Salvage the Bones

The family continues to makes preparations in the house and to watch television. They receive a threatening automated phone call informing them of a mandatory evacuation: “If you choose to stay in your home and have not evacuated by this time, we are not responsible. You have been warned. And these could be the consequences of your actions” (217). When they hear that they could die, “the hurricane becomes real” (217).

When Esch awakes, she and Skeetah move to the back of the house. They try to recall their mother’s voice and Skeetah reminds Esch that her last words were for them “to look after each other” (222). Skeet also tells Esch that she looks like their mother. They are startled by the sound of a dog barking “somewhere out in the storm” (222). While they are listening, a tree crashes onto the house and rips a hole in their parents’ bedroom. Claude runs out to the living room with the rest of them and Esch says that China knew about the tree because she barked and looked up at the ceiling before it fell onto the house. Skeetah denies this.

The family is later awakened by water coming into the living room. They don’t quite know where the water is coming from, but when they look out of the window, “there is a lake growing in the yard” (226). They also notice their Dad’s truck floating by. The water is rising rapidly, and reaches up to their waists as they climb into the attic. They all make it in safely and Claude checks the clear plastic bag he had hidden in his pants earlier. In it are pictures he has saved. It isn’t long before Esch announces that there is water in the attic. Skeet starts beating the inside of the roof to make a way out. Randall, using the chain saw he was sitting on, cuts a hole in the roof.

Skeetah takes off his pants and makes a makeshift sling out of his jeans and ties China close to him. “China’s head and legs are smashed to his chest, pinned under the fabric. She is a baby in a sling, and she is shaking” (231). Skeetah notices Mother Lizbeth’s and Papa Joseph’s house. It’s on a hill, and “the top half of the eaves of the house are above water” (231). He and Randall suggest they climb over a nearby tree that stretches to the house. They have to leap, both of them carrying another: Skeet carries China, while Randall holds Junior. They make it across and call for Esch and Claude.

They all scramble to the branch closest to the house, swimming amid detritus. Skeetah says he’ll break a window and the rest will climb in. He brings Esch with him making sure she goes in first. He rejects his dad’s claim that he is just trying to save the puppies and tells them all that Esch is pregnant. When Esch tries to jump to the house, she is thrown back into the water and the puppies that she was carrying in a bucket are tossed out. She grabs the one closest to her--the brindle--shoves him down her shirt. The other two puppies have disappeared. Skeet whispers something to China and lets her loose. Skeet pulls Esch by the leg and shoves her in through the broken window as he calls for China. They all scramble inside the house. “Junior is rocking back and forth, squatting on the balls of his feet, his hands over his eyes because he does not want to see anymore; he is wailing NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNO” (236). China is nowhere to be found.