Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [47]
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“Who?”
“Manny.” I swallow his name. He has to be better than that. I know it.
Skeetah speaks to the ceiling, his eyes wide, his elbows hanging from his knees with his hands clasped; this is his prayer.
“You don’t know,” he says.
“Everybody ain’t always plotting against you and China, Skeet.”
He crawls across the floor, waves his hand in front of China’s face. She follows him with her eyes, sighs so hard she raises dirt on her linoleum floor in a dusty wave.
“Ain’t nobody said that, Esch.” Skeetah puts his hand on China’s neck, as careful as Mama used to take biscuits from the oven. China breathes hard again, pushes one of the puppies away from her desultorily. “That’s my girl.”
“She probably just need to eat something.”
“I can’t lose her.” Skeetah’s bald head looks muddy from sleeping on the dirty floor of the shed. Mama’s arms would look like that when she was pulling greens in the small garden plot she kept behind the house. It was fenced off with wooden slats from an old baby crib Daddy had found at the side of the road. There is danger in what Skeetah says, in even thinking China could die. Reckless to say it aloud, to call it down, to make it possible.
“Why don’t you go take a bath?” I imagine the gashes at his side, seeing them turn red with infection under Randall’s old wrap. We catch boils on the Pit as easily as we used to catch stray dogs, and I know enough about them to understand that they are bacterial infections. He’s not going to want to go to the hospital, and Daddy isn’t going to want to take him if it comes to that. “Your stomach.”
“I’m all right.” He is rubbing China’s head to the beat of Daddy’s hammer.
“You need to be clean at the fight. Healthy. So do she. If you hurting, what she going to do?” This is the way to his heart. His pride. He stops petting China, lets his hand rest on the warm globe of her skull. She sighs and kicks another puppy away. The triangle of sunshine disappears and appears again on the floor, hidden by clouds and then free again; when Skeetah looks up at me, he squints.
“Fine. Watch her.” Skeetah stands, walks to the door, shoves Junior in passing so that he almost falls off the barrel.
“Scab!” Junior yells.
“And don’t let Junior touch nothing.”
China feebly kicks at the puppies. She scoots along on her back to get away from them, and only stops twitching when her back is against the wall. The puppies make little squeaking noises, paw the air, roll helplessly on their sides. Their eyes are slivers of fingernails. There are four: the white China clone, the red one that looks like Kilo, the brindle runt, and the black-and-white one with patterns on the fur. They wobble away from China. I crouch in the door, my belly pushing out so that it pushes against my thighs, my knees; I pull my T-shirt away from my stomach. China eyes us all lazily, and then puts her head to her paws, closes her eyes, and, as far as I can tell, falls asleep.
“Esch?”
“What, Junior?” The puppies are flailing across the floor. Junior jumps down from his perch, lands with a thud in the dirt next to me, and crouches.
“They need to go back by China,” he says. He lets his hands hang across his knees and dangle down, but even then, it still looks as if he is reaching out to them. “They going to go out the door.”
“How they going to do that with us sitting here?”
“They got gaps.” Junior brushes his hand between us. “Here.”
“Don’t touch them.” I pull at my T-shirt again. Junior’s breath smells like peanut butter. I’m so tired; it washes through me like blinding, heavy rain. China’s ear twitches in her sleep. I wish she could talk.
“Aw, Esch.” Junior leans forward on his haunches, tipping over toward the puppies, slowly. “I’m just going to put them back. See?” He grabs the white one by the nape, pinches it with his whole hand, and moves it a foot back so it is closer to China. She breathes sleepily. Junior looks back at me, smiling, his lips closed over his teeth, the multiple gaps, the digs of decay in the crevices. “See?”
“You do it, but quick.” China