The Hard Blue Sky by Shirley Ann Grau

lip hard.
    Cecile started to say something, then changed her mind.
    “Hector, man!” a voice called.
    Hector walked over to that boat. When he had gone, Inky said: “That’s a good-looking man you’re married to.”
    “Me, I think so,” Cecile said.
    Inky looked around. “Where’d she go?”
    Cecile grinned. “Annie? She just up and disappeared.”
    Hector called over: “Bozo’s coming back.”
    Cecile said: “You can hear them engines a mile off.”
    “I got the fenders out,” Inky said.
    Cecile grabbed a circling mosquito out of the air and peeped cautiously in her clenched fist. “Sure you got fenders,” she said.
    “Now what’s so funny about that?” Inky said.
    Hector wandered back, stopping finally with one foot on the stern mooring-line.
    Inky looked up at him.
    “You got a fixed keel and no centerboard?” Hector asked.
    “Yea,” Inky said. “You can come see if you’re interested.”
    “How much?”
    “Huh?”
    Hector scratched his eyebrow. “How much lead you got?”
    “Two tons.”
    Hector stared at the stern of the boat. “Looks pretty from back here.”
    “You like it, huh?”
    “What you draw?”
    “Near five.”
    Hector shook his head.
    “Four eleven.”
    “There ain’t much water that deep around here.”
    “If you stay offshore.”
    “Sure,” Hector said, “I wasn’t thinking about that.”
    “That’s why we had to be so careful with the channel.”
    The sound of engines was very loud now. The Bozo must be nearing the dock. Inky turned around. For a minute he stared at the rough paint-blistered hull of the fishing-boat.
    “Jesus Christ,” he yelled, “stay off!”
    Cecile rolled over slowly and looked at him. She was grinning.
    Along the side of the Bozo, acting as fenders, was a row of old rubber tires.
    “Don’t come in here,” Inky yelled. “Keep the god-damn tires away.”
    Hector laughed. “Going to be a big smear for sure.”
    Inky was jumping up and down, waving them off. The men on the Bozo did not seem to notice. One of them waved calmly to Hector. “Hi, Hector man,” he called, “what you say?”
    Hector waved back.
    “Keep the fucking god-damn tires out of here,” Inky yelled. He was standing on the cockpit seats now, stuttering with rage.
    “All that pretty white hull,” Hector said softly, “just all going to be smeared up.”
    The Bozo’s bow came around and her engine reversed and she swung gently in. The two hulls touched very gently, the smaller canvas fenders useless against the thick tires. At that precise minute the Bozo’s engine went into forward and the line of black tires dragged and scraped along the sailboat’s freeboard. Then the engine was idling and two men were calmly fastening the lines.
    Inky was very quiet now; he stood watching them, his mouth pursed. Then he leaned over and looked at the side of his hull. The white freeboard was a smear of black rubber.
    Inky straightened up. “That was real funny,” he said, “and now who’s gonna help me clean off the freeboard?”
    There were three men on the boat. They looked so much alike they might all have been brothers. Inky looked from one to the other.
    “Son of a bitch,” he said, “who’s gonna help me clean that off?”
    They went on with their jobs, appearing not to hear.
    “There’s a whole day’s work cleaning there.”
    One of the men, the shortest one, with light brown hair cut so short it looked almost shaved, said: “You yelling at us?”
    “You god-damn right I am.”
    “You got you fenders out,” another man said. He was older, fifty-five or so, and his hair had balded away to a bristly fringe around the edges. “It wasn’t none of our fault they wasn’t enough.”
    “Son of a bitch!” Inky said softly.
    The third man, who was tying his shoe on the caprail looked up. “What was you calling us?” He was just a kid, Inky noticed; and he had a kid’s pimply face, big red splotches across his cheeks and down his neck. He had long thin arms