Second Skin

by Michael Wiley

  He eyed me, then smiled. ‘Johnny.’ If he’d noticed the revolver, he didn’t show it.

  ‘Hey, can we talk?’

  He glanced at the yard, looked across the street. ‘Of course. C’mon.’

  He held the door so I could pass, but I waved him ahead and followed him into the front hall. He was a big man – wide-hipped, wide-shouldered.

  ‘Patty home?’ I asked.

  ‘She went to work early. And I was out late last night, so I slept in.’

  As we came to the kitchen, I reached for the revolver, but at the same moment he spun and threw a punch at me. His face had pinked as if he’d been straining or holding his breath, and as he lunged his robe pulled open, exposing his chest and belly.

  I dropped back, and his punch missed, but I fell against the hallway wall. I tried to get the gun out of my belt. He regained his balance and charged at me, a man whose size and violence could crush me, but my fingers touched the wooden revolver grip, and the gun came into my hand and up until I aimed it at his chest.

  He stopped.

  He stood and stared at me, his naked body exposed by the open robe. He laughed. ‘What the hell kind of gun is that?’

  ‘The kind that will shoot you.’

  He stopped laughing. ‘I don’t think so.’ But he stayed where he was.

  ‘Close your robe.’

  Keeping his eyes on me, he did. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Why did you try to punch me?’

  ‘I saw the gun in your pants when I opened the door. A man like you should never have a gun. When he does, only bad can come.’ His face was red.

  ‘Why did you shoot me at the Phelpses’ house?’

  He stared at me a moment as if he might answer, but turned and walked toward the back door.

  I pointed the gun at his back. ‘Stop.’

  ‘Go to hell. I need some air.’

  The cylinder held four bullets. One would be enough.

  He went out through the back door. I followed him as he walked down the lawn to the dock. When he built it, around the time I started seeing Lillian, he’d painted the pressure-treated wood white, constructed a bench at the end to sit on while fishing, and bracketed a length of PVC pipe to the back of the bench to hold a flag on the Fourth of July and Memorial Day. Now the bench and pipe were gone, and gray wood showed where wind and rain had stripped the paint.

  Daniel walked to the end of the dock and stared at the water. An anhinga, its black wings stretched to dry in the sun, perched on the exposed branch of a fallen tree that had snagged near the close bank of the creek.

  Daniel breathed heavily. His neck was sweaty. If I shot a bullet in his back, it would push him into the water and he would float with the lazy current to where the creek emptied into the St Johns River and, if no one pulled him out with a net or a hook, down the St Johns into the Atlantic Ocean.

  He said, ‘It’s real bad with the Phelpses and it’s getting worse.’

  ‘You got yourself into it,’ I said.

  ‘That makes it better?’

  ‘Why did you shoot me?’

  ‘You know, I could have shot you in the head,’ he said. ‘Then we wouldn’t be standing here. I told the Phelpses it would be better that way. But Edward wanted you to live if possible. For what that’s worth.’

  ‘I should be grateful to him?’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘Who wants to be responsible for killing a vet?’

  ‘But shooting me in the stomach is OK?’

  ‘If you come to his house, crazy with a rifle, yeah. Extra points if it turns out you’re not hurt too bad.’

  ‘You know it didn’t happen that way.’

  ‘I know how it goes down on paper. That’s all that matters to the Phelpses.’

  ‘You do everything they ask you to do?’

  ‘More or less.’ He sounded resigned.

  From up the creek, a small aluminum motorboat approached, driven by a man who looked to be in his early twenties. He wore camouflage cargo pants, a blue sleeveless T-shirt, and a yellow baseball cap. Three fishing rods hung over the stern. He waved at Daniel, and Daniel waved back. As the boat passed, I tucked the revolver behind me.

  I said, ‘Did you help kill Sheneel and Alex Greene.’

  He waited for the boat to disappear down creek. ‘No.’

  ‘Who killed them, then? Did Peter Lisman do them both?’ I pointed the gun at him again.

  ‘If you want the truth, I don’t know.’

