Under a Dark Summer Sky (8 page)

There was a collective groan of disappointment. This happened every year, as Cyril bought the fireworks cheap to make the budget go farther. This year had been especially hard, with the budget cut almost to nothing.

“Ain't you got a flamethrower, Cyril?” came a voice from the crowd.

“Maybe Doc Williams can install one for you!” cackled another.

Cyril struck another match on his claw, hurrying to get the flame to the fuse in the stiff breeze. The fuse fizzled with a disappointing
sssss
. And again. Same result. In frustration, he tried every fuse, to no avail. “Sorry, folks, must have got damp.” He rose off his knees. “Or those crooks up in Brooksville sold me a load of duds. Sorry.” He put the matches away but left the rockets where they were.

People shuffled back up the beach. Zeke growled his unhappiness. Poncho let out a quiet, disappointed, “
Caw
.”

Deprived of the promised spectacle, the crowd seemed caught in a state of suspended anticipation. It was too early to go home, but the engine of the party had stalled. People freshened their drinks, scolded their children, and cast dismayed glances at the line of impotent rockets by the sea's edge.

Then came, from the road, a noise that at first sounded like loud rushing water. It resolved itself as it came closer into the sound of booted feet, marching in formation, crunching over the oyster-shell path to the beach. The veterans appeared from around the bend in the road, Henry at the lead. They came smartly to a halt with a stamp of feet where the path met the sand.

Henry surveyed the scene with a soldier's eye. On the colored side, people seemed to be spooked by something, and there were tearful women being comforted. There was also a great mound of fly-covered meat. Selma looked both tired and angry. Missy, barefoot in a pretty yellow dress, waited alone at the water. On the white side of the beach, there were long drag marks in the sand, coming from the colored side, spotted with what looked like blood. And at the water, a line of unattended, unfired rockets. “Good evening, everyone,” he said in his best officer voice. “Looks like we missed quite a party.”

Hilda observed the veterans' arrival with little interest. Her feet hurt. Nelson was clearly in no hurry to go home. There was sand in her hair and in her teeth. God only knew how it got there. Nelson whispered in Dolores's ear, his mouth up close to her glossy black hair. They looked like two thoroughbred horses together. Dolores flung her head back to laugh, exposing the strong lines of her throat. Hilda pictured them in the back of the Caddy, Dolores's toned legs wrapped around him, his hands at her narrow waist, his mouth on hers. The pain was overwhelming, like she was drowning in it.

Her eyes rested on the veterans' leader, the one with the big scar on his neck. He was clearly in command, carried himself straight and tall and the others followed. Hilda recognized him. She struggled to focus. Harold? Horace? No…Henry. Selma's brother, been away a long time, back now with the veterans to build that bridge. He had done some work at the house to make extra money, repairing one of the hurricane shutters.
A good-looking man, or he would be
, she thought,
if he got some decent food in him.
An idea began to crystallize.

Henry stooped to kiss his sister's cheek. The atmosphere hummed with electric tension, like there was a great big generator buried in the sand beneath their feet. “Jesus, Selma, what's been going on here?” he asked as he looked around.

“A black jackass attacked a white jackass. Same as every year, but then you wouldn't know about that, would you?” Before he could reply, she said, “Henry, your boys better not make no trouble. We had our fill for one night, I can tell you.”

“Don't you worry about my boys,” he said with a sideways glance at the men. Sonny twirled a petite, giggly woman to the music on the gramophone. Franklin was in conversation with a pretty girl too, showing her some of his driftwood carvings. Everyone was behaving like civilized people. So far. “They just here to have a good time. Any food left?” He patted his flat stomach. “I'm starvin'.”

She regarded him through narrowed, tired eyes. “Henry Roberts, what the hell's wrong with you?”

“What you mean, Sister?”

Selma gestured toward the figure of Missy, down by the surf. Her dress glowed against the dark blue of the water, which was streaked with the orange and red fragments of the sunset.

She looked so pretty. Had he been anywhere else, had she been anyone else, he most certainly would have been intending some private time with her. He could feel her waiting but did not want to disturb the picture she made.

“I don't know, Selma,” he said, suddenly at a loss. Unused to polite company, after so long on the road, he had forgotten how to be with people. Everything felt temporary, like it could all be washed away by the next wave. His former friends and neighbors studied him with guarded smiles. Their curious stares tingled on his back. “I don't think it's a good—”

Selma planted her feet, folded her arms, and leaned very close. Her breath, scented slightly with beer, was hot in his face. “You listen to me now. I put up with you comin' back here after so long, with barely a word for me or your mama, the good Lord rest her soul. I put up with you livin' out at the camp, showin' you care more for those…
men
”—she fairly spat the word—“than for your own people. But I will not”—she leaned even closer, her finger pushed into his chest—“I repeat,
not
put up with you breakin' that girl's heart for a second time.” Her voice went quiet. “You read me, Henry?”

