Second Skin

Cleopatra’s Car

Shanks of ice hanging from the eaves, the wind sucking with increasing fury at the wormholes, Miranda standing in the open front doorway and laughing into the wind or bellowing through the fog at her two fat black Labradors and throwing them chunks of meat from a galvanized iron basin slung under her arm, the ragged bird returning each dawn to hover beyond the shore line outside my window, empty Old Grand Dad bottles collecting in the kitchen cupboards, under the stove, even beside the spinning wheel in the parlor — so these first weeks froze and fled from us, and Cassandra grew reluctant to explore the cow paths with me, and my nights, my lonely nights, were sleepless. I began to find the smudged saucers everywhere — stink of the asthma powders, stink of secret designs and death — and I began to notice that Cassandra was Miranda’s shadow, sweet silent shadow of the big widow in slacks. When Miranda poured herself a drink — tumbler filled to the brim with whiskey — Cassandra put a few drops in the small end of an egg cup and accompanied her. And when Miranda sat in front of the fire to knit, Cassandra was always with her, always kneeling at her feet and holding the yam. Black yam. Heavy soft coil of rich black yam dangling from Cassandra’s wrists. Halter on the white wrists. Our slave chains. Between the two of them always the black umbilicus, the endless and maddening absorption in the problems of yam. It lived in the cave of Miranda’s sewing bag — not a black sweater for some lucky devil overseas, nor even a cap for Pixie, but only this black entanglement, their shapeless squid. And I? I would sit in the shadows and wait, maintain my guard, sit there and now and then give the spinning wheel an idle turn or polish all the little ivory pieces of the Mah Jongg set.

And marked by Sunday dinners. The passing of those darkening weeks, the flow of those idle days — quickening, growing colder, until they rushed and jammed together in the little jagged ice shelf of our frozen time — was marked by midday dinners on the Sabbath when Captain Red did the carving— wind-whipped, tall and raw and bald like me, his big knuckles sunk in the gravy and his bulging eyes on the widow — and when Bub waited on table and ate alone with Pixie in the kitchen, and Jomo — back straight, sideburns reaching to the thin white jaws, black hair plastered down with pine sap — sat working his artificial hand beside Cassandra. On Sundays Jomo worked his artificial hand for Cassandra, but I was the one who watched, I who watched him change the angle of his hook, lock the silver fork in place and go after peas, watched him fiddle with a lever near the wrist and drop the fork and calmly and neatly snare the full water glass in the mechanical round of that wonderful steel half-bracelet that was his hand.

Those were long Sunday meals when the Captain spoke only to say grace and ask for the rolls; and Bub stood waiting at my elbow and smelled of brine and uncut boy’s hair; and Jomo sat across from me, solitary — except for Cassandra at his side — and busy with his new hand; and Miranda drank her whiskey and cursed the weather and grinned down the length of the table at the quiet lechery that boiled in old Red’s eyes; and Cassandra, poor Cassandra, merely picked at her plate, yet Sunday after dreary Sunday grew heavier, more ripe to the silent fare of that cruel board. Dreary and dull and dangerous. So at the end of the meal I always asked Jomo how he had liked Salerno. Because of course he had lost his hand in the fighting around Salerno. A city, as he said, near the foot of the boot. What would I have done without Jomo’s hand?

Family and friends, then, gathering week after dreary week for the Sabbath, meeting together on the dangerous day of the Lord, pursuing our black entanglement, waiting around for something — the first snow? first love? the first outbreak of violence? — and saying grace, watching the slow winter death of the oak tree, feeling wave after wave of the cold Atlantic breaching our trackless black inhospitable shores. And then another Sunday rolling around and the sexton rushing to the Lutheran church to ring the bells — always excited, always in a hurry, can’t wait to get his hands on the rope — and once again the frenzied sexton nearly hanging himself from the bellpull and another Sunday ringing and pealing and chiming on the frosty air.

So the gray days died away and the hours of my lonely and sleepless nights increased, each hour deeper and darker and colder than the one before and with only the dummy — mockery of myself — to keep me company, to follow me through the cold night watch. Luckily I found an old brass bed warmer in the closet behind the trunks and every night I filled it with the last coals of the fire and carried it first to Cassandra’s room, devoted fifteen minutes to warming Cassandra’s bed, and then carried it across the hall — hot libation, hot offering to myself — and shoved it between the covers where it spent the night. And I would lie there in the darkness and everywhere, except in my feet, suffer the bruising effects of the flat frozen pillow and the cold mattress, and clutching my hands together and waiting, knowing that even the coals would cool, would remember one of Jomo’s phrases spoken when he thought I couldn’t hear — blue tit — and in the darkness would begin to say the phrase aloud — blue tit — aware that in some mysterious way it referred to the cold, referred to the way I felt, seemed to give actual substance, body, to the dark color and falling temperature of all my lonely and sleepless nights. Then I would dream with Jomo’s incantation still on my lips. And I would dream of Tremlow leading the mutiny, of Gertrude’s grave, of Fernandez mutilated in the flophouse, and I would awaken to the sound of the wind and the sight of my white spoiled uniform flapping and moaning on the dressmaker’s dummy. Blue tit. And at dawn a hard tissue-thin sheet of ice in the bottom of the basin, big block of ice in the pitcher, frozen splinters like carpet tacks when I stumbled to the bathroom to empty the bed warmer down the john. Standing in that bathroom, shivering, blinking, bed warmer hanging cold and heavy from my hand, I would always lean close to the bathroom mirror and read the message printed in ornate green type on a little square of wrinkled and yellowed paper which was pasted to the glass. Always read it and, no matter how cold I was, how tired, I would begin to smile.

