Under a Dark Summer Sky (13 page)

Everyone would win. Once the men had better housing and food, they would be more productive. His veins felt full of light, his head a kaleidoscope of possibilities.

There was something about Missy. Being around her made him feel he could achieve anything, the way he used to feel. Before the war, before the horrors that followed homecoming, before the lost years on the road. When he was with her, he believed.

He quickened his steps.

• • •

Mama had a squawking chicken by the neck when Missy shuffled dejectedly into the yard.

“Back already?” Mama asked as she broke the bird's neck with one quick twist of her wrist.

Missy just nodded and flopped onto a chair on the porch, staring at her worn, dusty old shoes.

“He not there?” asked Mama as she plucked with great dexterity. Soon her ankles were mounded with feathers, which she would use to restuff their thin mattresses. “That a shame, baby. Never mind, dinner be ready soon. Come on inside and help me with the peas.”

Missy did not raise her eyes. For the first time in maybe her whole life, she had no appetite. “Not hungry, Mama. Think I'll just set here awhile.”

“Missy Douglas”—Mama's tone was sharp—“you get in this house and help me with them peas. You ain't too big for me to take a switch to, you hear?”

Missy hauled herself out of the chair. The disappointment at Henry's nonappearance settled into her limbs and made her feel heavy and sluggish, like moving through deep water. The future stretched before her, dull and flat as a swamp. The pattern of all her days was fixed: get up, do chores, go to work, do chores, have dinner with Mama, go to bed with the encyclopedia. One day, Mama would be gone. She could not imagine that time, could not fathom the depths of loneliness it would bring. Like a winter that never ended. Although she had no experience of cold weather, she had seen pictures of snow in books. It made everything so white and still, took away all the colors from the trees and flowers, the sun just a weak ember in the sky. Nothing but empty stillness, forever and ever.
That
what
loneliness
look
like.

Whatever Mama said, Missy was too old to be treated like a child. At that moment, she felt every one of her twenty-six years. As she opened the door, she began to say, “Mama, I ain't no—” when she saw him. Leaning against the sink, looking oh so pleased with himself, in a tight black shirt that accentuated the muscles he had earned on the construction site. And Mama beside him, grinning like a crazy person.

Before she could stop herself, she blurted, “Where was you? I waited. I was there. You said you be there!” She didn't care that it sounded pitiful, just like the child she was no more. She was ferociously, ridiculously, glad to see him. Waiting for him that evening had only served to remind her how much she hated doing that very thing. It seemed like she had been waiting all her life for Henry Roberts, in one way or another.

“I sorry, Missy,” he said, but he was trying not to grin as well. “They put us under curfew, on account of the fight at the barbecue. But I sneaked out anyway, because we was supposed to go for a walk. And that was important to me.”

Missy turned her face away in embarrassment. He had risked his job to come see her. The question burned inside her, but for now, it could wait.

“Do you forgive me?” he asked.

“I suppose so.” Up close, she could see the curls of gray in his hair, his eyebrows.

“All right then,” he said. “And I make you a promise. I will never disappoint you again. You hear me?” He took her hands. His palms were warm against hers. They stayed like that for a few moments while Mama busied herself with the peas, humming noisily on the porch.

“Now,” asked Henry, “what's a man got to do to get fed around here?”

Some hours later, plates washed and chickens fed, Mama and Missy talked quietly over an unconscious Henry. Mama had her sewing basket between her feet, darning on her lap. Missy just sat and watched him sleep. His eyelashes curled up where they rested on his cheek. His chest rose and fell. A small snore escaped his mouth.

He had begun to drift off even before they had finished dinner, head propped on one hand, eyelids drooping.

“You put knockout drops in this chicken, Mama?” he had asked as he yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Guess I better get back to camp.” The lamplight smoothed the corners of the little room. The curtains hung motionless in the muggy air.

“Naw, Henry,” Mama had said, bustling to the sink. “You best stay here. The road too dark and you too beat. Like as not you'll get lost, end up in old Zeke's mangrove swamp. Gator'll have you, and that'll be that.” She wiped her soapy hands on her apron. “Here.” She got out a patchwork quilt that was more darning than cloth. “In case you get cold.”

“Mama, it's ninety degrees,” he had said sleepily.

Missy had met Mama's eyes. It was a sign of how long he had been away. People in Heron Key had a different temperature gauge. Seventy degrees was sweater weather. When the thermometer hit sixty, it was time to get out the winter coats. The quilt was light and soft from endless washings. He settled into a saggy, heavily patched armchair with his feet on Mama's sampler stool. His head began to loll right away, like it was filled with lead weights. “Guess I could catch just a few winks,” he said, “long as I'm back at first light for roll call…” And with that, he was asleep.

Missy whispered, “Do you think…?”

“Think what?” Mama took a thread between her teeth and bit it off cleanly.

