Salvage the Bones

THE EIGHTH DAY: MAKE THEM KNOW

Esch?”

Junior touches me, and I roll away from him.

“Are you going to the fight?”

I woke up this morning and I hurt.

“Skeetah say I can’t go if you don’t go.”

Someone has been beating me.

“He fixing to wash China.”

They have been beating me in my sleep.

“Him and Randall got into a fight because Randall say he shouldn’t be taking her. Say it ain’t her place to go.”

I will not get up for the bathroom. I don’t want to eat.

“Say Skeet always being stupid, and we always ruining things. Like his game. Say the only way he could go to camp now is if Skeetah came up with the money.”

I curl. Under pillow and sheet, I curl around the hurt, around the slipping secret, like a ball.

“Randall dunked the ball so hard this morning he tore the basket down. He made Skeet fix it.” Junior taps my shoulder.

“He broke it. Esch?”

I want it to stop.

I try to read the entire mythology book, but I can’t. I am stuck in the middle. When I put the book down and wipe my wet face and breathe in my morning breath, ripe to the afternoon under the sheet, this is where I have stopped. Medea kills her brother. In the beginning, she is known by her nephew, who tells the Argonauts about her, for having power, for helping her family, just like I tried to help Skeet on the day China first got sick from the Ivomec. But for Medea, love makes help turn wrong. The author says that there are a couple of different versions of how it happened. One says she lies to her brother and invites him onto the ship with the Argonauts as they were fleeing, and that Jason ambushes him. That she watched her brother die, her own face on his being sliced open like a chicken: pink skin cut to bloody meat. The other version says that she kills her brother herself, that her brother runs away with her and the Argonauts, assuming that he is safe, and that she chops him into bits: liver, gizzard, breast and thigh, and throws each part overboard so that her father, who is chasing them, slows down to pick up each part of his son.

I read it over and over again. It is like she is under the covers with me, both of us sweating to water. To get away from her, from the smell of Manny still on me a night and morning afterward, I get up.

Junior is sitting on the floor in the hallway outside of the door.

“What you sitting out here for?”

Junior shrugs, looks up at me.

“I was going to go outside, but Skeetah getting ready to wash China, and it be getting muddy under the house. Why you didn’t wake up?”

“I was tired.”

“Daddy asked why you didn’t bring him something to eat this morning. Randall told him you didn’t feel good.”

“Randall made Daddy some eggs?”

“Yeah.”

“What he doing now?”

“Sleep. He was hollering about the hurricane; say it ain’t stopping, that the woman on the news say it’s coming straight for us. Randall told him to calm down. Him and Big Henry went to the store and got some beer and then Daddy went to sleep.”

Junior follows me down the hall to Daddy’s room. Randall has nailed up a blanket over the window, folded it in half over the box fan, which hums and lets in light. Daddy is asleep, sitting up, slumped over like I left him yesterday. The TV is low, a buzzing firecracker. On the screen, there is a map of the Gulf, and Katrina spins like a top, as if the long arm of Florida has just spun it loose. There are two beer cans next to the bed, one open, both of them sweating. I close his door to a crack.

“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. Skeetah is on his knees before China again, squirting the last of the soap on her coat, rubbing her whiter than white: she is the cold, cloudy heart in a cube of ice.

“Look at you, shining,” Skeetah breathes into China’s ear. “Cocaine white.” He brushes her, his hand a blade. “Blinding.”

The few dirt-scratched yards and thin-siding houses and trailers of Bois Sauvage seem a sorry match to the woods, like pitting a puppy against a full grown dog. Here, there are swimming holes that are fat puddles and some the size of swimming pools fed by skinny clear creeks, but the earth makes the holes black, and the trees make them as filthy with leaves as a dog is with fleas. There are clusters of magnolias that are so tall and green and glossy, they are impossible to climb, and the air around them always smells like peaches. There are oaks so big and old that their arms grow out black and thick as trunks, which rest on the ground. There are ponds that are filled with slime and tall yellow grasses, and at night, frogs turn them teeming, singing a burping chorus. There are clearings where deer feed, startle white, and kick away. There are turtles plowing through pine straw, mud, trying to avoid the pot. Marquise told us once that he went out into those woods with Bone and Javon after a hard rain to find some mushrooms they could take, and they came across a wolf, lean as a fox, dirty gray, who looked at them like they’d shot at him, and then disappeared.

