Under a Dark Summer Sky (5 page)

Everyone had told her she would get used to the monotonous, wet heat of Florida. She had not. Even after all these years, she longed for the crisp catch of the fall bonfire smoke in her throat, the crystal stillness of snow-covered pines, the raucous choruses of migrating geese.

She stared in despair at the figure in the mirror, the gaping buttons, the bulges at her hips. She pulled harder on the fabric. All her pretty dresses had gone. She could not bear to look at them once the baby weight had set like concrete on her stomach, her thighs. Soon, Nettie would have some new dresses for her, shapeless tents in which she could hide her ravaged figure away. They represented defeat. She only wanted to stay home, away from the scornful glances of the other women who met for coffee and tennis at the country club. Their baby weight seemed to melt away within weeks, like the snow she missed so much. At one time, not so long ago, those same women had wanted to be her friend, when she was the slim, stunning beauty queen, with a future as bright and sparkling as the sea. After all, she had been crowned Miss Palmetto, two years running. Hilda Humbert as she was then, saddled with an ugly stump of a name but blessed with a fragile beauty that could make grown men weep.

All through her early teens, Daddy had seen off any boy brave or stupid enough to attempt to get near her. She was special, a sacred treasure, a fruit of perfect ripeness to be presented to the best of society at the cotillion ball on her nineteenth birthday. It seemed as if the very stars had aligned to shine for her. Her life, Daddy always said, was charmed. Only the best for her, always the best.

And then, not long after she turned eighteen, Nelson Kincaid had arrived, at the wheel of a cream-colored Cadillac roadster with burgundy interior. She knew very well not to talk to men alone, but when he pulled alongside the curb and asked directions to Delaney Street, her good manners obliged her to respond.

As she leaned down to explain that there was no Delaney Street in town, the occupant of the passenger seat became visible. On a pink velvet cushion sat a caramel lop-eared rabbit. “Oh!” was all she could think to say.

The rabbit rejoiced in the name of Earl, she learned. Men she had been trained to resist, even men as shiny and handsome as Nelson Kincaid, with his wavy black hair and slow, sassy smile. But Earl had captivated her with one look of his deep brown eyes. He began to groom his ears with flicks of a tiny pink tongue. She said, “Oh,” again, but this time quietly. And when Nelson asked if he could drive her home, with Earl and his cushion on her lap, she had simply nodded and gotten into the car. All training forgotten. Much, much later, she realized that all was lost in that moment.

Hilda sat on the edge of the four-poster bed and allowed her mind to drift back to those first few weeks after she got into the car. She had known instinctively to keep their meetings secret. He would park in the cool shade of the sea grapes at the end of a quiet track that led to the beach. They would sit in the Cadillac, Earl asleep on his cushion, and listen to the waves and talk. She had never talked to a man like a real person. Whenever Daddy's friends came to call, she was presented as a doll to be admired. And Nelson had done such interesting things, traveled to places in Europe and Asia as a merchant sailor—places that only existed for her in the geography books she rarely opened at school. He promised to take her to those places. They would leave the stagnant, suffocating heat of small-town Heron Key and see the world together.

They had met three times before he even took her hand. She just let hers rest on the seat between them, until slowly he picked it up and held it. His felt smooth and dry. She had been kissed once before, by Tommy Higgins, on a dare at a school dance. His lizard tongue had pushed against her teeth. He smelled of sweat and teenage boy. The whole disappointing episode had left her wondering what exactly all the fuss was about. But by the time Nelson finally kissed her, she wanted him to do it so badly that the first touch of his lips was like ice cream on a hot day—cool, sweet, and delicious. His hands had cupped her face, and he had smelled of hair oil and cedar. She wanted more; her body clamored for it.

She didn't care about anything else, not her friends, not school, not the cotillion ball coming up in a few months. She didn't even care about Daddy. She would walk home after their meetings, every nerve aflame, sure that the signs must be visible to all, and try to compose herself. Rejoining normal life was like surfacing from deep under the ocean. She had seen fish pulled up too quickly from the depths, their eyes popped right out of their heads. So she walked home slowly, to give herself time to weave the lies about reading at the library or a homework session with her girlfriends. The lies came easily, so easily, and this made her feel it must be all right. She lied right to Daddy's face and felt nothing, nothing at all. Her dreams were filled with images of falling, endlessly falling.

Hilda touched her lips, leaned against the bedpost, and remembered the feel of his kisses. It had been a long time since he had kissed her like that, since before Nathan was born. Sometimes she thought of Nelson like a sickness, a disease that had turned her mind against itself. Back then she needed to be with him, to feel his hands on her, like she needed to breathe.

