Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [96]
There is water over my toes.
“The Pit,” Randall sighs.
Daddy gets up then, walks slowly over to the window, each bone bent the wrong way in each joint. Randall moves so Daddy can see out of the crack.
“No,” Daddy says.
I shift, and the water licks my ankles. It is cold, cold as a first summer swim. China barks, and when she jumps down from the window and bounces, there is a splash.
“Daddy?” Randall says. He puts his arm over Junior, who, cringing with his eyes wide, hugs Randall’s leg. But for once, Randall’s arm doesn’t look like metal, like ribbon, like stone; it bends at the elbow, soft, without muscle, and looks nothing but human.
“Daddy!” Junior squeals, but he buries his face in Randall’s hip, and Randall’s hip eats the end of the word. Junior rises an inch or so; he must be on his toes. The water is up to the middle of my calf.
“Look,” I say.
There is something long and dark blue between the trees. It is a boat. Someone has come to save us. But then I squint and the wind lags clear for one second, and it is not a boat, and no one has come to save us. It is Daddy’s truck. The water has picked it up, pushed it from the Pit. The snake has come to eat and play.
“Your truck,” Skeetah says.
Daddy begins to laugh.
The snake has swallowed the whole yard and is opening its jaw under the house.
“Open the attic,” Daddy says.
The water is lapping the backs of my knees.
“It’s stuck,” Randall says. He is pulling at the string that hangs from the door of the attic, which is in the ceiling of the hallway.
“Move,” says Skeetah.
The water is tonguing its way up my thighs. Skeetah hands me the puppies’ bucket.
“Hurry,” Randall says.
The three puppies squeal little yips that sound like whispered barks. These are their first words.
“Pull down,” Daddy says. He frowns, holds his hand up like he is pulling the cord.
The water slides past my crotch, and I jump.
“All right!” Skeet yells. He pulls himself up on the cord, like he is swinging from a swing rope in a tree, and the attic door groans downward.
“Up!” Randall says, and he is shoving Junior up the ladder into the attic. China is swimming next to Skeetah, her head bobbing like a buoy.
“Go!” Skeetah says, and he pushes me toward the ladder. I float on the water, my toes dragging on the hallway carpet. He grabs my back and steadies me as I slog into the attic with the bucket.
“Esch!” Junior says.
“I’m here.” Junior’s eyes are white in the dark. The wind beats the roof, and it creaks. Randall is next, then Daddy, and last, Skeetah and China. I cup the bucket with my knees, sit on a pile of boxes, fish out a broken ornament that is digging into my thigh. Christmas decorations. Randall is sitting on an old chain saw, Junior cowering next to him. Daddy takes out the package he put in his pants after the tree fell into his room. It is a clear plastic bag. He opens the packet, pulls out pictures. Just before Skeetah pulls shut the attic door, seals us in darkness, Daddy makes as if he would touch one of the pictures, hesitant, as lightly as if he is dislodging an eyelash, but his glistening finger stops short, and he wraps the pictures again and puts them in his pants. Mama.
The attic door moans shut.
The roof is thin; we can hear every fumbling rush of the wind, every torrent of rain. And it is so dark that we cannot see each other, but we hear China barking, and her bark sounds like a fat dog’s, so deep, like dense cloth ripping.
“Quiet, China!” Skeetah says, and China shuts her jaw so quickly and so hard, I can hear the click of her teeth shuttering together. I put my face down in the bucket; the puppies do not hear. They mewl still. I feel them with my hand, still downy, their coats just now turning to silk, and they squirm at my touch. The white, the brindle, the black and white. They lick for milk.
“The house,” Randall says, and his voice is steady, calm, but I can hardly contain the panic I feel when the house tilts, slowly as an unmoored boat.
“It’s the water,” Skeetah says. “It’s the water.”
“Shit!” Daddy yells,