Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [64]
“He do,” Manny says.
“Ain’t it a little early to be trying to claim one of my bitch’s puppies?” Skeetah says. He is leaning forward, straining at the leash. “They a week old. You know like I know that if they make it through the first six weeks, then they ready to go. So until six weeks go by, you ain’t got no fucking business claiming shit.” Skeet is smiling, and he is rubbing his thumbs with his fingers, his hands clenched loosely as if he can already feel the sting of them on Rico, on Manny. I know that’s who he really wants: Manny. Big Henry and Marquise move with a loping, easy purpose, to flank Skeetah.
“Y’all little Bois Sauvage niggas really think y’all run shit? I will fuck y’all up.”
“Everybody just chill out,” says Manny. “It ain’t even got to be like that.”
“Fuck you!” Skeetah’s voice carries, sliding up in pitch, and it breaks his face in pieces. “You a dirty motherfucker!”
“You going to let that little nigga talk to you like that? If I was you, I’d beat the shit—”
It is what Skeetah has been waiting for Rico to say. Skeetah punches Rico. He does it with his whole body, raining down on Rico’s wide, sweaty face with the steady fury and quick power of the small: fierce as China. The referees on the floor are blowing their whistles, and people are standing up around us, like they are doing a wave. Manny tries to catch his cousin Rico, and Big Henry reaches out to grab Skeetah, but then Manny has pushed his cousin back into Skeetah, volleyed him like a ball, and Manny is punching Skeetah, and Marquise is on Manny, and Big Henry slides his body in between them as a barrier, to stop it all, but then Rico punches him, and they are brawling, falling down the stairs, ripping the crowd like fabric.
Randall is in the middle of the court, wrestling the ball from the huddle that one referee is screeching into his whistle over, when he stops, distracted by the rumble of the crowd, and sees the boys beating one another down the bleachers, Junior and me arm in arm, running down the edge of the stands for the door. Randall looks lost on the court, the ball cradled in his limp hand. The other referee is blowing his whistle at Skeetah and Rico and Manny and Big Henry and Marquise, who are fighting their way along the side of the court now, the crowd carrying them out of the door in the kind of frothing waves we only get before hurricanes.
“Get out of here, Batiste!” Randall’s coach yells at him: the green hand towel he has been using to mop his face snaps like a flag in a bad wind. “That’s your people, ain’t it? That’s you! You’re done! Go on!”
Randall lobs the ball at the wall of the gym, and it ricochets back onto the court. Players that aren’t frozen by the fight try to catch it. I pull at Junior’s arm, and we are the first out of the door; he is fast. Randall jumps in the middle of the fight as it spills out of the door, begins screaming at all of them, calling names, pulling them from their fury one by one until he stands in the middle of them, taller than all of them, black as iron, rigid as a gate.
“What the fuck is wrong with y’all?”
“Who the fuck you think you is?” Rico yells. Manny has him by his shoulder, pulling him backward away from Randall.
“Let me go!” Skeetah says. Small scratches mark his face in beads. Big Henry is holding his arm, and Marquise stands next to them, breathing hard, glaring. “I’m going to kill that motherfucker. He ain’t getting nothing from me!”
“I’m going to see your little bitch-ass tomorrow,” Rico sneers; his lips are bleeding. “With your fucking dog.”
“You know you can’t fight no dog just had puppies.” Big Henry steps toward Manny and Rico, stumbling forward with Skeetah. Big Henry’s lips are swollen at one side, puffy and wet.
“I knew I didn’t like this bitch for a reason,” Marquise bites out. His forehead is bruised.
“Fuck that,” Skeetah says. “Fuck that. He ain’t getting none of my puppies.”
“Skeetah”—Randall leans in to Skeetah, his hands still raised—“you fight her tomorrow in that dog fight and Kilo win, them puppies die. You know that.”
“Kilo