Salvage the Bones (14 page)

“Where did you get that from?”

“Found it,” Junior huffs. His smile is more like an exhale, and then he is huffing again, wheeling away from me to ride circles around Skeetah. Where China would have usually chased anyone on a bike, she saunters, head down, and ignores Junior. Skeetah ignores her in turn, walking straight ahead, his back curved, his silhouette one tense, worried line. The leash remains taut. I run to catch up with them.

As we walk into the center of Bois Sauvage, away from our Pit, the houses appear gradually, hidden behind trees, closer to one another until there are only ragged lots of woods separating them. We walk past Big Henry's incongruously narrow shotgun house. Marquise's small pink house, which has only three windows and sits in a yard so clustered with azalea, seems like one more faded flower. Rich boy Franco's house is green, and for some reason, someone in his family has painted the bottom two feet of the tree's trunks in his yard white. Some older boys named Joshua and Christophe have a blue-gray house with a screened-in porch along the side with bougainvillea grown to riot under the oaks in the yard, and then there is Mudda Ma'am's yellow house faded to tan, choked with wisteria. Manny's trailer is on the other side of Bois Sauvage, away from this side of the neighborhood: the small Catholic church, the haphazard cemetery Skeetah mowed, the county park with the dirt parking lot, which strives to impose some order, some civility to Bois. It fails. The woods muddle the park's edges. Mimosa trees arch over it with a basketball player's long, graceful arms and drop pink flowers like balls. Pines sprout up in the ditches along the edge of the park, aside the netless basketball goals, under the piecemeal shade of the gap-toothed wooden play structure sinking into the earth, beside the stone picnic tables with their corners worn smooth by rain, even in the middle of the baseball field overgrown with grass. Maintenance workers, usually county convicts in green-and-white striped jumpsuits, come out once a year and halfheartedly try to trim back the encroaching wood, mow the grass set to bloom, the pine seedlings. The wild things of Bois Sauvage ignore them; we are left to seed another year.

Junior whoops away from me, the rubber of his underinflated tires sounding like a saw grinding through a stump. He swoops down in the ditch and upward, his bike sailing for a moment in the air before he lands, with a jolt so jarring it almost pinions him to the non-seat. He glances back and crows in pride, and then fishtails into the park. Skeetah still resolutely drags China, whose tail and head hang low in shame. He does not follow Junior into the park toward the basketball goals where people are playing.

“What you doing?”

“I'm making her walk it out.”

“Y'all done already walked damn near two miles to the park. You don't think she sweated it out yet?”

“No.” Skeetah snaps China's chain and sets off at a trot, away from me and toward the graveyard. The heat is a wet blue blanket. I turn, follow Junior toward the court. Under the trees in the small, warped wooden bleachers, there are people sitting; I see long dark shadows framing their faces, long glistening legs crossed at the thigh, small shorts: two girls. Clouds trail the sun, and there are clear faces: Shaliyah, her cousin Felicia. I stop where I am, on the periphery of the court, opposite the shade under the oak tree and the bleachers, and I sit ungracefully in the grass. It feels like falling.

Manny is on the court, spinning, unfurling like a streamer to fling the ball into the basket. I wonder if she can tell his injury like I can, see it in the way his arm snaps back down after he lays up the ball too fast, as if he cannot extend it far enough. I wonder if she notices the way he swings his arm back and forth across his chest when he runs, as if he still holds hope that he can work past the rip, heal it, make his body as seamless and perfect as it used to be. I wonder if she notices that he favors it during sex, that he places most of his weight to his left so that he is always at my right ear, breathing. An ant crawls over the bone of my ankle, smelling with its antennae. I wave it away into the spiky grass. Sweat has bloomed on my shirt between my breasts, which throb gently. They always hurt now. My skin feels like the darkness of it is pulling heat, so I cannot help but glance toward the shade, see the bit of metal that Shaliyah wears on her arm catch the sun through the tree and throw it back gold. I will not sit there.

