Second Skin (13 page)

And softly: “We were wrong about him, weren’t we? Just a little? I think so, Cassandra.”

In my own room I discovered Uncle Billy’s crucifix in my pocket and pulled it out, held it in the palm of my hand and stared at it, then hung it around the neck of my white tunic on the dressmaker’s dummy. Gold was my color. Another medal for Papa Cue Ball. Someone—Miranda? Red? Jomo? Bub? even Grandma was not above suspicion—had filled the foot warmer with water, and it was frozen solid. I frowned, set it carefully outside my door—blue tit—and inched myself into the cold comfort of that poor iron bed with bars.

Sleep with a gentle thought, I remembered, and did my best.

Yes, I have always believed in gentle thoughts. Despite everything, including the long-past calumnious efforts of a few cranks in the Navy Department, I have always remained my mother’s son. And how satisfying it is that virtue—tender guardian, sweet victor, white phantom of the boxing ring, which makes me think of the days before the mutiny when Tremlow vainly attempted to give me boxing lessons every late afternoon in a space cleared among the young bronze cheering sailors on the fantail—how satisfying that virtue always wins. I have only to consider Sonny and Catalina Kate and Sister Josie and myself to know that virtue is everywhere and that we, at least, are four particles of its golden dust.

Yes, everywhere. In getting down to business with one of the cows, in blowing the conch that calls the cows across the field to me, in noticing from time to time the remarkably rapid growth of the child, another fleck of golden dust inside Catalina Kate, in splitting a pawpaw with Sonny or spending an hour or two over the year-old newspaper Catalina Kate had wrapped the hot dogs in, or calling out “No beat the puppy!” to the small black bowlegged boy who wallops the little pink squealing bitch
every afternoon between the overgrown water wheel and our collapsing barn, in all this, then, the virtue of life itself.

In the very act of living I see myself, picture myself, as if memory had already done its work and flowered, subjected even myself to the golden glass. Broad white window frame, white shutter with all but a few slanting lattices knocked out, long mahogany table, cane chairs, rusted hurricane lamp suspended by a chain from the ceiling that rises to a peak, pagoda style, and houses the bats; gray clay-colored wooden floor, hemp hammock filled with red petals, odor of slaves and curry and wine and hibiscus soft and luxurious on the dark air. Cup of the warm south. Beaded bubbles. And myself: drawn up to the table, studious, smiling at the thought of the little dark faces pressed into the enormous green and yellow leaves curling in at the window, frowning and smiling both with my upper body leaning on the table and my feet bare and my toes playing in the rich dust under the table, eyes and mouth burning slightly with the fever of our constant and deceptive temperature. Myself. Lunged quietly against my long table—bottle of French wine, bottle of local rum, handful of long thin unbanded black cigars stuck like pencils in a jam jar, swarms of little living fleas in the grooves of my note-taking paper—lunged at the table and seeing myself and smiling at the thought of yesterday, yesterday when I sat in the swamp with Sister Josie and Catalina Kate, and ruminating over the latest development of Kate’s precious pregnancy—Kate has only about three more months to go, it occurs to me—and teasing the fleas.

And so I have already stepped once more from behind the scenes of my naked history and having come this far I expect that I will never really be able to conceal myself completely in all those scenes which are even now on the tip of my tongue and crowding my eye. The fact of the matter is that Miranda will have to wait while I turn to a still more distant past, turn back to a few of my long days at sea and to several other high lights of my more distant past. Mere victory over Miranda is nothing, while virtue is everything. So now for my past, for the virtue of my far-distant past.

But first my afternoon in the swamp.

God knows what time it was, but we had finished eating our noon meal of the sea creatures Big Bertha somehow digs out of the conchs, and Sonny was sleeping out in the barn and I was sitting at my table and toying with—yes, even after seven years I still wear it around my neck on its thin chain—toying with Uncle Billy’s crucifix and thinking about certain problems of my profession. I was noticing that the insides of my hands were the color of golden straw, and was listening to the doves when suddenly a face appeared among the flat green and yellow leaves and spotted shadows outside my window, a tiny face as smooth as a wet kidney and the color of the black keys on a piano. Tiny little face without a line, with eyes like great timid pearls and a little nut-brown mouth and masses of artificial gold teeth— young as she was she had had all her teeth extracted and nice gold teeth installed for beauty’s sake—and around the little black head the truly gigantic mauve headpiece of her official habit and the white thing that looked like a priest’s collar shoved vertically over her tiny face. Serene, serious, silent.