“Now, Sunny, you just—”

“Don't call me that. I ain't in the mood.”

“All right, Selma.” He looked again at the figure in the yellow dress. “The whole truth is I ain't the person she remembers.” He recalled that little girl, who believed him capable of anything, who trusted him completely. The way she used to look at him, like he was some kind of hero because he knew stuff and could read stories…it made him believe too. All that was gone, everything she knew of him, burned away at a shantytown in Washington. He had nothing to offer someone like her. “You don't realize how I've changed—”

“We all changed, Henry!” Selma's nostrils flared, her hands spread wide, taking in the whole beach, Missy included. “S'what eighteen years will do to a body. She been waitin', all that time. For you. Now go on, say whatever you got to say. But be a man. It time you take responsibility for what you done.”

When Dwayne returned to the beach, having settled Ike in his cell for the night, he was greeted by an unexpected scene. A group of veterans chatted amiably with the townspeople. Everyone had a beer in hand, but no one was obviously drunk. A big guy with a goofy grin was doing a shambling shuffle. Even the rather scary one with the eye patch seemed to be getting on well with Violet. Some of the white folks had drifted over to get a better look at them.
Maybe
Doc
was
right, and it will be okay after all.

Something akin to disappointment settled over him. A good fight would be a welcome distraction from the words overheard earlier, which had twined around his brain like a strangler fig:
baby
Roy's daddy…Henry, Henry Roberts.
They slithered through his consciousness to the point where he could barely wrest his thoughts away.
Could
that
be
the
answer?
After so long, wondering, torturing himself and Noreen, was the answer as simple as that?

He forced himself to focus on what he could be sure of: Mabel was the worst kind of fool and an inveterate gossip. She slavered over a hot rumor the way he did a sirloin steak. Yet he also knew that, in small towns, this was exactly how news got around. It was often just a kernel of truth, wrapped in layers of speculation and even pure fantasy.

He jabbed the toe of his boot into the sand, hands sunk deep into his pockets. The timing of Roberts's arrival at the camp fit. Everyone knew the colored soldiers got a taste for white women overseas. And he was well aware of Roberts's reputation for causing trouble with his ideas. In every way, Roberts was the kind of man who could do such a thing.

The sand spilled over his boot. Millions of grains of it, in only a few inches of space. Was there even the tiniest grain of truth in what Mabel said? He had to find out.

His eyes were drawn to the other side of the beach, where Roberts was deep in conversation with his sister. The man clearly thought a lot of himself, just from the way he was standing, back straight, shoulders square. Like he was in charge of something. Dwayne could not help himself, despite all the rational arguments against it. He studied Henry's face, looking for the resemblance. The longer he looked, the more uncertain he felt. There were things that reminded him of Roy in the shape of Henry's face, the tilt of his head. But nothing definitive, nothing that would serve as conclusive proof.

More confused than ever, he was about to turn away, determined to master the turmoil in his head, when he saw something that fixed him to the spot. Henry and Selma were arguing. From their posture, Dwayne could tell it was about something important. Then Selma's lips formed the words that made up his mind. She said to Henry, “Now go on, say whatever you got to say. But be a man. It time you take responsibility for what you done.”

Hilda watched and waited for Henry to finish talking with his sister. When he set off down the beach, she saw her chance and rushed around to meet him. She hugged him with a cheery, “Welcome home, Henry!”

With deliberate care, he removed her hands and stepped away. “Evenin', Missus Kincaid.”

“Call me Hilda, silly!” She gave him a playful slap.

“Now, Hilda, I mean Missus Kincaid—”

“Dance with me, Henry, c'mon.” And she began to shuffle around him in a stumbling approximation of the beat coming from the gramophone. She tried to put his arms around her but he held her away stiffly, his smile taut. She was acutely aware that everyone had stopped to watch the display.

The shocked stares on both sides of the barrier fueled her determination. Now she had their attention. Now they would see. She was not someone to be mocked and ignored. After all, she had been Miss Palmetto. Two years running. “No one else will dance with me,” she said, loud enough for Nelson to hear. “Not even my own husband.” She switched to a stage whisper. “'Cause he likes those other girls better.”

Nelson flung his cigarette aside, separated himself from the group, and strode toward her. He took Hilda by the arm and began to drag her back across the barrier. His fingers dug painfully into the soft flesh of her arm. She caught Henry's eye.

Henry said mildly, “Hey, you don't need to hurt the lady.”

