Salvage the Bones

is gas, so when Randall lights the burners, the kitchen glows orange and shadows climb the walls. The day tries to light the open doorway and fails. Junior sits in that dim light of the door, his chin on his knees, hugging his legs. He draws designs in the dirt on the floor. He is mad because Randall told him that no, he couldn’t watch TV. That he was still in trouble. Randall fries the eggs with the bacon grease Daddy keeps in the old Community Coffee tin on the counter; he dumps in the rice and creole seasoning. I fry the bologna slices, and China must smell them because she starts barking, loud, begging barks. On four plates, we divide the eggs and rice, the bologna sliced in half, saving a little for Skeetah. Junior and Randall drink the milk. I bring Daddy his plate, but he is asleep, so I set it on his dresser and leave him there, dozing in the cave of his room. It is dark, but still he sleeps with his bad arm over his eyes.

Park my truck in the clearing by the pit.

The only real clearing on the Pit is by the pit. They had to cut trees so they’d have room to maneuver the dump trucks, to open the earth. Randall drives Daddy’s truck around the house, skirts the trees, the mirrors barely clearing on each side. The chickens scatter before the truck, clucking in complaint, the wind picking them up so they fly in clumsy leaps. Randall parks next to the makeshift grill we cooked the squirrel on; there are tiny lumps of black char stuck to the metal, and red ants stream over it, a living line. While we are rolling up the windows of the truck and locking the toolbox, Junior kneels next to the grill. By the time we are done, Randall shakes his head at Junior, tells him come on; Junior’s finger is in the middle of the ants, and they have diffused to a puddle over his hand. They are all curving, all stinging, all burying their bites in his skin. Junior has a prideful look on his face, says, Look how long I can do it. When Randall grabs him by his arm and I brush the ants away, Junior’s skin is puffy, white and red, bumps swelling under the skin.

What is wrong with you, Junior? Randall asks.

Get the cheapest you can get, Randall had said, so when Skeetah and Big Henry begin unloading the trunk, I expect cardboard boxes cut in half full of tomato soup. Skeetah pulls out a big bag of dog food, hoists it up over his shoulder, and carries it to the shed. Then he pulls out another fifty-pound bag of dog food and dumps it next to the first, where they sit like lumpy twins. China is barking, high-pitched, from the shed. She is hungry.

“All right!” Skeetah yells, and she stops mid-bark, swallows it. He slides the tin shed door over, and she walks out calmly, brushes him with her head, noses his pants, licks his hand. He squats and rubs her.

Randall and Junior and I have been sitting in the yard for the past hour or so, jobs done; the house is too dark, too hot. It is a closed fist. Junior had been playing with an old extension cord, using it like a rope. He’d kept tying it to trees and twirling the cord like a jump rope. The tree was his partner, but he had no one to jump in the middle. Finally Randall untied the cord and I walked over and grabbed the other end. While the sky was darkening, the sun shining more fitfully through the clouds, we turned the cord for Junior and he jumped in the dust.

Randall walks to the car first. There are two boxes shoved in the corner of the trunk, the tops open and folded apart. In one, there are around fifteen cans of peas, green writing on silver, and a few of potted meat. And in the second box, there are two dozen bags of Top Ramen. Randall grabs the box with the peas and meat in it, and I grab the box with the ramen. Randall holds his box with one arm, his muscles knotting, and shrugs at Skeetah, raises his hand like he is throwing a ball in the air toward a goal raised too high.

“Why did you get all these peas?”

“It’s all they had.”

“And only three potted meats?”

“They was wiped out. Last things on the shelves.”

“I told you not to get nothing that need to be cooked. What we going to do with a box full of Top Ramen?”

“We going to eat it.” Skeetah looks up from China. He is checking her breasts, peeling back the tan wrap to see the scabs that line the red watery wounds. China licks his forearm.

“What we going to cook Ramen with? You know the electricity go out in a thunderstorm; what you think it’s going to do in a hurricane?”

“We got the grill in the woods. We can cook them over a fire.”

“The wood is going to be wet.”

“It ain’t even going to be that big of a deal. Probably turn and miss us.”

“No, Skeet. We been listening to the radio all day. It’s a category three and it’s coming right for us. Got two sacks of dog food! How long you think these peas going to last us?”

“We got other stuff in the house!”

I hate peas. My stomach, which has lately been pulling at me, driving me to eat at all hours of the day to feed the baby, burns.

“Barely enough for five people!” I say, my voice harder than I have ever heard it.

Skeetah unwraps China’s breast, and it hangs free, already bruised and wilted from disuse; it is a dark mark on her, marring what was once so white, so pristine. The scar makes what remains even more beautiful. Skeetah looks at China like he would dive into her if he could and drown.

“You ever tasted dog food?” Skeetah asks.

Randall’s box jerks, and he looks as if he wants to throw it.

Big Henry closes the trunk, holds up his big hands palms out, like he would calm us.

“Man, we got a little extra. Me and Mama got cases of cold drinks and canned goods at the beginning of the summer, and we been eating from her garden since, trying to save them. Sure Marquise got some extra, since his mama been hollering about him eating too much since they trying to make sure they got enough to eat just in case, too. Skeetah, you ain’t got to eat dog food.”

“It’s salty. Taste like pecans. And if worse comes to worst, we can eat like China.” Skeetah rubs China from her shoulders to her neck, up along her razor jaw, and holds her face, which goes wrinkly with the skin smashed forward. It looks like he is pulling her to him for a kiss. She squints. I want to kick her. Randall shoulders his box, grabs the ramen box from me, and turns to walk into the house. Junior is tying his cord around an old lawn mower now, pulling at it like he’s playing tug-of-war. The sun shines, blazes like fire, funnels down in the gaps between the trees, and lights up Skeetah and China so that they glow, each kneeling before the other, eyes together. Skeetah has already forgotten the conversation, and China never heard it.

“We ain’t no dogs,” Randall says. “And you ain’t either.” He walks between the thumb and pointer finger of the house, it clenches, and he is gone. The day goes cloudy, and stays.

THE TENTH DAY: IN THE ENDLESS EYE

I ate skeet’s eggs and bologna. He was out in the shed with China, cleaning her. I ate them all. I cleaned the plate with my tongue, licked the plate clean. I could’ve eaten the plate. Randall glanced at me once and then went to pulling all the cans out of the cabinets. We sat at the kitchen table and divided and stacked and counted: twenty-four cans of peas, five cans of potted meat, one can of tomato paste, six cans of soup, four cans of sardines, one can of corn, five cans of tuna fish, one box of saltine crackers, some cornflakes we could eat without milk. The rice, sugar, flour, and cornmeal were useless. There were thirty-five Top Ramen noodle packs.

“Shit!” Randall yelled and threw the can of tomato paste he was holding across the room. Outside, the wind pushed between the buildings.

After breakfast, I hear them talking while I’m in the bathroom. The rooster is crowing outside, and China answers him, barking. They are in Daddy’s room. When I pee and lean over to grab the toilet paper, my belly pushes into the tops of my thighs, insistent. I ignore it, ease open the door, and creep down the hallway so I can listen to Randall and Daddy through the open door.

“I know,” Randall says. “But we still don’t have enough.”

“Y’all eat them dry anyway.”

“Junior eat them dry. Nobody else do.”

Daddy breathes hard so I can hear it catching on mucus in his throat, and then he coughs it out.

“I got enough money in case it’s an emergency after the storm. Never know what will happen.”

“But what about-”

“It’s just a few hundred, son,” Daddy wheezes. He has only ever called Randall that and has only done so a few