The trail that leads into one of the deeper parts of the woods is up the road away from the house. China leads us, relaxed at the end of her chain; the leash is dull steel, the collar chrome. Skeetah stole it. He has reshaved his head, and he wears a hand towel around his neck like a scarf. Big Henry carries Junior on his shoulders, and Randall trails, a big stick in his hand, which Skeetah laughed at him for picking up when we were jumping the ditch, saying, That ain’t going to do nothing against these dogs. Then he pointed at China and said, But she will. Randall carries the stick anyway. Marquise is probably already there with his cousin. Crows caw. I listen for the boys and the dogs somewhere out in these woods, but all I can hear is the pine trees shushing each other, the oak bristling, the magnolia leaves hard and wide so that they sound like paper plates clattering when the wind hits them, this wind snapping before Katrina somewhere out there in the Gulf, coming like the quiet voice of someone talking before they walk through the doorway of a room.

A cloud passes over the sun, and it is dark under the trees. It passes, and the gold melts through the leaves, falls on bark and floor: foil coins. Soon we reach a curtain of vines, which hang from the lowest branches to the needle-carpeted earth, and we crawl. Skeetah dusts China’s breasts off, waves us on. We have been walking for a long time when I hear the first tiny bark.

“You tired?” Randall asks.

“No,” I say. My stomach feels full of water, hurts with it, but I will not tell him that. I push aside a branch, let it go, but it still scratches my arm. Medea’s journey took her to the water, which was the highway of the ancient world, where death was as close as the waves, the sun, the wind. Where death was as many as the fish waiting in the water, fanning fins, watching the surface, shadowing the bottom dark. China barks as if she is answering the dog.

The clearing is a wide oval bowl, which must be a dried-up pond that grows wide and deep when it rains; the bottom is matted with dry yellow reeds, and the trees grow in a circle around it. The boys and their dogs talk and smoke in clumps, pass blunts and cigarettes from one to another, ask How old is yours or Where you got that collar or How many she done had? There are around ten dogs here, around fifteen boys. I am the only girl. Marquise’s little brother Agee is here, and he and Junior begin competing to see who can climb the fastest up a gray, low-limbed tree outside the circle of game dogs and game men. The dogs are brown and tan, black and white, striped brindle, red earth. None of them is white as China. She glows in the sun of the clearing, her ears up, her tail cocked. The dogs nap, pace, bark, strain against the leash, and lean out into the clearing where they will fight, trying to get into the sun, to feel it on their black wet noses. They will all match today, one dog against another. The boys have been drawn by gossip of the fight between Kilo and Boss to the clearing like the Argonauts were to Jason at the start of his adventure. They will throw their own dogs into the ring, each hoping for a good fight, a savage heart, a win, to return home from the woods, their own dangerous Aegean Sea, to be able to say, My bitch did it or My nigga got him. Some of the boys are nervous; they put their hands in their pockets, take them out, swing their sweat rags in the air and swat at gnats. Some of the boys are confident: shoulders round and grinning. Big Henry wipes at his face with a sweat rag he’s pulled out of his pocket, and Randall leans on his stick, frowning at the frolicking dogs. A hawk circles in the air above us, turns, vanishes.

Marquise is standing next to a boy who must be his cousin; they both are the color of pecans, both have their ears pierced with gold loops, and both are short, but the cousin is a little fatter. His T-shirt is so big it swallows him.

“What’s up?” Marquise asks. “This my cousin Jerome.”

“Cuz told me about y’all little problem.” Jerome glances at Marquise, and then wipes his head with a rag, already wet, that he’s pulled out of his pocket. “You ain’t got to worry.” He flicks his leash and his dog, Boss, gets up from where he has been laying in the sun, walks to Jerome’s side and sits. He is black all over with a white muzzle.

“You said he was big, cuz, but…” Marquise’s whisper trails off to a laugh. “I didn’t think you was talking this big.”

Boss is huge. He is fat and tall, and his front legs are so bowed the front of him looks like a horseshoe. Where China’s hair is silky, Boss’s hair is coarse, so coarse that I can see the fight scars on him that have healed, black and fat as leeches. He lets his tongue hang out, smiles. His sides whoosh out and in as he pants, and he breathes so hard, he ripples Jerome’s shirt.

