Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [101]
“It ain’t steady now,” I said. “It’s easing up.” I could see the living room, a messy doll’s house. The trees cracked in protest around us. Skeetah hummed.
“China,” he said.
The tractor, which had been buried under the water, peeked its head out, the top of its hood appearing from under the water.
“When it gets to the middle of the tires, I’m going,” Skeetah said.
I said nothing, just hooked my fingers together, like I could’ve kept him there in a living chain.
When the first slice of rubber appeared over the rolling water, Skeetah started. He was a school of fish in my arms. The wind gusted and the trees clattered. There was a whirling sound in the sky, a whistle that was descending and rising, circling. The hurricane groaned, and it was like hearing a million Daddys moan and push back their chairs after eating plates full of fish fried whole, white bread for the bones, beer. The iron at the center of the tire peeked through, and it was an eye opening. Skeetah shrugged out of my embrace all at once: a school of fish exploding around a rock.
“Where you going?” I asked.
Skeetah was already past me, past Randall, in front of Daddy.
“Skeet?” Randall asked. Junior buried his face in Randall’s muddy shirt.
Skeetah was at the hole we’d climbed through. The glass in the window had cut his face, his thighs, his chest, and his skin was running red. Then I looked at my arms, Randall, Junior, Daddy; we were all bleeding, all gashed.
“Boy,” Daddy said.
“I got to find her,” Skeetah said.
“The storm ain’t over.” Daddy rolled to his side, lifted his knees, and settled again as if he was trying to get more comfortable, find purchase to stand up, but none of us could with the bones of the ceiling folding so low.
Skeetah turned in his crouch. All that jumping, stilled. He was one animal again, or at least he thought he would soon be.
“She’s waiting for me,” he said, and jumped down through the ceiling, splashing in the water below.
“Skeet!” Randall yelled.
I looked out of our ragged window, the ripped roof, and saw him wade out into the yard, the water at his waist, his head up, his shoulders back, his arms raised, and his hands extended palms down inches over the water, as if he could calm it.
“Be careful,” Daddy breathed, and I watched my brother walk almost naked out into the departing storm. He headed toward the Pit, the water swirling around him, the broken tops of the trees, the debris rising like a labyrinth up out of the water. He paused, turned his head, and looked back at us. I waved through the ruined window. The air was getting cold. He turned and vanished around a tree growing sideways, into the maw of the maze. He left a thin wake.
When the water left, the front part of Daddy’s truck was sitting on top of the smashed gas tank. The lower half was on the ground. All the water that had been in the car was out, and it left a muddy slime on the windows. The yard was one big puddle that we waded, so icy at our ankles, the first cold water we’d felt since the March rains, to the back door of the house, which was blasted open. The screen door was gone. The inside of the house was wet and muddy as Daddy’s truck. The food we’d gotten had been washed from the shelves, and we hunted for it like we did for eggs, finding some silver cans of peas. We found Top Ramen, still sealed, in the sofa. We put them in our shirts. My hands were pink with Skeetah’s blood from hugging him earlier. I washed them in a puddle in the living room.
“We can’t stay here. We need shelter.” Randall grimaced. “Your hand, and the water …” Randall trailed off. “Who knows what the water had in it.”
Daddy shook his head, his lips weak as a baby’s. He looked dazed. He stared at his truck, the ruined house, the yard invisible under the trees and the storm’s deposits.
“Where,” he said, and it was a statement with no answer.
“By Big Henry,” Randall said.
Junior was on Randall’s back, his eyes finally uncovered and open. He looked drunk.
“What about Skeet?” I asked.
“He’ll find us,” Randall said. “Daddy?” He raised an