Second Skin

by Michael Wiley

  When I looked at him, unconvinced, he added, ‘My family leave this place. We don’t stay and die with Mary and her boy. I like to live, son, and I like to heal. It a weakness, but it mine. I don’t say living is better than dying, but some men eat redfish and other men eat crab. Which is better? The one as good as the other. I’m a redfish man, but you definitely is a crab man, eating off the bottom. I think you don’t mind dying. So if you want to poke into it, I tell you where it is and you can bring your own claw.’

  I looked at the poisoned creek, then shined my flashlight back on the ruined house. ‘I want to get out of here,’ I said, ‘if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Fine with me. Phelpses run security through here sometime, and they worse than the bone of the dead.’

  When we drove back to the end of the lumber road, the old man turned left instead of right, and soon we were buried in a tunnel of old-growth trees.

  ‘Where are we going now?’ I said.

  He leaned close to the windshield as if the dark had thickened. ‘A man got to eat.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Don’t matter. We get some breakfast.’

  ‘It’s three in the morning.’

  ‘Best time to eat.’

  ‘Take me home.’

  ‘If you ain’t reasonably healthy, you don’t do me no good.’

  ‘I’m not interested in doing you good.’

  He drove.

  A flat-roofed, one-story cinderblock building with a tall redbrick chimney appeared suddenly at the side of the road. A string of incandescent bulbs shined on a gravel parking lot full of rusting sedans and pickup trucks. A red cursive sign that said Tobias Rib hung over the dirty glass front door. Concrete flowerboxes with weeds growing in them stood on either side.

  When we stepped in, the smell of frying food, cigarette smoke, and sweet barbeque hit us. Black men and women, wearing everything from little nightclub dresses to greasy coveralls – partiers finishing the night, shrimpers and crabbers up early before heading out on their trawlers or skiffs – sat at a mix of picnic tables and plywood counters, laughing, shouting, eating, and drinking as if it was happy hour on a Friday evening. A long buffet table stood in the center of the room with aluminum trays loaded with barbequed pork, breaded fried shrimp, fried fish, coleslaw, collards, and biscuits. In the little open kitchen, a fat, potato-faced white man, in a white apron and a green-and-orange head rag, worked a big deep fryer.

  As we walked to a picnic table, a woman somewhere in the room started singing in a cracked voice, ‘John on the island and I heard him groan. Yeah, Johnny on the island—’

  ‘What the hell,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Papa Crowe said.

  We ate, and men and women came to our table to say hello to Papa Crowe as if he deserved their special respect. The cook came from the kitchen, and though he probably was forty or forty-five, his skin looked grayer than a ninety-year-old’s, grayer than the skin of some of the men I’d seen below deck on the Arabian Sea, and I could have mistaken him for dead except for the smile, big and yellow-toothed, as he told Papa Crowe about a friend who’d gotten drunk and lost his truck. A dark-skinned woman, wearing a brown business skirt and jacket and carrying a leather briefcase, came and kissed Papa Crowe on his cheek.

  The voice that had sung about John on the island broke into a new song, about a stray cat, and I thought I recognized its cracked sound.

  Papa Crowe leaned toward me and said, ‘You eat this food every day and it kill you.’ He pointed his thumb at the kitchen where the cook was dipping wire baskets into the deep fryer again as if he was skimming for fingerling baitfish. ‘Tobias eat it every day, and he have three surgeries to open the veins. But you eat it once a week or twice, it give you a nice coat for when the winter come or the pain.’

  The singing woman started into ‘John on the island’ again, closer now, and the strangeness and familiarity irritated me. I spun toward the sound.

  Felicity, the Philips Highway hooker, smiled at me with drunken eyes. When I’d bought her breakfast three days ago, she’d dyed her hair pink. Now she’d braided in feathers as well.

  I said, ‘What are you—’

  ‘Hey, you,’ she said. ‘I saw you on TV. You’ve been in Fernandina, making a whole lot of hurt.’ She was wearing knee-high black vinyl boots and a short burgundy-red skirt, ready for business.

