THE TWELFTH DAY: ALIVE
We sat in the open attic until the wind quieted from jet fighter planes to coughing puffs. We sat in the open attic until the sky brightened from a sick orange to a clean white gray. We sat in the open attic until the water, which had milled like a boiling soup beneath us, receded inch by inch, back into the woods. We sat in the open attic until the rain eased to drips. We sat in the open attic until we got cold, and the light wind that blew chilled us. We huddled together in Mother Lizbeth’s attic and tried to rub heat from each other, but couldn’t. We were a pile of wet, cold branches, human debris in the middle of all of the rest of it.
I scooted past Daddy, whose eyes were closed as he mumbled against his maimed hand and his good hand, which were folded like he was praying, past Randall, who still held Junior, who still had his hands over his eyes, to Skeetah. He crouched where the attic’s roof was mostly gone, near the front of the long, low half room, and leaned out the gaping absence. He looked like he wanted to jump. I touched him in the middle of his shoulder blades. His skin was warm, hot as if he’d been running, as if the day was blazing bright. He jerked but didn’t look back at me as he scanned the boiling water, the trees popping and flying, the old washing machine spinning like a bumper car around the yard, the wind ripping the land away. The wood under me felt wet and spongy, like it wanted to give. I put my legs to either side of his thighs, scooted up behind him, slid my arms under his armpits, and rested my face on his shoulder.
“I failed her,” he said.
He blinked hard.
“No you didn’t.” I spoke into his neck.
“Yes,” he said. His voice sounded like a rake being dragged over rocks.
“You didn’t fail us,” I said.
He shook his head, and his cheek brushed my forehead. The muscles under his jaw were jumping. He started to shake. I hugged him tighter, held him the way I’d embraced those boys I’d fucked because it was easier to let them get what they wanted instead of denying them, instead of making them see me. My arms had never been so strong.
I squeezed. With my whole body, I squeezed. I could hold him together, but he jerked so hard it felt like he was trying to shake himself apart, separate at the knuckles, pop loose his ribs, dislocate his shoulders, and dislodge his knees: shudder into nothing, a pile of skin and bone and limp muscle. No Skeet.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said.
The hurricane laughed. A tree, plucked from its branches, hopped across the yard and landed against Daddy’s truck with a crunch, stopped short like it had won a game of hopscotch without stepping out of the lines. The sky was so close I felt like I could reach up and bury my arm in it.
Skeetah squinted into the storm, so I looked with him, searching for anything white, anything in the direction that China had whirled away, swimming furiously, barking. Plastic bags, a broken dryer, an old refrigerator. We could see nothing that held heat like China, nothing fighting. The hurricane gusted and peeled back a corner of our house, flung tin with a clatter into the air.
“It ain’t steady now,” I said. “It’s easing up.” I could see the living room, a messy doll’s house. The trees cracked in protest around us. Skeetah hummed.
“China,” he said.
The tractor, which had been buried under the water, peeked its head out, the top of its hood appearing from under the water.
“When it gets to the middle of the tires, I’m going,” Skeetah said.
I said nothing, just hooked my fingers together, like I could’ve kept him there in a living chain.
When the first slice of rubber appeared over the rolling water, Skeetah started. He was a school of fish in my arms. The wind gusted and the trees clattered. There was a whirling sound in the sky, a whistle that was descending and rising, circling. The hurricane groaned, and it was like hearing a million Daddys moan and push back their chairs after eating plates full of fish fried whole, white bread for the bones, beer. The iron at the center of the tire peeked through, and it was an eye opening. Skeetah shrugged out of my embrace all at once: a school of fish exploding around a rock.
“Where you going?” I asked.
Skeetah was already past me, past Randall, in front of Daddy.
“Skeet?” Randall asked. Junior buried his face in Randall’s muddy shirt.
Skeetah was at the hole we’d climbed through. The glass in the window had cut his face, his thighs, his chest, and his skin was running red. Then I looked at my arms, Randall, Junior, Daddy; we were all bleeding, all gashed.
“Boy,” Daddy said.
“I got to find her,” Skeetah said.
“The storm ain’t over.” Daddy rolled to his side, lifted his knees, and settled again as if he was trying to get more comfortable, find purchase to stand up, but none of us could with the bones of the ceiling folding so low.
Skeetah turned in his crouch. All that jumping, stilled. He was one animal again, or at least he thought he would soon be.
“She’s waiting for me,” he said, and jumped down through the ceiling, splashing in the water below.
“Skeet!” Randall yelled.
I looked out of our ragged window, the ripped roof, and saw him wade out into the yard, the water at his waist, his head up, his shoulders back, his arms raised, and his hands extended palms down inches over the water, as if he could calm it.
“Be careful,” Daddy breathed, and I watched my brother walk almost naked out into the departing storm. He headed toward the Pit, the water swirling around him, the broken tops of the trees, the debris rising like a labyrinth up out of the water. He paused, turned his head, and looked back at us. I waved through the ruined window. The air was getting cold. He turned and vanished around a tree growing sideways, into the maw of the maze. He left a thin wake.
When the water left, the front part of Daddy’s truck was sitting on top of the smashed gas tank. The lower half was on the ground. All the water that had been in the car was out, and it left a muddy slime on the windows. The yard was one big puddle that we waded, so icy at our ankles, the first cold water we’d felt since the March rains, to the back door of the house, which was blasted open. The screen door was gone. The inside of the house was wet and muddy as Daddy’s truck. The food we’d gotten had been washed from the shelves, and we hunted for it like we did for eggs, finding some silver cans of peas. We found Top Ramen, still sealed, in the sofa. We put them in our shirts. My hands were pink with Skeetah’s blood from hugging him earlier. I washed them in a puddle in the living room.
“We can’t stay here. We need shelter.” Randall grimaced. “Your hand, and the water…” Randall trailed off. “Who knows what the water had in it.”
Daddy shook his head, his lips weak as a baby’s. He looked dazed. He stared at his truck, the ruined house, the yard invisible under the trees and the storm’s deposits.
“Where,” he said, and it was a statement with no answer.
“By Big Henry,” Randall said.