“You ain’t never gave him a name, huh, Skeet?” I ask.
“No.” He doesn’t look up. “You can give it a name if you want, Esch.” He sits with his chin in his hands. “It’s a girl.”
A name. I knew a girl once in school that was named after the candles you burn to drive the mosquitoes away: Citronella. She always had at least two boyfriends, lip gloss, and all her folders were color-coded to match her books. I used to kneel in the water up to my neck and watch her when we ran into her and her folks swimming at the river. She was golden as those candles, so perfect that I wanted to hate her. And I did, some. But sometimes I would say her name when I was walking along, talking to myself, and I liked the way it sounded, the way it rolled around my tongue like a mouthful of ice cream. Citronella. I want to name the puppy this, but I think Marquise, at least, will laugh at me, because he knows her. Probably was one of her boyfriends, walked down the street to the park with her and held her hand.
“Nella,” I say. “I want to name her Nella.”
Skeet nods. Big Henry tries to pass me his forty, but I shake my head. The hot sauce is still pulling spit from my tongue, but I know I’m probably going to cry when Nella goes, and I don’t want any more salt. Marquise shoves a stick in the fire and stabs at the ashes.
“It’s a good name,” Big Henry says, with a smile half shining and then fading. Skeet looks in the bucket like he didn’t hear. Still, the little bit of happiness that was inside me at coming up with the name flutters and snuffs out. What’s the use of naming her to die?
There’s a breaking sound coming from the woods, the crunch of leaves crumbling underfoot, and Randall and Manny appear. Manny catches all the light from the fire, eats it up, and blazes. He smiles. His scar gleams, and my heart blushes.
“Junior finally fell asleep,” Randall says. “Manny say his cousin Rico lost the dog he had before Kilo to parvo.”
Manny sits next to Randall at the fire, drinks so much of the punch when Marquise hands it to him that there is only scum left at the bottom.
“You should kill it now,” Manny says. “Save it the pain. Rico sliced his dog’s throat soon as he saw it getting sick. Right now, you just torturing it.”
“No,” Skeet says. “It’s not time yet.”
“You going to shoot it?” Manny eyes the gun. “That’s quick, at least.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, how you going to do it?”
Skeetah looks up, but he is looking at Randall when he talks, not Manny.
“You remember how Mama used to kill the chickens?” Skeetah asks.
The cicadas in the trees are like fitful rain, sounding in waves in the black brush of the trees. When Randall speaks, he stares at Skeetah, who grips the side of the bucket.
“She only killed one when it was something special, like one of our birthdays or her and Daddy’s anniversary. She used to watch them, like she knew every one, knew which one had eggs to hatch, which one hadn’t lain in a while, which one was just getting fat and old. Was almost like the chickens knew it; they’d get nervous. Shuffling around, sticking in groups, staying away from the coop. Next thing you know, she’d grab one, take it behind the house to that big old oak tree stump Daddy’d dragged out of the woods, and stand over it real still while the bird was beating its wings so fast they’d blur. But the chicken wouldn’t ever make no noise. And then she would put her hand over the bird’s face like she was hiding it from seeing something, and then she would grab and twist. Break the neck. Slice the head off on the stump.” Randall doesn’t take a breath when he speaks, just lets it all run out of him like a steady stream. He swallows. “Chicken don’t taste like that no more.” The crickets in the tree closest to us take up a low rumble, almost drown Randall out. I don’t really remember Mama killing the chickens so clear, but when Randall says it, I see it, and I think I remember it.
“Yeah,” Skeetah says; he is slow to blink. He lifts the puppy. Her stomach rises and falls, and the wind coming out of her sounds like a croaking frog. I reach out to touch her. “Don’t,” Skeet says. “It’ll carry back to the rest.” He glances at me and half smiles, 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.
“What are you doing?” Marquise asks around the squirrel bone he is sucking on. He slurps and almost swallows it, chokes it back up.
“It’s all contaminated,” Skeetah says. “Everything.”
He shucks his pants, throws them into the fire.
“Are you serious?” Marquise laughs.
“As 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.
“I 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.
“Y’all niggas crazy,” Marquise says, but he takes off his clothes anyhow and follows us to the water.
“I 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.
“Watch out. You know they got water moccasins under that brush,” says Randall. Skeetah’s scrubbing like he could rub his skin off.
“I’m all right. They ain’t studying me.”
“I ain’t sucking the poison out you,” Randall laughs.
“I ain’t getting bit. They can smell it, you know.”
“Smell what?”
“Death.”
Randall stops his forward glide and treads. I can’t see his face in the dark.
“Shut 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.”