“Where the other dog at?”

Marquise rises from petting his own dog, Lala, whose ears he has clipped and put earrings into, loops like his own, to nod across the clearing. Marquise never fights his dog, Lala. She is a soft tan color, and she is almost as clean as China. She lays in pine, cocking an eyebrow at us. Skeetah once told me that Marquise’s dog sleeps in the bed with him, in the house, every night. Skeetah had shrugged and sort of smiled when he told me, but the way one side of his mouth had gone up while the other side of his mouth had gone down made me think that if Daddy weren’t here, China would sleep at the foot of Skeetah’s bed every night, too.

Across the clearing, Kilo is straining at a leash that Rico holds. He is sniffing at the ground, looking as if he is amazed, and then digging his paws into the dirt. It flies up and out between his back legs: he is tunneling through the dry grass and down through the bed of the pond. I wonder if there are frogs down there, dry and cool, hiding in the cracked mud. If they are trying to flatten themselves to hide from the sharp paw. Rico is half in the sun, half out, laughing toward Manny and some other older dark boy who has worn white shoes that look new to a dogfight in the woods. Rico’s grill is bright, but Manny, his arms folded, is more gold than Rico’s smile, and I hate him for it.

“I done fought Boss all the way from Baton Rouge to Pensacola,” says Jerome. “He won more than he lost.” Boss lays down in the pine straw again, snorts into it, so it flies up like feathers in front of his face. “He ready.”

I edge in the shade next to Randall, who is stabbing his stick into the clay earth, again and again. Big Henry plucks his shirt away from his front, airs it out. He grins at me. Skeetah stands in the sun, the only boy in the yellow clearing who braves the light with the dogs. He ignores us, looks past us off into the woods, still as China at his side, who ignores us and looks off as well, standing, never sitting. I wonder if he has trained her to do this, to stand at his side, to not dirty even her haunches with sitting so that they gleam. China is white as the sand that will become a pearl, Skeetah black as an oyster, but they stand as one before these boys who do not know what it means to love a dog the way that Skeetah does.

The boys meet in the middle of the circle, careful to keep their dogs at the edge; they hand their leashes to friends. They huddle to hammer the matches out.

“What the fuck you mean, you want Boss?”

“Yours is too big for mine.”

“He a puppy, but he scrappy.”

“She can take on any of them. She ain’t weak.”

“I say a two-fight limit.”

“I say three.”

“Who gives a fuck what you say?”

“I say two, too.”

“Sugar got at least two in her.”

“Homeboy got three.”

“Ojacc can fight every one of them and whip all they asses.”

A chorus of groans.

“Buddy Lee, too.”

“Truck’ll run all y’all over.”

“Do you see Slim? Do you understand what he’d do to Kilo?”

“Ain’t noboby for Kilo but Boss.”

“Wizard want in on Kilo.”

“I said Kilo ain’t here for nobody but Boss.”

“Y’all heard the man. Kilo ain’t here for nobody except Boss.”

In the middle of the dead circle, the boys snap like the air before a storm. Skeetah and China stand at the edge. The boys’ arguing rises to an angry buzz, and the air that had been still before swoops and tunnels through the clearing, raising dust, making the boys close their eyes. Maybe Daddy is right; maybe Katrina is coming for us. Big Henry covers his nose with his rag. Did Medea bless the heroes before they set out on their journey? Did she stand on the deck of that ship like I stand in this clearing, womanly ripe, and weave spells for rain to cloak their departure, to cloak her betrayal? Had Jason told her he loved her? Manny holds Kilo’s leash and stares at China. Skeetah and China do not move.

“Let’s go,” Marquise says.

Skeetah and China leave the circle, stand to the side of us, but a little away, a little closer, Skeet’s shirt darkening wetly at the neck, down the middle of his back, China still except for her ears, which flick away gnats trying to land.

Skeetah fought China as soon as he figured she was full grown, at a year. There was always a clear winner to those fights with dogs owned by boys in Bois Sauvage, in St. Catherine. She has fought every one of these dogs. Except for two of her beginning fights, where China fought but still bled more than the other dog and had part of her ear sliced, she won by bearing down on the other dog, by grabbing his throat with her teeth, her face a fist. The other dog would yelp, and Skeet would call her off, and that is how everyone would know that China had won.

