The Hard Blue Sky Read Online Free PDF Page 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.

P ERIQUE L OMBAS CUT ACROSS the island, walking fast in spite of the heat, heading for the wharf on