  ‘The truth?’

  ‘Such as it is.’

  ‘You’ve got to stop the Phelpses,’ I said. ‘It’s all you can do. It’s your only chance.’

  At first, he said nothing. Then, ‘This dock is my favorite place. I sometimes wish I could cut the pilings and float into the middle of the creek and stay there.’

  ‘Your last chance.’

  ‘Are you going to shoot me?’ he asked.

  Before I could answer, a voice spoke from the base of the dock behind us. ‘You bastard.’

  It was Lillian.

  I was holding a gun to her brother’s back. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at Daniel. ‘You goddamned bastard.’ She must have arrived at the house, knocked, and known – as I’d known – that if her brother didn’t answer, she would find him on the dock.

  She came to us, and, for the first time since I’d known him, Daniel looked distressed. He tried to speak but failed. He was big and pathetic in his bathrobe.

  Lillian reached for my gun. ‘Give it to me.’

  I gave it to her.

  She pointed it at Daniel. ‘You lied to me, and you’ – a look of incredulity crossed her face – ‘shot Johnny?’

  Again, he opened his mouth to speak.

  But Lillian said, ‘No. If you say a word, I swear to God I’ll kill you.’

  He said, ‘Lillian—’

  She pulled the trigger. The gun blast seemed to shock the air. The anhinga lifted from its perch and disappeared into the trees on the other side of the creek.

  Daniel froze, amazed. He looked at his hands, his legs, his torso. They were bloodless. Lillian had drawn the barrel up as she’d pulled the trigger.

  ‘I don’t ever want to hear another word from you,’ she said to Daniel, and she turned and walked back up the dock. I stared at the fear and surprise in Daniel’s eyes. I wanted to remember that look. Then I followed Lillian across the backyard, through the fence gate, and to the street.

  THIRTY

  Lillian

  My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun.

  Johnny and I agreed to meet at home. I drove with the revolver on the passenger seat. It was a strange object, and I’d almost killed my brother with it, my rage at his betrayal seeming to stream through the gun barrel like pressurized air, like sexual release, like … Christ, I’d almost killed my brother.

  On the roadside, kudzu and wild grapevines draped the low-standing trees. Other cars and trucks drove like a slowly advancing wash, but the sun warmed me through the windshield.

  I knew exactly where I was going and I felt lost.

  About thirty seconds after I arrived, Johnny pulled into our driveway. When we went inside, he mumbled something about feeling sick and went to our bedroom. A minute later, the shower started running. I made coffee, then sat on the floor with Percy. I fumbled with the gun until the cylinder sprang open and I saw three bullets and three dark holes. I went into the sunroom and watched a cardinal hopping on the lawn. When Johnny came into the kitchen a half-hour later, he had changed clothes, and I was sitting at the table with the gun in front of me.

  He looked at it and at me and said, ‘You could have killed Daniel.’

  ‘Yeah.’ When he said nothing, I asked, ‘Were you going to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He poured himself a cup of coffee, then asked, ‘Are you sorry you didn’t?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He drank from the cup. ‘How did you know I would be at his house?’

  ‘I didn�
��t. I went to talk to him.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘I thought you’d gone off again.’

  ‘Off?’

  ‘Off.’

  ‘I hadn’t.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Or I had, but for a good reason.’

  ‘I know.’

  He stared at me, at the gun, at me. He asked, ‘Do you want to go in deeper?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I do.’

  We drove across the Hart Bridge with Percy in the back seat, the sun shining on the slow, flat water, then hooked into the Interstate and cut back toward the river on Heckscher Drive.

  Johnny said, ‘On the night that Daniel shot me, when I asked what happened to Sheneel and Alex Greene, Cecilia Phelps started talking about salt. She was going on about how salt preserves when it’s dry but eats away at things when it’s wet. It sounded like nonsense, but Edward hit her to stop her from talking. Little Marsh Island is on a salt marsh. Why are the Phelpses building their waste-processing plant there? What happens when you mix salt water with pulp waste? What does salt water do to chromium-six? Do you know anyone at the college who could tell us?’