Big Henry, Marquise, Javon, Franco, Bone, and Randall are all on the court. They breathe in sobs. Cut curses. All shirtless except for Big Henry, they elbow each other, fall and let the concrete peel the skin of their hands, their knees, their elbows away like petals. There is an openmouthed excitement on each of their faces, the same kind of look that Skeetah has when he is wrapping China's chain around his fist, pulling it so that it indents into his skin, when he says,
Watch 'em, watch 'em—GET
. It's the same kind of face that most of them have when they are fucking. Under the oak, Shaliyah waves at her face with a candy box, fanning. She rubs one arm and then the other, and flips her hand as if she is flinging off the sweat she finds there. She is calm and self-possessed as a housecat; it is the way that all girls who only know one boy move. Centered as if the love that boy feels for them anchors them deep as a tree's roots, holds them still as the oaks, which don't uproot in hurricane wind. Love as certainty. It is the way I imagine China feels, even as I look back and see Skeetah running the perimeter of the baseball field, the leash still taut.

Manny calls a time-out, walks over to the goal nearest me, his eyes closed, his breath catching. He leans on the pole, stretches his arm, pulls back with his hips. Randall stares out at the road, his hands locked behind his head, at Skeetah and China running in the distance. Manny waves his arms in wide arcs, stretching out the muscles in them, eyeing the sidelines, and when he sees me sitting in the grass, feet away from him, his mouth twists.

“Come on,” Manny yells.

The game begins again and Manny is like China when she is beset by mites in her ear. She runs in circles, chasing her tail, lashing her head against bushes, hoping to shake them out until Skeetah clasps her between his knees, holds her head, and treats them. Manny runs like that up and down the court, weaving through Big Henry and Marquise for layups. He pulls up for jump shots on Randall, who inevitably slaps them away and out of the court, and even though Manny's shots begin falling short because of his bad arm, he still shoots, ignoring Franco's calls for passes. The look on Manny's face becomes China's the first time she caught the ear mites; she was still half grown, still short in the torso and long in the leg. When the ear mites became more agitated in the heat and began biting her frantically in her ear, she turned on the last stray dog of Junior's, black and brown and missing an ear, and she tore the other ear off. Bone passes Manny the ball, and Manny catches it, wincing at the pull in his arm, and he rushes Big Henry under the goal, even though Bone is the other big man inside, and even though Big Henry is easily half a foot taller than Manny and twice as big. Big Henry locks his knees, and they both fall. They slide across the concrete.

“This ain't football!” Marquise squeaks.

“Foul!” Manny yells, jumping to his feet.

“What the hell you talking about?” Big Henry asks, bewildered, picking himself up by his toes and fingertips.

“Just play!” Randall says. He waves his arm out toward the road, to where Skeetah has disappeared in the distance. “Let's just fucking play.” He puts his hand on Manny, who is on his toes before Big Henry, and with a squeeze to Manny's shoulder, he is Skeetah to China. Manny calms. The pace is slower, and when he calls his last time-out, he rests on the pole opposite Shaliyah. He waves his fingers, and she laughs.

The game fades away to a lazy, trickling finish, which is Randall pulling up from half-court and sinking the ball with a three-pointer. Marquise trots to the water spigot, Franco behind him. Randall lets the ball roll to a stop in the grass and walks over to me before putting his hands on his knees. Sweat drips from him like water, and he is winded as a horse. Big Henry alights in the grass next to me, graceful as a heron, and then falls back and throws his arms over his eyes because the sun surfaces from behind the clouds and blinds us.

“Good game,” Randall says.

“Thanks,” Big Henry breathes.

“What the hell is Skeet doing?” Randall spits sweat when he speaks.

Manny is walking over toward the bleachers, toward Shaliyah.

“Running China.”

“I see that. But what for?”

“He wormed her yesterday and he say she sick today.”

“Yeah?”

“I think he afraid he gave her too much.”

Randall screws his mouth up like he's eating a sour scupadine; he is chewing the pink inside of his cheek.

“What can he do.” It is a statement. I shrug and look under the bleachers. Shaliyah must have bought Manny a sports drink because he is standing under the oak and tilting the bottle back so that the liquid runs down straight into his throat. The sun is shimmering through the oak leaves and catching his skin, so his whole body shines fractured as the glass scar on his face.

“What?”

“What can he do?” This time Randall asks it as a question.