Now, no dogs sniff China. No dogs lope over to her and playfully snap, mouth her face or shoulder. She and Skeet stand apart, and when the first fight begins between the first two dogs, they are the only two that stand still. The fight is quick, messy. The dogs meet in the middle and tumble around the side of the pond bed, kicking up dirt and golden grass and sticks and blood. They twist and snarl and whine. The gray shrieks first, but it is the brown-and-white that falls, pulls away, wanting out of the harsh light, the burning bowl, the searing puffs of wind, the nail, the jerk, the tooth. The boys grab the dogs by the hind legs, pull them away from each other, cuss, let them go again. Junior is bouncing from foot to foot on his toes behind Big Henry, who wipes at his neck even though he is wiping so often there is no time for sweat to gather, to glaze. Randall, who had been flipping the stick over and over like a band major, has stopped, and he stares at the fight and holds the stick like a club. The gray is pulled away, yelping, while the brown-and-white one still strains against his boy’s hands. Skeetah pets the watching China once, just a touch to the head, and she licks his finger. She never pulls away.

“Ojacc got him,” the gray’s boy says, admitting defeat. The brown-and-white’s boy smiles, rubs his dog’s head.

Marquise’s dog, Lala, hops like a rabbit into the bowl, her gold bars flashing, and barks toward the brown-and-white dog as if she wants to congratulate him. Ojacc is still eager. He twists like a question mark, yanks one leg from his boy’s hand, and bites. Lala skids to a stop, but the brown-and-white still sinks his teeth into her leg like a stapler. His boy pulls, and Marquise yanks Lala’s leash with both hands. The brown-and-white lets go, growling.

“Hold!” his boy yells.

“Son of a bitch!” Marquise screams, and Lala limps to him, yelping. He kneels over her and she melts into him, true to her butter color. The dogs bark and rise up on their hind legs, pulling at their leashes, and the boys strain against them. China shifts on her feet and her breasts sway. Skeetah shakes his head, spits. The boys curl the leashes around their wrists, weave them up their arms. The dogs choke themselves to a standstill, laying their chins on their paws on the straw and grass. Marquise’s dog will not stop whimpering, and when he puts his hand over her lips, slob runs through. After the next fight, Marquise lets her go and she sits with her back to his legs, facing the woods, and bows her head. Junior runs over to her, pets her head. By the time all the dogs but Kilo and Boss have fought, Lala is sitting with her bottom in Marquise’s little brother’s lap, her head on Junior’s thigh, and she is licking his leg.

Rico and Kilo walk into the bowl. The other dogs and boys are breathing hard, bloody, wearing sweaty coats. Rico smiles as Kilo grins, stocky but tall where his master is short; his coat is red as the dirt under the pine needles, clean and dry as that. Rico winds the leash around his fist, winds Kilo in, pats him along the rough length of his side, looks up, and says, “We ready?”

Jerome leaves us. Boss waddles next to him. They stop a few feet away from Kilo and Rico. Boss flings his head up twice at Jerome, tapping the leash with his forehead, smiling, and Jerome squats next to him, slowly, whispering in his ear. Across the circle, Rico mouths something in Kilo’s ear, but the wind blows again, and a cloud covers the sun, and their voices are lost in the whispering shuffle of the trees around us. And then the wind lags and catches again, and the cloud moves, and the clearing is a bright ball, and Jerome hollers “Ready!” and unhooks the leash from Boss as Rico backs away from Kilo. Boss and Kilo aren’t tethered to anything or anyone and they are rolling across the bowl, furious at the other who stands in their eyesight, who has not lowered tail or head.

“Get him, son!” Jerome yells. He claps in exclamation marks, over and over. “Get him!”

They meet at the middle. They rise up on their hind legs at the same time, front legs meeting shoulder to shoulder like they are dancing. Boss’s head, dull black, whips around first. His is the first bite. Kilo rears back and twists away. He snaps as he falls and sinks his teeth into Boss’s neck.

“Shake him! Shake him!” Rico yells, leaning so far over that he looks like he is going to fall facedown in the circle.

Kilo ignores him. Kilo bites and lets go, snaps and bites again. His teeth flash white, flash red, flash again.

“Grab him, boy!” Rico yells.