  I hated to say it. ‘Tom might know someone.’

  Johnny shrugged. ‘Call him.’

  I did, and he gave me the number of his kayaking friend in Chemistry. ‘He does environmental studies, so he might know,’ Tom said. When he added, ‘We need to talk,’ I hung up.

  Tom’s friend laughed nervously when I phoned him. He said Tom had told him about me. I asked about salt and chromium, and he said, ‘They bond and that slows biosorption.’

  ‘Slows what?’

  ‘Biosorption is when plants and animals absorb heavy metals. Like chromium. If a human absorbs a lot of heavy metal, that’s bad, and so, if you use salt to bond with chromium and keep it out of the food and water supply, that’s good. But, of course, if you add too much heavy metal to any body of salt water, that’s bad.’

  ‘Let’s say the body of salt water is next to a neighborhood that uses freshwater wells,’ I said.

  Again he laughed. ‘Why take a chance? I would put up a For Sale sign.’

  We arrived at Little Marsh Island a little after one p.m. and parked by the chained service road. Johnny tucked the revolver into his pants and fastened the leash to Percy’s collar. Then we walked back to the fence gate with the sign for Phelps Paper Company. Johnny drew Percy close to him on the leash and we went in.

  Since I last trespassed on the construction site, a crew had laid a wide foundation into the cleared and filled marsh. Fingers of steel rebar jutted from the concrete. A pile of long, thick pipes stood on one side. A pile of iron I-beams stood by the pipes. A tractor crane stuck its yellow arm into the sky. The two white construction trailers, their windows dark, stood off to the side.

  We walked to the foundation, Percy straining on the leash. The concrete and metal – the uncertain architecture of a factory or plant – meant nothing to my eyes. We crossed the concrete slab toward the construction trailers. The first of the afternoon thunderclouds hung in the sky to the west. Percy saw a blue heron in the grass by one of the trailers and tugged to get free.

  ‘Let him run,’ I said.

  Johnny said, ‘Last time I let him go here, he brought me Sheneel Greene’s arm.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a danger anymore.’

  He unclipped the leash, and Percy shot after the heron, which lifted into the air on awkward wings and flew toward the outer marsh.

  The door on the first trailer was locked.

  ‘Try the other one?’ I said.

  But Johnny kicked the door. It was made of metal. He kicked it again, and again, and the frame bent inward. He kicked it again. He held the door handle and pulled it with his weight. The metal whined, but the door remained standing. He kicked it, pulled it again. Metal snapped and the door sprang open. He went inside and found a light switch, and I followed him in.

  A wall-unit air conditioner was off, but the musty air was cool. Someone had been here recently. I wanted to go back through the door and run through the construction site and up the dirt road to our car, but Johnny walked through the trailer, inspecting it as if he was thinking of buying it.

  He found blueprints, construction diagrams, and a binder of permits on a metal desk at the back. The blueprints showed a two-story building with a double smokestack at one end and a half-dozen pipes reaching out into the marsh. Three windows, all in a second-story office, would face inland. There were two doorways and a triple ramp into a bay that would accommodate large trucks. The diagrams showed machines and boilers, labeling their dimensions but not their functions.

  ‘Do you understand?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  Johnny rolled the diagrams into the blueprints and carried them out the door.

  The second trailer also was locked, but a window on the side was open, so I pulled out the screen and Johnny boosted me through.

  The inside of the trailer was partitioned into three rooms. It appeared clean but smelled like gasoline and rotting meat. A worn couch stood in the middle of the main room. A small sink was attached to the back wall next to a little stove and a miniature refrigerator covered with Bible verses written on magnets. A computer stood on a table nearby, with a black-ink sticker on the monitor that said, I will lift up my eyes to the hills.

  Johnny called from outside: ‘Hey.’

  I unlocked the door and let him in.

  He let his eyes adjust and said, ‘What’s that smell?’

  ‘Garbage?’

  ‘A month ago.’

