Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [94]
“Did you hear that?”
“What?” I sound stuffed again. Leaves slap the roof in great bunches. The rain is heavy, endless, hits the roof in quick crashing waves. At least the wind doesn’t sound like a train again.
“That,” Skeetah says, his head to one side, his ear cocked toward the window. His eyes gleam in the light of the lamp. He stands up, and China stands up with him, ears straight, tail pointed, tongue gone. Somewhere out in the storm, a dog is barking.
“Yeah,” I say, and then all three of us are at the window, peering out of the light edge left by the boards. We hear the dog but can’t see it; what we do see is the pines, the thin trees bending with the storm, bending almost to breaking. Even the oaks are losing leaves and branches in the gray light, the beating rain. The dog barks loudly, fast as a drum, and something about the way the bark rises at the end reminds me of Mama’s moans, of those bowing pines, of a body that can no longer hold itself together, of something on the verge of breaking. The high notes are little rips. It circles the house, its bark near and far. Is it one of Junior’s mutts, his mangy family member, seeking shelter, the cool bottom of a house and a knobby-kneed boy and no rain?
“We can’t.” Skeetah leans toward the window as if he could push his way through the glass and board and save that invisible dog, who for him, I know, must be China. She drops from where she has been standing on her hind legs with her paws pressed against the wall and leans into Skeetah’s side, head-butts his thigh, her smooth white head and floppy ears as soft as the swaddling blankets that Daddy brought Junior home in after he returned from the hospital and Mama didn’t. This your little brother. Claude Adam Batiste the second. Call him Junior. And then, Your mama didn’t make it. The searching dog barks one last time before the rain and wind tighten like a choke collar and silence him. China growls in answer, but swallows it when Skeetah kneels before her, takes her face in his hands, and smoothes her ears back so that her eyes are slits and she grins and her skin pulls tight and her head could be a naked skull.
China squeals and jumps up into a bark, skitters back and forth across Skeetah’s bed, over his knees; this is what makes me look up from my crouch on Randall’s bed, from my stomach, from me trying to burrow into myself, to safety. China looks to the ceiling, her teeth gleaming in the dark, ripping barks.
“China, what’s …?” Skeetah reaches out to grab her, to stop her from curling and running, and there is a loud, deafening boom. When it comes, China leaps from Skeetah’s bed and rushes to the door as if she would rip the wood to splinters with her teeth. Skeetah yanks the door open, and Randall is running into Daddy’s room with a lantern, Junior clinging to his waist while the wind yells outside and the house shudders. There was no need for the lamp; there is a hole in the ceiling in Daddy’s room, the trunk and branches of a tree tossing in the opening. It is a large bush growing wrong. China barks, her nose to the wind.
“Daddy!” Randall runs forward into the wind and rain streaming through the gaping hole, the gray day fisting through it. Daddy is on his knees in front of the dresser, pushing an envelope down his pants. He stands and sees us.
“Go on!” Daddy says. He waves at us, the bandage on his wounded hand flashing light. He is slack and then tight like a clothesline catching in the wind, and he shoves us out of the ruined room and into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him. Junior will not let go of Randall.
“We’ll stay in the living room.” Daddy says this as he slumps over on the sofa, pushing his head back into the cushion like Mama pushed hers back into the pillow, baring his neck. He’s blinking too much.
“Your hand,” Randall says.
“It’s fine,” says Daddy. “We going to stay here until the storm’s over.”
“When you think?” Skeetah asks.
“A few hours.”
China squeals and barks again.
“She knew,” I say.
“Knew what?” Daddy’s face is wet, and I don’t know whether it is water