John Hawkes: Second Skin

“All right, Miranda,” I said, still holding and weighing the jar and looking at her and seeing the mouth slide down deeper, seeing the breasts heave, “all right, Miranda. What is it?”

She waited. The cigarette was a white butt pinched between her two long fingers. Her legs were crossed. And then her lips moved, her mouth became a large quivering lopsided square: “I mean it, Skip. And just as I said, it’s got your name on it. And it’s hers,” throwing the butt on the kitchen floor where it lay burning out and smoking, “Candy’s, I tell you. Why do you think she jumped, you old fool?”

I looked at the mouth, the shadows that were her eyes, I looked at the bright package in my hand. Slowly, slowly I shook it again. Nothing. Full or empty, did it matter? There were tiny arrows of sunlight now on the backs of my hands and Pixie had her mouth full of strawberry jam.

“Cassandra’s?” I said then. “You mean it was Cassandra’s? But surely that was no reason for Cassandra to kill herself?”

And thrusting her head at me and slowly shaking the black tangled hair and with both hands clutching her enormous white throat: “Reason or no reason,” she said, “there it is. Good God!” And she was laughing, wheezing, exhaling dead smoke from the rigid lopsided square of her mouth, “Good God, I thought you’d like to have it! Sort of makes you a grandfather for the second time, doesn’t it?”

I waited. And then slowly I stood up and unfastened the strap and gathered Pixie into one arm — Pixie covered with strawberry jam — and in my other hand took up the package again and slowly, gently, pushed past Miranda in the doorway.

“I think you’re right, Miranda,” I said as softly as I could. “I’m sure you’re right. But, Miranda,” gently, softly, “you better step on the cigarette. Please.”

And I knew then exactly what I had to do, and I did it. I went upstairs and took my white officer’s cap off the dummy and put it on my head where it belonged and packed up our tattered flight bag. And with my arms loaded — Pixie hanging from one, bag from the other, bright smeared package in my right hand — I went back down to the kitchen and asked Miranda for a serving spoon. I asked Miranda to take a serving spoon out of the drawer and slip it into my pocket.

“Well,” she said, “you’re leaving.”

“Yes, Miranda,” I said. “I’m going to the cemetery first, and then Pixie and I are leaving.”

“Good riddance,” she said and grinned at me, fumbled for the cigarettes, struck a match. “Good riddance, Skip….”

I smiled.

So I carried Pixie and the flight bag and the present from Miranda out to the cemetery, carried them past the sepulchral barn of the Poor House and down the deeply rutted lane and through the grove of pines and onto the yellow promontory where the expressionless old gray lichen-covered monuments rose up together in sight of the sea. Yellow stubble, crumbling iron enclosure, tall white grizzled stones and names and dates creeping with yellow fungus. And the sky was like the stroke of a brush. And of course the wind was only the sun’s chariot and the spray was only a veil of mist at the end of land.

I kicked open the gate and let Pixie crawl around in the stubble between the stones while on my hands and knees once more at the side of the fresh mound I dug a little hole at the top of Cassandra’s grave with the serving spoon and stuffed the package in, covered it over. Empty or not it was a part of me somehow and belonged with her. Under a last handful of loose black earth I hid the ribbons — red, white and blue ribbons— and stood up, brushed off my pants. Even from here, and standing in the windy glare of that little Atlantic cemetery, I could smell the pines, feel the pine roots working their way down to the things of the sea.

I threw the spoon out onto the black rocks.

Then off we went, Pixie and I, and I smiled at the thought that the night I found Fernandez on Second Avenue was the first night after the day they stopped the war, and that all my casualties, so to speak, were only accidents that came when the wave of wrath was past. But how can I forget what lies out there in that distant part of my kingdom?

So I had my small quiet victory over Miranda after all, and had my victory over Cassandra too, since there are always faces, strange or familiar, young or old, waiting to kiss me in the dark, and since now there is one more little dark brown face that will soon be waiting like the others. My shades, my children, my memories, my time of no time, and I thank God for wandering islands and invisible shores.

But one more face. Yes, there is one more face because the mountain fell, the flesh went down, they soaked up the blood with coconut fibers, they washed the baby as I told them to, Kate smiled. A big success. And wasn’t it the day, the very hour, even the sex I had decided on? And weren’t we flourishing together, Kate and I, finishing up our little jobs together on a flourish of love? And didn’t Sister Josie and Big Bertha pitch right in and help? Down on their hands and knees with the coconut fibers? And didn’t I forbid Kate to have our baby in the swamp, and didn’t Kate, young Catalina Kate, bear the baby on the floor of my own room in Plantation House and sleep with the sweat and pleasure of this her first attempt at bearing a baby for me — for Sonny and me — in my own swaying hammock filled with flowers? Didn’t Sonny and I wait out in the barn with Oscar until they called us back to the house to see the baby? And didn’t I spend the rest of that afternoon — just yesterday, just yesterday afternoon — sitting beside her on a little empty vinegar barrel and giving the hammock a push whenever the wind died down? What more could she ask? What more could I?

But there was last night too, of course, last night when I broke out the French wine and long cigars and took the three of them — Sonny and Kate and little black fuzzy baby in the strip of muslin — down to the cemetery to have a fete with the dead. In the afternoon I rocked Kate and little child in the hammock while the sun hung over us and grew fat and yellow in the leaves and vines outside and the hummingbirds sucked their tiny drams of honey at my still window. But with the coming of night and while Josie and Big Bertha softly clapped their black hands and sang to us outside the window, suddenly I felt like taking a long walk and laughing and eating a good meal and drinking the wine and smoking. ^ I leaned over Kate and shook her gently and told her it was time to get up because the moon was rising and they were already lighting the candles in the graveyard.

“Come on, Kate,” I whispered, “time to go.” Slumberous. The shadowy color of cinnamon and rouge. Bright and naked and smiling, softly smiling, in my old hammock full of flowers. Her hair was down and hanging in a single black shank over the side of the hammock, was hanging, swaying, brushing the floor. And even in the shadows I could see how full she was and see that already she had regained her shape and that her naked waist was once more like the little belly of the queen bee.

“Time now, Kate,” I said, “give me your hand.”

So I helped her out of the hammock and helped guide her head and arms through the hole of the dress, garment, rag, whatever it was, and fixed the muslin around the baby, held it out to her. A bunch of homemade candles; the old broken wicker basket filled with blood sausage, pawpaws, the bottle of wine; white cap on my head and baby in Kate’s arms, and we were ready to go then and I shouted to Sonny, led the way.

“Go on, Kate,” I said, “take one….” And she smiled and did what I told her, and the coals of our three long slim cigars were as bright as the little red eyes of foraging pigs as we puffed away together down the dark path toward our festive hours among the slabs and crosses and shallow mounds in the sunken cemetery. I could smell the three of us in the darkness — rancid smoke, long hair, wet skin, newborn child — smell our invisible lives in the darkness, and I walked with a bounce and swung the basket to and fro and watched for the glow of the candles.