Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [22]
“You remember how Mama used to kill the chickens?” Skeetah asks.
The cicadas in the trees are like fitful rain, sounding in waves in the black brush of the trees. When Randall speaks, he stares at Skeetah, who grips the side of the bucket.
“She only killed one when it was something special, like one of our birthdays or her and Daddy’s anniversary. She used to watch them, like she knew every one, knew which one had eggs to hatch, which one hadn’t lain in a while, which one was just getting fat and old. Was almost like the chickens knew it; they’d get nervous. Shuffling around, sticking in groups, staying away from the coop. Next thing you know, she’d grab one, take it behind the house to that big old oak tree stump Daddy’d dragged out of the woods, and stand over it real still while the bird was beating its wings so fast they’d blur. But the chicken wouldn’t ever make no noise. And then she would put her hand over the bird’s face like she was hiding it from seeing something, and then she would grab and twist. Break the neck. Slice the head off on the stump.” Randall doesn’t take a breath when he speaks, just lets it all run out of him like a steady stream. He swallows. “Chicken don’t taste like that no more.” The crickets in the tree closest to us take up a low rumble, almost drown Randall out. I don’t really remember Mama killing the chickens so clear, but when Randall says it, I see it, and I think I remember it.
“Yeah,” Skeetah says; he is slow to blink. He lifts the puppy. Her stomach rises and falls, and the wind coming out of her sounds like a croaking frog. I reach out to touch her. “Don’t,” Skeet says. “It’ll carry back to the rest.” He glances at me and half smiles, and then looks down at his fingers.
Through the trees, there is a new moon, and Nella is singing to it. I think I see Junior leaping like a squirrel through the shadows, watching and waiting, but when I look closely again, there is only darkness beyond the fire.
When Skeet grabs and twists, his hands are as sure as Mama’s.
When Skeetah comes back from burying the puppy, he is shirtless, his muscles black and ropy as that squirrel’s. Sweat coats him like oil. He stands for a second in the firelight, still, breathing hard. He throws his shirt into the fire.
“What are you doing?” Marquise asks around the squirrel bone he is sucking on. He slurps and almost swallows it, chokes it back up.
“It’s all contaminated,” Skeetah says. “Everything.”
He shucks his pants, throws them into the fire.
“Are you serious?” Marquise laughs.
“As a heart attack,” Skeetah says. His boxers are sagging, the elastic showing at the top. He grabs the dishwashing liquid and walks toward the black water of the pit, bends mid-step to pull his drawers off of one leg and then the other, and then throws them in the fire by looking over his shoulder. But he does not turn back around. All of him is muscle. I haven’t seen him naked since we were little and Mama put us in the tub together.
“I can’t believe you’re going to wash in that,” says Marquise, but even as he is saying it Randall is standing, and even though he didn’t touch the puppy, Randall is taking off all his own clothes, leaving them in a pile. He is taller, and his arms and legs are rubber bands. Big Henry grinds his bottle into the dirt until the earth holds it still. He kicks off his shoes first, and then peels his socks away and folds them in half before shoving them into his shoes. His feet are large and soft-looking with long black hairs curling down the top like baby’s hair.
Where my brothers go, I follow.
I walk into the water with all my clothes on. When I am all wet, I grab the soap from Skeetah and rub suds into my clothes, too. I make them white before I pull them away, one by one, until I am naked in the water, my clothes a dirty, slimy pile on the mud bank.
“Y’all niggas crazy,” Marquise says, but he takes off his clothes anyhow and follows us to the water.
“I was hot anyway,” Manny says, and he throws his white tee near where I was sitting along