Wake with a Loving Thought.

Work with a Happy Thought.

Sleep with a Gentle Thought.

I would begin to smile, begin to whistle. Because it tickled my fancy, that prayer, that message for the new day, and because it was a talisman against the horrors of blue tit and saved me, at least for a while, from the thought of the black brassiere.

So the changes of those cold days. Until the local children became glum Christmas sprites and the first snow fell at last-sudden soaring of asthma powder stench, dirty little volcanoes smoldering in every room — and the night of the local high school dance loomed out of the fresh wet snow and I, I too, was swept along into the glaring bathos of that high school dance. Kissing in the coatroom. Big business out back in the car. Little bright noses in the snow. Jomo’s hook in action. Beginning of our festive end.

“Ready, Skip? Ready yet, Candy? They’ll be here any sec. …”

Even in the cold and echoing bathroom — lead pipe, cracked linoleum, slabs of yellow marble — and even with the cold water running in the tap and the snow piling against the window and the old brown varnished door closed as far as it would go, still I could hear her calling to us from the parlor, hear the sound of her tread in the parlor. But though her voice rose up to us crisp and clear and bold — a snappy voice, a hailing voice, deeply resonant, pathetically excited — and though I resented being rushed and would never forgive her for daring to invent and use those perky names, especially for shouting up that cheap term of endearment for Cassandra when I, her father, had always yearned hopelessly for just this privilege, nonetheless it was Saturday night and the first snow was falling and I too was getting ready, after all, for the high school dance. So I could not really begrudge Miranda her excitement or her impatience. I too felt a curious need to hurry after all. And perhaps down there in the parlor — kicking the log, sloshing unsteady portions of whiskey into her glass, then striding to the window and trying to see out through the darkness and heavy snow — perhaps in some perverse way she was thinking of Don, though her chest was clear and though from time to time I could hear her laughing to herself down there.

Laughing while I was making irritable impatient faces in the bathroom mirror. Giving myself a close shave for the high school dance. Trying to preserve my own exhilaration against hers. And it was pleasurable. After a particularly good stroke I would set aside the razor and fling the water about as wildly as I could and snort, grind my eyes on the ends of the towel. Then step to the window for a long look at the black night and the falling snow.

Wet hands on the flaking white sill. Sudden shock in nose, chin, cheeks, sensation of the cold glass against the whole of my inquisitive face. Kerosene stove breathing into the seat of my woolen pants, eyes all at once accustomed to the dark, when suddenly it coalesced — soap, toothpaste, warm behind, the cold wet night — and I smiled and told myself I had nothing to fear from Red and saw myself poised hand in hand with Cassandra on the edge of the floor and smiling at the awkward postures and passions of the high school young. I stared out the window, tasting the soap on my lips, watching the snow collect in the black crotch of a tree — slick runnels in the bark, puckered wounds of lopped branches crowned with snow — that grew close to the window and glistened in the beam of the bathroom light, and I felt as if I were being tickled with the point of a sharp knife. Thank God for the sound of the tap and of Cassandra’s little thin shoe spanking across the puddles of the bathroom floor. I waited, face trembling with the coldness of the night.

“Skipper. Zip me up. Please.”

“Well, Cassandra,” I said, and turned to her, held out both hands wide to her, “How sad that Gertrude can’t see you now. But your dress, Cassandra, surely it’s not a mail-order dress?”

“Miranda made it for me,” tugging lightly at a flounce, twisting the waist, “she made it as a surprise for me to wear tonight. It has a pretty bow. You’ll see. It’s not too youthful, Skipper?”

“For you?” And I laughed, dropped my arms — antipathy toward my embrace? fear for the dress? — and wiped my hands on the towel, frowned at the thought of Miranda’s midnight sewing machine, stood while with straight arm and straight Angers she followed the healing needlework on my skin, traced out the letters of her lost husband’s name — did she, could she know what she was doing? know the shame I felt for the secret I still kept from her? — then by the shoulders I turned her so I could reach the dress where it hung open down her back. “Of course it’s not too young for you, Cassandra. Hardly.”

“And we’re not making a mistake tonight? We shouldn’t just stay home and let Miranda go to the dance alone with Red and Bub and,” pausing — moment of deference — whispering the name into the little clear cup of her collar bone, “and with Jomo?”