Boss does not want to be grabbed. His head is a knife, and he cuts a leaking gash on Kilo’s shoulder. He sets Kilo to running red. He is slower than Kilo. But he is strong.

“Come on, son!” Jerome yells.

They both fall, separate. Kilo jumps up before Boss, growls, rushes back in. Boss lumbers to his feet and meets Kilo. They are teeth to teeth. They chew at each other’s face, kissing. They growl into each other’s throats.

“Come on, son!” Jerome yells.

But Boss thinks he has been called, that he should run to Jerome. He whirls and pours through the air, black as burnt oil, and jerks to a puddle in the dirt because Kilo has borne down on him, his teeth in Boss’s back. Boss flings himself back at Kilo, his growl a great rip.

“Call him!” Jerome yells. The fight is no longer clean. Jerome has made a mistake.

“Kilo!” Rico shouts, and he grabs Kilo by his hind legs. “Kilo!” It is more a cough than a yell. Kilo lets go, tosses his head through a cloud of dust and hair and droplets of blood. Jerome grabs Boss by his front leg. Rico drags Kilo by his hind legs across the bowl, away from Boss. Both dogs are peppered in cuts. Rico’s shirt is not so white anymore.

Jerome kneels, presses his rag into the wound on Boss’s back. It shows black through the rag, and when he wipes the gash, the blood runs clean. He presses again, waits until it is a trickle. Boss’s white muzzle is streaked with red. Jerome nods at Rico.

“Again?” Jerome calls.

“Yeah,” Rico says.

Junior lets Lala’s head fall in the dirt.

“I’m going back to the tree,” he says to Marquise’s little brother. “You coming?” They leave Lala to sit up, looking confused. Big Henry stands with his arms crossed over his chest. Randall stares at Boss’s back, his stick hanging at the side of his leg before he flips it up to rest on his shoulder, and he sighs.

Jerome slaps Boss on his haunch, and he is off across the clearing to meet Kilo. The two dogs blur into one. They have two heads, four legs, two tails. They are an ancient beast, fierce, all growling hunger, rising up out of the sea. Boss’s head whips back, distinct for a blink, and he buries his teeth behind Kilo’s shoulder.

“Shit,” Randall breathes.

Kilo gurgles and bends himself almost in two, grabbing Boss’s front leg.

“Shake him, son! Shake him!” Rico yells.

“Get him!” Jerome shouts.

They are boiling, red against black. Kilo is trying to shake blood loose. Boss growls and shakes his head again and again, giving back to Kilo what he is given. Neither rips; neither folds.

“They’re even,” Big Henry says.

Boss and Kilo’s teeth are grinding into each other with each asking and answering jerk. They are sharpening the knives of their canines on a whetstone of flesh. Both hold. Neither will give.

“Call it,” Skeetah says.

“Boss!” Jerome yells, and grabs Boss’s back leg and drags.

“Kilo!” Rico grabs.

The dogs pull apart, are dragged away. Boss has many cuts, and his white muzzle has never been white, has always been red. Kilo’s red shoulders look spread with redder yarn, a ratty maroon shawl, and his breathing is the loudest sound in the clearing, over the dying and rising wind. Daddy’s hurricane is sending out feelers.

“Kilo got it,” Rico says.

“Bullshit,” says Jerome.

“What you talking about? He had him,” says Manny.

“I don’t know what you saw, but it sure wasn’t Kilo winning,” says Marquise.

“Everybody saw Kilo got him,” says Rico’s friend wearing the white shoes, which have turned yellow-brown.

“Everybody didn’t see shit. It was even,” says Big Henry, and suddenly everyone is talking at once. Kilo had him. No, Boss had him. Nigga, you blind? No, you? All the boys argue. The dogs around them bark and roll in the pine and lick their wounds and wag their tails. They raise their wet noses to the moving wind.

Rico rises from wiping Kilo, who bleeds and smiles. Rico clips Kilo’s leash and leads his dog, who saunters with his head down, across the clearing to us. Rico is frowning at Skeetah, who still stands apart on the edge of the bowl, one finger a hair’s width above China’s head. She is so bright it is hard to look at her.

“So when I get my puppy?” Rico asks Skeetah.

“My dog ain’t lose,” says Jerome, clipping and standing.

“Ain’t no clear winner,” says Marquise.

