John Hawkes: Second Skin

Duty gave still greater clarity, power, persistence to the whisper: “Has she been crying. Sonny?”

“Pixie? My baby love? You know Pixie never cries when I croon to her. Miss Cassandra. And I been crooning about an hour and a half. But Miss Cassandra,” lulling us with his most intimate voice — it was the voice he adopted in times of trouble, always most melodious at the approach of danger — lulling us and tightening the long black hand — shiny knuckles, long black bones and tendons, little pink hearts for fingertips — that spraddled Pixie’s chest limply, gently, “Miss Cassandra, you look like you been cashing in your Daddy’s Victory bonds. And Skipper,” sitting across from us with the child, glancing first at Cassandra and then myself, “you’ve got a terrible blue look about you, terrible tired and blue.” Then: “No more cemetery business. Skipper? I trust there’s no more of that cemetery stuff in the cards. That stuff’s the devil!”

Cocked garrison cap and shiny visor; petty officer’s navy blue coat, white shirt, black tie; two neat rows of rainbow ribbons on his breast; elongated bony skull and black velvet face — he called himself the skinny nigger — and sunglasses with enormous lenses coal-black and brightly polished; signet ring, little Windsor knot in the black tie, high plum-colored temples and white teeth of the happy cannibal; tall smart trembling figure of a man whose only arrogance was affection: he was sitting across from us— poor Sonny — and talking through the Chinese babble, the noise of the Arkansas sailors, the loud breasty volume of mother America’s possessive wartime song. Poor Sonny.

“Skipper,” once more the whisper of fashion, whisper of feminine cleanliness, cold love, “show Sonny, please.”

“What’s this? Games?” And casting quick razor looks from Cassandra to myself, shifting Pixie still further away from us and leaning forward, craning down: “What you two been up to anyway?”

I unhooked my stiff collar and worked loose the top brass button and then the next, gingerly, with chin to collar bone trying to see it again myself, through puckered lips trying to blow a cold breath on it, and leaned forward, held open the white duck in a V for Sonny, for Sonny who respected me, who was all bone and blackness and was the best mess boy the U.S.S. Starfish ever had.

He looked. He gave a long low Negro whistle: “So that’s the trouble. Well now. You two both grieving not for the dead but for that halfpint Peruvian fella who run out on us. I understand. Well now. Husbands all ducked out on us, wives all dead and buried. So we got to do something fancy with his name, we got to do something to hurt Skipper. Got to turn a man’s breast into a tombstone full of ache and pain. You better just take your baby girl and your bag of chicken salad sandwiches — I made you a two-days’ supply — and get on the bus. This family of ours is about busted up.”

But: “Hush,” I said, done with the buttons and still watching Cassandra — chin tilted, lips tight in a crescent, spine straight— and reaching out for the black angle of his hand, “You know how we feel about Fernandez. But Sonny, you’ll find a brown parcel in the back of the jeep. My snapshots of the boys on the Starfish. For you.”

“That so, Skipper? Well now. Maybe we ain’t so busted up after all.”

He puffed on his signet ring — the teeth, the wrinkled nose, the fluttering lips, the twisted wide-open mouth of the good-natured mule — and shined it on his trousers and flashed it into sight again — bloodstone, gold-plated setting — and took off his cocked and rakish hat, slowly, carefully, since from the Filipino boys he had learned how to pomade his rich black opalescent hair, and fanned himself and Pixie three or four times with the hat — the inside of the band was lined with bright paper medallions of the Roman Church — and then treated the patent leather visor as he had the ring, puffing, polishing, arm’s length examination of his work, and with his long slow burlesquing fingers tapped the starched hat into place again, saying, “OK, folks, old Sonny’s bright as a dime again, or maybe a half dollar — nigger money of course. But, Skipper,” dropping a bright black kiss as big as a mushmelon in Pixie’s platinum hair and grinning, waving toward Cassandra’s glass and mine — Coca-Cola like dark blood, little drowning buttons of melted ice — then frowning, long-jawed and serious: “whatever did happen to that Fernandez fella?”

I shifted, hot, desperate, broad rump stuck fast and uncomfortable to the wooden seat, I looked at her, I touched my stinging breast, tried to make a funny grandfather’s face for Pixie: “We don’t know. Sonny. But he was a poor husband for Cassandra anyway.” I used the handkerchief again, took hold of the glass. She was composed, unruffled, sat toying with a plastic swizzle stick — little queen — and one boudoir curl hung loose and I was afraid to touch it.

“Maybe he got hisself a job with a dance band. Maybe he run off with the USO — I never liked him, but he sure was a whizz with the guitar — or maybe,” giving way to his black fancy, his affectionate concern, “maybe he got hisself kidnapped. Those South American fellas don’t fool around, and maybe they decided it was time he did his hitch in the Peruvian Army. No, sir,” taking a long self-satisfied optimistic drink, cupping the ice in his lip like a lump of sugar, “I bet he just couldn’t help hisself!”

Then she was stirring the swizzle stick, raising it to the invisible tongue, touching the neckline of her wrinkled frock, once more whispering and informing us, tormenting us with the somber clarity of what she had to say: “Fernandez deserted his wife and child”—hairs leaping up on the backs of my hands, scalp tingling, heart struck with a hammer, fit of coughing—“deserted his wife and child for another person. Fernandez left his wife and child”—I clutched again the handkerchief, wishing I could extricate myself and climb out of the booth—“abandoned us, Pixie and me, for the love of another person. A man who was tall, dark-haired, sun-tanned and who wore civilian clothes. A gunner’s mate named Harry. He had a scar. Also, he was tattooed,” the whisper dying, dying, the mouth coming as close as it could to a smile, “like you. Skipper.”

Then silence. Except for the shot glasses. Except for the tin trays. Except for the moaning sailor and the bay plunging and crashing somewhere in the night. Except for the torch song of our homeless millions. I slumped. Sonny shook his head, threw out suddenly a long fierce burnt-up hand and pure white dapper cuff:“Oh, that unfaithful stuff is the devil! Pure devil!”

The shaft goes to the breast, love shatters, whole troop trains of love are destroyed, the hero is the trumpet player twisted into a lone embrace with his sexless but mellow horn, the goodbys are near and I hear Cassandra whispering and I see the color in her eyes: “There aren’t any husbands left in the world. Are there. Skipper?”

But Sonny answered. Sonny who took a shower in our cheap hotel. Sonny whose uniform was pressed dark blue and hard and crisp in a steaming mangle: “Dead or unfaithful. Miss Cassandra, that’s a fact. Damn all them unfaithful lovers!”

Bereft. Cool. Grieved. Triumphant. The frozen bacchanal, the withered leaf. Taps in the desert. Taps at sea. Small woman, poor faithful friend, crying child — Pixie had begun to cry — and I the lawful guardian determined but still distressed and past fifty, nose packed with carbonated water, head fuming with rum, all of us wrecked together in a Chinatown café and waiting for the rising tide, another dark whim of the sea. But still I had my love of the future, my wounded pride.