by Jesmyn Ward
“Grab his legs,” Randall says, so I bend and lift. Daddy is heavier than he looks. His eyes are closed and he is wheezing into his bicep; his breath gargles in his throat. “Come on.”
I have to back down the dark hallway, so we shuffle slowly. After Mama died, Daddy taught Randall and me how to use the washing machine. It was our job to wash the sheets, to hang them up. At first we only washed them when Daddy told us to, and later we washed them when they’d get so dirty we’d wake up often in the middle of the night, itching, scratching a shin, an ankle. This is how we hung the sheets in the beginning, when we were both too short to put them over the line: the wet sheet sagging in the middle, us counting and lifting and flinging the damp cotton at the same time hoping it would catch. Daddy’s ankles feel smooth as oranges. I don’t expect them to be so smooth.
“One, two, three,” Randall says, and we are lifting and rolling Daddy onto the bed like our sheets. For one moment, Randall is half his size, thin as a stretched belt, his knees big as softballs, all bone and skin, and we are children again, and Mama has just died and we are hanging her sheets. My eyes sting. Daddy leaves a wet trail across the pillowcase. He moans and holds his bad hand.
There are more beer cans on the nightstand, half empty. They shake when Randall kneels next to the bed, looking for Daddy’s medicine, which is on the floor.
“Your hand hurt?” Randall asks. Daddy rolls on his side, facing us, and I go to the bathroom and come back with the garbage can and put it under his nose next to the bed. There are candy wrappers and wadded-up toilet paper at the bottom of the can, but it is mostly empty. Randall turns on Daddy’s bedside lamp, reads the bottles to see which is his pain medicine. He is big and dark and every inch of him is pebbled with muscle, and sometimes I wonder if Daddy is amazed at how this tall machine of a boy came out of him and Mama. Sometimes I wonder if he’s amazed at Randall. And then I see Manny, almost as bright as China in the clearing, and wonder what will come from him and me: something gold and broad like him, black and small like me, or something more than either of us. Daddy came to one of Randall’s games, once, and stood by the gym doors the entire time, nodding to himself with his baseball cap in his hand, frowning at the court and half watching the game. He left before halftime.
“Daddy, it say here you wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol with these antibiotics. Or with these pain pills.”
Daddy shakes his head and lays still.
“Beer ain’t nothing,” he croaks into the pillow. “Just like a cold drink.”
“It’s probably why you throwing up.”
“I can’t lay here.” Daddy’s good hand is shaking. “Got to get the house ready.”
“Esch, get some water.” Randall grabs a can, crushes it in one hand with his long fingers, which closes like a spider. “And take these with you.”
I load the beer cans into my shirt. Daddy mumbles. When I come back with the water, Randall is handing Daddy his pills, and Daddy is at least up on an elbow, even if the side of his head is smashed into the headboard. He gulps down all the water and the pills as if taking it down fast will stop it from coming back up later.
“The hurricane,” Daddy says.
“You tell us what to do,” Randall says, and then asks me to get Daddy two pieces of bread for his stomach and put them on the table.
The breeze has become a wind today, its gusts stronger, harder than yesterday in the woods and clearing. With my fingers I find a flashlight in the metal storage box on the back of Daddy’s pickup truck along with a hammer and a drill. The nails are are all along the bottom of the box, like feathers and hay in a chicken coop. The windows first, Daddy had said. You have to cover all the windows. Picking the nails out is slow; I prick my finger on one, suck it, but there isn’t any blood, just the pain. I wonder if China’s ruined nipple will feel like this in her puppy’s mouth when it heals: hard, healed over hurt.
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 his hand when Daddy tried to slap him and said, Don’t hit me in the face, like he would take it anywhere else but there.
“Junior?”
He is standing next to Daddy’s bed, his small, narrow back to me, his bald head bent. One arm hangs at his side, and the other he holds in front of him like he’s in an Easter egg race, balancing a boiled egg on a spoon. But there is no spoon here, only his pointer finger, which he holds steady in front of Daddy’s sleeping nose, nearly brushing Daddy’s scraggly mustache, the naked chicken skin above Daddy’s lip. I have never seen Junior so still.
“What are you doing?”
Junior jumps. He turns and whips his finger behind his back. There are bruises under his eyes, so he looks like a little brown nervous man. I grab the finger and pull him out of the room, shut the door.
