Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [29]
“So you going to steal it?”
“I can’t lose no more.”
“Well, how I’m going to let you know if somebody’s coming?”
“You see that group of stumps right there? Them three all huddled up next to each other close to the middle of the field?”
“Yeah.”
“You going to lay there, and if the white people come, you going to whistle. And then you going to keep low and start running to the woods.”
“What if they get you?”
“Don’t stop,” he says, looking me in the face, his head forward and down like a dog standing across from another at the end of his leash, straining, ready to fight. “You hear me? Don’t stop.”
We pick our way around the edges of the field, circle the eye of the house and barn, fight through the wooden lash. Skeetah is still holding his shirt in one hand, but he’s eaten the razor. He moves through the wood carefully, folding branches in his hands like dog chains, holding them lightly so he doesn’t break them, and letting them go with two fingers. He holds them for me, but even then he still catches me with several of them, and the branches feel like popped rubber bands when they hit me on my arms, or in my forehead. I make a noise.
“Sorry,” he says, glancing back.
I shrug even though he can’t see it as he peers toward the house. We are working our way toward the house side of the pasture, Skeetah looking for cars, for movement. In the shadow of the house away from the barn, a puppy lolls. A mutt. Skeetah pauses, drops to his knees. He puts on his T-shirt and wets one fingertip, holds it up to the air. His head is to the side with one ear up as if he is listening to the trees, the insects droning in waves. I shrug at him again, this time with my hands up.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
“Seeing if we upwind or downwind.”
“Okay, Crocodile Hunter.” I expect him to laugh, but he doesn’t even grin. He wets two more fingers, holds them up. “You know he’s dead, right?”
“Shut up, Esch.” Skeetah’s quiet, wipes his hands off on his pants. “That must have been the dog we heard that first time.” He licks his finger and holds it up again, but soon drops it. “I can’t tell.”
We are standing in the middle of a patch of blackberry vines. Their barbed-wire twine catches on my ankles, fingers a shin, draws blood in short, deep lines like a child’s scratch. I knee the air, trying to pull away, only to get caught up in more on my calf, around my toe.
“Hold still.” Skeetah grabs them as he’d grabbed the branches and pulls. “They can smell blood, you know.”
“Not from this far, Skeet.”
“Fine, don’t believe me.” The vines peel away. Skeetah wets his fingers again, but this time he wipes away the droplets of blood that have gathered on my legs like summer gnats. He wipes them away in dabs, licks his fingers again, wipes. He has the same patient look Mama had on her face when she used to find us crusty in public, smears of Kool-Aid along our mouths, crumbs on our cheeks. She cleaned us like kittens. He bends to wipe the seams of my socks, and his bald head gleams with sweat. He picks up my leg and I balance with one hand on his head. His shaved skin reminds me of scales when I rub against it, and it is cool like a puddle of water that has been turning dark and dry at the edges in a tree’s shade.
We worm our way through the woods as we watch the house for movement. We slide on our stomachs under bushes so tangled and overgrown that we cannot crouch or crawl through them. We slither like snakes, grab dirt and pine straw with our elbows, and pull. Skeetah stops often, straw and twigs sliding off his slick head to catch on his shoulders like holiday tinsel, and he listens. I stop, too, try my hardest to be so still, to hear the threat, but the blood beats through my ears so strongly I cannot hear anything over that and the whooshing of my breath. Skeetah crawls through a stand, and we start again. Dust turns to mud on our arms, leaves us striped. Bits of sunlight bite through the tops of the pines, that murmur once and twice and are quiet. There is nothing but us creeping