“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.
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,
“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
