Second Skin (12 page)

Sweat in the eyes, breathless. Partners face to face, hands set and loose and dangling like little fins, bellies an inch apart, two mean idiotic smiles. Ready. And then the signal, crowd pressing in to see, and then the swaying start, the first bump, the grunt, the rhythm of collision, and in and out, up and down, forward and backward with shirt tails working loose in front and the bottom of the belly popping out and visible and pink and sore, bump and shudder and recover—tempo steady but blows rising in strength—until the look of surprise, the tottering step, the blush of defeat, and Skipper wins again. Another blast on the cornet, more blows on the drum. Some clapping, my weak smile. Then off again, off on another round.

I vanquished the local butcher, came up against Red’s cousin, fought on until I nearly met my match in Uncle Billy. Because he was last year’s champion and wanted to win. Because bare as the day he was born he weighed four hundred and eight pounds on the fish factory scales. Because he was sixty-three years old and prime. Because he wore no underwear on bumping days and bumped with his shirt unbuttoned, bumped with his blackened gray cotton workshirt pulled out of his pants and hanging loose and flowing wide from neck to somewhere below the navel. Because he also wore rubber-soled shoes and, tied in little finger-like knots at the four corners, a red bandanna on his big bald head—nigger
neckerchief to frighten opponents and keep the sweat out of his eyes—and from a heavy chain locked around his throat a big gold bouncing crucifix. And because he whispered in constant violation of the rules, and because he rumbled. Uncle Billy who knew all the tricks. King of the fat.

Old volcano belly. Worse than a horse, louder than a horse. Rumbling, sloshing, bearing down, steering his terrible tumescence with the mere sides of his wrists and for a moment I saw their faces in the crowd—Miranda, Jomo, Red, Bub, Cassandra, all in a row, all smiling—and I thought I saw Cassandra wave, and then I was laboring to keep my balance, to hold my stride, while with every painful encounter I could feel that Uncle Billy hadn’t even begun to exert himself and was only biding his time, waiting me out.

And the catcalls: “Come on, Uncle Billy, bust him open!”

And close to me and through his little hard teeth the constant whispering: “…never been on a woman. Never had a woman on me. No sir. … Always saved myself. For supper, that’s my big meal, and for bumping. … I eat a full loaf of bread whenever I sit down to table. And I make a habit of drinking one full gallon can of sweetened corn syrup every day. … So you know what you’re up against. The picture of health,” nodding the nigger neckerchief, tossing his cross, patches of short white whisker beginning to shine on his fat cheeks, “because the Good Lord gave me so much flesh that little things like piles or stones or a cardiac condition don’t mean a thing. … Never know they’re there. … Now wait a minute,” going up on his toes, eyes bright, shadow of a jawline appearing above his jowls, “don’t you try to trick me, now. … You look out for Uncle Billy because I measure eighty-nine inches around the middle and I’m just letting you get winded before I bust you right open as the fella wants me to. …"

Then: “Your mother,” I whispered as we hit, “you bumped bellies with your mother, did you?”

Socko. Straight to the heart.
Touché.
And in that lapsed moment, single faltering moment when he tried to determine the exact nature of the insult—smile swallowed up in a gulp, jaw
unhinged, blinding light, pain in the muck of his morality—1 shifted my weight and gave him everything I had and hooked him, hit him hard and at a fine unsettling angle, managed to work a little hipbone into the blow, man to man, final and fiercest of the thwacking sounds, and his flesh was surrendering against mine even before he sagged, gasped, staggered back from me in defeat, even before I heard the asinine cacophony of drum, cornet, and crowd. I shut my eyes and felt as if at last I had struck the high gong of the carnival.

“No hard feelings,” I said, and wiped my face on my sleeve.

“You win, Mister. But here,” fumbling with the chain, holding out his hand, “do me a favor and take this as a gift from me. I got it when I beat the Reverend Peafowl at belly-bumping. But now you deserve it more than me.”

So with the chain and crucifix in my pocket and a five-pound chocolate cake in a box under my arm I set off calling through the crowd for Cassandra. And of course she was gone. All of them were gone. I was alone, abandoned, left behind. Outside I stood for a long while looking down into the violent ragged hole the fleeing hot rod had torn in the snow, stood watching all their scuffed and hurried footprints now filling slowly, gently, with the first snowfall which was still coming down. The gymnasium lights went off and the trees, the building, the sky behind the snow were all a deep dark blue. There was nothing to do but walk, so I shrugged, put my hands in my pockets, put my head down and started my journey home. Alone.

