Rob peered up at him through the hole in the old floor and smiled guiltily. He was sitting on a pile of sand one more shack down. It was as far down as one could go, this next buried home nearly full of drift.[8] His brother’s hair looked wet, was matted to his forehead, like he’d been exerting himself. Conner quickly looked away.
“Aw, c’mon, man. You’re not down there jerking off, are you?”
“No!” Rob squealed, and Conner peered back into the hole. He saw his brother wiggling back and forth. Rob glanced up at him and bit his lip in frustration. “Where’ve you been?” he asked. “I’ve been calling for you and calling for you.”
Conner realized now that his brother was in trouble. Crouching down, he lowered the lamp below the floorboards and saw that the sand was up to his brother’s hips. There were gouges where Rob had been digging.
“What the fuck have you done?”
“I was just playing,” Rob said.
Conner hung the lantern on a nail and worked his way down another level. “I told you to stay out of here. Drift can dump through in a flash.”
“I know. But… it didn’t dump in. I kinda buried myself.”
Conner spotted the wires trailing out of the sand. He tried to pry his brother out, but Rob wouldn’t budge. The sand around him was hard as concrete. “What’ve you done?”
“I’ve been working on… something.” Rob showed Conner the band in his hand, a cluster of wires trailing off and disappearing into the hard pack. “I wasn’t diving, promise. Not all the way. Just trying to see what I could do with my boots—”
“With your boots—?”
“Father’s boots.”
“You mean my boots.” Conner snatched the band out of his brother’s hand. “Eleven fucking years old, Rob. You’re gonna get yourself killed playing with this shit. Where’d you get the band?”
“Found it.”
“Did you steal this?” Conner shook the band. He had half a mind to leave his brother there for the night, just to teach him a lesson.
“No. I found it. Swear.”
“You know what Palm would’ve done if he found you playing with this? Or Vic?” Conner checked the band. It belonged to an old pair of visors, but someone had removed those. “Did you find this in the trash? Because that’s where this piece of shit belongs.”
Rob didn’t say. A scavenger’s admission.
“Did you do the wiring?”
“Yes,” his brother whispered. “Con, I can’t feel my feet.”
Conner saw that his brother was crying. And one of his arms was pinned. Rob didn’t need to be told how serious this shit was.
“Look,” Conner said, “you can’t leave these contacts exposed like this. They’ll work for a while until you get a sweat going, and then they’ll short.” He used his shirt to dry the inside of the band. “Once that happens, everything you try just gets worse and worse. You were tightening the sand by trying to loosen it. All we’ve gotta do is kill the power and the sand should unclench.”
Rob sniffed. “I put the power in the left boot,” he said.
“In the boot? Why the fuck would you do that?”
Rob wiped his cheek with his free hand. “’Cause I thought I could make a dive suit without the suit. Just the boots.”
“Jesus Christ, how did you make it to eleven?” Conner checked the band, made sure it was dry, and was about to press it to his forehead and release his brother when he thought of his sister and what she would do.
“Hold still,” he said. He pulled his shirt over his head, found a dry patch, and patted his brother’s forehead dry.
“I’m not crying,” Rob said quietly, as Conner dabbed his head.
“I know you’re not crying. I’m drying your temples.”
His brother held still. Conner checked the dive band to make sure it was aligned right, then paused a moment to admire the tiny solders his brother had made. “You’re a piece of work,” he said. He slid the band down on his brother’s head. “Now listen, I don’t want you to just release the sand, got it?”
Rob nodded.
“I want you to flow it down around your legs, okay? Feel it move. Direct it. And then let it push up on the bottoms of your feet. You have to picture two hands down there beneath you, lifting you up. Two hands with good grips on those boots, okay? Can you feel the fingers? The palms?”
“I think so,” Rob said, biting his lip.
“Okay. Try it. Quick, before you start sweating.”
“’S’not helping,” Rob grunted. He squinted his eyes and concentrated. Conner felt the sand stir and loosen beneath him.
“Good,” he said. “Now up.”
Rob yelped as he shuddered skyward. His head nearly bumped into the rafters. The sand lifted him through the hole in the old bathroom, until his boots were high and dry on the pile of drift.
Conner laughed and brushed the spill[9] off his lap. Rob whooped and pumped his fists.
“Awesome job,” Conner said. “Now take those boots off. You’re fucking grounded.”
13 • Son of a Whore
Conner stayed up late that night and waited for Palmer to get home. He finally passed out beside Rob on the tiny cot and woke in the morning to find his own bed undisturbed. He had left it open for Palmer, but his brother had probably gotten lucky with a girl. Totally flaking out on them again this year, even after promising. After really promising. And now Conner had a crick in his neck for nothing.
He got up and stretched. Rob grabbed the loose sheets, rolled over, and cocooned himself. Conner grabbed a white open-front shirt that tied shut around the waist. He stepped into the washroom and rubbed sand on his face and hands, exfoliating the sweat and grime and stink. With some sand in the shirt, he rubbed the fabric together with his fists. The sand in the basin still had the faint smell of old dried flowers crushed up in there. Damn faint, though.
He shook the sand back into the basin and got dressed, leaving his shorts on and knotting the shirt. Hurrying out into the morning chill, he pissed in the general vicinity of the nearby latrine, steam swirling off in the breeze. After kicking some light sand on the dark sand, he hurried back home.
“Yo, Rob, I’m running out for a fill and to find Palm. Get the tent aired out, will you? And no fucking around down there.”
There was a grunt from the bedroom, and the Rob-shaped mound shifted beneath the covers. Conner gathered his canteens: one on the hook by the door, an old beat-up one of Vic’s sitting in the window like a relic or a piece of decoration, and a third he’d hidden on top of the kitchen cabinet. He strung all three over his head, grabbed all the coin he owned in the world—which fit easily in one palm—and called into the bedroom again.
“All right. I’ll be back. Don’t sleep till noon, man. I want to get going early enough we aren’t figuring the tent out in the dark like last year.”
Conner sat on one of his sister’s old chairs and grabbed his boots. Then he spotted his dad’s boots where he’d dumped them the night before and decided to wear them instead. Maybe he was already thinking about his trip that night and wanted something of his father’s with him, or maybe it was just to keep Rob from getting into trouble while he was gone.