  Papa Crowe grinned at me. ‘You know Felicity?’

  The old hooker said, ‘He’s my sugar. He gives me cigarettes and I make him groan.’

  ‘You don’t – and I don’t.’

  The old woman laughed. ‘Listen to him, the lyin’ man.’

  Papa Crowe said something to her in a language I didn’t understand.

  She stopped laughing and spoke to him the same.

  ‘She’s a messed-up old woman,’ I said.

  Papa Crowe laughed. ‘She family.’

  Felicity dropped into a chair between us.

  I said, ‘What are you doing up here?’

  She gave me a cold look. ‘You don’t think I live on Philips Highway.’ When she saw my face, she said, ‘OK, some of the time I do. But I’ve got my people here. What’re you doing here?’

  The old man said, ‘I show him the Garden House.’

  Felicity said, ‘Why did you want to see that evil old place?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said.

  Papa Crowe said, ‘He need to see who the Phelpses is.’

  Felicity said, ‘I’ve known them my whole life. Ever since I was fourteen and didn’t know better. They like it rough, the Phelpses do. I’ve seen what the boy does to the girls. I know what Edward’s daddy did to me. Have you seen Edward’s wife?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You look at her and tell me poison doesn’t run in that man’s blood. You know, the skin on the outside will heal most of the time, but the inside never does rightly.’

  An hour later, as we drove from Tobias Rib, the sky still was dark. The noise of the voices, laughter, and spattering fryer oil hung in my ears, and though my hand ached, I felt almost pleasantly tired. I eased my shoulder into the crack between the seat and the door and closed my eyes. ‘Home?’ I said.

  ‘One more stop,’ the old man said.

  ‘It’s late,’ I said.

  ‘It early,’ he said. ‘Not even sun-up.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘When I give you that string and Indian shot and tell you to put it around your head, you don’t do it, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Some people got no sense,’ he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small square of folded aluminum foil. ‘Chew on this.’

  I unwrapped the packet and peeled away three bruised leaves. They smelled terrible. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Jimson weed. I grow it in my garden, but it grow everywhere – side of the road, if you want it wild.’

  ‘What’s it do?’

  ‘It fix that head of yours so you can think.’

  ‘I can think fine.’

  ‘For God sake, chew it.’

  I rolled the leaves into a ball, put the ball into my mouth, and chewed. It tasted as terrible as it looked. I rolled down my window and spat it into the dark. ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘That all right. You chew it much longer, it kill you.’

  He swung the car around a bend, slowed, and pulled on to a sand-and-oyster-shell road without a sign. By the time he rolled the car to a stop behind a sand dune and turned off the engine, my throat felt hot and dry. He got out of the car, leaving his door open. Ocean waves roared and hushed on the other side of the dune. ‘What are we doing?’ I asked, and when he didn’t answer, I got out too. ‘Do you have any water?’ I said.

  He came close enough to look in my eyes. ‘You thirsty? That good.’

  A wave of dread passed through my belly. ‘What’s jimson weed?’

  �
��I tell you already. Come on.’ He climbed the dune between the road and the ocean.

  I scrambled after him, steadying myself with my good hand. ‘Got a flashlight?’

  ‘Stars is plenty bright,’ he said.

  When we reached the beach, he sat on the sand, and I lowered myself beside him. The air smelled of salt water and the mixture of life and death that it held and always had held. In the corner of my eyes, I saw someone approaching, but when I turned, no one was there.

  ‘Relax,’ the old man said. ‘Look at the stars. They been burning like the devil since before the world was born, and there no bigger peace than that.’

  Again, someone approached from the corner of my vision, and now I saw it was Felicity, but when I turned to face her, she seemed to turn into Lillian. ‘Hey!’ I said, and struggled to get to my feet, but the old man held me down and Lillian disappeared. I said, ‘What’s in jimson weed?’

  ‘It is what it is. It been in this world since the world was born.’

