Avery: Bath

"Bath" or "Mud" or "Reclamation" or "Way In/Way Out" by Blake Butler

When the final crudded current first burst somewhere off the new coast of Oklahoma, I was seventeen and cross-eyed.
The storm spread like a curtain. It came and cracked the crust that'd formed over the fields, the junk that'd moored up in our harbors. It washed away most everything not tied down and most everything that was. All those reams and streams of ugly water. All that riddled from the sky.

My family sat huddled, hidden under one another in the house our dad had built alone. The house where we'd spent all these years together. The old roof groaned under the pouring. The leaking basement filled with goo.

LOST: my gun collection.
LOST: every board game you can think of.
LOST: mother's bowling trophies (30+).
LOST: our hope for some new day.

For weeks after the onslaught, I spent each afternoon up to my knees, shoveling mud from off of what remained of our crushed huddle. The sun had come back black, redoubled. What hadn't sunk or gone to mush now sat neck-deep, blobbed and burbling. The earth was sick and greedy. It swore to swallow whatever stayed out long enough to glisten. Me and my brothers, though; we fought hard. It was the twelve of us, blonde and hungry, each often nipples-deep and digging through the night. Then in the mornings, in the dew light, with the sun so hot it singed our hair, the gunk would form a crust—then we could take turns together sleeping, though you could never fully close your eyes. The mud might shift or stutter. I'd seen trees get sucked in sudden like spaghetti. Sometimes in my basement bedroom you could hear the screaming through the soil¾the folks from other homes who couldn’t fight the heave. I’d watched the Johnsons go down treading, their old muscles ripped and overheating. Mrs. Johnson’s bright yellow noggin with curled hair ribbon bobbed on the surface a full day before it sunk.

It wasn't long before we fell too. One by one I watched my brothers fizzle. Eleven boys, aged eight to eighteen, each so tired their pupils spun. You couldn't do much once it had you—the mud held tight and suckled quickly. I watched with sore hands as each one tuckered, went under deep, their small heads gone.