John Hawkes - Second Skin

The ants were racing through the holes in my tennis shoes and the tide was a rhythmic darkening of the sand and something was beating great frightened wings in the swamp. There were bright yellow turds hanging from a soft gray bough over the hut, and I began to scratch. But then I looked down and saw what I had somehow failed to see in my first sweeping glance at the warmer side of the sand shelf and beginning of the swamp. And I took slow incredulous footsteps down that sandy incline, leaned forward, held out my hands.

“Kate. Are you all right, Kate?”

She was lying there and watching me. Must have been watching me all the time. Lying there on her stomach. Chin in her hands. Naked. Legs immersed halfway up the calves in the warm yellowish pea soup of that disgusting water. And stuck to her back, spread eagle on her broad soft naked back, an iguana with his claws dug in.

“Kate, what is it, Kate. …

But she only smiled. I stopped, hand thrust out, and kneeled on one knee in front of Catalina Kate who had the terrible reptile clinging to her back. His head reached her shoulders, his tail dropped over her buttocks, and he might have been twenty or thirty pounds of sprawling bright green putty. Boneless. Eyes like shots in the dark. Gorgeous bright green feathery ruff running down the whole length of him. Thick and limp and weak, except for the oversized claws which were grips of steel. Kate was looking at me and smiling and the iguana was looking at me, and I heard the noise of locust or cricket or giant swamp fly strangling behind a nearby bush.

“Hold on, Kate,” I whispered, “don’t move. Just leave him to me.

So then I rose carefully from my position on one knee and tried to think of what to do, of how to go about it. There at my feet was Kate, and she was stretched out flat on the sand, had dug a nice deep oval hole for her belly, and her naked skin was soft and broad, mauve and tan, and the shadows all over her arms and calves and flanks were like innumerable little bright pointed leaves. At one end of her the scum from the swamp water lay in fluffy white piles against her calves; at the other her black hair was heaped up in a crown, shaped in oil, and the long thick braid hung down over one shoulder into the sand. A child with real pink sea shells for ears, child with a disappointing nose but with lips as thin as my own and bowed, moist, faintly violet and smiling. A dark mole — beauty mole — on one cheek. Body as big as Big Bertha’s. A garden, but shaped by her youth. There at my feet. Kate.

And on her back the monster.

So I straddled her — colossus over the reptile, colossus above the shores of woman — and hearing the lap and shifting of the sea, and wiping my palms on my thighs and leaning forward, I prepared to grapple with the monster. My eyes were already shut and my hands already feeling downwards, groping, when Josie, little Sister Josie, took courage — for her it must have been courage — and called out to me.

“Oh, no, sir. No, sir. Don’t touch iguana, sir. Him stuck for so!”

She had risen from her seat on the stump in front of the fisherman’s hut, wringing her hands, squeezing her ankles together beneath her skirts, doll in the sunshine, straight and small, but sat down again quickly as soon as I glanced at her. Little black face, pained eyes, ankles and knees and hands all rigid and pinched together, unbearable hot weight of cowl and little buttoned shoes and God knows how many skirts. I was in no mood to take advice from Sister Josie and told her so.

“That’s all right, Josie,” I said. “I’ll handle this.”

From inside the rich brown layers of drapery or from one of her sleeves she produced a tiny Bible and licked a finger, began to read. She looked like a little black beetle hunched up and reading the Bible in the sunlight. The forked tongues were crying out in the swamp. I shook my head. And lunged down for the iguana.

I got him with the first grab. Held him. Waited. And with my feet buried deep in the sand, my legs spread wide and locked, my rump in the air, tattered shirt stuck to my skin like a plaster, nostrils stoppered up with the scum of the swamp, heart thumping, I made myself hold on to him — in either hand I gripped one of the forelegs — and fought to subdue the repellent touch of him, fought not to tear away my hands and run. Cool rubber ready to sting. Feeling of being glued to the iguana, of skin growing fast to reptilian skin.

“Now,” I said through clenched teeth, and opened my eyes, “now we’ll see if you’re any match for Papa Cue Ball.” And slowly I pulled up on him, gently began to wrestle with him. He yielded his putty, stretched himself, displayed a terrible elasticity, and everything rose up to my grasp except the claws.

“It’s just like being in the dentist’s chair, Kate,” I muttered, and grinned through my own agony, “it’ll be over soon.” But Catalina Kate gave no sign of pain, though now her head was resting on her folded arms and her eyes were closed. So I kept pulling up on the iguana, tugged at him with irritation now. With every tug I seemed to dig the claws in deeper, to drag them down deeper into the flesh of poor Kate’s back in some terrible inverse proportion to all the upward force I exerted on the flaccid wrinkled substance of the jointless legs or whatever it was I hung on to so desperately. And he wouldn’t budge. Because of those claws I was unable to pull him loose, unable to move him an inch, was only standing there bent double and sweating, pulling, muttering to myself, drawing blood.

“Well, Kate,” I said, and let go, stood up, wiped my brow, “it looks as if he’s there for good. Got us licked, hasn’t he, Kate? Licked from the start. He means to stay right where he is until he changes his mind and crawls off under his own power. So the round goes to the dragon, Kate. I’m sorry.”

I climbed off, dipped my hands in the scummy water — even scummy water was preferable to the iguana — rubbed them, wiped them on my trousers, mounted the slope, flung myself down in the sand beside Sister Josie. And grimacing, pulling the visor down fiercely over my eyes, “There’s nothing to do but wait,” I said. “We’ll have to be patient.”

“She plenty patient already, sir. She already waiting.”

“That’s right, Josie,” I said, “you young ladies better stick together.”

Sister Josie read her Bible, I twirled Uncle Billy’s crucifix on its gold chain until the sun came down. And we waited. Coconuts knocking together, sun drenching the sand, dry bones scraping in the middle of the swamp, peacock tails of ugly plants fanning and blazing around the edge of the swamp, a little pall of late afternoon heat settling over us. Like Sonny and Big Bertha and the rest of them I must have dozed. Because suddenly I was leaning forward to the stillness of the warm south and trembling, giving the nun a signal on her little knee. “Do you see, Josie? Do you see? The iguana moved!”

It was true. He had unhooked his claws and slid down onto Kate’s right hand and deep rosy shoulder and upper arm, and now his ruff was humming, his tongue flexing in swordplay, swishing in all the tiny hues of the rainbow, and the eyes were dashing together like little sparks.

“He’s hungry! Do you see that, Josie? He’s hungry now, he’s going off to hunt flies! Thank God for Kate. …”

So he plopped from her shoulder and waddled down to the scum, this bright aged thing livid in the last thick rays of the sun, and inch by steady inch pushed himself under the lip of a broad low-hanging yellow leaf and into the scum, and lashing his tail, kicking suddenly with his stubby rear legs, he disappeared. Succubus. I would have gone after him with a stone had it not been for the failing light and for Catalina Kate who had raised herself up on her arms and was smiling and beckoning and opening to me like some downy swamp orchid.