Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [46]
“You hear me?” Daddy yells, takes a halting step toward Skeet. China’s tail rises.
“Yes,” Skeetah says. He is facing Daddy, staring at him plainly, his face smooth and open, only his mouth barely moving when he speaks. “Yes.”
“Good.” Daddy steps back. Skeet leans on China to stop her from moving. Daddy turns to walk into the house. He shuffles sideways, slow and deliberate, watching Skeet and China watch him leave them to the abandoned hammer, the fallen frame, the dark expanse sounding of bug and wood and wind spreading out and away from the two of them like a bride’s train.
THE SIXTH DAY: A STEADY HAND
Daddy is knocking down what is left of the chicken coop. The chickens and rooster have long abandoned it. After summers of heavy rain the wood grew soft and rotten, and then the short, knuckle-freezing winters dried it up and hollowed the woody pulp out, and it began to sag and buckle into the earth. It used to have Mama’s clothesline tied to it with the other end fixed to a pine tree. After Mama died, Daddy moved the clothesline to a closer tree, but he didn’t tie it tight enough, so when Randall and I wash clothes and hang them out with wooden clothespins, the line sags, and our pants dangle in the dirt.
Skeetah slept out in the shed with the dogs after he faced Daddy with the hammer last night. I have been sitting on the sofa near the living room window, waiting for him to come into the house, because I know he will circle around and enter the front door to avoid passing Daddy in the back. But Skeet has not surfaced. He could always hold his breath the longest when we first began swimming in the pit, crouched on the silty, junk-reefed bottom; we would circle him like anxious boats, calling him to the surface, but he would remain still and bubbling below. I take breaks and sneak cans of Vienna sausages in the bathroom, swallowing all five quickly. They are so light they could be air. I tried to read this morning, but I stopped in the quest for the Golden Fleece, distracted again by Medea, who can only think of Jason, her face red, her heart aflame, engulfed by sweet pain. The goddess struck her with love, and she had no choices. I could not concentrate. My stomach was its own animal, and thoughts of Manny kept surfacing like swimmers in my brain; I had my own tender pain. I slid my book between the wall and my bed and slunk to the kitchen, filching Daddy’s hurricane supplies. I eat, and nothing touches my stomach, nothing tells me it is full with food, with something more than food.
Thwack, thwack, thwack, sounds the hammer. The wood creaks. One panel falls off. Daddy begins cussing, calling down sonofabitches, fuck this’s, and gotdamnits. I am tired of waiting. I grab another can of sausages, stick it in the pocket of my shorts. I will go to Skeetah like Medea went to her brother when they fled on their great adventure with the Argonauts. I will offer my help.
Skeetah looks like somebody’s punched him in both eyes. The sound of Daddy’s hammer in the shed threads through the door, and it steadily pulses like blood. China is reclined, the puppies squealing at her tits. Her head is laid on her paws, and she does not look up when I step over the threshold. Junior is a crow, perched on a metal drum beside the door, eating a pack of peanut butter crackers. It makes me hungry.
“Something’s wrong,” Skeetah says. He is sitting on the floor, his back against the wall. He lets his head roll back, and his Adam’s apple bulges so prominently it looks like bone.
“What’s wrong?” I say. His eyes burn like he has fever.
“She been too—easy. Usually she let them suck and then fight them off when they done had enough, but they been sucking for almost an hour and she ain’t moved.”
“Maybe she just tired, like you said yesterday.”
Daddy’s hammer beats at the room.
“That ain’t it.”
“Well, then what?”
“I think I gave her too much.”
“You did what Manny said.”
“How you know Manny knew what he was doing?”
“Rico probably showed him how.”
“And who say Rico going to show him the right way to do it if he know Manny