“Esch,” Junior whispers. He looks at the floor like he is looking through it, down to his hollows in the dirt under the house.
“What was that?” I ask. I squeeze, and there is only skin over bone. His finger is still pointed. He moans and tries to pull away, but I hold.
“He wasn’t breathing.”
“What do you mean, he wasn’t breathing?”
I drag him down the hallway, and he curls and drops and digs in with his feet, but I get him to our room. I kneel in front of him.
“What were you doing?”
Junior is looking at my throat, my hand, anywhere but my face. I yank, and he looks at my face.
“He looked like he was asleep but then he looked like he wasn’t breathing so I wanted to feel him breathe. Let me go!”
“Don’t go in there when he’s sleep no more.” I shake Junior’s arm again. “He’s sick.”
“I know,” Junior mewls. “I know he sick.” Junior closes his hand and pulls suddenly, and his hand slides between mine like wet rope and is out. “I know about his hand and the beer and his medicine.” He bounces. “I saw it when he smashed it. I found it!” Gets louder. “I see things!”
“Found what?”
“His ring!”
“Junior!”
“Here!” Junior yells. I can’t see his baby teeth, small and yellow like candy, only his throat, wet and pink, and he is an infant again, his mouth always open, always trying to find the nipple so that he’d grab our fingers, the blanket, his bib, the paws of his lost dogs, and suck them. He is the baby Junior and then he isn’t; he is a miniature Skeetah, and the hand he hadn’t been using to check Daddy’s breathing digs into his pockets and whips something out, something small and maroon, the size of a quarter, and throws it across the room. “It wasn’t no good to him noway!” He is breathing like he’s been running, and then he is skittering down the hallway like a spider. I almost catch him at the steps.
“Randall!” I yell, “get Junior!”
Randall jackknifes out of the truck, and he is a long black line streaking around the corner of the house where Junior has gone, and then I hear him banging underneath the house. Junior is laid so flat I cannot see him.
“Junior,” Randall yells, “get from under there!”
Junior is silent.
“You going to make me come under there and get you!” Randall says from between clenched teeth, and he must be crawling because Junior has popped up on my side of the house and is trying to run, his eyes white and rolling like a rabbit’s, but I have him, and he is kicking, kicking, and I’m surprised he doesn’t have fur.
“What did he do?” Randall walks around the corner, the front of him red with dirt.
“He had Daddy’s wedding ring.”
“He what?” Randall is frowning.
“He had Daddy’s wedding ring. He found it on the finger and took it off. It was in his pocket.” Each word makes Randall’s face slide and break until it looks like a broken glass with all the lines in it, and I know it’s because he can’t believe what I’m saying.
“Boy, what the hell is wrong with you?” Randall yells. He yanks Junior from me, and his other hand comes down hard on Junior’s skinny bottom. “What is wrong with you?” Randall yells, and his voice is higher. He hits again. “Junior!”
Junior runs in circles from Randall’s hand, so they spin, but Randall is faster and stronger, and his hand comes down again and again.
“That’s so. Nasty. You. Could’ve. Got. A disease!” Randall slaps twice, and his hand is as stiff as a board. “Why did you do it?”
“She gave it to him!” Junior wails. His voice is a siren. “And it wasn’t no good for him no more!” He sobs. “I wanted it!” He wails. “Her!”
Skeetah laughs when we tell him what Junior did.
“He’s dead wild.”
“He’s bad.”
“Did y’all at least find it? He going to be up in there trying to stash it somewhere.”
“I did,” I say. It was on my bed, and I’d picked it up with a handful of toilet paper and washed it off in the sink. The gold was dull and old, an almost silvery pale, and nothing about it looked like it had ever touched Mama’s skin. “It was covered in blood.” I’d thrown up after I cleaned it.
Junior is hiccupping, bent over double into the top of the toolbox on the back of Daddy’s truck, picking out nails. His sobbing hiccups echo up and out of the metal, loudly. He drops the nails he finds on the truck bed, and they ping.
“What’d you do with it?” asks Skeetah.
“I put it in my top drawer,” I say.
Skeetah laughs. His teeth are milky, his smile wide.
“We should look for the fingers. That’s free protein.” He laughs. “We could feed them to China.”
“Shut up. That is so nasty,” I say.
“Don’t know what’s wrong with him.” Randall shakes his head.
