Second Skin (New Directions Paperbook), page 24
“Who do you think it looks like, Kate? Sonny or me?”
And smiling down, tangling her shank of hair into the muslin and studying the small candlelit sheen of her first child: “Yes, sir. Him look like the fella in the grave.”
“Of course, Kate,” I said then, and laughed. “But just think of it. We can start you off on another little baby in a few weeks. Would you like that, Kate? But of course you would,” I said. Kate nodded, smiled, held the baby tight. And we finished the wine, packed the basket, waited for the moon to suck the last light of our candles into the new day. When we started back to Plantation House in the morning—this morning—I carried the baby in my own arms. Light as a feather, that baby. Good as gold.
So yesterday the birth, last night the grave, this morning the baby in my arms—I gave Uncle Billy’s crucifix to Kate this morning, I thought she deserved it—and this afternoon another trip to the field because Gloria was calling, calling for me. And now? Now I sit at my long table in the middle of my loud wandering night and by the light of a candle—one half-burned candle saved from last night’s spectacle—I watch this final flourish of my own hand and muse and blow away the ashes and listen to the breathing among the rubbery leaves and the insects sweating out the night. Because now I am fifty-nine years old and I knew I would be, and now there is the sun in the evening, the moon at dawn, the still voice. That’s it. The sun in the evening. The moon at dawn. The still voice.
also by John Hawkes
The Beetle Leg
The Blood Oranges
The Cannibal
Death, Sleep and the Traveler
The Lime Twig
Travesty
Virginie: Her Two Lives (signed, limited edition)
Copyright © 1963, 1964 by John Hawkes
Copyright © 2005 by Jeffrey Eugenides
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Portions of this book first appeared in The Texas Quarterly and in Vogue, to whose editors grateful acknowledgement is made.
The author also acknowledges generous help given to him by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
First published clothbound and as New Directions Paperbook 146 in 1964.
Reissued as New Directions Paperbook 1027 in 2005.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hawkes, John, 1925-1998
Second skin / John Hawkes; preface by Jeffrey Eugenides.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-811-22260-0 (e-book)
1. World War, 1939-1945-Veterans-Fiction. 2. Suicide victims-Family relationships-Fiction. 3. Grandparent and child-Fiction. 4. Loss (Psychology)-Fiction. 5. Cattle breeders-Fiction. 6. Grandfathers-Fiction. 7. Bereavement-Fiction. 8. Islands-Fiction. I. Title.
PS3558.A82S4 2005
813’.54-dc22
2005021516
New Directions Books arc published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
Hawkes, John, Second Skin (New Directions Paperbook)