Trying to hurry, trying to keep out of the deepest drifts, trying to hurry along for Cassandra’s sake. There were little black shining twigs encased in icicles, and fence posts and sudden gates opening through the snow. And my wintry road was littered with the bodies of dead birds—I could see their little black glistening feet sticking up like hairs through the crusty tops of the snow banks—and far off where the snow was falling thickest I could hear the sloshing and breaking of the black wintry sea. No lights. No cars. Not even the howl of a dog. It was a late winter night on the black island and I was alone and cold and plowing my slow way home. Digging my way home with my
wet feet. Gloomy, anxious, hearing the ice castles shattering in the branches overhead and falling in tiny bright splinters around my ears.

Then the house, the kennel, the sword points of the picket fence, the chestnut tree under full white sail. At last. And thinking of the foot warmer with its brass pan of bright hot coals and seeing the hot rod black and squat and once more covered with new snow, seeing that car and so knowing I was in time after all, I began to clap the snow from my arms and to run the last few steps to the creaking cold veranda where wrapped in a quilt on the frozen glider and smoking a cigarette Miranda sat huddled and waiting for me in the dark. Miranda. Woman in the dark. Wet eyelashes.

“You,” I said with my hand already on the old brass knob, “what do you want?”

“Skip,” throwing off the quilt, stretching her legs, pitching the cigarette over the broken rail, “don’t go in, Skip. They’re young. Let’s leave them alone.”

“Where were you?” I said, and paused, pulled the door shut again softly, faced her. “Do you know what happened to me in that parking lot? Do you? As for running off without me at the end, a pretty cruel trick, Miranda.”

“Never mind, for God’s sake. They’re only kids. But let’s go out to the car, Skip, and leave them alone.”

“Car? You mean Jomo’s car? I wouldn’t set foot in his car, Miranda. And besides, I want to go to bed.”

“My car, for God’s sake. Out back,” and her breathing was clear and full and I could see the single gray streak thick and livid in her hair and already she was going down the steps and wading knee-deep in the untrampled snow and I was following her. Against my will. Against my better judgment. Shivering. Watching her closely. Because she had changed her clothes and was wearing the canary yellow slacks that had turned the color of moonlight in the snow and a turtle-neck sweater and a baby-blue cashmere scarf that hung below her knees and dragged in the snow. And the little wet flakes twinkled all over her.

“No snowballs,” I said. “I’m warning you.”

She muttered something without turning her head and I missed it, let it go by. The snow was falling in fine little stars but I was too cold and wet to enjoy it. Once I glanced back over my shoulder at the house and though there was not a single light in a window I thought I saw the dark head and torso of someone watching me in a downstairs window—Grandma? Jomo? Bub? —but I could not be sure. Apparently the night was full of snares and sentries and I hesitated, wiping the fresh snow out of my eyes, and then I heard Miranda rattling at the wrecked car and I hurried on.

Tall weeds matted deep in the snow. Crystals as big as saucers tucked in the eaves of the rotting shed. Outline of an old wheelbarrow. And canted up slightly on one side next to the shed the smashed and abandoned body of the wrecked hot rod—orange, white, blue in the soft cold light of the snow—and in that dark and gutted and somehow echoing interior Miranda with one white naked hand on the wheel. Dense shadow of woman. Queen of the Nile.

“Hop in,” she said, and I heard her patting the mildewed seat, heard her ramming the clutch pedal in and out impatiently.

I tugged, stopped, stuck my head in, looked around—pockets of rust, flakes of rust, pockets of snow, broken glass on the floor —and slid onto the seat beside her. And the glass crackled sharply, the springs were steel traps in the seat, the gearshift lever—little white plastic skull for a knob—rose up like a whip from its socket, the dashboard was a nest of dead wires and smashed or dislocated dials. There was a cold rank acrid odor in that wrecked car as if the cut-down body had been burned out one night with a blowtorch, acrid pungent odor that only heightened the other smells of the night: rotting shed, faint sour smell of wood smoke, salt from the nearby sea, perfume—
Evening in
Paris
—which Miranda had splashed on her wrists, her throat, her thick dark head of hair. A powdery snow was blowing against us—no glass in the windows, no windshield—and scratching on the roof of that dreadful little car, and I felt sick at last and wanted only to put my head between my knees, to cover my bare head with my arms and sleep. But I pushed the
gearshift lever with the toe of my shoe instead, glanced at Miranda.