“Nothing,” Big Henry says. His arms are flung out at his sides. He is looking at me. He's not really fat, but the bigness of him is all over: his hands like baseball mitts, his head like a melon, his chest like a steel drum barbecue pit, his legs like branches reaching from an indomitable trunk. “Can't do nothing,” Big Henry says. I feel like he can see through my shirt to my swollen breasts, my stomach that pouches just too far when I sit so that it is more than fat. He grins, tentative and gentle as he moves, but it is like an afterthought.

“Well, shit.” Randall folds himself in half and wipes his face on his basketball shorts. “Shit.”

“You ready for the summer league game tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” Randall's voice is muffled in his shorts; the cloth makes it quaver.

“They going to pay for basketball camp this year?”

“Don't know. Coach say it's between me and Bodean.”

“Nervous?”

“They only choose one, and I score two to Bodean's one every game. I work harder than him.”

“You already imagining all them scouts at the camp, ain't you?” Big Henry laughs.

“Figure I look best in a black jersey.” Randall leans back and cradles his skull in his hands. “Or baby blue.” Randall smiles, but I know that a part of him is serious, that he already knows what college he wants to go to.

Big Henry pushes himself up off his elbows. Manny sits down next to Shaliyah on the bleachers, leans over to her, rubs his sweaty shoulder into hers. She squeals and tries to jump up, but he clutches her to him. She squirms and squeals again, laughing. The sun is bearing down on me, burning, evaporating the sweat, water, and blood from me to leave my skin, my desiccated organs, my brittle bones: my raisin of a body. If I could, I would reach inside of me and pull out my heart and that tiny wet seed that will become the baby. Let them go first so the rest won't hurt so much.

“That grass going to make you itch.”

“I know,” Randall says. He stretches the waistband of his shorts. “Water.” He walks to the spigot across the grass, and he is fluid and tall and black.

“I know you hot out here.” Big Henry touches the back of my hand with two fingers, presses.

“Yeah.” Manny is rubbing the sweat from his forehead into Shaliyah's cheek. Her squeal becomes a shriek. Her teeth are so white.

“You want to come sit in my car? It's parked in the shade. Windows down.” Big Henry glances over at the bleachers and then rolls to his side and stands in one quick motion. Sometimes I forget he was an athlete.

“Okay.” The clouds are slower now, hang off in the distance above the tree line as if they are wary of the sun. “Okay.” I look at the ground when I rise, when I turn away from the court, when I walk. Barely resisting the urge to look back. I don't even see when Junior barrels up next to me, whooping, swerving at me on his bike. He is laughing. Under the trees in the dirt parking lot, Javon is parked. His car gleams like the approaching sunset. Marquise is leaning on his bumper. Randall runs over behind us, reclines on Big Henry's hood and the front windshield so that his wet back looks like pudding. Inside the car, Big Henry and I sit with the doors open, one leg out, heads back. Big Henry plays Outkast.

Randall makes jokes and Big Henry laughs. When the sun rests on the rim of the trees, we leave, and Manny is on the court now with his girl. They are playing a game of one-on-one, and he is taunting her, knocking the ball out of her hand so that it ricochets across the court. Her laughter carries on the softening pink wind. Big Henry closes his door. I slam mine, and Randall scoots over to the passenger side of the windshield. Junior holds the top of the door, still standing on his bike, and Big Henry folds his big paw over Junior's. Big Henry taps the gas and then eases, and this is how we follow Skeetah and China, who are both running now, both sucking dark and blazing bright under the setting sun and the scudding clouds, all the way home.

The puppies are whining for milk. They have been listening to Daddy hammering at the coop, dismantling it nail by board, into the pine-black evening. They writhe against each other. Skeetah lifts them out one by one by their necks, sets them on the floor before China, who is still nosing the ground. He has not taken off her chain yet, so it pools in the dirt next to her, as heavy and sharp as a bike chain. She breathes through her mouth, but something wet seems to catch at the back of her throat with each exhale. She nods with each breath. Her legs are still, but the sweat Skeetah worked up on her catches the red dust on her coat, channels it so that it runs down her back like watercolor paint. Under the bulb, my arms seem blacker, seem dirtier than I've ever seen them. I pull my hair back, tie it by taking a tendril of hair from the bottom and knotting it around the rest. I want it out of my face. Mama was wrong: I have no glory. I have nothing.