The ceiling fan traced slow circles above her. She recalled the time when the kissing and touching were no longer enough. Nearly wild with frustration, she couldn't concentrate on anything and acted so irritable at home that she risked discovery. In rare quiet moments when the fever lifted from her brain, she observed herself as from a distance and wondered how she had become this animal in just a few short weeks.

When it finally happened—in the back of the Cadillac, of course—he had had to cover her mouth to stifle her howls of pleasure.

They were careful, or rather he was careful, with his supply of rubbers, which nearly reduced both of them to hysterical laughter. As time passed, her body became attuned to his. They fitted together perfectly, moved together just right. Every day, she woke aching for his touch.

But then came the day when she was alone in the house. Momma and Daddy had gone to the hospital in Miami to see the specialist. Daddy toted an oxygen cylinder on wheels with him everywhere, but even that seemed to be failing. The house was quiet, with only the
tick
tick
of the ceiling fan. It was one of those rare Florida spring days, when the sun was just nicely warm, before the arrival of the sweltering summer humidity.

Hilda decided it was the perfect opportunity and called Nelson at his rooming house, holding the phone close to her mouth. He sounded a little strange, taken aback by her urgency, but he arrived within a few minutes.

“Hilda,” he said, as soon as she kissed him, “I got something to tell you.”

“Later,” she said, not really listening as she led him up the stairs. A bed! They were going to do it in a real bed, for the first time! Just like it would be when they were married. “Tell me later.”

“No,” he said, and something in his tone cut through the haze of lust in her head. People never said no to Hilda. “I need to tell you now.” He took both her hands and stopped halfway up the stairs. “It's important. Let's sit down.” He settled on the step above hers. She looked up at him, trying to detect some sign of their usual warmth, but his head was turned to the side. “You know I love you, honey…” He stopped, cleared his throat.

Her stomach felt like it was full of angry wasps.

“The thing is,” he said, “I never thought I'd meet someone like you… You're so beautiful, and young, and oh, so”—he shrugged helplessly, like he had no choice—“and I'm…”

“Whatever it is, Nelson,” she had said, leaning forward, now full-blown scared, “just tell me. Whatever it is, we'll figure it out.”

“Leaving.”

“You…what?” Of all the things he could have said, this was the last thing she had expected. They were going to be together; he said so all the time. She had put a hand to her face, so sure was she that he had slapped her.

“Hilda, I never meant to stay so long. I was just passing through that day. Then you appeared on the sidewalk like a vision… What's a man to do?” Again the helpless look. “But I've got business up in Miami, long overdue now, thanks to you.” He stroked the side of her face. She jerked away from his hand. “Oh, don't be like that, sugar. We had a good time—”

“What about our…our plans?” The tears came, big sobs that fractured her words. “You said…you said you loved me.”

“I do, honey, I do, but we cain't be together, not like that. Your daddy has big things in store for you. You could do anything, get outta Heron Key, go to New York. You don't need me. And I've… There's stuff I gotta do.”

“Take me with you.” She clutched his leg. Miss Palmetto, two years in a row, was begging, and she did not care one bit. Her life would end when he walked out that door. “Oh, please, Nelson, take me with you. I'll do anything—”

“I cain't, baby girl. I'm sorry, but I cain't.” He looked away again, and she realized that some part of him had already left.

“You mean you won't!” After all the weeks of feeling so grown-up, she suddenly felt like a helpless child.

“All right,” he said and looked at her, but his eyes saw somewhere else, someone else. “You gonna make me say it.” That look made her feel so cold and alone. “Someone's waitin' for me in Miami. I've dawdled here too long.”

That's all I've been to him, a dawdle.
“Oh, no,” she sobbed. “No, no.” She hugged her knees, wished her parents were there. Daddy would make it right. Nelson's promises had all been lies, all the whispered endearments, just so much malarkey.

Then she looked up at him again and the tears stopped. His black hair had fallen forward over one eye. His lips were moist. She could see right down the open neck of his shirt to his bare chest, which moved with each breath. She felt the heat from his skin, imagined the taste of his mouth. Tobacco and the cinnamon chewing gum he liked so much.

“I'm sorry, darlin'. I'm—” he began.

