his neck, he backed up, until he felt the wall. Then he stood leaning on it, kicking at the dogs. A few had scattered; he heard them running off yelping. But most of them were still milling around the store, as if nothing had happened. Only their movements were a little more excited than before. Saliva was dripping off their jaws and their tongues were a little farther out. The bitch had moved down along the counter and up on a little shelf. She had wedged herself on top of the cartons of cigarettes. Her flanks were quivering.

A half-dozen crab nets, stood up on their long poles like brooms in the corner, smashed down. One of them covered a light yellow dog’s head. He did not shake it off; he did not seem to notice: the handle trailed around after him.

Julius was panting now, almost sobbing. Outside, he could hear people come running up and then stop, laughing. He glanced out the window—a little crowd, a dozen or so people, and right in front his wife, crouched down, holding her knees with laughter. If he had not emptied his gun at the dogs, he would have fired at them.

He could feel a trickle on the side of his neck. He looked down at his shoulder and saw blood splatters on the blue shirt. With a fingernail he gouged out one of the pellets and looked at it: a little black bit of lead smeared with red. He dropped it and wiped his fingers on his shirt.

He held to the wall with one hand and kicked at the dogs. They just moved out of reach. He was shouting at them: “There. Behind the counter.” He was even pointing. “There. There she is.”

The bitch stared at him. Her tongue licked the tip of her nose.

He grabbed one of the dogs and tried to carry it behind the counter, but the animal squirmed free. “There she is. She can hardly wait for you. Behind the counter.” He grabbed for another dog and missed.

Two of the dogs were snapping at each other on top of the icechest over by the window. They lunged, lost balance, and crashed through the glass to the ground outside.

Now through the broken window, he could hear even more clearly: the talk and the chorus of laughing outside. And his wife calling to him: “Julius, hey!” And her laughing, louder than the rest.

It would take him twenty years to get over this story; they would be reminding him of it whenever there was a chance.

The bitch came creeping out from behind the counter, her eyes bright as oil. Silently she jumped through the broken window. The nearest dogs followed, smashing the remaining panes.

The pack swirled for a minute and then flowed away, some through the window, more through the door. A single can rolled across the floor and came to rest against the wall. He saw the bright red label and the word
PEAS
. He walked over and picked it up, looking for rust stains without thinking what he was doing. There was a terrible pounding ache in his head, so bad that he could hardly see. From the drawer under the cash register, he took a bottle of whisky and swallowed as much as he could stand.

That helped a little. He looked around. There wasn’t a thing left of the floor displays. Even the magazine racks had been turned over. And on the wall shelves, only the contents of the very highest ones were left.

Still holding the bottle in his hand, he walked out of the wrecked littered grocery to the back where he lived. The door had been closed tightly so that the dogs had not come in there.

It was time somebody did something about the dogs, he thought. He would take his gun and go after them.

He took another swallow of whisky and set the bottle down on the dresser. His neck did not hurt anymore, just a kind of stinging. With the proper kind of mirror he could even fix it himself.

But, no, his daughter would be the one for that. He would walk over to her place. She would be there.

He unbuttoned his shirt and dropped it on the floor. He opened the dresser drawer that held his handkerchiefs, jerked it open so hard that it fell to the floor. He did not bother picking it up. He took a single clean handkerchief and knotted it around his neck. He touched the wounds lightly. They would have to be cleaned out at once. He’d seen kids ignore birdshot wounds and come down with blood-poisoning.

He could hear his wife laughing and shouting to him: “Julius, hey, Julius, what happen? What happen to you?”

“Moment,” he called. “Moment.”

He would have to put on a clean shirt before he went outside.

B
Y THE TIME HE
had walked out of his bedroom, Julius Arcenaux had a fresh shirt and freshly combed hair. He had even poured some tonic on it: his hand hadn’t been too steady so some of the liquid had run down his neck. The whisky was getting to him now, and he felt better.

He jerked open the door and went out into the grocery. And in the middle of the floor, turning around and around on her heel to survey the damage was Mamere Terrebonne. He was startled. He didn’t know what exactly he had expected, but it wasn’t the old lady. She was so old she was a little queer: she would see things and talk to people who weren’t there. Kids swore that when the moon was dark they’d seen her out on the long south sand bar waiting for the loup-garous to come and talk to her. Maybe so, maybe not. Nobody was afraid of her, not even her great-grandchildren, who took turns sleeping in the house with her so that she would not be alone.

Even so, Julius was startled when he saw the thin bent figure and the brown wrinkled face, thin and hawked as a gull’s.

“They have made you a mess, yes?” Her voice wasn’t like an old woman’s voice. It was low and soft and a little husky. You could almost hear the young woman she’d been once.

“Um,” he agreed and shook his head slightly. He looked around. There was really no one else inside. He glanced out a window. Sitting in a chair in the shade of a sweet olive bush was Philomene, her hands folded across her big stomach. She was talking to someone, a man, but Julius did not recognize the back. He could see though, how brightly she was smiling. And how, now and then, she would look over at the grocery and laugh out loud.