Salvage the Bones

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.