“Can she do
this
?” She pushed him back on the stairs, tore open the front of her dress. His expression changed. His eyes danced with excitement, pupils blacker than black. She unzipped his pants. His breath quickened. He groaned at her touch. She rubbed against him, used her hands, her mouth, used everything he had taught her over the past weeks. She felt powerful, womanly, to have him on his back. Under her control. He would not forget her so easily.

But then with a roar he was on top of her, the edge of the stair hard in her back. His mouth was hot on hers, her hands pulled him closer, ever closer, and with every thrust, she knew they would be together always.

When finally he rolled off her, his face was closed. “Oh, Hilda,” he breathed, “what have you done?”

Her pregnancy had become apparent almost immediately. There was just time, before Daddy died, for him to meet Nelson. It was not a success. Daddy just sat in a corner with his oxygen, too weak even to rage, the room filled with the gasps of his ruined lungs. He was gone by the time of the hastily arranged wedding. Momma had given her away, and she was gone too by the time Nathan arrived. Without Missy, whose services she had inherited with the house, Hilda would have had a nervous collapse.

She looked again at the enemy in the mirror, cheeks flushed, eyes bright in some cruel parody of her old self. Her once-fine figure, now buried under mounds of fat. It was no wonder Nelson preferred to sleep alone.

She was hungry, always hungry. There would be such a feast tonight. And she would take a tiny plate and pick at it all evening, while others piled theirs high and went back for seconds. The food called to her like a lover, promising pleasure and comfort and an end to sorrow.

With a last flick of her still-shiny blond hair, she prepared to face the stares, the ridicule, the barely concealed contempt for the oddest couple in town. She planned to get very, very drunk indeed.

By the time Henry finished helping with the gator cleanup, it was late afternoon. They had left no trace of the butchery on the lawn and dispersed just as the big Cadillac carrying Hilda Kincaid crunched down the drive. Missy's secret was safe. Selma had taken the meat home to prepare for the barbecue, trying as usual to persuade Henry back to her house. “Why you want to go all the way back to camp?” she had asked. “You can get washed better in my bathtub. Just look at you; you need a good soak. And I got some of Jerome's clothes to fit you.”

“You make good sense, as always, Sister,” he had said as he wiped his machete on the grass. “But I got to go back. It's important I be there, for the men.” He slipped the machete into his belt.

Her mouth was set in a disapproving line. She seemed to have aged fast while he had been away, but then, he reckoned, eighteen years was half her life so far. At the same age, his mother had seemed like an old woman. There was gray in Selma's hair and tiredness in her walk. He leaned in to kiss her cheek, which she accepted with a glare. He whispered, “See you later…Sunny.” The choice of this relic from their childhood was deliberate, what he used to call her whenever he was in her bad graces, which was often. It almost never failed to deflect the worst of her ire, like throwing sand over flames. But he always knew they were not extinguished, just smoldering, and could rise up again at any moment.

The muscles in her face fought against the smile. “Git.” She slapped his shoulder. “You got a lotta walkin' to do.”

• • •

Henry headed for the coast road, where there would be a breeze to dry the sweat on his face. The sun was still fierce and seemed to get stronger as it sank toward the horizon, on its way to the sudden, spectacular tropical sunset. He had forgotten the way the sun seemed to laze all afternoon in a slow arc toward the ocean and then, around supper time, drop the world into night like a rock into a barrel.

He was tempted to jump straight into the ocean, clothes and all, it looked so cool and inviting, but this stretch of beach was for whites only. Families had already begun to set up their picnic stations. Fathers fought with beach umbrellas, mothers flicked sand off the blankets, children ran screeching into the waves. A few of the parents eyed him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion, as if he were an exotic but dangerous animal at the zoo. A little girl sped over to him, a brown ring of melted chocolate around her mouth, stubby legs making hard work of the sand. She offered him her bright red bucket and a shy smile. Right behind was her mother, out of breath and windblown. She grabbed up her daughter roughly and marshaled her back down the beach. He heard the little girl cry, “Why, Mommy?” “Because he's a bad man,” hissed the mother, with a backward glance at Henry. “That's why.” Her glance took in his blood-soaked T-shirt and filthy pants. He tipped his hat, but she had already rejoined the husband who stood on their blanket, alert, hands on hips.

Henry stepped up his pace, eyes narrowed against the glare off the water.

He fell into the familiar rhythm that had taken him on foot across the country and back. The soft crunch of his boots freed his mind like nothing else. A pelican skimmed the water in an effortless, silent glide alongside him. He realized there was a debt to be paid, to Selma, to Missy. A debt of explanation, for why he had stayed away so long, why he had chosen to ramble aimlessly around the country after the war rather than return home to his people. And why, even after he came to the camp, it was months before he made contact, and after that, only venturing into town rarely. He was grateful Selma had not demanded payment of this debt, but everything in her voice and body said to him, “We have unfinished business, you and me.”