“Like it? Bub’s going to fix it up for me in the spring. It only needs a couple of new tires.”

“Your lipstick’s crooked,” I said, and sniffed, stared at her, ran my fingers along the clammy seat.

“Yours would be crooked too, for God’s sake. But you can thank Red for that.” She smiled, close to me, and the lines in her broad white face were drawn with a little sable brush and India ink and the mouth was a big black broken flower still smeared, still swollen, I knew, from the Captain’s teeth. “Need I say more?” she said, and snapped out the clutch, picked up the fuzzy end of the baby-blue cashmere scarf and rubbed it against her cheek.

“That’s all right, Miranda. I don’t care anything about your private life. Shouldn’t we be going back to the house?”

“We just got here, for God’s sake. Relax. You’re just like Don, never sit still a minute. But of course Don was love.”

Silence. Hand pulling up and down aimlessly on the steering wheel. Snow falling. Snow singing on the roof. Then a movement in her comer, sudden rolling agitation in the springs, and her tight yellow statuesque leg was closer to mine and she was reaching out, pressing the cashmere scarf against my cheek.

And quickly: “What about Cassandra?” I said. “She won’t do anything foolish?”

Another drag of the rump, leg another few inches closer, and she leaned over then—slowly, slowly—and with long moody deliberation removed the tip of the scarf from my cheek and wrapped it twice around my throat and fastened it in a single knot with one tight sudden jerk. Too vehement I thought. But tied together neck to neck. Hitched. And feeling the cashmere choking me, and seeing the head thrown back against the mildewed seat and the long leg bent at the knee and the angora sweater white and curdled all the way through—solid, not a bone to interrupt that mass, no garment to destroy the rise of the greater-than-life-size breasts—at last I felt like a sculptor in the presence of his nubile clay—to hold the twin mounts, Oh
God, to cast the thighs—and quickly I flung my right hand out of the wrecked car window, heard something rip.

“Cassandra? Cassandra?” she said, showing me the deep black formless mouth, the hair on the back of the seat: “Like mother, like daughter, isn’t that about it? You and your poor little Candy Cane,” she said, and she was laughing—low mellow mannish laugh, scorn and intimacy and self-confidence—and with one foot resting on the dashboard and the other hooked to the edge of the seat she rolled up the bottom of the sweater and took the heavy canary yellow cloth in both bony hands and, tensing all her muscles, pulled down the slacks and swung herself up and away on one cold and massive hip. Away from me. Face and hands and eyes away from me. Laughing.

Icebergs. Cold white monumental buttocks. Baffling cold exposure. Classical post card from an old museum. Treachery on the Nile. Desire and disaster. Pitiless. A soft breath of snow swirling in that white saddle, settling in the dark curves and planes and along the broad rings of the spine. And laughing, shaking the car, muffling her deep low voice in her empty arms she said: “Red’s sleeping it off right now. So how about you?”

Drunk? Out of her mind with passion? Or spiteful? Who could tell? But in the rusty disreputable interior of that frozen junk heap she had mocked me with the beauty of her naked stern, had challenged, aroused, offended me with the blank wall of nudity, and I perceived a cruel motive somewhere. So I clawed at the scarf, tore loose the scarf, and supporting myself palm-down on her icy haunch for one insufferably glorious instant I gathered my weight, rammed my shoulder against the loud tinny metal of the rusted door—no handle, door stuck shut —and kicked myself free of her, kicked my way out of the car and fled. Burning. Blinded. But applauding myself for the escape.

When I reached the front of the house I realized that the snow had stopped and that the slick black hot rod under the chestnut tree was gone. When I reached Cassandra’s room, puffing through the darkness, feeling my way, I knew immediately that she was not asleep, and without pausing I dropped to my knees
beside her and took her cold hand—no rings—and confessed to her at long last that Fernandez was dead. That I had found him dead at the end of my final shore patrol on Second Avenue. That I thought she should know. Pixie stirred from time to time but did not wake. Then at the doorway I stopped and glanced back at the rumpled chunky four-poster bed, the black shadow of the cradle on the warped floor, the windowpane covered with snow.