Read Online Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward - Free Book Online Page B

and then looks down at his fingers.
    Through the trees, there is a new moon, and Nella is singing to it. I think I see Junior leaping like a squirrel through the shadows, watching and waiting, but when I look closely again, there is only darkness beyond the fire.
    When Skeet grabs and twists, his hands are as sure as Mama’s.
    When Skeetah comes back from burying the puppy, he is shirtless, his muscles black and ropy as that squirrel’s. Sweat coats him like oil. He stands for a second in the firelight, still, breathing hard. He throws his shirt into the fire.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Marquise asks around the squirrel bone he is sucking on. He slurps and almost swallows it, chokes it back up.
    â€œIt’s all contaminated,” Skeetah says. “Everything.”
    He shucks his pants, throws them into the fire.
    â€œAre you serious?” Marquise laughs.
    â€œAs a heart attack,” Skeetah says. His boxers are sagging, the elastic showing at the top. He grabs the dishwashing liquid and walks toward the black water of the pit, bends mid-step to pull his drawers off of one leg and then the other, and then throws them in the fire by looking over his shoulder. But he does not turn back around. All of him is muscle. I haven’t seen him naked since we were little and Mama put us in the tub together.
    â€œI can’t believe you’re going to wash in that,” says Marquise, but even as he is saying it Randall is standing, and even though he didn’t touch the puppy, Randall is taking off all his own clothes, leaving them in a pile. He is taller, and his arms and legs are rubber bands. Big Henry grinds his bottle into the dirt until the earth holds it still. He kicks off his shoes first, and then peels his socks away and folds them in half before shoving them into his shoes. His feet are large and soft-looking with long black hairs curling down the top like baby’s hair.
    Where my brothers go, I follow.
    I walk into the water with all my clothes on. When I am all wet, I grab the soap from Skeetah and rub suds into my clothes, too. I make them white before I pull them away, one by one, until I am naked in the water, my clothes a dirty, slimy pile on the mud bank.
    â€œY’all niggas crazy,” Marquise says, but he takes off his clothes anyhow and follows us to the water.
    â€œI was hot anyway,” Manny says, and he throws his white tee near where I was sitting along with his pants and strips to his underwear. He runs and dives in the water and comes up behind Randall and tackles him so that they both sink. They wrestle, giggling, looking like fish yanking against a line. Marquise is swinging from a rope that hangs from a high tree, and Big Henry is moving through the water with a slow stroke, his hands cutting in so straight they don’t make any splash. Randall and Manny keep dunking each other, laughing. I want Manny to touch me, to swim over and grab me by my arms, to pull me up against him, but I know he won’t. Randall slips away from Manny, swims over to Skeetah, who has been treading water off by himself.
    â€œWatch out. You know they got water moccasins under that brush,” says Randall. Skeetah’s scrubbing like he could rub his skin off.
    â€œI’m all right. They ain’t studying me.”
    â€œI ain’t sucking the poison out you,” Randall laughs.
    â€œI ain’t getting bit. They can smell it, you know.”
    â€œSmell what?”
    â€œDeath.”
    Randall stops his forward glide and treads. I can’t see his face in the dark.
    â€œShut up, Skeet.” He splashes water that catches firelight and turns red. Drops, like fireworks from the sky, hit Skeet. Under the cicadas, I imagine that I should be able to hear it sizzle. “Now you really talking crazy.”
    Big Henry is grabbing at Marquise’s feet, trying to pull him off the rope. Marquise kicks, and Big Henry tugs so hard on the rope, the limb