“Of course not,” I said, and reached for the zipper, probed for it, quickly tried to work the zipper. “It’s only a high school dance, Cassandra. Harmless. Amusing. We needn’t be out late,” pulling, fumbling, trying to work the zipper free, “and think of it, Cassandra. The first snow. …”

She nodded and plucked at the bodice, fluffed the skirt, put one foot in front of the other, and with each gesture there was a corresponding ripple in the prim naked shape of her back and a corresponding ripple in the dress itself. That dress. That green taffeta. Flounces and ruffles and little bright green fields and cascading skirt. Taffeta. Smooth for the palm and nipped-in little deep green persuasive folds for the fingers. Swirling. Shining. Cake frosting with candles. For a fifteen-year-old. For a cute kitten. For trouble. Green taffeta. And when we went down the stairs together, Cassandra holding up the knee-length skirt, I following, steadying myself against the flimsy bannister, I saw the green bow, the two full yards of fluted taffeta with a green knot larger than my fist and streamers that reached her calves. Bow that bound her buttocks. Outrageous bow!

So I zipped the zipper and in the mirror full of contortion, mirror crowded suddenly with hands, elbows, floating face, I tied my tie and spread a thin even coating of Vaseline on my smooth red scalp — protection for the bald head, no chafing in wind or snow, trick I learned in the Navy — and grinned at myself in the glass and buffed my fingernails and struggled into my jacket and rapped on Cassandra’s door — exposure of black market stocking, gathered green taffeta hem of skirt, hairpin in the pretty mouth — and waited and waited and then escorted her down the dark stairs.

“Candy! My God, Candy! She looks like a dream, doesn’t she, Skip?”

Before I could reply or smile or make some condescending gesture they hugged each other, hooked arms and crossed the parlor to the fire, in front of the fire held hands, admired each other, babbled, swung their four clasped hands in unison. Girlish. Hearts full of joy. The big night. Miranda was dressed in black, of course — her totem was still hanging in the bathroom — and around her throat she wore a black velvet band. Her bosom was an unleashed animal.

“My God, Candy, we’re just kids. Two kids. Two baby sitters waiting for dates! And they’ll be here any sec! ”

“And me, Miranda?” Squirming, shrugging, raising my chin toward the cracks in the ceiling, “What about me, Miranda?”

“You?” She laughed, showed her big white knees, pretended to waltz with Cassandra in front of the fire. “You’re the Mah Jongg champion. Boy, what a Mah Jongg champion you are!” And suddenly locking Cassandra’s face between her bare white hands, and swaying, smiling at Cassandra’s little downcast eyes: “My God, I wish Don were here,” she said. “I wish Don could see you tonight, Candy.”

“Watch out for the asthma,” I murmured, but too softly and too late because the dates were stamping on the veranda, banging on the door, and she was gone, was already rushing down the hall and kissing them, throwing herself on the sniffling figures standing there in the cold.

And under my breath, quickly: “First dance, Cassandra? Please?”

“I can’t promise, Skipper. I can’t make promises any more.”

Then the fire shot high again and the black beauty was herding them all into the parlor — Jomo, Bub, Grandma who looked like a little corncob tied up with rags — and they were all blowing on their fingers, kicking the snow off their boots, sniffling. Red ears. Mean eyes. Smears of Miranda’s lipstick on each of the faces.

“Have a drink, Jomo?” she said, and hugged his narrow black iron shoulders with her long white arm, ran her other hand through Bub’s wet hair. “Just one for the road?”

“Can’t. Red’s out in the car. Waiting.”

The long-billed baseball cap, the steady eyes, the flat black sideburns sculpted frontier-style with a straight razor, pug nose and skin the color of axle grease and little black snap-on bow tie and lips drawn as if he were going to whistle through his teeth — this was Jomo and Jomo was looking at Cassandra, staring at her, with one oblivious snuff of his pug nose expressed all the contempt and desire of his ruthless race. It was the green taffeta bow, of course, and before he could finish his contemplation of that green party favor, green riddle as big as a balloon, I stepped in front of him, and hoping, as I always hoped, that one day he would forget and give me his cold hook of steel, I thrust out my hand.

“Evening, Jomo,” I said. “How’s the cod? Running?”

He waited. No artificial hand. No real hand. Only the soft light of fury sliding off his face, only one more baffling question to ask his old man about and to hold against me. So he turned to Miranda, jerked his head toward the door.

“Anyways, Red’s got a pint in his pocket. Let’s go.”

But the little old woman, mother of the Captain and grandmother of his noxious sons, was pushing on Bub’s sleeve and pointing in my direction and trying to talk.

“She wants to say something,” Bub said. “Tell Bub,” he said, and stuck his ear down to the little happy bobbing clot of the old woman’s face. Crushed once with a clam digger. Dug out of a hole at low tide. Little old woman with love and a sense of humor.