“You,” growled Nelson, “keep your hands off her. And keep off our property.” To the crowd, he said, “Pay no mind. My wife's not used to being in public.” Quietly to her, he said, “You're embarrassing yourself. Quit it.”

“Oh, pardon me,” she said as she jerked free. “I meant to embarrass
you
.”

They stood there, glaring at each other, breathing hard. Nelson broke away. “Fine,” he said and turned to go. “Do what you want.”

“I want,” she said with a tremor of the lips, “to go home.”

“Feel free,” he said over his shoulder.

“When…when will you be back?”

“When I damn well choose to, woman,” he said and returned to the group on the other side. One of the men patted his back. Dolores just shrugged at Hilda and sent her a look that said “game, set, match.”

Hilda looked around at the faces, black and white. She saw sadness and disgust there, compassion and disapproval. Her pretty sandals were stained and stretched. Her dress was awry, caught in the sweaty folds of her stomach. Damp hair stuck to her forehead. There was only one thing left to do. With a last look at Nelson, she began walking toward the road and home.

Down at the water, Missy affected an air of cool at Henry's approach, just like in her daydreams. She thought of the last time she had seen him before he left, in his uniform with his duffel bag, waiting for the train that would take him somewhere she could not imagine. He had shown her the place on the map: Iowa. It was a funny shape, surrounded by other funny shapes, several shapes away from the fingerlike projection she knew to be Florida. She had hopscotched her fingers across the map. It didn't look very far away. She and Mama could go visit him. They could bring him some of Mama's corn bread, which he loved so much. He had said there was no ocean in Iowa. She had frowned at this. “That crazy talk,” she had said. “Crazy” had been her favorite word at the time. “How the people go fishing?”

“No fishing,” he had said. “They eat other stuff, Missy. Cows, mostly.”

To which she had responded with a disbelieving huff.
No one ate cows
, she thought,
else where would the milk come from?

“I'm gonna be an officer,” he had said. “You know what that is?”

From the weight of the word in his voice, she had known it was important. “Means you the boss?”

He had laughed at that, head thrown back. “The day a black man is the boss won't come in my lifetime, but yes, I will be in charge of some stuff.”

“Like story reading?” There could be no job more important than that, she had thought.

“Like story reading. Officer in charge of story reading, reporting for duty, ma'am.” He had saluted and placed his cap on her head, where it dropped over her eyes.

She looked out from under it. “Who gonna be in charge of story reading here till you come back?”

“That you, Missy,” he had said and retrieved his cap. “That you.”

He had looked so strange that day, so grown-up, his uniform beautifully pressed by his mother, Grace. She stood close by, her hands shaking with the effort not to cry, flanked by Selma and Mama. Mama whispered something in Grace's ear. Henry sweated in the heat, unwilling to loosen his tie or roll up his sleeves as some of the others had done.

The train had lumbered to a stop in a blast of steam and a shriek of brakes. Day-trippers and returning shoppers filed off with curious glances at the black man in uniform.

Henry bent down until their eyes were level. “You be good, Missy, and mind your mama.” She flung her arms around his neck.

“Come away now, Missy,” Mama had said with a hand on her shoulder. “Time for Henry to go.”

Grace had gripped him to her, bunching the uniform in her fists. Gently he separated himself, flung the duffel over his shoulder, and boarded the train. Just as it pulled away, Missy had run after it and yelled, “When you comin' back?”

The wind had whisked his words away, but it sounded like he said “summertime.”
Well
, she had thought, left alone at the platform, waving until the train shrank to a black speck that got swallowed by the sky,
that's not long. Already been my birthday, which comes in April. Already plenty hot. Summertime not far away. Won't be long.

Eighteen years. Eighteen summertimes later, and here he was, at last.

She had waited. Grace and Selma had waited. Mama had waited. When the war had ended in 1918 and Doc Williams and the others came back, Grace had fainted right there on the same platform when Henry was not among them. There was no explanation, no dreaded official telegram from the army. They knew he had left France at the end of the war. Sporadic postcards had come from Texas, California, Washington State, enough to confirm he was alive but little else. The years passed. Grace died, like she had been holding on to something and one day just decided to let go. Selma blamed him for that, Missy knew, and a reckoning would take place, at a time of Selma's choosing. But for now, she was just so glad to have him back…

In the meantime, there had been suitors for Missy, the few not put off by her reputation for being headstrong. After all, she was a hard worker, had learned her cooking from Mama, whose food was famed over the whole county, and she had a good, steady job. Her rounded, sturdy build, inherited from Billy, was suited to heavy lifting, and her ample hips, swaying beneath her white uniform, had prompted more than one hopeful local fella to ask her for a stroll on the moonlit beach. But after a few such outings, which always ended in sandy wrestling matches, she had declined the propositions of Heron Key's young men.