How could he explain when he did not really understand it himself? Where to begin? How could he make her feel what it was like, when men you've trained with, lived with more intimately than any woman, get mashed to gristle, their blood in your eyes, your nose, your mouth? What it was like to harvest body parts, instead of cotton, from the fields? What happens to your feet when they're immersed for weeks in a trench filled with mud and shit?

Equally, he lacked the words to tell her about the thrill of fighting alongside white soldiers as valued comrades—French soldiers, because his own countrymen would not have them, but still. The French locals had treated them like heroes, like their own brothers. His boys had played “le jazz” to ecstatic, gyrating crowds in packed clubs. And the women…the women. He thought of Thérèse, the last morning before he was shipped home. Her red hair shining in the sunlight on the pillow, the smell of fresh bread from the
boulangerie
below. How to explain that he could step out with her in any bar in town and be greeted with cheers and free drinks, rather than the lynching rope?

He pulled his hat down to shade his eyes and loped on. At first, the homecoming had seemed to meet all his expectations. It looked like everything was really, finally going to be different, just as they had hoped. Even now, he had to smile at the memory of that parade, right up Fifth Avenue. His men had marched proudly in step, exchanged slightly disbelieving glances, nervous grins saying, “Is this for real?” Happy, flag-waving crowds lined their route, the cheers ricocheted like bullets off the tall buildings. There was Li'l Joe, and Franklin, and Sammy, Tyrone, Lemuel, and Jeb. Jeb's little legs had to make two strides for every one of the bigger men's. Together they had marched in hopeful formation toward their future. Henry's plan afterward had been to visit the folks in Florida, but then come back north—to do what, he was not exactly sure, but opportunities for someone like him seemed to ooze from the sidewalks. He would make enough money to give Grace and Selma a comfortable life. Then he would go back to Thérèse, to the room above the
boulangerie
that always smelled of warm bread.

A
fine
plan. When did it first go wrong?
he wondered. When the killings started in Washington and Chicago, the very places where he had thought to try his luck? They heard that Li'l Joe got strung up in Mississippi. Sammy was dragged to death behind a car in Illinois. Tyrone was burned alive for taking part in a labor rally. So he and Jeb had started to walk, away from the riots, away from the burning smell of hate and the rank terror of change. They had worked in fields, slept in barns, sometimes hopped a boxcar, but mostly walked.

During those lost years, he often thought of his mother, his sister, and Missy and the others in Heron Key. If he tried to imagine going back, it was Missy's face he saw, the day she waved him off at the station. The shock and disappointment in her eyes if she could see what he had become—gaunt, weathered, in shabby clothes stiff with dried sweat. He had let them down, all of them. The proud officer, in his shiny shoes, who they had seen off at the station all those years ago, was dead. He sank into the clammy embrace of failure. It was best for everyone if he stayed away. He no longer had a plan. He and Jeb simply existed. They slept in vacant buildings, scavenged in garbage cans for food, did odd jobs. And then one day, while they were in Georgia on a fruit-picking crew, came the call to march on Washington. The government had decided that it would not, after all, pay them the long-promised bonus now, when they really needed it, but rather in 1945, which seemed a century away. This final insult had provoked a reaction, even from the weary veterans. A protest had been organized to explain why this was not acceptable. And so they trekked north to join in.

He could still feel the anger, after all these years, like the smell of smoke that just won't go away. When he and Jeb had arrived at the marchers' shantytown in Washington, it was thick in the air. Thousands of veterans, with their families, had pitched tents in front of the White House. When the army troops arrived to disperse them, at first the veterans milled about in confusion at the sight of their old comrades. Then the soldiers began to fire gas grenades at them, and mounted troops moved in to slash with bayonets, led by a major who someone said went by the name of Patton. The Washington skyline turned orange with the fires of burning tents. Henry saw women and children trampled beneath the horses' hooves. And finally, when it was clear they had lost, he and Jeb joined a slow-moving river of dejected, defeated humanity heading back across the Potomac. Hope gone, faith gone. Only anger remained.

And then, when it had seemed they could sink no lower, a lifeline had found its way to them in the form of a letter from Lemuel. He wrote that a government construction project in the Florida Keys was hiring, for real pay. Not as good as the bonus, it seemed, but better than picking fruit. More than that, Henry decided the location of the project was a sign that the universe wanted him to go home. If it was going to work that hard, he figured, then the least he could do was see what purpose it had for him.