“All right,” I said, “what is it? And how is Mrs. Poor tonight?” I smiled and glanced at Cassandra — shining and silent cameo by the hearth — and smiled again, squared my shoulders, leaned my head slightly to one side for Mrs. Poor who was clinging to Bub’s arm and pumping with excitement in all the little black muscular valves of her mouth and eyes. Every Saturday Red went down to feed her doughnuts, and on Sundays after grace he would sometimes tell us about her health and happiness. “Well,” I said, knowing that she was shrewd, not to be trusted, that the little rag-bound head was stuffed with Jomo’s jokes and snatches of the prayer book which she knew by heart, “well, tell us what Grandma wants to say tonight.”

Bub looked at me, wiped his nose. “She says all the girls are sweet on you. You’re apple pie for the girls, she says. All the girls go after a rosy man like you. Real apple pie, she says.” And Bub was scowling and the old woman was nodding up and down, grinning, pointing, and Miranda was kneeling and fixing Cassandra’s bow.

“What a nice thing to say,” said Cassandra. “Don’t you think so, Skipper?”

Jomo leaned over and smacked his thigh. “God damn,” he said, “that’s good.”

And going down the hall toward the open door where I could see the snow driving and sifting — Miranda first, then Cassandra and Jomo and Bub and last, as usual, myself — I noticed Bub’s quick ferret gesture, quick fingers nudging his brother’s arm, and clearly heard his young boy’s voice cupped under a sly hand, in the darkness saw his boy’s feet dance a few lewd steps to the fun of his question:

“What’s that thing she’s wearing on her ass?”

And Jomo, in a dead-pan voice and puppet jerk of the silhouetted head: “Never you mind, Bub. And watch your language. You got a mouth full of rot.”

“Maybe. But I’d like to kill it with a stick.”

Old joke. Snickering shadow of island boy. Jackknife shadow of older brother. But then the snow, the darkness, the packed and crunching veranda, the dying oak and the picket fence heaped high with snow, and beyond the fence, low and throbbing like a diesel truck, the waiting car. It was a hot rod. Cut down. Black. Thirteen coats of black paint and wax. Thick aluminum tubes coiling out of the engine. And in the front an aerial — perfect even to the whip of steel, I thought — and tied to the tip of the aerial a little fat fuzzy squirrel tail, little flag freshly killed and plump, soft, twisting and revolving slowly in the snow, dark fur long and wet and glistening under the crystals of falling snow. The lights from the house were shining on the windshield — narrow flat rectangle of blind glass already half-buried like the silver hub caps in the heavy snow — and I glanced back toward the house and waved and, blinking away the snow, licking it, thinking of another departure, “Au revoir, Grandma,” I called softly, “take good care of Pixie.” Then I stumbled to the car with wet cheeks and with a smile on my wet lips.

I took hold of the handle. Turned, pulled, shook the handle. “Come on, Bub,” I said, leaning down, rapping on the glass, shading my eyes and attempting to peer into the car, “open the door, you’re not funny.” I squinted, brushed at the snow with a cold hand. I saw the two heads of hair and the knife-billed baseball cap between them in the back, saw Bub laughing, poking at Captain Red who sat behind the wheel holding the pint bottle up to his lip. I saw the pint bottle making the rounds.

“All right,” I said, when the door came open at last, “now get out for a moment, Bub. You can sit on my lap.”

“Now wait a minute. Just you wait. I got this seat first. Didn’t I? If there’s any lap-sitting to be done, it’s you who’s going to do it. Now you want to ride to the dance with us you better just climb into the car and have a seat. Right here.” Pointing. Laughter. Bottle sailing out the window. Captain Red — tall man dressed in his Sunday duds, shaved, fit to kill — blowing the horn three times. Three shrill trumpet blasts through the falling snow.

“But, Bub,” leaning closer, trying to whisper into his ear, “I’m bigger than you are. I’ll be too heavy.”

And the shout: “Never you mind about that. I’ll do the worrying, you just do what I say. And I say you can sit on my lap or you can walk!”

Then there was the meshing of metal, the hard shower of snow, sparks under the snow, and if I hadn’t leapt — puffing, pumping, displaying blind humiliating courage since it’s always the fat man who has to run to catch the train — surely I would have been left behind, left standing there with my hopeless breath freezing on the dark night air. An evening at home. Evening with Grandma. Up and down to the lavatory. Smiles. But I did leap, sucked all possible breath into my lungs and desperate, expecting and even willing to be maimed, for five or ten steps plowed along beside the moving car and then jumped, ducked my head, got a grip on the dashboard and back of the seat, hunched my neck and shoulders — presence of mind to save fingers, feet, loose ends of cloth and flesh from the slamming door — and perched there, balanced there absurdly on Bub’s tough wiry little lap. Steaming upholstery, six steaming people. Smells of gasoline, spilled whiskey, fading perfume, antifreeze. And Bub. With my head knocking against the roof of the car I knew him for what he was: a boy without underwear, holes in his socks, holes in his pockets, rancid navel, hair bunched and furrowed on the scrawny nape of his neck, and the mouth forever breathing off the telltale smell of sleep and half-eaten candy bars. This country boy, this island boy. Filled with fun. With hate. With smelly self-satisfaction.

