John Hawkes: Second Skin

“My second skin,” I said, because I had gone out once before in oilskins, and I laughed, ducked, took the flying crest of a wave full in the face. “Which way is up?” I laughed, wiped my eyes, held the thick yellow bundle of empty arms and legs in my own fat arms. “How about it, Red?”

“Oilskins,” he said clearly, patienly through the wind, the spray, the now billowing sun, “better put them on…going to be plenty rough out there.”

So I struggled with the monstrous crackling togs, turned them over, turned them around, lost my footing — shoulder smack up against the ironwood edge of the top of the dirty cabin, sudden quick pain in the shoulder — burned my fingers, finally, on the hard wet skins, felt my cheeks puffing out under the ear flaps of the little tight preposterous sou’wester, felt the chin strap digging in.

“It’s much too small,” I said, but Red was talking.

“That’s Crooked Finger Rock over to leeward,” he was saying, gripping Cassandra’s little shoulder where it was hidden inside the yellow oilskin, gripping her and pointing away with one long red bony finger that was as steady and sure as the big needle of an enormous compass, “and that’s the Dog Head Light — she’s abandoned — over there to windward…

“I see,” I heard Cassandra say softly in her most interested voice, “I see,” as if they were studying an atlas together in Miranda’s parlor, and her eyes, I saw, were fixed on the stately wet red features of Captain Red’s squinting seagoing face.

“What’s that about Crooked Finger Rock?” I said, but Red was telling her about the draft and sailing qualities of the Peter Poor , telling her that the Peter Poor , fish-smothered little filthy scow, was really a racing craft, a little Bermudian racer which he had only converted to a fishing boat a few years ago for his own amusement. And then he gave an analysis of Bermudian racers and then a discussion of nautical miles and speed at sea and the medal the Coast Guard had given him for heroism on the high seas. Steady deep wind-whipped voice. Rapt attention. Bub doubled over in stitches at the little wheel.

But I, at least, made an effort to see the landmarks he thought worthy of our attention, and twisted to leeward and saw a chip of black rock rising and falling in those black crests and hair-raising plumes of spray, and I twisted to windward and a couple of miles away made out the tiny white spire of the lighthouse.

Waves, bright sun, the bow falling, and suddenly I knew what was on my mind, had been on my mind from the first moment I had seen the Peter Poor. “Red,” I interrupted him, cupping my hands, insisting, until the big red face swung in my direction and Cassandra stared down at her feet, “Red, there’s no dinghy. Is there, Red?”

“Nope.”

“But, Red, we’ve got to have a dinghy. Don’t you care about our safety?”

Face sniffing the salt, eyes clear, big legs spread wide in the cockpit: “Dinghy couldn’t last in this water. Too rough. Might’s well go down the first time when the boat goes down.”

“Good God,” I said, “what a way to talk in front of Cassandra.”

“Candy don’t mind. No, sir. She’s a sailor. Told me herself.”

Tiny face composed under the sou’wester. Water on the eyelashes, flush in the cheeks, eyes down. Modest. No objections. Not a glance for father. Not a smile. So I nodded, felt myself thrown off balance again as Bub laughed and swung the little iron wheel that was clotted now with lengths of bright dark green seaweed. How was it, I wondered, that the others were in league with the helmsman, what signals were they passing back and forth while only I heaved about moment by moment in the hard rotten embrace of that little tub?

“Cassandra gets her sea legs from her mother,” I said, but the sea was against me, the Old Man of the Sea was against me, and the waves smelled like salted fish and the engine smelled of raw gasoline and Jomo was still crouching high on the stem and watching me. And all at once I was unable to take my eyes off him: Jomo going up, Jomo going down, up and down, Jomo swaying off to starboard, Jomo swinging back to port, and holding his hook on high where I could see it and aiming the bill of the baseball cap in my direction and fingering his sideburns now and then but keeping his little black eyes on mine and sitting still but sailing all over the place. Without moving his head he spit between his teeth and the long curve of the spittle, as it reached out on the wind, was superimposed against Jomo’s unpredictable motion and dark anxious face. And then I heard him.

“You don’t look too good,” he said. “Don’t feel good, do you? Why don’t you go below? Always go below if you don’t feel good. Here, let me help you down….”

Even as the Peter Poor pitched out from under me, Jomo spit one more time and then hopped off the stem, carefully, without effort, and approached me, came my way with his quick black eyes and on his forehead a sympathetic frown. Jomo with his hot advice, his hot concern for my comfort.

“You want to try sleeping,” he said. “Try can you get to sleep and see if I’m not right.”

It sounded good. I was bruised, hot, wet, sleepy, and my mouth was full of salt. Salt and a little floating bile. My face and fingers were wrinkled, puckered, as if I had spent the morning in a tepid bath. And the red sun had turned to gold and was hot in my eyes.

“Jomo,” I murmured, “there’s no dinghy, what do you think of that.? But the life jackets, Jomo, point them out to me, will you?”

And roughly, stuffing me into the little wooden companion-way: “You ain’t going to need no dinghy nor no lifejackets neither…. Now put your feet on the rungs.”

So I went down. I went down heavily, a man of oilskins and battered joints, while Jomo stayed kneeling in the open companionway with his arms folded and his chin on his arms—“I got to see this,” I heard him say over his shoulder — watching until my feet touched something solid and I fell around facing the cabin and managed to hold myself upright with one hand still on the ladder.

Pots and pans and beer bottles were rolling around on the floor. Two narrow bunks were heaped high with rough tumbled blankets and a pair of long black rubber hip boots. Little portholes were screwed tightly shut, the exhaust of the gasoline engine was seeping furiously through a leaking bulkhead, and in front of me, directly in front of me and hanging down from a hook and swaying left and right, a large black lace brassiere with enormous cups and broad elasticized band and thin black straps was swaying right and left from a hook screwed into the cabin ceiling.

“Jomo,” I said, “what’s that?”

“Never you mind what it is. Just leave it alone.”

Water on the portholes, stink of the engine, rattle of tin and glass going up and down the floor, long comfortable endless pendulum swinging of her black brassiere and: “But, Jomo, what about the owner?”

“Don’t you worry about the owner. She’s coming back to get that thing. Don’t worry.”

And then: “Jomo. I’m going to be sick…"

“Well, hot damn, just hike yourself up here on deck,” laughing over his shoulder, gesturing, then scowling down at me again through the dodging companionway, “just drag ass, now, I can’t let you puke all over my cabin.”

I got my head and shoulders up through the hole and into the open air in time to see Captain Red and Cassandra sitting side by side on the thwart and opening our brown paper bag of sandwiches, got there in time to see the wax paper flying off on the wind and one white sandwich entering the big red mouth and the other white sandwich entering Cassandra’s mouth. Then they were smiling and chewing and I was hanging my head into darkness that was like the ocean itself and trying to keep the vomit off the fresh yellow bulging breast of my borrowed oilskin coat.