  Something black and low crept from the waves on to the sand. An animal of a kind. Then another, its flat belly sliding over the sand. A half-dozen more washed in on the next wave. Their black skins glistened under the starlight, and they came up the beach toward me. They were reptiles, black and shiny, without eyes or mouths, sliding up the sand. The next wave brought ten or twelve more.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ I said.

  The old man’s voice was steady. ‘You ain’t supposed to like it. You supposed to hate it. It supposed to chase the fiends from your head. You been hag-ridden too long.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ I said again.

  ‘But your hand don’t hurt right now.’

  ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘It doesn’t.’

  ‘That right.’

  The black reptiles came up the sand. I kicked at them wildly. I got to my feet and tried to step on them.

  ‘You see – nothing there,’ Papa Crowe said calmly. ‘Nothing but what in your head. You just kicking a lot of good sand around, but it don’t mind.’

  I kicked one of the creatures. It flew through the air back toward the ocean, and I yelled, ‘Hah!’

  ‘That right.’ The old man stood up, took me by the arm, and pulled me toward the water. ‘Walk right through it. Nothing that can hurt you here. It all in your head. Go all the way if you want.’

  When I realized he was pulling me toward the ocean, I fought him. More black creatures were coming from the waves. My legs felt weak, and he drew me down to the water against my will, until my shoes and pant legs splashed in the white foam. The black reptiles lunged at me, though I batted and kicked at them, and still the old man drew me deeper. ‘You a tough son of bitch,’ he said, and started lowering me backward into the dark water. Hundreds of black animals swam at me. The reptiles that had come for me on the beach now had mouths but no legs. They were eels of some kind, their jaws hooked open. I screamed, and I felt the old man’s hands holding me and heard his voice saying, ‘Quiet, boy. Quiet.’

  He shoved my head under the surface. The black wash of salt water rose into my nostrils and flooded my mouth. Hundreds of black creatures swam at me, slamming against my body and legs, jaws open. I kicked and struck at them with my hands. I screamed. I couldn’t breathe.

  The old man held me, though I clawed at him and tried to come up. Water sucked into my throat, and I knew I was drowning. The black creatures became a blanket of life or of death – or of something that was neither life nor death but both, woven into one fabric – and it held me and warmed me as if to reassure me that, whatever I was, I was part of the sea – I belonged to it, and it belonged to me. I felt my body relax, the fight leaving me, and I seemed to float under the surface of the water for a long time, neither living nor dead.

  The old man must have carried or dragged me back to the beach. When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the sand, the black creatures gone, the stars shining in my eyes. I breathed hard, rolled to my side, and vomited. I looked at my injured arm. The cast and bandages were a wreck of plaster, salt water, and cotton gauze. I vomited again and tried to sit.

  The old man helped me. ‘You all right now,’ he said.

  ‘Take me home.’

  ‘Sure. I think you ready for sleep.’

  On the way back to the city, as the sun rose, animals and insects climbed on to the hood of the car and pasted themselves against the windshield and windows trying to get at me, but I knew Papa Crowe didn’t see them. If I told him I did, he might take me back to the beach and try to drown me again, so I said nothing.

  The old man seemed cheerful. ‘You got to fight the devil with the devil. Some folk call jimson weed angel’s trumpet. I think the last judgment be gentler,’ he said, and he glanced at me. ‘You get a new cast for that hand, OK? Unless you want me to splint it for you?’

  A wet, black reptile slammed against the windshield. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘You all right now, I think,’ he said. When I said nothing, he added, ‘Now I tell you one more thing. This about your brother-in-law, Daniel Turner. He going to drop the investigation into Sheneel and Alex. He done it for the Phelpses before. I don’t know what they give him, but I know they own him.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You wait see.’

  I shivered in my wet clothes and looked at him, a strange old man barreling down the highway in a strange car. ‘You shouldn’t have done this to me.’

  He said, ‘For your own good.’

  I closed my eyes, but that didn’t stop the insects and animals.

  After a long time, I opened them again to his voice. ‘Uh oh, you get some trouble.’

  We’d arrived at my street. Two squad cars were parked on my driveway. The sun was still low, and the lights were on in the front windows.

  ‘You really shouldn’t have done this,’ I said.

