Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

smiles at me and holds the door open, waiting for me to walk through, and he is blind.
    Junior is pulling planks of plywood across the yard. He yanks them up and hauls, walking backward through the dirt. Daddy has them scattered all around, pulled from other places on the Pit, and has lain them on the ground. Junior is piling them, and every one leaves a trail of crumbling wood behind him since they are eaten through with black, rotting blotches. Junior is leaving a trail of bread crumbs. He is covered in dust, and it makes him look rolled in chalk. His thin gray shorts sag on him, hanging to the middle of his shins. They must be an old pair of Skeet’s. He drops a board, and it claps.
    â€œWhere y’all going?” Junior asks.
    â€œNone of your business,” says Skeet. He walks into the shed, and I follow.
    â€œGo on, Junior.” I say. He doesn’t need to know that the puppy is dying. He doesn’t need to know that young things go, too.
    â€œYou ain’t the boss of me,” Junior says. I try to block his slide into the curtained doorway, but he crawls under me and sees Skeet handling the sick puppy, which doesn’t swim now. The puppy’s head rolls to the side, and he raises an arm, but I don’t know if that is Skeet’s fingers pulling him like a puppet, or the puppy, fighting.
    â€œGet out of here, Junior! You so bad,” Skeetah says. He pulls down a bucket from one of the high shelves and lays the puppy inside, and then puts it back up so China can’t reach it. She growls, and Skeetah places his fingers in the middle of her forehead, shoves. “Shut up.”
    â€œI’m telling Randall that you fixing to do something bad to the puppy!” Junior runs outside.
    â€œOh Lord,” I breathe.
    China watches, reclining on her side. The puppies feed from her, and she is still, stone. Only her eyes shine like an oil lamp in the light. I should know that’s who she is, know that she’s often still as an animal ready to attack, but I’m not. Her tail does not wag. I can’t help the skin puckering over my stomach, up my arms.
    â€œWe’ll leave him up here till later tonight. If it’s the parvo, hopefully he too far away to infect the other ones.” Skeetah wipes his hands on the front of his holey tee. His shirt comes up over his ribs, his thin, muscled stomach. “Shit. The germs. I need to go wash my hands.”
    I’m sitting on the steps, waiting on Skeetah, when Randall comes out the trees. He bounces when he walks, and it’s like the darkness under the green gives him his pieces one by one: a chest, a stomach, hips, arms, and legs. Last, a face. Junior is a voice behind him, riding on his back, his feet flopping over Randall’s stomach, leaving white dusty marks like powder with his soles.
    â€œWhat’s this Junior talking about y’all trying to drown one of the puppies?”
    I feel a quick wave of nausea.
    â€œI don’t know where he got that from.”
    â€œHe say y’all put it in a bucket.”
    â€œThe puppy got parvo.” I say.
    â€œThey was going to drown it in the bucket!” Randall hoists Junior up, so when Junior says this, he is the flash of a face over Randall’s shoulder.
    â€œAnd we wasn’t fixing to drown it in no bucket.” I say.
    â€œWell, what y’all going to do with it?”
    â€œTake it to back to the pit.”
    Randall lets Junior go, and Junior hangs on until he can’t anymore, until his legs turn to noodles and he is sliding down Randall like a pole. We three are quiet, looking at each other, frowning.
    â€œGo on, Junior.” Randall says.
    â€œBut Randall—”
    â€œGo.”
    Junior folds his arms over his chest, his ribs like a small grill burnt black. He needs to put a shirt on.
    â€œGo.”
    Junior’s eyes are bright. When he runs away, his feet make little slapping sounds in the dirt, and leave clouds of