  Johnny went to one end of the trailer and looked behind the partition. I went to the other end. The smell seemed to be coming from there. When I looked, I choked on my breath and whispered, ‘Johnny!’

  An old black woman wearing only underpants and a bra was sleeping on a small bed. Her hair was dyed henna and pink. One of her legs was swollen and had an open and infected lesion, slathered with ointment. The other leg looked as if it belonged to a much younger woman – muscled and curving toward an ankle around which hung a thin silver chain with a silver medallion. Flies hovered over her.

  The old woman opened her dark eyes and fixed me with a terrible stare.

  Johnny came and peered around the partition. ‘Felicity?’ he said.

  The woman said, ‘Hey, sugar.’

  He said, ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Who is she?’ I asked.

  The woman answered, ‘I watch this place at night. Sleep in the day unless someone knocks on my door.’

  Johnny said, ‘She’s a hooker.’

  That made no sense. ‘Yours?’

  He gave me a look. ‘She works the strip on Philips Highway near my office.’

  ‘What’s she doing here?’

  The woman said, ‘He gives me cigarettes and I give him—’

  ‘She gives me nothing,’ Johnny said.

  ‘He came to me in the hospital and brought me a carton.’

  ‘I brought you two.’

  The woman looked at me for confirmation. ‘I told you he’s my sugar. Two cartons of cigarettes. He wants something.’

  ‘You’re hurt,’ I said to her.

  Johnny said, ‘Your leg is rotting.’

  ‘My leg is fine,’ she said. ‘I’ve got medicine.’

  I said, ‘You should be in a hospital.’

  ‘Do I look like I can afford a hospital?’

  ‘You’ll die here,’ Johnny said.

  She laughed. ‘I’ll never die, sugar.’ She lifted herself to her feet, took a black metal cane from a corner, and stepped into the main room. She took a jar of clear liquid from the top of the mini-fridge, went to the table, and sat. She unscrewed the cap on the can and poured something that smelled like turpentine over her wound. ‘Jesus, save me,’ she said as it boiled on her leg.

  ‘You’re out of your mind,’ Johnny said.

  When her eyes cleared, she said, ‘I’ve been told that before.’
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  ‘Did Papa Crowe give that to you?’ Johnny asked.

  She nodded. ‘He gave me a poultice and sent me to the hardware store. I feel better already.’

  ‘You look like death,’ I said.

  ‘Is this your wife, sugar?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  She peered at me. ‘You don’t look so hot yourself.’

  Johnny said, ‘The Phelpses hired you as a security guard?’

  ‘A girl’s got to make a living. I’m not so good on my back right now, and I never did like taking it from behind.’

  He said, ‘They’re building a waste-processing plant here?’

  She glanced out the window. ‘Not this afternoon, they ain’t. Most days they’ve got trucks rolling and men shouting. Makes it hard to sleep.’

  ‘What have they told you about the plant?’ he asked.

  ‘They don’t tell me nothing. But I listen. Edward says they’re going to process pulp waste. Everyone else says, Yes, sir or No, sir.’

  ‘How are they going to process it?’

  ‘When was it they gave me the engineering degree?’

  ‘All right.’ He glanced around the trailer. ‘What are you supposed to do if someone breaks into the site at night?’

  ‘I’ve got a telephone. I call Peter, and then I call nine-one-one.’

  I asked, ‘Peter Lisman?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s another good-looking one, ain’t he?’ She smiled. ‘But he’s part of the family, so they ain’t going to kick him out of the nest.’

  Johnny asked, ‘What do you mean, part of the family?’

  ‘Where’s the confusion?’ she said.

  Johnny shook his head. ‘Edward told me about taking him in from a prison work crew.’

  ‘That’s true, Edward did. But he’s still part of the family.’

  ‘What part?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘You have to talk to Miss Cecilia about that. Even when everything is your business, there’s still some things that are none of it. I’ve lived a hard life,’ she said, ‘but she’s lived harder. She’s got the houses and gardens, but I wouldn’t want to live in her head. No silver coins can buy her way out, and no brooms can sweep out the evil.’

  THIRTY-ONE