The water hit the plastic bottom in a hard, fast sheet before it softened. As the bucket filled, the sound changed pitch as it climbed. I shut off the tap when the rim was still dry an inch from the top. Standing water has a way of making a room suddenly quiet.
The bucket was not new. A white five-gallon pail scuffed with drywall dust. The dust never washed out. It just settled into the ridges. The wire handle wore a split blue grip, the kind that knows exactly where a thumb belongs. I curled my fingers around it. The seam in the plastic sleeve found the old fold in my palm.
My right foot stepped back without being asked. My left knee unlocked. Free hand braced on my thigh, just above the kneecap, a triangle of bone I could press weight into. My chin tucked. I stopped breathing.
The bucket cleared the concrete by an inch. That was all the body needed to take a reading. A full bucket doesn’t announce itself all at once. It seeps into the wrist first, then the elbow, then a place behind the sternum that has nothing to do with lungs. The spine kept its own measure. I knew the weight by exactly where breath stopped letting go.
I took the first half-step. The water swayed once, a low clop against the plastic, and then it settled against my side like something that had decided to cooperate. The split grip bit its familiar territory.
A thin ring of water marked the concrete where the base had sat. It would dry in an hour. The bucket sat level. One side still held a faint smear of gray paste. I wiped my palm on my jeans. The crease was wet.