Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [57]
Daddy is propped up on pillows when I walk into the bedroom, a bowl of chicken noodle soup on a potholder before me, a little of it dribbling around the edges. He is eating crackers one by one, placing them between his lips and then pulling them in. His chewing sounds like crumpled notebook paper. I put down the bowl and the spoon on the night table, cluttered with a glass of water from the tap, a Budweiser can he’s been using as an ashtray, and his medicine for pain and infection. His arm is resting on a hill of old blankets and crocheted pillows, which Randall piled last night. Daddy is watching the thirteen-inch black-and-white television sitting on the wide, mirrored dresser across from the bed. He hasn’t changed a thing here since Mama died: there are small glass candleholders with tall peach candles wedged into them, and two small bunches of fake flowers in squat vases that look like cups that Mama placed at both ends of the dresser. There are pictures of us, Polaroids, which Mama wedged between the glass and the frame of the mirror. There is one picture of her and Daddy standing chest to chest, in a frame. Her hands are on his shoulders, her hair ironed straight and pulled back smooth, her dress cut open in the front so that it shows her collarbone, as dense and burnished and beautiful as a brass doorknob. She smiles without opening her mouth. Daddy doesn’t smile at all, but his hands are around her back, and he has that serious, prideful tilt of his head that Skeetah has when he is standing with China at a dogfight, showing her off before the mad scramble, the cutting barks and teeth.
“Play with the antenna,” Daddy says. His voice sounds dry as the cracker. He leans over and pulls a wicker tray from next to the bed and drags it across his lap. The bowl wobbles in his left hand. He spills some of the soup on the potholder when he sets it down.
There is only static. I grab the right antenna, yank it up.
“Down,” Daddy says.
The box fan in the window is not pushing any air in the room. Every day seems hotter than the last. I grab the left antenna, split them one from the other like a wishbone.
“There.”
“Katrina has made landfall in Florida … miles from Miami.” It is the local news. The weatherwoman is speaking with the anchor, and she is pointing at the interactive screen before her, but the television is so old and the resolution so bad that the map looks like concrete, and the storm, an oil stain.
“Early reports say that there are some dead. Does anyone … idea of where … projection of storm?” Mike’s voice is even, smooth, when we catch it through the static.
“… unclear. The storm is currently a category one … could weaken … could change.” The woman’s hair is light; she may be blonde.
“So what would you advise our listeners to … Rachel?” The TV gives a static moan, so I split the two parts of the antenna further.
“… prepare as well as they can for the storm. Katrina is on the … if it does not weaken … moving northwest, they should also prepare … government will issue orders for mandatory evacuation.”
“So what does this mean?”
“This means that our viewers may … preparations to remain in their homes for the hurricane, and instead may want to begin … possible evacuation.” Rachel appears to be smiling.
“I can’t see, Esch.”
I step aside. Mike turns to the camera.
“… highways will be open for evacuation. It is better to leave earlier … hours … stuck in traffic.”
“You’re still in the way,” Daddy says. He blows his soup and stirs it with his spoon, but he does not eat, and instead he lets his good hand drop behind the wicker across his lap.
Mama smiles serenely from the photo. She has no idea that three years later, she will be bleeding to death in the bed that Daddy now lays in with three of his fingers missing.