Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward Page A

Is everybody ready.” He says it like that, like a statement rather than a question. Skeetah is not giving us any room to not be ready. “All right, then. Once you see me come out that window, I want everybody to start running. Don’t look back. Run.”
    There is a line through us all, stringing from one to another across the field; Skeetah with his knees bent, his back a black ball, running toward the barn window. Me on a low rise, grass tufted up unevenly around me in bunches, lying like a snake in wait behind the tree stumps. Randall hidden in the woods behind me, crouching behind a large, low bush with leaves the size of my fingernails. And Big Henry and Junior, even farther back behind Randall. When I left them, Big Henry was bouncing back and forth on his feet, and Junior was squatting on the ground away from him, his feet splayed out in a Y, digging with a stick to raise the pine needles into peaked roofs.
    The cows rip bunches of grass away, feed steadily, chewing and swallowing and yanking. The egrets flap, walk in small couples. One leaves its mate to wander over to me, pecking between each step so that his beak is another leg. It walks him closer. I hiss at it so it stops. It is whiter than the other egrets. Its feathers are soft, downy, as if it is younger, recently born; a fluffy, warm body beats under the down. I hiss again, and it is a flailing pillow, beating away. The cows ignore Skeetah as he runs by unless he brushes too close to their salad plate, and then they skitter away a few feet to settle. Skeetah crawls under the other edge of the fence and sprints to the window he showed me, a leaping shadow. His hand moves to his face and away again, and I know that he must be taking out the razor. He jumps and pulls himself up onto the window’s ledge, balancing with his feet braced against the wall, and he begins to fiddle with the window. My underarms feel flushed and swampy.
    â€œWhat is he doing?” I talk myself into hurrying him. “Now, Skeet, do it.”
    He wrenches it, but the window will not open. He slides down the wall and puts his hand to his face again. Grabbing the hem of his shirt, he yanks it over his head, wraps it around his arm, and jumps back up on the ledge. With one arm holding him up, he elbows the window with the T-shirt. It breaks. He elbows it again, and it shatters. Skeetah is all forearms and knees, truncated thighs and twisting shoulders, and then he is black as the shadowy interior of the barn, and then he is gone.
    â€œThank God,” I whisper to the egret, who will not leave me, and pecks in a suspicious circle near my foot.
    What I can see of the road is empty. The trees are moving so it seems like they are a green, shimmering curtain in the distance, the road fading to a dark green velvet line in the middle. I stare at it, try hard to see something, run my tongue over my lips again and again, twist it into a wave to ready it. My arm feels like it is going dead, so I roll to the side, glance at the road. Is that blue, a flash of metal like a dying star? But there is nothing. I hiss at the bird again, wonder why Manny didn’t come by, wonder when he will come again, if he will want more from me next time. If I can get him to look at me in the eye again. To not walk away from me.
    The pain is sudden, sharp. It shoots through my hips and I squeeze my legs together and wonder why my bladder feels like a soaked sponge. I can’t help it. I have to pee. Again.
    â€œShit, Skeet,” I say to the side of the barn, the empty shimmering road. I will hold it. It shoots again, and I rock my hips side to side in the grass, squeezing my legs. Sometimes when I move like this, squeeze like this, it helps. The pressure eases. It lasts for a shake of my head, a nod at the still empty road, and then it is back. Unbearable, a tadpole grown to the confines of its egg. Pressure. I can hold it. I can’t.
    I stand up, look back toward where I know Randall