Jesmyn Ward - Salvage the Bones

Thwack, thwack, thwack , sounds the hammer. The wood creaks. One panel falls off. Daddy begins cussing, calling down sonofabitches, fuck this’s, and gotdamnits. I am tired of waiting. I grab another can of sausages, stick it in the pocket of my shorts. I will go to Skeetah like Medea went to her brother when they fled on their great adventure with the Argonauts. I will offer my help.

Skeetah looks like somebody’s punched him in both eyes. The sound of Daddy’s hammer in the shed threads through the door, and it steadily pulses like blood. China is reclined, the puppies squealing at her tits. Her head is laid on her paws, and she does not look up when I step over the threshold. Junior is a crow, perched on a metal drum beside the door, eating a pack of peanut butter crackers. It makes me hungry.

“Something’s wrong,” Skeetah says. He is sitting on the floor, his back against the wall. He lets his head roll back, and his Adam’s apple bulges so prominently it looks like bone.

“What’s wrong?” I say. His eyes burn like he has fever.

“She been too-easy. Usually she let them suck and then fight them off when they done had enough, but they been sucking for almost an hour and she ain’t moved.”

“Maybe she just tired, like you said yesterday.”

Daddy’s hammer beats at the room.

“That ain’t it.”

“Well, then what?”

“I think I gave her too much.”

“You did what Manny said.”

“How you know Manny knew what he was doing?”

“Rico probably showed him how.”

“And who say Rico going to show him the right way to do it if he know Manny going to show me?”

“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’s tail jerks in her sleep, and then she is still. “Before she wakes up.”

“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.