“Jingle Bells, everybody,” cried Miranda, “sing along with me!” But we were swerving, skidding, sliding through the snow and all at once the lights of the high school were flickering above the tombstones in the cemetery on the hill.

And into the tiny exposed orifice of Cassandra’s ear: “I got dibs on the first dance,” said Jomo, and I understood the meaning of her downcast eyes and through the snow I heard that the bass drum was out of time with the rest of Jack Spratt’s Merry Hep Cats.

But how long, oh my God, how long did I endure that drummer — pimples, frightened eyes, chewing gum under his chair, some kind of permanent paralysis in his legs — how long endure the cornet — begging for alms — or the little girl with the accordion — black and white monster on her bare knees — or the poor stick of a schoolteacher at the upright piano or the paper cups of pop, the wedges of chocolate cake — chocolate on the lips, cheeks, melting all over the hands — how long endure the concrete walls, steam pipes, varnished and forbidding floor, the red, white and blue bunting hung from the nets, how long endure the mothers or the fat old men waiting around for the belly-bumping contest? How long? How long endure all this as well as the sight of Jomo going after Cassandra with his damnable hook? Long enough to be tempted into love once more, long enough to perspire in that cold gymnasium, to win the belly-bumping contest — treachery of my long night-long enough to have my fill of pop and chocolate cake. Too long, oh God, much too long for a man who merely wanted to dance a few slow numbers and amuse his daughter.

“If the power fails,” and I startled at the sound of Red’s deep voice, glanced at the uncertain yellow glow of the caged lights, glanced at the windows filled with wind and snow, “if it fails there’s no telling what all these kids will do. Might have quite a time in the dark. With all these kids.” And the two of them, widow in black, Captain Red in black double-breasted suit, swung out to the middle of the floor, towered above that handful of undernourished high school girls and retarded boys. Two tall black figures locked length to length, two faces convulsed in passion, one as long and white and bony as a white mare’s face, the other crimson, leathery, serrated like the bald head to which it belonged, and the young boys and girls making way for them, scattering in the path of their slow motion smoke, staring up at them in envy, fear, shocked surprise. From the side lines and licking my fingers, swallowing the cake, I too watched them in shocked surprise, stuffed a crumpled paper napkin into my hip pocket. Because they were both so big, so black, so oblivious. But if this was the father, what of the ruthless son? What of Cassandra? What dance could they possibly be dancing?

I was her guardian, her only defense, and I tossed off my Coke — fifth free Coca-Cola, thoughts of Sonny — crushed the cup, and in my heavy dogtrot ran the whole length of that cold basketball court and in the darkest corner saw a flash of steel, the sheen of bright green taffeta. And paused. Bumped a proud mother. But started out onto the floor anyway. Alone. Breathless. Trying to avoid the dancers.

“Say there,” behind me the woman’s voice, sound of Sunday supper in the Lutheran church, “that fellow’s got a nerve.”

“Don’t he though? And all these young boys in uniform and men like that going around scot free? Lord God. Ain’t it a crime?”

The boys were wearing their white shirts — frayed collars, patches in the sleeves — and their wrinkled ties, the young girls were wearing their jerseys, homemade skirts, glass earrings— hand-me-downs — their cotton socks and saddle shoes. And I was among them and I looked into their frightened eyes, looked through the jerseys, and despite my desperation I was able to keep my wits about me — interesting little blonde, sweet raven head — and was not ashamed to look. Sixteen, seventeen, even nineteen years old and undernourished and undeveloped as well. Daughters of poor fishermen. Daughters of the sea. Anemic. Disposed to scabies. Fed on credit, fed on canned stock or stunted berries picked from a field gone back to brier, prickly thorns, wild sumac. Precious brass safety pins holding up their panties, and then I saw the pins, all at once saw the panties, the square gray-white faded undergarments of poor island girls washed in well water morning and night and, indistinguishable from kitchen washrag or scrap of kitchen towel, hung on a string between two young poplars and flapping, blowing in the hard island wind until once more dry enough and clean enough to return to the plain tender skin, and of course the elastics had been worn out or busted long ago and now there were only the little bent safety pins for holding up their panties and a few hairpins for the hair and a single lipstick which they passed from girl to girl at country crossroads or in the high school lavatory on the day of the dance. Plain Janes, island sirens, with long skinny white legs — never to know the touch of silk — and eyes big enough and gray enough to weep buckets, though they would never cry, and little buttocks already corrupted, nonetheless, by the rhythm of pop melodies and boys on leave. I steadied myself on a thin warm shoulder. “Don’t be afraid,” I murmured, “it’s only Papa Cue Ball,” and smelled the soap in her straight shining hair and saw that her skirt had once belonged to Mamma — poor skillful pleats — and that her face revealed the several faint nearly identical faces of a little Dionysian incest on a winter’s night.

