by Jesmyn Ward
“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.
THE NINTH DAY: HURRICANE ECLIPSE
The sound of someone throwing up in the bathroom wakes me. In my half sleep, I see myself in the bathroom, hunched over the toilet, one hand on the back of the bowl, vomiting. But then the retching becomes louder, sounds like my tongue is curling up and out of my throat, and I realize I am not throwing up. I have never been so loud; have never made that sound. The bathroom disappears and I wake to the half-light of dawn, the ceiling, Junior asleep in his twin bed with his sheets and pillow kicked to the floor, and our door cracked.
It’s Daddy on the floor of the bathroom. Daddy with one hand on the back of the bowl, one knee on the floor. Daddy looking like he’s about to dive into the toilet, lose his tongue.
“Daddy?”
“Get Randall,” he breathes, and then his back curves and he sounds like he’s being ripped.
The hallway is still dark. Randall is in his bed, Skeetah isn’t. After the match yesterday, he washed China under the lightbulb outside the back door. He rubbed her down and then sat on the back steps and dabbed anti
biotic ointment from a dirty crumpled tube into her where Kilo had torn her and made the flesh show. Her leg and shoulder and her ripped breast looked like meat, and Skeetah took the same worn-out Ace bandage he’d wrapped his side with and cut it in thirds. He wrapped her leg, her neck and shoulder, her stomach, and pinned. She stood, eyes slits, panting easily, letting him patch her up. Every few minutes, she would wag her tail, and he would rub her somewhere it wasn’t red: her feet, her back, her tail. He must have slept in the shed with her. I have to shove Randall twice before he wakes up, his eyes rolling white, his arms up to guard his face.
“What?” he says. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Daddy. He in the bathroom throwing up.”
Randall looks at me like he can’t see me.
“What?”
“Daddy. In the bathroom. He’s sick.”
Randall nods at me, blinks. He’s waking.
“Said he needed you.”
By the time we get to the end of the hallway, Randall is bouncing, shaking the sleep off his arms and legs. Daddy has laid his head on the toilet, his face turned to us, his eyes closed, his arms hanging knuckle down on the peeling tile so that they look like sapling pine trees.
“I’m sick,” Daddy moans. “Can’t stop.”
“Come on, Daddy.”
“No.” Daddy tries to push Randall away from him as Randall bends over, grabbing Daddy under his arms, but Daddy is weak, and his hands fall away like dry branches. “Got to stay by the toilet.”
“I’ma put a garbage can next to your bed.” Randall tugs Daddy up, gets his chest in the air, but Daddy’s legs drag, and Daddy hangs there limp as sheets on a clothesline before they’ve been stretched and pinned. When the grandparents were still living, Mama washed all the sheets for both houses at once, and there was so much bedding that Daddy had to hang extra lines. Mama would walk through and hang them bunched first before spreading them. The sheets were so thin we could almost see through them. They made cloudy rooms, and we played hide-and-seek in them. In the winter, they made our faces wet and achingly cold, but in the summer, it was so hot the sheets didn’t stay wet long, but we smashed our faces into them anyway, trying to find the hidden cool. Mama yelled at us for dirtying them once when we left muddy prints on them; afterward, we let our hands hover over them, shoved our noses into them to see if we could see the other person running down the next billowing hallway. Now, washing and hanging clothes is me and Randall’s job: I don’t even think Skeetah knows how to work the washing machine.