“You hear everybody talking. It’s a draw,” Randall says, and he moves forward to stand next to Jerome, facing Rico. Rico sniffs and spits. I wish the wind would catch it, throw it back in his face or on his white, white shoes. Randall’s stick is across his shoulders and behind his neck, and his arms hang over it like a scarecrow’s. Big Henry shadows him, flanks Marquise. Manny starts walking across the clearing, the boy with the yellowed shoes behind him. They are all coming, all meeting in the middle. Like the dogs.

“I said”-Rico points his finger at Skeetah and China, who pants at his side-“where’s my puppy?” He walks toward Skeet and the boys, who have moved into a loose cell around Rico and Jerome. Marquise is bouncing on his toes, curling his hands. If I were a boy, I would fight like Marquise, I think.

“No,” says Jerome. “My dog didn’t lose. Most it is is a draw.”

“I gives a fuck what you say,” says Rico, his finger now swinging to Jerome, his eyes on Skeetah. “And I want the white one.”

“It’s a draw. It’s a tie.” Randall blocks Rico, stands in front of Skeetah. He rolls his shoulders, grabs the stick in one hand, swings it wide and holds it like a baseball bat. Everyone is drawing together in a knot, tighter and tighter, black against the day. “You can’t decide it.”

“Yeah,” Skeetah says. “We can.” He unhooks the dull heavy chain from China’s neck, smiles; she smiles with him.

How you going to fight her? Randall scream-whispered at Skeetah after Rico started laughing and led Kilo across the clearing to rub him down. She’s a mother! The boys and their dogs spread around the circle of the clearing; the knot loosened, frayed. And he’s a father, Skeetah said, motioning toward Kilo, and what fucking difference does it make? China nosed Skeetah’s side. Her titties, Randall said. Are for the puppies, and you don’t have to worry about that, Skeetah breathed. The puppies, Randall said, what about the puppies? We all fight, said Skeetah. Everybody. Now leave me the fuck alone so I can talk to my dog, he said.

“Randall?” Junior and Marquise’s little brother have scampered down from their mimosa tree. “Skeetah going to fight China?”

“Go back to your tree,” Randall says, “I mean it. Up.”

“Go ’head,” I tell Junior. “And don’t come down til it’s done.”

Junior picks up a stick, throws it at Marquise’s little brother, who wears a bright green shirt dusted with pink flowers from the tree and jean shorts with creases. His mother did that, I think.

“Don’t fall,” I say.

“All right,” Junior huffs, to let me know that I am getting on his nerves, and then they are running away.

Marquise is speaking loudly in the kind of voice that wants to be heard and saying that he thinks Rico is a bitch, his dog is a weak bitch, and hell naw Kilo didn’t win. Big Henry is shaking his head, rubbing his forehead over and over with his sweat rag. Jerome is agreeing with Marquise, loudly. I can see why they are cousins. Boss is lounging again at Jerome’s feet, bleeding faintly, tongue out, grinning again. Blood runs in his eye and he blinks. Kilo lolls on his back in the straw, curving into a C again and again. Randall is swinging his stick back and forth, again and again, like a golf club now, catching vines, ripping them down from their branches. He looks at me, his upper lip tight.

“Well?” Randall swings, and the stick flings up dirt and dry pine needles. “They’ll die. Fucking camp!” he spits.

Across the circle, Manny is watching us. When the dogs were fighting, rolling like the spokes around the wheel of the clearing, gnashing and struggling muscle to muscle, tooth to tooth, it was easy to narrow my vision, to avoid Manny. Manny’s eyebrows are together, his eyes are big; they almost look sorry. I tell myself I don’t care and imagine myself tall as Medea, wearing purple and green robes, bones and gold for jewelry. Even though it feels awkward, I pull my shoulders back when I walk toward Skeetah, who is on the edge of the clearing in a cluster of ground palms, kneeling, whispering into China’s ear, rubbing her so hard her skin slides in ripples with his hand. Skeetah smooths her, talks to her. Her fur looks silver in the shade. China is standing very still, staring across the clearing. Skeetah’s tongue darts out of his mouth and a razor I did not know he had in his cheek flips out and over the tip of his tongue before he sucks it all back inside. He is reciting something, and he is saying it so fast that it sounds like he is singing it. China White, he breathes, my China. Like bleach, China, hitting and turning them red and white, China. Like coca, China, so hard they breathe you up and they nose bleed, China. Make them runny, China, make insides outsides, China, make them think they snorted the razor, China. Leave them shaking, China, make them love you, China, make them need you, China, make them know even though they want to they can’t live without you, China. My China, he mumbles: make them know, make them know, make them know.