“Just wondered… He goes all over, to France, and California, and New York…and then, just by chance, he ends up back here, of all places. Seems kinda strange, don't you think?”

“Ain't nothing to do with chance,” Mama said. “The Lord has a plan for that boy. And for you too.” She tied off a stitch and stretched her arms above her head to the sound of popping joints. “Time for bed. Tomorrow I'll be over at Doc's to help change Missus Kincaid's dressings.”

That the woman still did not wake was a worry, but Mama hoped it meant all her energy was being used for healing. As she and Doc had worked to clean and dress the wounds, each one had revealed itself. Hilda's body was a testament to pain. They found her missing tooth, embedded in her tongue. They straightened her broken nose as best they could. Doc said she had opened her eyes briefly. That she could still see was surely a miracle.

Mama looked over at Henry, whose face in repose regained some of its boyish softness.
What
happened
to
you?
The rumors in town had grown from whispers to open talk about him…about how being in France had given him all kinds of ideas that had no place in Heron Key, how he had danced shamelessly with Hilda at the barbecue, even laying hands on her. How he and Missus Campbell… A black man who could bed one white man's wife could easily beat the tar out of another, no problem. Once the line was crossed, it made it easy to cross another and another, went the thinking.

She looked at Missy watching Henry, her eyes studying him like he was a ghost that could just evaporate any minute into thin air.
Plenty
of
people
willing
to
believe
a
lie, if it filled a need.
And the town definitely had a need, and a burning one at that: it needed a name and a face to fit a crime, and any of those crazy veterans would do. And Mr. Kincaid spending almost all his time at the club, just coming home for clean clothes and more cigarettes, didn't bother to check on his wife… It wasn't right, none of it.

Mama could sense the anger bubbling like lava through the town, could almost smell it in the air, with each day that passed without an arrest. And if Hilda died, which could well happen…
Dear
Lord, please make her well, or there will be hell to pay. And still may be, whatever happens.

• • •

It was barely dawn when Missy felt it, a change in the air around her bed. She had not really slept, her head too full of questions and the sound of Henry's snores from one side and Mama's from the other. The floor creaked slightly. A dark shape stood over her. She started to scream, but then the shape said, “Missy, it's me.” His face came into focus in the gray morning light from the bare window.

Henry sat down on the edge of the bed. She should have felt embarrassed by his eyes as they traveled over her white nightgown, but she did not. He said, “I got to go back now, but I can sneak out again, I reckon.” Half of his face was in darkness, the other half lit by the pale glow from the window. Somewhere a rooster crowed.

“Wait, don't go yet.” She scooted over to the wall to make room. “Set a minute.”

He sat down, grimaced, and removed a large object from underneath him: volume M to Z of the
Encyclopedia
Britannica
. “I see now that you weren't kidding about this,” he said.

She took the book from him, smoothed the worn ocher cover with her hand. “It helps me get to sleep. I pick a page at random, any page, and it always seems to be the right thing for that day.” Shadows from the past crowded around her, old memories of the people they used to be.

“What you read last night?”

Almost overcome by the nearness of him, conscious of her thin cotton nightgown, she blurted, “Voyeurism.”

“From the French,
to
see
. But it means more than that, don't it?”

“Yes, it's when you watch someone, and they don't know you doing it. Like last night—” She caught herself just in time, but his bemused expression said he knew exactly what had happened.

“You was watching me, when I was asleep.”

Desperate to get out of the hole she had dug for herself, she pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “So you speak French then?”

He smiled in a sad way. “A little. I picked it up from…people I met there.” His eyes went to the square of watery sky.

“What was her name?”

He turned to look at her. “You a surprising young woman, Missy.”

She shrugged. “Don't take a genius to work it out. We heard stories of how the…ladies there, even white ladies…” She did not know how to finish the sentence. Her insides churned at the thought of his hands on Missus Campbell's pale, skinny body.

“It true, what you heard. That did happen.” Now he stared at her hard, like she had an answer to some important question.

“You a grown man,” she said, trying to manage an air of worldly disinterest with a shrug. “Ain't got nothin' to explain.”

“Oh, but I do, Missy; I do.” And he leaned right in, to where she could feel his breath on her face. “You see, I figured I'd go back to France one day. They got a better way of livin' there. Whites and coloreds, they's just all people. Not like here.” His eyes got that clouded look again. “When I come back after the war, I got… You could say I got stuck. Me and the others who fought. I lost my way, Missy, and it seemed like I had nowhere to go. Not France, not Heron Key, just…nowhere.”

She could not imagine how that felt, she who had always been surrounded by familiar people and things, as much a part of Heron Key as the palms and the coral. What did it feel like to lose your place in the world? It must be like purgatory, she decided, a place that often got talked about in church. It scared her more than hell, where there was at least something going on all the time. But if a person was just to drift, unattached to anything or anyone, in endless emptiness… She could conceive of nothing worse.