But when he arrived back in Heron Key, he was unprepared for the shock of so many familiar sights and smells, having long ago given up on ever seeing the place again. It looked exactly like it had all those years ago, as if he had only stepped away for a few minutes. He half expected to see his younger self stroll by. It was eerily disconcerting, like an endless attack of déjà vu. He felt like a ghost, haunting a former life where he didn't belong anymore. His men went to town, especially on payday, but he made up excuses to stay behind. The months went by, and still he made no contact. Although his cowardice shamed him, he could face no one from the past, no one who had known him as he was. The extra shame barely registered, just got added to the great big well of it inside him. He was unwilling to face the questions and curious stares of the people he had left behind, even the ones he cared about. The only place he had felt at home was in Doc's kitchen, drinking bourbon after dark. Only Doc, who had served and understood. So once in a while, he snuck into town like a thief.

And then it happened. One night, on his way back from Doc's, he saw her. At first he thought it was a drunken hallucination. Missy passed by in the direction of her Mama's house, head down, weary feet shuffling on the dusty road. Although she hummed under her breath, it was not a happy sound. And then she was gone around the corner. Suddenly he felt completely sober…and very, very foolish. The next day, he had presented himself at Selma's house, as protocol demanded. Reporting for duty.

He thought back to the scene at the Kincaids' house. So now Missy was all grown up. His little Missy, no longer little. She used to leap into his arms each time he arrived to help with her homework, fairly vibrating with the excitement of learning. Even smeared head to foot with gator gore, she was still pretty. And the embarrassment made her prettier still. She was a girl no more, not even a young woman. He had missed all of that. Still working for the Kincaids and living with Mama, Selma had said with a sad shake of her head. He ran his dirty cloth around his neck. Missy could have been something. There had even been talk of her getting a scholarship to college at Howard. And then her useless daddy got himself drowned. Still, where was her husband, her babies? He had wanted to ask Selma, but that would have alerted her extremely keen senses to an interest he was not sure he felt…or even deserved to feel.

The coast road bent around the curve of the point that brought him within sight and smell of the camp. The sulfurous stink of the latrines caught in his throat. On the colored side, he could see Jeb sluicing his skinny torso at the pump. The last of his men were here.
His
men. There was Jeb and Franklin, Lemuel and Sonny. That was all.

Henry noticed that his shadow had lengthened on the walk from town. He marched faster, boots kicking up puffs of coral dust. There was just enough time to get clean before they would need to turn around and go back for the barbecue. He did not mind the walk. It was something he knew well how to do. It seemed he had done little else than walk for years and years—always away, never toward anything.

Jeb looked up as he approached.

“Hey, man.” He straightened with a grin. “You look like shit.” Jeb, whose survival was down to one part blind luck and three parts Henry's protection, was the smallest of them. He joked that he had lied about his height to enlist. By all rights, he should never have even passed basic training, much less been deployed to France, yet he turned out to be fearless in combat and a great comfort to the dying. When Henry caught the shrapnel in his neck, it was Jeb's small hand that stopped him bleeding to death, under fire so intense that it kept even the medics away.

Henry peeled off his shirt. “Guess who's having gator steaks tonight? I had to help Selma get him ready for the grill. Outta the way, Shortstop.”

Jeb nudged the discarded shirt with a disdainful flick of his boot. “Might as well burn that thing. It ain't never comin' clean.”

“No chance—that's my best one. My sister can work miracles.” Henry stuffed the shirt under the side of their cabin. “She'll be there tonight.”

“A woman who looks like you? I scared already.”

Henry splashed water in Jeb's face. “That how you talk to your superiors? Where the others at?”

“Where you think?” Jeb indicated the mess hall with a jerk of his head.

Henry rubbed himself dry with Jeb's towel. The little girl on the beach had stayed with him, her green eyes so open and friendly despite his appearance. And her mother's expression, so familiar to him from his years on the road. He imagined what she would make of the veterans when they arrived at the barbecue after hours of drinking beer in the mess. It would fulfill her every fear and expectation. He was surprised to find it bothered him, as he had long become used to reactions like hers. Maybe it was seeing Missy again, or being in the familiar place of his past, but something felt different. He wanted it to be different, and not just for one silly white woman, but for the men themselves. For Selma. For Missy. And yes, for himself. “We'll see about that.”