Insides and Gold

The storm had wrapped itself around their whole house, carried the water level with it through the backyard all the way up to the second floor. When it was time for the damn thing to be over, the flood had carried the guts of the house out with it – even the refrigerator, like some kind of organ obstruction. We were the young ones, assigned by the elders in our church to scrape out the fridge that had rested in the mud under the trees for a month. Put on leather gloves and extracted sealed bags of chicken nuggets, casseroles that must’ve been made with the storm in mind. Plenty of leftovers. We were tossing the insides into a pile, and one of us whisper-squealed about something he saw in the carcass of the fridge. A six-pack of Bud Light, a crystal ball shining from the guts of the hurricane. Like God sent the storm just to uncover this strange blue relic. It wasn’t without its blemishes though. Black mold dotted the aluminum. We tossed leaves over the pack and kept on with the fridge knowing we would come back. We’d just extracted a soggy cardboard portrait of the Red Baron and sent him flying to the trash pile when the adults decided to take a break and go to the other side of the house, drink some clean water from the back of a truck. We knew what we had to do. We were homeschooled and didn’t get a lot of opportunities like this. The alcohol was sitting right in front of us with no one but the carnage of a hurricane to witness it. The kind of scene you could bury down inside yourself and tear back out, pass around. By consensus, we concluded that the cans were too moldy to drink out of in the normal way. We’d have to extract the liquid with a little bit of violence. We shook the cans, conjuring a small, explosive force inside each one. And we hurled them into the trees. The cans ruptured, sprayed golden light beer into the air. On all fours, we careened through the leaves, threw our heads over the alcohol streams. And, for a few moments, the beer returned our violence. Spraying brightly at the back of our throats, carrying flecks of black mold along with it. Gold dripped from our teeth. It was like the volume of everything was turned up far too loud. And stayed that way. Travelling home, we watched movies on a portable DVD player, but the speakers were fucked up and only playing at full blast. We covered the noise with a towel the color of a storm cloud.