Jesmyn Ward - Salvage the Bones

“I know that,” Skeetah says.

“I shouldn’t even have asked.” Randall rubs his head. “Don’t get caught.”

“I don’t.”

“How are you going?”

“I already called Big Henry.”

“Hurry up and get back.” Randall turns on the radio station again. The rapper sounds like a squirrel. Randall starts fidgeting with the knob, but leans out again. “We need your help!”

“Yeah,” Skeetah says. He wipes the water shawl away, and it smears to a tie running down the middle of his ribs. The air is so hot and close that even with the wind, the water will not evaporate. “Keep an eye on China,” he says, and the sudden wind takes him into the house.

“Junior?”

I need him to pick the nails out of the bin. His small spider fingers can do it better than mine. He is not in his bed, but his sheets and pillow are still on the floor. I pick them up, put them on the mattress. The curtain at our window flutters. I turn the fan off.

“Junior.”

He isn’t in the bathroom. Whoever used it last left the toilet seat up, as usual. The door to Skeetah and Randall’s room is closed; I can hear Skeetah shuffling around inside. There is a hole in the bottom middle of their door from where Skeetah got mad once and kicked in a dent; Daddy came up behind him and kicked him hard for that one, and then tried to slap him in the face.

“Junior in there?”

“Naw.” The walls are so thin it sounds like Skeetah is standing next to me. It was because of China that Skeet had kicked the wall: once China got fat enough and her breasts big enough for Daddy to notice that she was pregnant, Daddy told Skeet he didn’t want the Pit overrun by dogs. He was drunk when he said it, and he didn’t say it again after that night, after Skeet had blocked his hand when Daddy tried to slap him and said, Don’t hit me in the face , like he would take it anywhere else but there.

“Junior?”

He is standing next to Daddy’s bed, his small, narrow back to me, his bald head bent. One arm hangs at his side, and the other he holds in front of him like he’s in an Easter egg race, balancing a boiled egg on a spoon. But there is no spoon here, only his pointer finger, which he holds steady in front of Daddy’s sleeping nose, nearly brushing Daddy’s scraggly mustache, the naked chicken skin above Daddy’s lip. I have never seen Junior so still.

“What are you doing?”

Junior jumps. He turns and whips his finger behind his back. There are bruises under his eyes, so he looks like a little brown nervous man. I grab the finger and pull him out of the room, shut the door.

“Esch,” Junior whispers. He looks at the floor like he is looking through it, down to his hollows in the dirt under the house.

“What was that?” I ask. I squeeze, and there is only skin over bone. His finger is still pointed. He moans and tries to pull away, but I hold.

“He wasn’t breathing.”

“What do you mean, he wasn’t breathing?”

I drag him down the hallway, and he curls and drops and digs in with his feet, but I get him to our room. I kneel in front of him.

“What were you doing?”

Junior is looking at my throat, my hand, anywhere but my face. I yank, and he looks at my face.

“He looked like he was asleep but then he looked like he wasn’t breathing so I wanted to feel him breathe. Let me go!”

“Don’t go in there when he’s sleep no more.” I shake Junior’s arm again. “He’s sick.”

“I know,” Junior mewls. “I know he sick.” Junior closes his hand and pulls suddenly, and his hand slides between mine like wet rope and is out. “I know about his hand and the beer and his medicine.” He bounces. “I saw it when he smashed it. I found it!” Gets louder. “I see things!”

“Found what?”

“His ring!”

“Junior!”

“Here!” Junior yells. I can’t see his baby teeth, small and yellow like candy, only his throat, wet and pink, and he is an infant again, his mouth always open, always trying to find the nipple so that he’d grab our fingers, the blanket, his bib, the paws of his lost dogs, and suck them. He is the baby Junior and then he isn’t; he is a miniature Skeetah, and the hand he hadn’t been using to check Daddy’s breathing digs into his pockets and whips something out, something small and maroon, the size of a quarter, and throws it across the room. “It wasn’t no good to him noway!” He is breathing like he’s been running, and then he is skittering down the hallway like a spider. I almost catch him at the steps.

“Randall!” I yell, “get Junior!”

Randall jackknifes out of the truck, and he is a long black line streaking around the corner of the house where Junior has gone, and then I hear him banging underneath the house. Junior is laid so flat I cannot see him.

“Junior,” Randall yells, “get from under there!”

Junior is silent.

“You going to make me come under there and get you!” Randall says from between clenched teeth, and he must be crawling because Junior has popped up on my side of the house and is trying to run, his eyes white and rolling like a rabbit’s, but I have him, and he is kicking, kicking, and I’m surprised he doesn’t have fur.

“What did he do?” Randall walks around the corner, the front of him red with dirt.

“He had Daddy’s wedding ring.”

“He what?” Randall is frowning.

“He had Daddy’s wedding ring. He found it on the finger and took it off. It was in his pocket.” Each word makes Randall’s face slide and break until it looks like a broken glass with all the lines in it, and I know it’s because he can’t believe what I’m saying.

“Boy, what the hell is wrong with you?” Randall yells. He yanks Junior from me, and his other hand comes down hard on Junior’s skinny bottom. “What is wrong with you?” Randall yells, and his voice is higher. He hits again. “Junior!”

Junior runs in circles from Randall’s hand, so they spin, but Randall is faster and stronger, and his hand comes down again and again.

“That’s so. Nasty. You. Could’ve. Got. A disease!” Randall slaps twice, and his hand is as stiff as a board. “Why did you do it?”

“She gave it to him!” Junior wails. His voice is a siren. “And it wasn’t no good for him no more!” He sobs. “I wanted it!” He wails. “Her!”

Skeetah laughs when we tell him what Junior did.

“He’s dead wild.”

“He’s bad.”

“Did y’all at least find it? He going to be up in there trying to stash it somewhere.”

“I did,” I say. It was on my bed, and I’d picked it up with a handful of toilet paper and washed it off in the sink. The gold was dull and old, an almost silvery pale, and nothing about it looked like it had ever touched Mama’s skin. “It was covered in blood.” I’d thrown up after I cleaned it.

Junior is hiccupping, bent over double into the top of the toolbox on the back of Daddy’s truck, picking out nails. His sobbing hiccups echo up and out of the metal, loudly. He drops the nails he finds on the truck bed, and they ping.

“What’d you do with it?” asks Skeetah.

“I put it in my top drawer,” I say.

Skeetah laughs. His teeth are milky, his smile wide.

“We should look for the fingers. That’s free protein.” He laughs. “We could feed them to China.”

“Shut up. That is so nasty,” I say.

“Don’t know what’s wrong with him.” Randall shakes his head.

Skeetah laughs as he walks into the shed, pulling the wood behind him, but we can still hear him chuckling and talking to himself minutes later. When Big Henry drives up to pick Skeetah up, Skeetah is tugging the tin back over the doorway of the shed, smiling into his shirt. Big Henry parks and walks up slowly, a cold drink in his hand, and I’m surprised it’s not a beer. I nod at Big Henry but stand with my arms folded in the truck bed behind Junior, who is still hiccupping and dripping snot into the toolbox.