When Skeetah faces Rico across the clearing, he has left China’s chain on the ground and taken the chrome from her throat. She stands at his right leg, ears up, tail straight, and nothing moves on her. I cannot even tell if she is breathing. She is white, so white. She is the pure white heart of a flame. Kilo is all red, all muscle, a moving heart in the clearing. He barks high, once, and Rico unclips his leash and slaps him. Kilo runs.

“Go,” Skeetah says.

China shoots across the clearing before Kilo can get to the middle, and she meets him with a searing growl. There are no snaps to legs or faces for her. There is only Kilo’s neck. She rises with him, slings her head forth, and bites.

“Watch her, son!” Rico yells.

China grabs Kilo at the back of the neck again. She sinks her face into him. When she draws back, her jaws are shut, and she rips fur. She gasps like she is drawing a breath, and she dives in again with her teeth.

“Come on, Kilo!” Rico yells.

She would burrow into him with her head like a worm tunneling into red earth.

“Kilo!” Rico yells.

Kilo dives from the drive of her head. He latches onto China’s leg. It is a weak move, easy, and I think that Rico has taught him this.

“Now shake her, boy!” Rico screams.

Kilo is shaking her. China is boring with her head again and again, turning what had been a shawl into a bright red scarf, but Rico is pulling at her leg, rippling from side to side; his muscles boiling so his fur is no longer earth, but water again, a red flood. He growls with each jerk, but the last one, as China swallows his ear and the side of his face with her sharp jaw and bites, slides into a squeak.

“Grab her!” yells Rico.

Skeetah refolds his arms, bows his head. China kisses the side of Kilo’s face, a face-tonguing lover’s kiss, mother to father, deeply.

“Fucking grab her!” Rico yells.

“China!” Skeetah calls, and China lets Kilo go even though he still gnaws at her foot. She looks back at Skeetah as if to say, I am coming, love, I am here.

“Kilo!” Rico yells. He grabs Kilo by the back legs and drags the dog toward him. Kilo smacks open his lips as if he has just eaten something he likes, and China’s leg comes free. She is bounding toward Skeetah, her smile red like smudged lipstick. The blood on her leg is a crimson garter.

“Fuck! He don’t even have to drag her,” Jerome says.

Rico wipes at Kilo’s neck until the blood looks less like a scarf and more like a necklace. He studies his dog, who breathes so hard he sprays the ground with spit and blood, his nose to the earth. Manny kneels next to Rico, whispers. I know that whatever Manny is saying is showing the meanness in him, that he is Jason betraying Medea and asking for the hand of the daughter of the king of Corinth in marriage after Medea has killed her brother for him, betrayed her father. Manny’s mouth moves and I read, She ain’t shit, ain’t got no heart. He looks at China when he murmurs, but it feels like he looks at me.

“You ready?” asks Skeetah. China stands next to him, heedless of the blood speckling her sides, her lips firmly sealed, her ribs billowing and clenching. She stands evenly on the leg Kilo has chewed, which is red and gummy and raw above the joint.

Rico flashes a hand, quiets Manny. Manny stands, Rico with him. The boys have moved. They cluster behind Rico and behind Skeetah so that I have to move to the edge to see the dry pond bed, the red dashes where blood has fallen. The circle of boys that the dogs fought in all day has dissipated like fog.

“Fucking right,” Rico says. He slaps Kilo’s side. Kilo grunts to a stand, staggers to a run to the middle of the bowl. He is a creek becoming a river.

“Go!” Skeetah says. China raises her head to the sun and barks once, twice. It is a laugh. She digs her feet into the straw and jumps to a sprint.

“Grab her!” Rico yells.

Kilo eddies around China’s shoulder. Swirls and bites. China bites back, returns the kiss, savagely.

“Grab her, son!” Rico yells.

