Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [11]
“You don’t have to cook them.” He stares at the television. There’s a commercial for toys on. He will eat them dry, and he will stick something sharp that he will sneak from the kitchen into the flavor packet to make a small hole. He will suck the spice from that damn flavor packet all day. I grab his plate, and the eggs jiggle like rubber.
Skeetah walks me in the shed after I interrupt his hammering by nudging his leg and pointing at the plate of eggs. I don’t feel like yelling. Feels too embarrassing, too big, too showy, even when it’s only me and Skeet around. Inside, China is laying on her side, and the puppies are squirming in a pile against her, sucking. She looks up, bares her teeth. Sees Skeetah and lets her lips fall a little bit, but still shows fangs. I want to pick one of the puppies up and hold it like Skeet did when China gave birth, let the puppy shove its wet nose into my shirt. Instead I stand at the door and watch Skeet set the plate in front of her on the ground.
“The white one is almost as big as the red one.”
China decides to ignore me and shoves her nose into the plate, licks up some egg. She leaves a slimy web of spit.
“Want to see?” Skeetah says. He bends and picks the red puppy away from China’s tit, and milk dribbles down her belly. All eight of her titties are so swollen with milk they look like human breasts. I breathe in air and swallow past the rock in my throat. The rock melts and burns. I run outside and crouch down and brace myself on my knees and throw up all over the red dirt, my hair falling forward like a black cloud. I can feel Skeetah watching me. When he touches my back with the puppy-free hand, I know this is how he touches China.
Daddy is grinning a beer out of Big Henry, who can buy beer at the gas station on the interstate because he’s so tall and solid, his face so square and serious, that he looks like he’s over twenty-one. He never gets carded, even though he’s only eighteen.
“Big boy like you, I know you know all about that.”
Daddy is leaning into Big Henry’s bulk so that he is cloaked in his shadow, and Daddy looks like he doesn’t know whether he wants to poke or punch.
“Them women like to have something to hold on to.”
Daddy elbows him in the ribs; he has his head down and he’s grinning. This is the way he tells a joke.
“Cost me some women back in the day, not having nothing to me.”
Daddy rubs his hand over his stomach, which I know is flat under his shirt, lean and dark with a thin layer of skin and fat that hangs over his muscle like a light T-shirt. With all that beer, you’d think he’d have a bowling-ball gut, but he doesn’t.
“Used to tell me, ‘Claude, I need a little more man than you. Need something warm. Don’t want no bony hard legs up on me at night.’ ”
Big Henry nods like he’s agreeing. Opens his eyes like Daddy’s interesting.
“Used to say, ‘You know how them big men is.’ ”
Big Henry hands Daddy the beer he’d been sipping on and slumps over the top of Daddy’s truck. The last of the jugs from under the house catches the light; the soap and water look like diamonds inside.
“What y’all did to get ready for them hurricanes today, Mr. Claude?” Big Henry asks. He scans the yard for Randall, for Skeetah, and when he doesn’t see them, snags on me and, resigned, shrugs.
When we were little, Big Henry used to let me ride on his back in the deep part of the pit, the part that was lined with oyster shells. He used to carry me so my feet wouldn’t get cut, even though his feet were bare as mine. They never bled. He hasn’t touched me since then. I thought that one day we would have sex, but he never came for me that way; since the boys always came for me, I never tried to have sex with him. He’s always around, moving in that big careful way of his. He bounces when he walks, sways side to side on his tiptoes. He swings his arms like he’s wading through water. He holds his beer bottles with three fingers.
“I’m going for dog food. Want to come?”
Skeetah asks me this as he rounds the side of the house; Big Henry looks