Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [77]
Skeetah walks out of the door of the shed and slides the tin slab he has been using as a door back in place. He turns on the water at the faucet, bends and drinks, lets it run over his head. When he comes over to me, the water is streaming in beads down his neck, down and over his collarbone like Kilo’s red shawl.
“What y’all in Daddy’s truck for?”
“He sick,” I say.
Randall is leaning half in and half out of the truck, tuning the radio to the black radio station. His legs are so long that they rest flat-footed on the hard packed dirt below the passenger door. He yells into the windshield so Skeetah can hear him. “He wants us to get the house ready for the hurricane.”
“He say to do the boards first,” I tell Skeet. He is shirtless, and his belt is looped so tight around his shorts that the waistband hangs from it like a shower curtain, and the leather cuts into his skin. They are the shorts from the day before. I was right; he slept in the shed with China.
“I can’t,” Skeetah says. “I need to wash China again, treat her cuts. Make sure they don’t start looking ugly.”
“That’s going to take what? Fifteen, thirty minutes?” Randall is leaning out of the truck now, the music curling back up behind him, tiny and metal-sounding because Daddy’s truck doesn’t have any bass. The song tinkles to an end, and the DJ, a woman, speaks smoothly, her voice calm and almost as deep as a man’s.
“Hurricane Katrina is now a category three hurricane. It is scheduled to make landfall in Buras-Triumph, Louisiana, sometime Monday morning. The NHC has issued a hurricane watch for southeastern Louisiana and the Mississippi and Alabama coasts. We at JZ94.5 will keep you updated about the status of the storm throughout—” Randall switches off the radio. Skeetah works his mouth, looks down at the ground. His eyebrows, so dark and even they look drawn on, meet and form a hook. Daddy’s do that. Mine are so light you can barely see them.
“I need to go to the store for some supplies. Wraps and stuff,” Skeetah says.
“You can pick up some more canned goods when you go.” Randall rolls his eyes.
“I ain’t got no money for that.”
“Well, then how you was going to get—” Randall stops mid-sentence. “Shit. I’ll get some money from Daddy’s wallet. Get the cheapest. Anything in a can. We ain’t going to be able to cook nothing.”
“I know that,” Skeetah says.
“I shouldn’t even have asked.” Randall rubs his head. “Don’t get caught.”
“I don’t.”
“How are you going?”
“I already called Big Henry.”
“Hurry up and get back.” Randall turns on the radio station again. The rapper sounds like a squirrel. Randall starts fidgeting with the knob, but leans out again. “We need your help!”
“Yeah,” Skeetah says. He wipes the water shawl away, and it smears to a tie running down the middle of his ribs. The air is so hot and close that even with the wind, the water will not evaporate. “Keep an eye on China,” he says, and the sudden wind takes him into the house.
“Junior?”
I need him to pick the nails out of the bin. His small spider fingers can do it better than mine. He is not in his bed, but his sheets and pillow are still on the floor. I pick them up, put them on the mattress. The curtain at our window flutters. I turn the fan off.
“Junior.”
He isn’t in the bathroom. Whoever used it last left the toilet seat up, as usual. The door to Skeetah and Randall’s room is closed; I can hear Skeetah shuffling around inside. There is a hole in the bottom middle of their door from where Skeetah got mad once and kicked in a dent; Daddy came up behind him and kicked him hard for that one, and then tried to slap him in the face.
“Junior in there?”
“Naw.” The walls are so thin it sounds like Skeetah is standing next to me. It was because of China that Skeet had kicked the wall: once China got fat enough and her breasts big enough for Daddy to notice that she was pregnant, Daddy told Skeet he didn’t want the Pit overrun by dogs. He was drunk when he said it, and he didn’t say it again after that night, after Skeet had blocked