They rise and clench each other with their arms, stand on their back legs. China kicks with her front feet, pushes away from Kilo’s chest to unfurl like a whip to lash back around with her head, to bite and rip again, but when she leans back it is as if Kilo has just seen her breasts, white and full and heavy and warm, and he bows his head like a puppy to drink. But he doesn’t drink. He bites. He swallows her breast.

“No,” Skeetah says.

“Shake her,” Rico calls.

Kilo is a whirlpool, spinning China, shaking her. She claws at him with her paws, her jaw wide, and tries to eat his eyes. But Kilo will not let go.

“Jump!” Skeetah yells. “Jump, China!”

It is what he tells her to do when he wants her to jump from trees. To leap. To fly. China bows into Kilo. She gathers herself, flexes like a muscle. She tongues Kilo’s ear and bites and then leans back and pushes hard with her feet all at once. She rips. Her breast is bloody, torn. The nipple, missing.

“China!” Skeetah calls, and China lands on her front feet, already running toward him.

Kilo howls and falls backward away from China, his ear ragged.

“Come, Kilo!” Rico calls, and Kilo runs to Rico, dragging his ragged ear along the ground, butting Rico’s leg and leaving a bloody print.

“I told you, Skeet,” Randall says.

“Shut up,” Skeetah says.

The gash is a red flame swallowing her breast.

“She can’t fight,” Randall says.

Skeetah is squeezing China’s neck, murmuring in her ear. This time I cannot hear what he says. Skeetah is whispering so closely to China’s ear I only catch half of his lips behind the red-veined white of her ear. Her breast drips blood. China licks Skeetah’s cheek.

Rico stands, already smiling.

“Maybe I don’t want the white one,” Rico says. “Maybe I want the colored one that got more Kilo in it.” He laughs.

Skeetah stands, and China, stout and white, looks up at him.

“She fights,” Skeetah says.

Randall pulls the stick from his shoulders, swings it around to his front.

“She’s already fucked up enough,” Randall says.

“Cuz, if she lost, she lost,” Big Henry says, slowly, as if he is tasting the words.

“She didn’t lose,” Skeetah breathes.

Rico laughs.

Skeetah shrugs and touches the tip of China’s nose with his finger.

“She’s mine, and she fights.”

Kilo grimaces.

“Let’s give this nigga what he want,” Rico says to Kilo.

There is sweat and blood running red and gray down China’s ribs.

“Go ahead, Kilo.”

Kilo runs.

“Go, China! Go!” Skeetah screams, and China hurtles forward, her bloody breast streaming fluid, leaving a trail in the brush.

They meet. They rise. They embrace. They bite, neck to neck. They rip growls from each other, and the wind punches into the clearing and carries the growls away.

Kilo grabs China’s shoulder again, jerks his neck to make her shake.

Skeetah’s fists are curled tight, and his whole body seems to bristle.

“Make ’em know!” Skeetah calls, barely louder than speaking.

China hears.

“Make them know.”

She is fire. China flings her head back into the air as if eating oxygen, gaining strength, and burns back down to Kilo and takes his neck in her teeth. She bears down, curling to him, a loving flame, and licks. She flips over and is on top of him, even though he still has her shoulder. He roils beneath her. She chews. Fire evaporates water.

Make them know make them know make them know they can’t live without you, Skeetah says. China hears.

Hello, father, she says, tonguing Kilo. I don’t have milk for you. China blazes. Kilo snaps at her breast again, but she shoulders him away. But I do have this. Her jaw is a mousetrap snapped shut around the mouse of Kilo’s neck.

When Kilo screams, it is loud and high, as if the wind whistles when it slides past China’s teeth.

Skeetah smiles.

Skeetah calls, “Come, China!”

China spins, takes away part of Kilo’s throat.

China comes.

“Hold! Hold!” Rico screams, sweaty, his face twisted sour. He drags Kilo across the dusty bottom of the pond. Manny kneels, takes in me, Skeetah, and China in one glance, and looks like he hates us all. I wish it wouldn’t hurt, but it does.

Kilo keens.

There are pink mimosa flowers drifting and falling on the breeze. Marquise’s brother has left Junior; he has scampered out of the tree to hide his face in Jerome’s leg while his pink-dusted shoulders shudder. Junior squats in the mimosa still, his hands white on the branches, jerking as if he would break the wood. His eyes are wide, glued to the screaming Kilo. Junior shakes a beat to Kilo’s keening, and it is a song.