He turned to find her eyes on him. “What is it, Missy?”

Just
ask
him.
“I don't know—”

“Ever since last night, there's been somethin' on your mind. I can always tell with you. Like that time you let all the turtles loose from old Simpkins's kraal? Or when you thought you'd caught chicken pox from one of the hens?” A dry chuckle escaped him.

And he looked, just then, in the weak light of dawn, like the old Henry again. The lines and the scars and the gray stubble were all smoothed away by the gentle glow. It took her back to a time when she could say anything to him, anything at all, and it would be all right. He had always been part of her life, and always would be. The warm cloak of the past wrapped itself around her.

“They say you baby Roy's daddy.” There. It was out. The words hung in the air like ash.

And then his face was old again and she wished she could claw the words out of the air and swallow them down, if it would erase the lines from his face. He said nothing for a long moment, and then, “Do they now? And you, Missy, what you think to that? You believe I did that?”

His eyes seemed to fill her whole field of vision. She saw her reflection there, and all the memories of their time together. The questions, the doubts, the fears…they all melted away under his gaze. “I do not.” And it was true—the certainty she had sought was there as she looked at him. Without a conscious decision, she put her arms around him, leaned her head on his shoulder. “You somewhere now.”

“I know. I with you, Missy.”

They sat like that for several minutes. She felt the thump of his heartbeat against her cheek and the warmth of his skin beneath her hand. Then he loosened her arms, got up, looked down at her like he had a lot more to say. The hens clucked beneath her window, impatient for their breakfast.

She watched him move quietly to the door. He paused there and whispered, like an afterthought: “Thérèse. Her name was Thérèse.”

• • •

Henry strode toward the coast road. He dared not risk missing the roll call, and yet he could have easily stayed with Missy on that hard, narrow bed for a lot longer. Maybe forever. He thought of the soft weight of her pressed against him. It had taken a tremendous effort of will to keep his eyes off the fullness of her body under the thin nightgown. Had she been anyone else, he would have taken her right there, with no care for Mama in the next room or the curfew or anything. As he had done with others on so many occasions in the past. But this was Missy, and that made it all different.

His head, which had been fogged for so long, suddenly felt newly scrubbed clean. When he had said Thérèse's name, it was like a spell had been broken. For so many years, he had kept her image in his mind, her red-gold hair on the pillow in the room above the
boulangerie
. It summed up everything he wanted to move toward—and everything he wanted to leave behind. And it summed up all he had lost. But when he said her name, just now, to Missy, instead of the usual pang of longing and regret, he felt…nothing.

Instead, his eyes were filled with the sight of Missy. She had said, “You somewhere now.” And he had felt it, at that moment, a feeling of settled contentment, of belonging, the first time in…he could not remember how long. Maybe it was the first time ever.

A band of flamingo-pink light had begun to spread along the horizon, which reflected on the waves rolling alongside him. There was just enough time for him to slip back into the cabin before roll call, if he hurried. Nearly running now, the speed of his steps matched his racing thoughts. A new kind of plan appeared in his mind, one that he had never considered during all the years that he had been away. It came to him fully formed, so clear it was like watching a newsreel, but in color.

He saw a pretty little house by the water, where cool breezes lifted the curtains that Missy had made. There was a vegetable patch and chickens around her feet. He would work doing maintenance on the big wooden houses like the Kincaids' and the old country club, which he happened to be walking past. Those places always needed repairs to the damage from the relentless sun and salt.

They would have babies, he decided. There was still time. They would have a little boy who he would teach how to fish and make things with tools, and a little girl with Missy's shy smile, who he would read stories to. Selma would love that too—she always wanted to be an aunt. Missy could stop doing for the Kincaids and take up…what?

Of
course!

The answer came to him so suddenly that he halted in his tracks. She could start the first school for coloreds in Heron Key. God knows they needed one, and she was more than capable, having a whole entire encyclopedia stored in her head.

He ran faster. He had run a lot over the years, but this was different. It felt like, for the first time, his tired old feet were taking him
toward
something.

Their kids would go to college one day and come back talking about strange things they had seen, completely beyond their parents' comprehension. He and Missy would grow old and care for each other. He could see it all, every detail, them sitting side by side on the porch he would build. They would rock in their chairs and talk at day's end, in the golden light of the setting sun, surrounded by good smells from the kitchen.

He halted again, shook his head. It was so real, he could almost taste it.

But then he recalled the thing she had struggled to voice. He had known, from the moment she arrived last evening, that something was wrong. He could always tell when she was troubled. But he had been completely taken aback to learn what it was: “They say you baby Roy's daddy.”
Where
on
earth
did
that
come
from?
He had a hard time even picturing Noreen Campbell, had maybe seen her a handful of times. He recalled a slight, pinched blond with downcast eyes. There was talk of regular beatings.