“You leave Chloris alone,” her partner hissed, and I yanked my hand from her shoulder, blushed at the realization that I had been squeezing her little thin rounded shoulder.

“No harm meant,” I said under my breath. “Just lost my footing. She’s all yours,” and I smiled at the relentless black walnut eyes, wheeled and cut in on Jomo, took Cassandra right out of his arms.

“OK, Jomo,” I said, “I’m cutting in.”

It was the far dark comer of the gym and there was a young marine sitting on top of a pile of wrestlers’ mats, and I noticed his mouthful of bright cigar, his crooked smile in the dark, the glint of the bottle he didn’t even pretend to hide. Three or four younger boys were hanging around the marine and sharing his bottle, waiting for word from Jomo and talking in lewd tones about Cassandra and me. By the way they turned their heads and covered their mouths and jerked their thumbs at us I knew perfectly well that they were talking in lewd tones about us. Country haircuts — except for the shaved marine — and the country ears and country Adam’s apples. Inheritors of the black Atlantic. Boys who talked a lot but never danced. And of course the marine, the pride of the school, the pride of the woman at the piano. Sophomore in uniform. Leather head. Twenty-seven wounds in the rib cage. Telling them how he raped the little Japanese children. Cocking his knee in the darkness, passing the bottle. Promising to show them all twenty-seven scars in the john.

And glancing to the left, to the right, leaning down as close as I could to Cassandra, and fighting all the while against the current and trying to draw away from Jomo’s friends in the corner — but there was no escaping the shadows, the arrogant glow of the cigar — and trying to subdue the electrical field of green taffeta and worrying, apologizing for my graceless steps, “It’s a tough crowd, Cassandra,” I said, “I don’t like the looks of it.”

She was stiff, her back was stiff, her arm was suddenly un-supple, she was making it hard for me. And I wanted to see her face — how could she, why did she turn away from me? — and wanted to feel the taffeta yielding, wanted some sign of her happiness. “You aren’t having fun, Cassandra?” I said, and squeezed her hand, wondered whether I might not be able to imitate the sons of the sea and whirl her around by that little tapering white hand for our amusement, hers and mine, and whirl her so that her skirts would rise. But there was only the varnished floor, only the stiff shadows of ropes and acrobatic rings looping down from the darkness overhead, only the steam pipes along the walls with their enormous plaster casts like broken legs, and it was discouraging and I wanted to take her to the cloakroom and take her home. “Refreshments, Cassandra? How about some chocolate cake?” And seeing a movement in the vicinity of the indolent marine and talking closer to her ear, more quickly, “Or Coke, Cassandra? Join me in a little toast to Sonny?”

But one of his admirers had taken the marine’s peaked cap, had hung it on the side of his head and was sauntering in our direction, swaggering. The cap was flopping against his neck, the pubic hair was curling around his ears, he was whistling— despite the clarion cornet and choking accordion — and he was advancing toward us casually, deliberately, shuffling our way from the darkness of giggling drinkers and lolling marine. Then a punch on my arm, jab in my ribs, and a boy’s brogan landed in a short swift kick just above my ankle and Bub was saying, “Come on, Sister, let’s dance,” and threw his arms around her and hopped from side to side, snorting and snuffling happily into the green. Proud of his rhythm. Proud of the hat. Bub acting on orders. Bub determined to work his hands under the green bow. And Cassandra? Cassandra’s eyes were closed and she was resting her palms lightly on the heavy wooden humps of his boyish shoulders. As I started away I saw them converging on her — Jomo, Red — saw the menacing horizontal thrust of the baseball cap, the bright arc of the swinging hook, the enormous black figure of Captain Red with his tie pulled loose. They began cutting in on each other, spitting on their hands or giving her up without a word, standing by and serving as outriders for each other, and at once I understood that they were taking turns with her and that this then was their plan, their dark design.

“Me?” I said. “Someone wants me? Outside?”

She grinned, a tiny girl, messenger with bobbed hair, and said she would show me the way. Mystery. Trap set by the marine? Cruel joke? But I decided that Miranda must be having asthma out in the snow and that my little girl guide — spit curls, washed and fed, eyes like a little mother cat, and plump, liberal with her own lipstick, well-mannered and ready for the juice of life — must surely be the daughter of the frenzied sexton who was so dead set on hanging himself from the bell ropes of the Lutheran church. So I followed her.

“Like the dance?”

“Why, yes,” I said, startled, trying to keep up with her, to keep in close behind her, “yes, I do. It gives me an idea of what my own high school reunion might be like,” and I was using the back of my hand, then my handkerchief, trying to catch the scent of her.

“I bet you were popular,” she said. She was not giggling, spoke with no discernible mockery in her voice, this child of chewing gum kisses and plump young body sweetly dusted with baby talc, “I bet you’d have fun with the kids in your school or with your classmates even after thirty or forty years or whatever it is. You don’t look like a kill-joy to me.” And leading me into a cold dark corridor, concrete, bare lead, whistling with the cold wind of my own distant past: “You know what?” speaking clearly, matter-of-factly, while I joined her hastily at the dead weight of a metal fire door and the snow began driving suddenly through a narrow crack and into our faces, “I bet all the girls go for you. Am I right? Aren’t you the type all the girls go after?”

