Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward [8]
“A runt,” he says. He carries it into the light.
It is brindle. Stripes of black and brown ride its ribs like a zebra’s. It is half the size of its brothers and sisters. Skeetah closes his fist, and it vanishes. “It’s alive,” he says. There is delight on his face. He is happy to have another puppy; if it lives, he can get maybe $200 for it, even if it is a runt. He opens his hand, and the puppy appears like the heart of a bloom. It is as still as a flower’s stigma. Skeetah’s mouth falls straight, his eyebrows flatten. He lays it down. “Probably going to die anyway.”
China does not lay down like a new mother. She does not suckle. She licks the big red puppy and then forgets him. She is looking past Skeetah to us. She bristles at us standing at the door. Skeetah grabs her neck collar, tries to calm her, but she is rigid. Junior pulls his way up Randall’s back. I think about hugging Skeetah before I go, but China is glowering, so I just smile at him. I don’t know if he sees me in the dark. He has done a good job. Only one puppy is dead, even though it is China’s first time birthing. China scratches at the earth floor of the shed as if she would dig a hole and bury the puppies from sight. In the ruins of the refuse-laden yard, Daddy is hitting something metal. We leave. Skeetah refastens the curtain behind us, pulling it tight against the still clear night. The shed falls dark.
I tell Junior to take a bath once we enter the house, but he ignores me, and it is not until Randall turns on the water and carries him to the bathtub that he washes off. Randall stands in the doorway watching Junior because he is convinced that when Junior closes the door to wash, he only sits on the edge of the bathtub and kicks his feet in the water. Junior hates bathing. I am the last to take a shower, and the water, even though I have only the cold spigot on, is lukewarm. August is always the month of the deepest heat, the heat that reaches so far in the earth it boils the water in the wells. When I go to bed, Junior is already asleep. The box fan in the window hums. I lie on my back and feel dizzy, light-headed, nauseous. I only ate once today. I see Manny above me, his face licking mine, the heat of his sweat, our waists meeting. How he sees me with his body. How he loves me like Jason. Junior snorts a baby snore, and I drift off with Manny’s breathing in my brain.
THE SECOND DAY: HIDDEN EGGS
Mornings after birth should be quiet; the air should muffle sounds. But quiet comes and goes here on the Pit like the pack of stray dogs that Daddy used to run off with his gun before Skeetah brought China here to stay. When Daddy kept hogs, in the morning the sows squealed at their sticky piglets. The chickens hatched the chicks from their hidden eggs, and they woke us with flapping and clucking. China’s pups’ first day in the world was no different. I woke up to hammering.
Outside, Skeetah looks clean. He’s wearing a different shirt at least, and his face is shining like he’s just scrubbed it. He is hammering a nail into a two-by-four, attaching that two-by-four to another. I am still in my night T-shirt, and it is so early that the morning could be called cool.
“What you doing?”
“Building a kennel.” Skeetah smacks in a nail. “They’re going to need it in six weeks.”
“Ain’t it a little early for that? A kennel?” I rub my eyes. I’m hungry, and I know I won’t be able to go back to sleep. I should’ve yelled out the window and told him to stop hammering, and then pulled the sheet over my head.
“They’re going to live, and they’re going to be big. I can’t have them running free all the time. They might get hit.” He tilts the upside-down bucket he’s sitting on forward, and he slips the hammer into his pants leg. “Want to see them?”
I nod.
In the shed, the slick squirming balls are gone. In their places are new fluffy, downy balls. They almost look like chicks. Their eyes are still sealed shut, still thin black lines that look like closed mouths. But their mouths are open. They are wheezing and huffing and mewling in squeaks that would be