“Sister Josie,” I said, “is it really you? How nice. But Sister Josie, what do you want?”

Somber child. Dark wonderfully cowled little head in the comer of the window. Little black cheekbones. Pearls beginning to dissolve and more luminous and gentle than ever. Ready to open her mouth, this child, this black girl, thin devoted example of missionary madness. Sweating. Hot as the devil. Long time to answer. And then she smiled and in a murmur she asked me to come with her because Catalina Kate was asking for me and had sent her, Sister Josie, up to Plantation House to persuade me, if she could, to join her in a little walk down to the swamp.

“Well, of course, Josie,” I said, and reached for my old yellowing cap and cocked it on my head, “I was wondering about Kate since you usually dog her tracks, don’t you, Josie?”

Vigorous nodding in the corner of the window. Trembling of the little dark features. Master coming. Gift of God. Ecstasy. As usual I was pleased with her happiness and smiled and told her to wait for me by the water wheel. I extended my hand slowly, gently, and let it come to rest on the broad white sill so that
it was directly in the path of a little black newborn lizard which I had noticed while listening to Sister Josie’s soft interminable plea. And for a moment we watched the baby lizard together. It was black, fuzzy, about an inch and a half in length. It was covered with frills and tendrils, wore leggings, had absurdly large feet for its size and an absurdly large blind head. Ugly. And while we watched—did Josie make the sign of the cross? —the baby lizard crawled onto the back of my hand and stopped, little tail twitching at a wonderful rate, and stood still as I lifted him slowly into the warm sweet air that hovered between Sister Josie and myself. Lifted him up to my nose.

“Do you see, Josie? He hasn’t any eyes. And look at that tail, will you? Excruciating!”

We laughed. Then I took a deep breath, puckered my lips and blew so that he sailed off in an orgy of somersaults and plopped onto a bright golden spot next to Josie’s cheeks.

“I’ll have to improve my aim, Josie,” I said, and, laughing, shooed her off to the water wheel. No doubt the little lizard would turn into a dandy big fellow when he grew older. But I have always favored the birds, especially the hummingbirds, over the lizards and butterflies. Give me the mystery of birds or the strength and sweetness of honest-to-God animals like cows any time. What better than the little honeysuckers or the leather hides and masticated grass and purple eyes of my favorite cows? As for a blackbird sitting on a cow’s rump, there surely is the perfect union, the meeting of the fabulous herald and the life source. And there are always the ground doves to give voice to my vision, soul to my love.

Since I was up and about I looked in on Big Bertha—mass of black fat, calico rags, old brazen face and dusty hands and fat breasts decorated with the fingerprints of the babies she had nursed, all of her crouched over the mortar and pestle and fast asleep—and I grinned at her, raised my finger to the visor of my cap in salute to her. I strolled around to feed a few fistfuls of green grass to the ducks, squatting, pulling up the grass, enjoying the greed of the ducks and the way they wagged their white tails. Then to my feet again and on through the shadows
of the lime trees—perfect little pale yellow globules dangling amidst the riffling green leaves and shadows and nearly invisible thorns—until I came out into the sun and approached the barn.

I stood in the doorway, crossed my legs, leaned against the hot porous upright—remarkable labor of the wood ants—thrust my hands into my pockets and stared up at the star-shaped hole in the roof. Interesting star-shaped hole with a shaft of sunlight driven through it like a stake. Dry and sagging timbers, roof that would soon collapse and be no more. Sonny—my ingenious Sonny—wanted to remove some of the planks from the walls to repair the roof. But I preferred the barn as it was, or as it would be. We would just have to get along, I told Sonny, with a roofless barn, and I was pleased when he slapped his thigh and said, “Oh, you means a roofless barn. I understands you, Skipper. That’s good!” I knew I could always count on Sonny.

I walked into the barn then and stood at the foot of Sonny’s hammock and smiled down on him. Poor Sonny. Sleeping in the heat of the afternoon. Hands clasped behind his head, light streaming in the little rivers between his ribs, hammock swaying, one long black shrunken leg dangling out of the hammock, hanging down. He was naked except for a pair of combat boots—no laces, leather turned to white fungus—and a pair of my castoff white jockey shorts and a sailor hat with the brim reversed and airslits, diamonds, cut around the crown. And he had changed in seven years-thinner, a few white kinks in the hair, some of the rich oily luster gone from his black skin, incurable case of boils on one of his thighs—but was Sonny, still Sonny with every black bone showing and a smile sleeping on those living lips which looked as if they had been split open in a fight. The nearby shaft of sunlight cast a glow on the patched hemp of the hammock and sent little shadows dancing and shivering up and down this black length of Sonny in his stretched and swaying bed. I left him in peace, walked softly to the other end of the barn where Oscar the bull was watching us.

