Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [48]
“Okay.” Junior picks up the red puppy, drops it next to its sibling. His lips part over his teeth, and he is really smiling.
“Hurry,” I whisper. I want to sleep like China, lie down on the cool dirt of the shed.
“All right,” he whispers. The spotted one wiggles a little in his hand, feeble and blind as an earthworm, before he sets it down.
“You can’t touch them again,” I breathe. A muscle spasms in China’s side: a white sheet flapping in the wind on a clothesline. “Hear?”
Junior grabs the last puppy, the brindle runt, around the belly. His thumb and middle finger touch as he grabs its rib cage. The puppy is skinny, not growing milk fat like the others. Junior brings it to his nose; this close, its fur looks like it’s moving. Fleas thread their way through its downy hair. Its head falls to the side, and it yanks it back in the other direction. I’m surprised its neck is so strong when it is only a child’s handful of fur and skin and bones.
“Hear?”
“Yeah.” Junior is not moving.
“Put it down!” I hiss. I want to slap Junior, but I know it will wake China. Junior is sniffing the puppy, and I swear that if I weren’t there, he would lick it. China lets out a mewling sleep growl.
“Gotdamnit!” I grab the slim stick of his arm hard. Dig my fingernails in. Hope he can feel the fear in my hands.
“All right, Esch!” Junior whines, pulling from me, still clutching the puppy. China kicks.
“Do it!” I dig. I am sweating, hot under my arms. I am burning. “Junior!”
“All right.”
Junior’s smile is gone. His mouth pulls tight at the corners, baring his bottom gums. That is his crying face. His back is narrow and hard as a ruler. He leans over, lets the puppy roll from his hand. It tumbles on its side, stops, and sweeps its head along the floor. Junior yanks his arm away, cradles it to his chest, and refuses to look at me. Instead he gazes at the puppies, whispers furiously through his downturned lips.
“That hurt, Esch. That really hurt.”
“What if Skeet had come in? What if China had woke up?”
My hands feel weak now that they are not gripping Junior. When he was a baby, Randall and I would pass him back and forth on the sofa, feeding him, rubbing his stomach, palming his head. Randall said that he frowned like Mama.
“You made me bleed.” Junior spits on his hand, rubs it back and forth across his forearm where I have left red marks that look like winking eyes. “You didn’t have to do it so hard.”
“You don’t listen,” I say. Junior never cried when he was little.
“Still.” He wipes his spitty hand across his eyes.
“You never know,” I say. China huffs in her sleep again. “You know that Junior, don’t you?” My hand flops in China’s direction. “You know her.”
China sleep-growls again, high and sharp. I touch Junior’s back, feel down the marble chain of his spine. He yanks away, still holding his arm, and looks at me, his eyes like the dark heart of an oyster. I look back to China to make sure she is asleep, make sure that her puppies aren’t straying too far away, make sure that my shirt is still pulled away from my stomach. I am tired again. Junior sits on his legs in the dirt, far enough away from me so that I can’t grab him, but still next to me. I had expected him to run under the house.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Junior bends over and braces himself on his arms in the dirt, his butt in the air. He nods at the puppies. When he was a baby, this is how he would fall asleep on the sofa, in the bed with Randall. The puppies are swimming blindly, as if through very deep water, away from China, toward him again. I wonder if he has been sneaking into the shed when we are gone with China, whether he has already been playing with them.
“Can we go to the park today?” he asks. Daddy beats the coop twice, then swears. He is hung over. He will be mean. I peel back the top of the sausage can, take one out, and hand it to Junior. China rolls on her back to face the wall, to escape her puppies in sleep the best that she can, and I nod.
“Yeah, we can go.”
When we were younger and