Skeetah laughs as he walks into the shed, pulling the wood behind him, but we can still hear him chuckling and talking to himself minutes later. When Big Henry drives up to pick Skeetah up, Skeetah is tugging the tin back over the doorway of the shed, smiling into his shirt. Big Henry parks and walks up slowly, a cold drink in his hand, and I’m surprised it’s not a beer. I nod at Big Henry but stand with my arms folded in the truck bed behind Junior, who is still hiccupping and dripping snot into the toolbox.
“What’s wrong with him?” Big Henry asks, and I glance over to see that he is looking at me, asking me. He’s shaved the stray hair and goatee off his face, so it is smooth and lighter than the rest of him, and looks soft with the sweat making it shine. I look at Junior’s narrow, bony back; he drops another nail. Ping.
“Come on,” Skeetah laughs, and they leave.
Cover the windows.
I make Junior hold the nails in his shirt and stand next to Randall and me as we try to match board size up to windows, drag them around the house, set them down where they will be nailed. Randall has the one hammer with a full handle we could find. It is my job to hold the wood in place at the bottom, at least as far as I can reach, while Randall drives the nails in. Junior is breathing in shudders. He is trying to swallow his lip each time. There is always glass showing after we nail the boards, an eye’s worth or a hand’s worth, no matter how we switch the wooden pieces and shuffle. Randall concentrates, but he still smashes two of his fingers, skipping around in tight circles like he is running a drill, cussing under his breath. Junior breaks his hiccup breathing to giggle then. So do I. The clay has turned to dust for want of rain, and when Randall nails, the board shivers and drizzles red down on my head from where the dirt is caked.
Bring the jugs of water in.
The glass jugs me and Junior fished from under the house are sitting in the kitchen in clusters. They look like tadpole sacs, huddled together, sticking to each other for company: cloudy at the heart. When Junior and I brought them in, they were dusty, opaque. I rinse a dishrag for Junior and one for me, and we sit on the floor in the kitchen and we scrub. This is a hurricane eclipse, the wood over the windows, the inside of the house so dark that the white of Junior’s shirt is the brightest thing. We si
t in the square of light left by the open door, and we wipe the rags pink. This is what we will drink. This is what we will use to cook. Randall is trying to fill the holes in the wood, but he can’t. There isn’t enough wood. Light cuts through the house, slinky and thin as electricity lines from the chinks of exposed glass. Daddy gets up out of bed, cussing and banging into things, and stumbles to the bathroom. He throws up. He yells for water, and I make Junior bring it. When I pee, I take the flashlight I found in Daddy’s toolbox to see that Daddy’s missed the toilet, and that there is throw-up on the bathroom floor. I clean it up with the rags we wiped the jugs with; when we take the rags outside to rinse them under the hose instead of in the sink full of dishes, they run yellow and red.
Fill my gas tank.
Junior sits in the middle, his legs dangling, black and skinny. Randall drives. I let my hand fall out of the passenger window, let the wind pick it up, bear down on it, take it as if it is holding it. Both windows are down because Daddy has no air-conditioning, and my legs stick to the rugs that Mama laid over the seat when we were small and the upholstery would get so hot in the summer it would feel like it was melting our skin. It’s too hot for them kids, she’d said, and she’d beaten the rugs until they were clean, and then she’d washed them, and then she’d tucked them over the seats. Before Randall sat in the driver’s seat, I could see that Daddy had worn his side thin. The rest of the fabric feels almost as thick as when Mama put it in. I remember it had itched the first time I rode in the truck cab with them, but I hadn’t complained. Back then we’d all fit in the cab, and there was no seat belt law. Now we ride up and through the country toward the interstate, where the closest gas station is. The pines whistle and whip at the side of the road, the fitful wind making them dance. The strip of sky ahead and over the pines is overcast, gray, and then the sun will shine through it in fits, burn through like fire through wax paper. At the gas station, Randall doesn’t even let Junior get out so he can go in the store and find something to beg for; I go inside and pay with cash, and Randall pumps. The AC is so cold and the fluorescent lights so bright that it makes it hard for me to breathe; I feel hot, my body sodden as a dripping sponge, my breasts and stomach full of boiling water, my limbs burning. Randall fills the tank, and on the way back he opens up the truck on the back road, presses the gas. We tear down the asphalt, past the trees, and the engine howls; we beat the sky and the wind. Junior bares his teeth and grins.