“Well, Bubbles,” I said, and like Carmen’s her black hair was curled into little flat black points, “you’re the second person to mention this idea tonight. So perhaps there’s something in what you say.”

“I knew it,” she said, and we were pushing together, forcing the wrinkling door to yield, small plump girl and tall fat man straining together, beating back the snow, smelling the cold black night of the silent parking lot and breathing together, testing the snow together, “I knew you were the shy unscrupulous type. The type of man who might get a girl in trouble. A real lover.”

“No, no, Bubbles, not in trouble. …” But I was shivering, smiling, setting straight the core of my boundless heart. A real lover. I believed her, and I lifted my broad white face into the wet tingling island snow. We had been able to open the door about a foot and so stood together hand in hand just outside the building. Together, the two of us. Blood under the skin and alone with Bubbles, scot free again.

A pale lemon-colored light from the gymnasium windows lay in three wavering rectangles on the snow. Pale institutional light coming down from the high school wall. And beyond the cold wall, beyond the tenuous light stretched the parking lot with its furry white humps of buried automobiles and, at the far edge, the black trees tangled like barbed wire. Behind the trees was the cemetery, and I could just make out the crumbling white shapes of the tombstones, the markers of dead children, the little white obelisks in the island snow. It was the place of rendezvous for the senior class, of passion amongst the fungus and the marble vines, of fingernail polish on the lips of the cherubim. So I felt that Bubbles and I were alone in some cheap version of limbo, and I chuckled, warmed the fingers of my free hand, and loved the trees, the perfect star-flashes of the snow, the nearness of the little cold cemetery, the buried cars, and at my side the small wet girl. But where, I wondered, was the heavy wolfish shadow of Miranda? Where the shadow of the woman who should have been clutching her chest and wheezing out there in the middle of that field of enchanted snow?

“I don’t see anyone,” I said. “Are you sure you’ve got the right person?”

“You’re supposed to meet her in the cemetery. Lucky you.”

I nodded. “But it looks so far.”

“Don’t be silly,” smiling up at me, shining her curls and eyes and earrings up at me through the snow, “it isn’t far. So good-by for now.”

“All right then,” I said. I dropped her hand, licked my chapped lips, tried and failed to imitate the bright promise of her young voice. “Good-by for now.”

Then I put down my head and started across the lot — six feet and two hundred pounds of expectant and fearless snowshoe rabbit — and wondered how many couples there were in the cars and whether or not I would dare to ask Bubbles for a kiss. I wondered too what Miranda could possibly be doing in the cemetery. And at that moment I had a vision of Miranda leaning against a lichen-covered monument in her old moth-eaten fur coat and signaling me with Jomo’s flashlight, and I hurried, took large determined strides through the trackless snow.

But I stopped. Listened. Because the air seemed to be filled with low-flying invisible birds. Large or small I could not tell, but fast, fast and out of their senses, skimming past me from every direction on terrified steel wings and silent except for the unaccountable sharp noise of the flight itself. One dove into the snow at my feet — nothing but a sudden hole in the snow— and I stepped back from it, raised my hands against the unpredictable approach, the irregular sound of motion, the blind but somehow deliberate line of attack. Escaped homing pigeons? A covey of tiny ducks driven berserk in the cold? Eaglets? I found myself beating the air, attempting to shield my eyes and ears, thought I saw a little drop of blood on the snow. And I was relieved with the first hit. It caught me just behind the earcrunching shock at the base of the head — and still it might have been the ice-encrusted body of a small bird, except that despite the pain, the vigorous crack of the thing and my loss of breath, and even while I reached behind my ear and discovered my fingers covered with ice and blood, I was turning around, stooping, trying and of course failing to find the body. With the second hit — quite furious, close on the first, snowball full in the face — my relief was complete and I knew that this time at least I had nothing to fear from any unnatural vengefulness of wild birds.

Tremlow, I thought, when the hard-packed snowball of the second hit burst in my face, Tremlow, thinking that only Tremlow’s malice — it was black and putty-thick, a curd incomprehensibly coughed up just for me — could account for the singular intensity of this treachery intended to befall me in the parking lot, could account for the raging meanness behind this ambush. I stood my ground, spitting snow, shaking the snow out of my eyes, dragging the snow away with my two hands and feeling the sudden purple abrasions on my cheeks, trying to dodge. Not a shadow, not a curved arm, not a single one of them in sight. But the barrage was slowing, though losing none of its power, none of its accuracy, and I could see the snowballs now and they were winging at me from all angles, every direction. I swung at them, growled at them, helpless and wet and bleeding, and still they came. The third hit — blow in the side, sound of a thump, no breath — sailed up at me slowly, slowly, loomed like a white cabbage and struck me exactly as I tried to step out of its path. Tracer bullet confusion of snowballs. Malevolent missiles. From every comer of the lot they came, and from the vicinity of the all-but-hidden cars — lovers? could this be the activity of island lovers? nothing better to do? — and even, I thought, from as far as the cemetery.

