Max Booth III - We Need to Do Something

Mom thinks we should all do it together. Otherwise we’re wasting our time. If someone’s passing by several blocks from our house, they’re not going to hear anything if it’s just one person. But four? Then maybe we stand a chance.

I disagree, of course. I tell her we should do it in shifts. It’s not like our street’s been particularly loud since the storm. We haven’t heard any passing traffic, or airplanes, or anything. No people. No animals. I think our voices will carry a lot farther than she’s giving us credit. Plus, this way we can scream longer. I tell her the last thing we want to do is waste five minutes shouting our lungs off, only to stop for a rest the moment a potential savior passes by.

Bobby doesn’t care which way we decide. He just wants the chance to be loud and crazy.

Dad, on the other hand, claims to have the “headache from hell” and begs us to be as quiet as possible. No one’s coming, he tells us. The only thing shouting will accomplish is pissing him off.

We ignore his pleas and utilize my plan of screaming in shifts. Mom and I let loose with a generic, “Help! Please help! Is anyone out there? Help!” while Bobby chooses to go down a slightly different route by howling like a wolf.

“Bobby, don’t be stupid,” I tell him. “No one is going to save a wolf. They’ll be afraid of getting eaten.”

“But I like being a wolf.”

“Don’t you want to get out of here?”

“Fine, Sis. Fine.” He leans against the opening again and continues, this time actually forming words. “Hello! Hello! My sissy farted so much and it smells like broccoli and now we are all gonna die because none of us can breathe! Hello? Hello! My sissy’s butt is a monster and we are trapped! Help! Please help save us from my sissy’s smelly butt! Oh god! We don’t have much time before her butt swallows us up and turns us into big poops!”

This time, when I punch Bobby, Dad doesn’t even get upset.

Mom and Bobby are halfway through a new game of cards when he rubs his belly and complains about being hungry.

“Yeah, me too,” I say, hating how much I sound like a baby, but it’s true. My stomach feels like it’s shrinking into a dark void.

“I know,” Mom says, quiet. “I’m sorry.”

“How much longer are we gonna be here?” Bobby asks, voice on the edge of whining.

“I don’t know, baby.”

Now it’s my turn to rub my belly. “I wish we had brought some goldfish crackers in with us.”

Bobby pretends to retch. “Goldfish crackers are disgusting.”

“More for me, then.”

“I want some eggs,” he says, licking his lips. “I want a thousand eggs—with cheese!”

“Ugh. Only old people like eggs.”

“No, they don’t. Mom, tell Sis all types of people like eggs.”

“Melissa, all types of people like eggs,” Mom says, barely paying attention to anything we’re saying.

I shake my head. “Nuh-uh. Only old people. And do you know what that makes you?”

“Don’t say it.” Bobby’s expression tightens into ultra-seriousness.

“You know what…”

“Mom, tell Sis not to say it.”

“Melissa, don’t say it.”

“Okay.” I pause for a good thirty seconds, then shout, “It makes you a tiny old man!”

Bobby slams his deck of cards down. “ Mom! ”

Holding back laughter now, Mom says, “Calm down. It’s okay.”

“But she called me a…”

“— A tiny old man! ” I shout again, full of glee, and burst out laughing, which only influences Mom to increase her giggling over on the blanket.

Bobby witnesses this matriarchal betrayal with his jaw dropped, exaggerating offense. For the past year or so, I’ve found great joy in calling my brother a tiny old man. The joke started one day when I walked in the house and found him sitting on the couch with one leg crossed over his knee, glasses at the tip of his nose, reading a physical newspaper. What are you doing? I asked, dumbfounded, and he’d casually responded, Checking the weather.

Therefore, he was now forever known as a tiny old man, from that day until the end of time.

“ Fuck! ” our father screams, and all three of our heads spin toward him. He’s next to the sink, furiously jabbing the screen on his phone, teeth gritting, veins punctuating against his neck. A second passes and the phone shatters against the wall, pieces of plastic flying every direction. Mom grabs Bobby by the head and ducks closer to the floor, dodging incoming projectiles. I scream out and cover my face with both hands just as a small shard lands in the tub.

Dad loses it. He starts punching the bathroom door over and over, the wood bouncing between his fists and the fallen tree on the other side. “Fucking piece of shit stupid fucking battery fucking useless asshole technology why the fuck do I even pay for this cock sucking thing if it doesn’t even do its fucking job! ”

Mom hugs Bobby close to her chest, trying to calm him down, but he keeps sobbing. I notice her still keeping an eye on Dad. Making sure he doesn’t get near them. I wonder what she’ll do if he starts redirecting his fists upon us. How she will defend Bobby and I. How she will defend herself. Then I wonder what I will do, if I’ll find the strength to at least try fighting him off, or if I’ll immediately surrender to cowardice and allow the inevitable to unfold.

I curl up into a ball while he continues punching the door, body shaking, eyes squeezed shut, trying my best to drown out the noise of my father punching a door and screaming and my brother crying so loud he doesn’t even sound human anymore.

Dad on the floor, flat on his ass, legs curved up into upside-down Vs, back against the door. Streaks of blood stain the wood above him. Both of his hands rest in his lap. He stares at them and we stare at him staring at them. Utter exhaustion befalls his face. His knuckles are black and blue and swollen. If his hands aren’t broken, they’re still plenty damaged. Every breath we emit is in danger of setting him off again, so for a while we try our best not to breathe. He ignores us and focuses on opening and closing his hand, grimacing with each motion. Eventually the blood on the door drips down into his hair and it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, but it’s also the scariest, too.

Everybody’s awake and it’s unclear if any of us have actually slept since this whole situation started. Sometimes I blink longer than other times and maybe that’s sleep, but who’s to say? Definitely don’t feel remotely close to rested , and judging by how everybody else looks, they don’t either. I can’t remember the last time any of us changed position, except one of us must’ve moved at some point, because now Bobby has the thermos again, sipping water and trying his best to avoid eye contact with our father.

“How long have we been here?” I ask, only I don’t realize it’s me who asked it until Mom looks at me.

“I think this is day three,” she says, voice so incredibly weak, and I wonder if I sound the same.

“I thought it was four, maybe.”

“I don’t know, Mel.”

“Why hasn’t anybody come yet?”

“…I don’t know.”

I know she doesn’t know. None of us know. But I have to ask them, I have to say something, just to remind myself that the rest of my family exists and I haven’t conjured them up with my imagination. Just to remind myself that I’m not alone.

“I don’t think it was a tornado that did all this,” Dad says.

Mom glares at him, confused, cautious.

And I can’t resist the bait. “What do you mean?”