“What’s the matter, Oscar,” I said, “jealous of my attentions?”

Confusion and hatred in the crossed bloodshot eyes. Dust
swirling out of the shaggy white head of hair when I rumpled it. Flies in the ears. Mean old bull begrudging every invisible drop of his scattered seed. Flies, lice, mud. But marvelous shaggy machinery for my purposes.

“Don’t be jealous, Oscar,” I said softly, “your time will come.” And I laughed and gave the brass ring in his nose a little tug and turned my back on him, walked out to the hot radiance beyond the doorway. I paused for a moment, squinted, fanned myself briefly with my cap, then made for the water wheel.

She was nearly invisible against the water wheel, my little blessed chameleon with bowed head and folded hands. But she was there and waiting. Patient and perspiring in the shade of the wheel. Each time I saw the water wheel, and I saw it a good many times each day, I stopped, always perplexed and startled to see its life-giving gloom. Because it was about twenty feet tall, this fusion of iron wheel and fragment of stone wall, and useless, absolutely useless, and inexplicable, statuary of unknown historic significance now drenched with green growth, robbed of its power. The wheel that could never turn, the wall that had ceased its crumbling. No water. And yet in every cracked iron cup, in every dark green furry ribbon of the climbing plants, in every black hanging leaf and every swaddling vine—there was even a little crooked gray tree growing out of the side of it—it appeared to be spongy and dense and saturated, seemed to drip with all the waters of the past and all the bright cold waters that would never flow. Monolith of forgotten industry, what on earth had it crushed? What sweetness extracted? The birds were singing and chirping among the red berries and in secret crevices in the moss. I listened until I could disregard no longer the little nun standing there meekly under the towering wheel.

“Well, Josie,” I said, and stepped forward briskly, “Let’s go and see what this is all about. OK, Josie?”

She told me that she was ready to go, though her little silk voice was so soft I could hardly hear it above the sound of the birds, and she told me that Miss Catalina Kate was hoping I would go to her. I smiled.

“Lead on, Sister Josie,” I said, and sauntered along behind her
as she picked her way down the hot path trying to avoid the thorns in the high grass. The wind was rolling about in that high grass—stretching out to sleep? getting ready to spring?— and there were trees growing out of trees, smooth gray trunks and bushy heads of hair, flowers like painted fingernails and occasionally underfoot a sudden webbing of little roots tied in knots. But Sister Josie had nimble feet and knew where she was going.

“Do I smell guavas, Josie?”

Vigorous nodding.

“Why don’t you pick a load on our way back, Josie? I’m very fond of guavas.”

More nodding, long soft statement of acquiescence.

When we passed the pile of dried conchs and stepped out onto the beach the bush was on our right and the sea on our left and the bush was impenetrable and the beach was a quarter-mile strip of snowy pink sand and the tide was sliding in, frothing, jumping up in little round waves. So there was much wetting of shoes and trouser bottoms and swaying skirts during that last quarter mile of our walk. Above us through the dead coconut leaves the sun was an old bloody bone low in the sky. I whistled, hummed, blinked, licked salt. Paused to help Sister Josie climb over the windfalls or crawl through the sea grape trees.

“Lovely spot, Josie,” I said. “Good for the soul.”

“Oh yes, sir.” Furnace of gold teeth, habit soaked to the knees. “That why she here, sir.”

“But surely she doesn’t mean to have the child out here, Josie? Does she?”

“Oh, yes, sir. She want the baby in the swamp, sir.”

“Well, there’s courage for you, Josie.”

“Yes, sir.”

And then the bush fell away on our right and the beach swept wide into the sea on our left and rose, straight ahead, into a long white sandy shelf, and Sister Josie and I were in the open and pulling each other to the top of the broad sandy shelf. A fisherman’s hut, a white stump, the green transparent tint of the endless
sea on one side and on the other, where the shelf dipped down into a little rank stagnant crescent, the swamp. The beginning of the swamp. Dark green tepid sludge of silent waters drifting inland among the ferns and roots and fuzzy pockets and pools of the infested swamp. Harem of veiled orchids, cells of death.