Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [18]
“Where y’all going?” Junior asks.
“None of your business,” says Skeet. He walks into the shed, and I follow.
“Go on, Junior.” I say. He doesn’t need to know that the puppy is dying. He doesn’t need to know that young things go, too.
“You ain’t the boss of me,” Junior says. I try to block his slide into the curtained doorway, but he crawls under me and sees Skeet handling the sick puppy, which doesn’t swim now. The puppy’s head rolls to the side, and he raises an arm, but I don’t know if that is Skeet’s fingers pulling him like a puppet, or the puppy, fighting.
“Get out of here, Junior! You so bad,” Skeetah says. He pulls down a bucket from one of the high shelves and lays the puppy inside, and then puts it back up so China can’t reach it. She growls, and Skeetah places his fingers in the middle of her forehead, shoves. “Shut up.”
“I’m telling Randall that you fixing to do something bad to the puppy!” Junior runs outside.
“Oh Lord,” I breathe.
China watches, reclining on her side. The puppies feed from her, and she is still, stone. Only her eyes shine like an oil lamp in the light. I should know that’s who she is, know that she’s often still as an animal ready to attack, but I’m not. Her tail does not wag. I can’t help the skin puckering over my stomach, up my arms.
“We’ll leave him up here till later tonight. If it’s the parvo, hopefully he too far away to infect the other ones.” Skeetah wipes his hands on the front of his holey tee. His shirt comes up over his ribs, his thin, muscled stomach. “Shit. The germs. I need to go wash my hands.”
I’m sitting on the steps, waiting on Skeetah, when Randall comes out the trees. He bounces when he walks, and it’s like the darkness under the green gives him his pieces one by one: a chest, a stomach, hips, arms, and legs. Last, a face. Junior is a voice behind him, riding on his back, his feet flopping over Randall’s stomach, leaving white dusty marks like powder with his soles.
“What’s this Junior talking about y’all trying to drown one of the puppies?”
I feel a quick wave of nausea.
“I don’t know where he got that from.”
“He say y’all put it in a bucket.”
“The puppy got parvo.” I say.
“They was going to drown it in the bucket!” Randall hoists Junior up, so when Junior says this, he is the flash of a face over Randall’s shoulder.
“And we wasn’t fixing to drown it in no bucket.” I say.
“Well, what y’all going to do with it?”
“Take it to back to the pit.”
Randall lets Junior go, and Junior hangs on until he can’t anymore, until his legs turn to noodles and he is sliding down Randall like a pole. We three are quiet, looking at each other, frowning.
“Go on, Junior.” Randall says.
“But Randall—”
“Go.”
Junior folds his arms over his chest, his ribs like a small grill burnt black. He needs to put a shirt on.
“Go.”
Junior’s eyes are bright. When he runs away, his feet make little slapping sounds in the dirt, and leave clouds of smoke. Skeetah grabs the bucket and his nest egg of food that he stole from the house.
“You can’t just kill the thing,” Randall says.
“Yes, I can.”
“You can make it better.”
“Nothing can make parvo better. Puppies don’t survive that. And if I don’t get rid of this one, the others will catch it. And then they will all die. You think Junior can handle that?”
“No. But they got to be another way.”
“There ain’t.” Skeetah hauls the bag over his shoulder along with his BB gun, holds the bucket in one trembling hand. “You know basketball, but you don’t know dogs.” He walks away. “Tell him something, I don’t know what—but this one got to go.”
“He too young, Esch.” Randall’s hands look graceless without a basketball in them. He looks like he doesn’t know how to hold them.
“I know,” I say. “But we was young, too.” He knows who I am talking about.
“I keep catching him climbing up on barrels, looking through the cracks, too scared to go inside. Staring at them puppies. China start growling and I pull him