I fought back. Oh, I fought back, scooping the snow wildly, snarling, beating and compressing that snow into white iron balls and flinging them, heaving them off into the flurry, the thick of the night, but I could find no enemy and it was a hopeless sweat. “Tremlow!” I shouted, raising my head though I felt in tingling scalp and quivering chin the unprotected condition of that bald head as target, “Tremlow! Come out and fight!” A hoarse shout. Unmistakable cry of rage addressed to the phantom bully, the ringleader of my distant past. Perhaps from somewhere, from some dark comer of the world, he heard.

Because it ceased. I saw no one, heard no human sound, no laughter, and the last of the discharged snowballs fell about me in a heavy but harmless patter like the last great duds of a spent avalanche. Final lobbing to earth of useless snowballs. Irregular thudding in the snow. Then safe. Then silence. Only the gentle puffing fall of the now tiny flakes, only the far-off wind, only the muffled sound of Jack Spratt’s Merry Hep Cats commencing once again in my ears. Only the yellow light on the snow. And of course the blood and snot on the back of my hand.

I waited. And slowly I controlled my temper and my pain, controlled my breathing, brushed the palm of my hand over my scalp and regained my usual composure. I was wet and chilled, but I smiled when I saw what an enormous ring I had trampled all about me in the snow. The great stag that had been at bay was no longer at bay. Tremlow, if he had ever been there, was gone. As I walked slowly back along the deep path I had cut from the fire door to the center of the parking lot I forgot about the demon of my past and began to muse about that enemy of the present who was, I knew, only too real. How was it possible, I wondered, for a man to throw snowballs with an artificial hand?

But it was my night of trials and when I returned to the gymnasium, blinking, wiping face and hands with my handkerchief, trying to reset the sparkle in my watering eyes, I saw the two of them at once — Jomo, Cassandra — saw that the hook was buried deep in the bow, that the two of them were dipping together to the strains of a waltz — Jomo leading off with a long leg thrust between her legs — and that Jomo was panting and that his trousers were sopping wet up to the knees. Poor Cassandra like a green leaf was turning, floating, waltzing away out of my life, a green leaf on the back of the spider. My teen-age bomb and her boy friend. And I might have charged him then and there, might have struck him down when two little white roly-poly women cut me short, caught my arms, hung a numbered placard around my neck, pushed me forward like little tugs — dirt in the girdles, dough in the dimples, mother’s milk to spare — and the music stopped, girls giggled, someone stood on a Coca-Cola crate and shouted: “Take your places, belly-bumpers! Gather about now, folks, for the contest!”

And another voice: “Make them take off their belts, hey, Doc! Buckles ain’t fair!”

And the first: “Ladies, pick your bumpers … bumpers in place … come on now, fellows, we got to start!”

Laughter. Calls of encouragement. Eight pairs of bumpers— including me — to fight it out pair by pair. Then a circle in the crowd, silence, boy with the bass drum and boy with the cornet standing there to beat and blow for each winner. And I who had always considered myself quite trim, heavy but rather handsome of form, holding up my trousers, perspiring now, I was called upon to make sport of myself, to join in the fleshly malice of this island game. Perverse. The death of modesty. But I could not refuse, could not explain that there was some mistake-rising to the catcalls in that human ring — could do nothing but accept the challenge and bump with the best of them and give them the full brunt of belly, if belly they wanted. I noticed that the old-timers were drinking down last minute pitchers of water so that they would rumble. But I was not intimidated. I would show them a thing or two with my stomach which all at once felt like a warhead. Allons. …

The fat began to fly. It was an obscene tournament. And if I had lost the night even before my abortive journey to the parking lot, or if I had begun to suffer the hour that would never pass when I first set foot in Jomo’s car, or if I had tasted the thick endlessness of the night with my first hurried mouthful of chocolate cake, knowing that I was sealed more and more tightly into some sort of desperate honeycomb of dead time with every drink the bare-headed marine took from his bottle — drinking to my frustration, drinking me dry — and if I had already begun my endless sweat at the mere sight of dancers dancing, what then was my dismay among the belly-bumpers? What then my injury — pain of bouncing bags, cramp of belligerence low in the gut — what then my confusion and drugged determination as I stood there facing the glazed eye of time? Dimly I heard Doc’s voice, “Hey there, no hands!” And slowly, slowly, I forced myself to learn the stance with body sagging to the front, back bowed, shoulders drawn tightly to the rear, elbows pulled close to the ribs and sharply bent, hands limp, fingers limp, barely holding up the trousers, forced myself to balance on the balls of my feet, to balance, pull in the chin, thrust, sail forward and bump, shudder, recover. Without moving my feet. Dead time. Spirited dismay.

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.

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.