Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [66]
“You going to the fight?”
Junior touches the back of my arm, and I stop outside the bathroom. He pinches me, and I look down at him, his big dark eyes, his missing teeth, his long eyelashes. He opens his eyes wider, looks hopeful.
“Huh, Esch? Please?”
“Who cut your hair?”
“Randall shaved it this morning. Said it’s too hot for hair.”
“He’s right.” I palm his lightbulb head, shake it.
“Esch.” He grins, and he looks like Skeet in the picture in Daddy’s room. The air is close, close as the water in the pit.
“All right,” I say. “We’ll go.”
I sit sideways on the toilet, rest my arms on the windowsill; my body feels stung all over by catfish, my stomach the lead sinker. In front of the shed, Skeetah is testing the water from the hose with one hand: it is so hot that I know the water boils fresh out of the faucet. He will wait until the water runs cold for her. When Skeetah first sprays China, she shakes. She is standing, legs wide, back straight, her head up. She is licking at the water, and it is as if she was never sick. She is coy as a girl with a lollipop, lapping at the hose. She sneezes and closes her eyes, and the dirt starts to run in sheets down her sides. It is the first time that I have seen her off leash in days.
“Come on,” Skeetah says. “We gonna make you shine.”
Skeetah cuts off the water and picks up a mostly empty bottle of dishwashing liquid and empties it on her back. He begins scrubbing, and the soap turns a pink gray. He rubs the soap up the flat, wide length of her head, down her face. He pulls her fur back so that her clenched teeth show, her fangs curving down sharp against her pink gums. Her eyes are slits, half closed in pleasure. She is stretching into Skeet’s hands. He is pulling her limber, massaging her. Her nose is up to the air, and she is long and beautiful as an outstretched wing. He kneels in front of her, swipes his hand down her chest, and she licks him, happy.
“You came back to me,” he says.
“You shouldn’t be taking her.”
Randall rounds the corner of the house. I expect to see a ball in his hands, but there isn’t. It’s like he’s missing his nose.
“Randall, you can kiss my ass.”
“You ain’t got no reason to be mad. I do.”
“She’s my dog. Those are my dogs.”
“You was steady fucking up. I had to do something.”
“Fuck that coach.” China is grinning against the pull of her skin again. Skeetah’s scrubbing hard. China looks striped. “And fuck Rico. Ain’t nothing about China weak.”
“You still ain’t thinking about the puppies.”
Skeetah turns on the hose. China walks in circles in the water.
“Stay!” Skeetah yells, and she stands frozen. “It wasn’t your dog to give.”
“And it wasn’t your game to fuck up. What am I going to do about camp?”
“If he would’ve said that shit to you, you would’ve jumped him, too.” Skeetah grimaces. “And the way he looked at Esch!”
“Rico fucked with Esch?” Randall, who has been pacing a ditch into the muddy yard as he argues, stops.
Skeetah snorts, glances at the window where I’m sitting, but the sun is too bright outside. He can’t see me. His mouth twists like he has bitten into a peach seed, and he laughs once, a bitter, loud bark.
“You don’t know shit, do you?” Skeetah readjusts his thumb over the hose so that the water shoots out in two hard sparkling streams. Where it hits China’s side, it sounds solid. “You ain’t got to go today. This ain’t got nothing to do with you. Why don’t you go shoot?”
Randall shakes his head, shoves his toe into dry dirt. The dust puffs and drifts in the still air. He looks toward the bathroom, and I sit back so that the tank of the toilet is cool and slippery through my T-shirt.
“I’m going,” I hear him saying. “You made a promise. You said you would pay for camp if they lived,” he says louder.
“All right!” Skeetah yells. “You kicking up dust, Randall!”
“You just like Daddy. Always crazy for something.” I hear the side door off the kitchen scratch open and close as Randall leaves Skeetah to walk into the house.
The water stops. I lean so I can barely see out of the window.