Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler Page A

something clean. In the nights, when the dripping swung low, we climbed onto the roof to try to see the city: a blubbered dot hung from the sky, a runny, rotten, murdered thing—a billion voices buried beneath, all saying the same thing over and over, smothered out.

TOUR OF THE DROWNED NEIGHBORHOOD

    This is the yard where the dogs would sit by the half-wrecked shed and sweat. Dad often tied them so tight they couldn’t crane their necks. Their backs flea-bit and wrecked with mange and xylophonic ribs. Moxie, Skipper, Moonbeam. Remember their howling in the hot nights when the ambulances screamed by. Remember the scummy flex of their brown backs, the lather of their sweat in suds. The year I snuck them each a sliver of my birthday cake, age 13—fudge batter, banana frosting. You should have seen those dumb dogs’ eyes.
     
     
     
     
    This is the driveway, cracked with gravel from the groaning of the earth. These are my initials scraped into the wet cement for which my father blacked my eye. His Corvette sat for years there dripping, no amount of wrench or sweat bringing it back to life, until finally one day the wind lifted it straight off into the air. Remember how on brown August days mom would come out and spread a towel and tan in her underwear where all could see. Her name carved in a stall of the middle school’s boy’s bathroom—another box now undersea.
     
     
     
     
    Imagine these houses taking on water. The cold flutter of family lungs.
     
     
     
     
    This is an electric chain-link fence.

     
    This is a picture window with no picture.
     
     
     
     
    This is my parents’ bedroom where when they slept he’d lock the knob. The drywall damp between us not thick enough to keep a quiet. How dad would shower her in shouting. How mom would cough clods up in rip. Remember emphysema. Remember how quick the disease spread. Remember the nights I woke with nightmare and went to crawl in bed between them, finding only a door that wouldn’t budge, a cold metal bauble in my hand.
     
     
     
     
    Here’s my room with the bunk beds I’ve slept in since I was seven, long after my feet hung off the end. Here’s a picture of my first girlfriend, whom I never got a chance to nuzzle. This is my videotape collection. This is a butterfly knife. A conch. This is the toe nail I lost after kicking the side of the house in anger. This is a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card in near-mint condition, just one corner burped with glitch.
     
     
     
     
    This is a drawing of me on the top of a mountain waving hello or goodbye.
     
     
     
     
    Imagine my innards flush with water. Imagine endless rain.

     
    This is the chimney, where once a year we’d catch a bird. You could hear it singing through the whole house, in the attic, in my sleep. Chirrup chirrup . Dad would get so mad he’d stand in the hearth with a broom. He’d shriek and curse and stir up dust. If he couldn’t scare the bird free, he’d start a fire. The smoke curling up its beak lines. Within an hour, the chirrup ceased. I guess the bodies stayed stuck up there somewhere, lost in charcoal smudge.
     
     
     
     
    Imagine how when the water rose high enough to cover the whole house. How you could see the tip of the chimney on the lip— an eye .
     
     
     
     
    This is the cul-de-sac where I once socked my neighbor for saying my parents were going to die. Bobby had a stye over his right eye from not sleeping—bright yellow, oozing, swollen so big he couldn’t blink. He said he’d read the Bible and there was still time for absolution.
     
     
     
     
    Remember how his was the first body I saw floating bloated on the rain, a school of malformed fan fish nipping at his back.
     
     
     
     
    Remember how you never know it’s coming until it’s there and then it’s there.

    Imagine how they swam until their arms ached, their lungs heavy in their chest.
     
     
     
     
    This is a ruined veranda.
     
     
     
     
    This is where I sometimes liked to