  ‘A man never do a thing he ain’t ready to do.’ He pulled to the side two houses before mine. ‘I leave you here, son. No sense complicating things.’

  I stumbled the rest of the way to my front door, but the insects and animals were suddenly gone, and the early morning sun warmed my wet clothes. I pushed the door open.

  Lillian stood in the living room talking with Daniel and three uniformed officers. She wore jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair was unbrushed, her eyes red. All at once she, Daniel, and the officers stopped talking and turned toward me. For a long moment, no one said anything. Then Lillian said, ‘Where have you—’ and I felt my drugged mind trip over itself again. Her eyes descended over my wet clothes and stopped on the wet remains of the cast and bandages. ‘What happened to—’ Lillian, Daniel, and the officers moved toward me.

  Lillian’s face turned into the face of Felicity the hooker. I closed my eyes and opened them. Daniel’s face and the faces of the officers turned into the featureless faces of dead men I’d processed in the slow-swaying room deep beneath the deck of a hospital ship on the Arabian Sea. I yelled.

  For a moment, they stopped. ‘It’s all right,’ said one of the officers, his voice calm. But then they and Daniel – dead men from six thousand miles away – fanned through the living room the way we were taught to do when approaching an enemy combatant, reducing the enemy’s choices and increasing ours.

  I yelled again, charged along the front wall to the hallway, and sprinted to the bedroom. I slammed and locked the door before they could reach me, and I looked around the room. Wet black animals were trying to come through the closed window. I found my SIG 9mm in the top dresser drawer, aimed at the window, and shot out the glass. The black animals poured into the room. A voice in the hallway yelled, ‘Gun!’ and I spun and shot a hole through the wooden door. When I spun back to shoot the animals, they were gone, but Felicity sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard, her legs splayed and welcoming. I cracked a bullet hole through the skin between her eyes.

  PART TWO

  FIFTEEN

  Lillian

  The SWAT team parked four RVs in front of the h
ouse. A helicopter circled over the trees. An armored tractor with a battering ram backed on to the street from a flatbed trailer. The police cleared our neighbors from their houses, running them to their cars and escorting them to the end of the street. They tried talking Johnny out of the house through a megaphone. When he refused to come, they tried calling him on his cell phone. When he didn’t answer, a SWAT team member, dressed in a jumpsuit and helmet, crept along the side of the house and tossed another phone into the bedroom through the broken window. When Johnny answered that phone and the negotiator asked him to come out, he said he was tired. When the negotiator asked him to throw his gun out of the window, he said no. When the negotiator asked what he planned to do next, he said he planned to sleep. When the negotiator said he hoped this would end peacefully, Johnny said he hoped so too, and now if the police negotiator would leave him alone, he would shut his eyes for a while.

  At that moment, four SWAT officers kicked down the bedroom door, fingers on the triggers of their automatic rifles.

  Johnny was on our bed with the sheets pulled around his wet clothes, the phone to his ear, his eyes closed, his pistol lying on the floor. They dragged him out, handcuffed and shackled, and, as they shoved him into the back of a police car, he screamed, ‘I won’t forgive you!’

  They took him to the station, charged and processed him, put him in a holding cell, then took him to the hospital where the doctors cut away his clothes and locked him in a room. They kept him for six weeks. During the first three, I got no updates other than that he was medicated and doing fine. During the second three, the doctors said they were trying out different pharmacological regimens.

  In that time I replaced the windowpane, hung a new bedroom door, and patched the drywall behind the bed. I taught my classes. My students saw my name in the news and filled in what they didn’t know with rumors and disconnected facts. They watched me teach with what seemed to me a profound curiosity that had little to do with the books we were reading. But in the new air and sunshine that had followed Sheneel’s death, they had changed too. Sheneel’s friend, Samuel Huang, who used to wear khaki shorts and untucked polo shirts, and looked like an overgrown toddler, showed up now with his head shaved and a silver ring through a pierced lip. Students who knew Sheneel, and some who didn’t, seemed to take her death as an opportunity to unmask themselves or put on new masks.