I bend and slap away all the fleas. In the kitchen, Skeetah is panting and pulling in the corner, his whole body straining. Where yesterday he had a short ’fro, today his head is shaved clean, and is a shade lighter than the rest of him. His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.
“Junior told me you was in here. What you doing?”
“Trying to get this linoleum.”
“For what?”
Skeetah was trying to peel it from the corner. A big piece flapped over in front of him like a dog ear.
“It’s in the dirt.” He pulled. I expected he would grunt, but no sound came out. His muscles jumped like popped gum. “The parvo. It’s in the dirt in the shed.”
“So what’s Mother Lizbeth’s floor going to do?”
“It’s going to cover the dirt.” He pulled, a loud pop sounded, and the tile gave. He threw it back and it landed in a pile with four or five others.
“You giving China a floor?” Daddy had started on our house once he and Mama got married. Hearing the stories about him and Papa Joseph when I was growing up, I always thought it was something a man did for a woman when they married: build her something to live in.
“No, Esch.” Skeetah slices at the underside of the next tile with one of Daddy’s rusty box cutters. “I’m saving them puppies. China’s strong and old enough to where the parvo won’t kill her.” He yanked. “They’re money.”
“Why’d you cut your hair?”
“I got tired of it.” Skeetah shrugs, pulls. “What you doing today?”
“Nothing.”
“You want to go somewhere with me?”
“Where?”
“Through the woods.” Skeetah gives another yank, and the next tile comes loose. He throws it wide. “You gotta run.” I’ve always been a fast runner. When the boys and I used to race when we were smaller, I was always in the top three. I beat Randall a few times, and almost beat Skeet once or twice. “I need your help.”
“Okay.” He needs me. Before China had these puppies, I’d go days without seeing him. Days before I’d be walking through the woods looking for eggs or trying to see if I could find Randall and Manny, or walking to the Pit to swim, and I’d stumble on Skeetah, training China to attack and bite and lock on with an old bike tire or a rope. They’d play tug of war, send up clouds of dust and leave dry rivers in the pine needles. Or China’d nap while Skeetah ate razor blades, sliding them between the pink sleeve of his cheek and tongue and back out of his lips so fast I thought I was imagining it. I asked him why he ate them once, and he grinned and said, Why should China be the only one with teeth?
“Yeah.” I say.
The sound of Daddy’s tractor growls in the distance, comes closer. Skeetah picks up the tiles and begins pitching them through a window at the back of the house, where he knows that Daddy won’t come because the back door has been grown over with wisteria and kudzu for years. The front door is the only way in. He pitches the last tile and the box cutter just as Daddy is shoving his way inside, the sound of the wood like a gunshot ricocheting through the room so that I think he’s broken the hinge, but the door stays upright. The cobwebs leave a gray trail and there’s a leaf stuck in his hair. His T-shirt is dark at the pits and neck and down the middle of his back. His boots hit so hard on the floor that he sounds like he’s going to go through the rotted wood. He’s not that much bigger than us. Is this what Medea saw, when she decided to follow Jason, to flee her father with her brother? Did she see through her father’s rich robes to the small-shouldered man beneath? Even though he doesn’t work much anymore, picks up odd jobs working on oyster boats or towing scrap metal, he’s worn the same work clothes every day for as long as I can remember: steel-toe work boots, pants, two T-shirts, two pairs of socks. Mama laid his outfit in clean layers for him on the chair sitting in the corner of their room every night, and Daddy would come up behind her when she was bending over the chair, put his arms around her waist, whisper in her neck. He’d tell us to go watch TV, to go to our rooms, to get out the door. Now Daddy looks up, surprised.
“What y’all doing in here?”
“Nothing,” Skeetah says, quick and loud, and he begins walking toward Daddy and the door.
“Hold up,” Daddy says. “I need y’all help.”
“I got to see after China.”
“Not yet,” Daddy says. He grabs Skeet’s arm as he tries to pass him. “She’ll hold.”
Skeetah walks into the step he was taking and pulls away from Daddy with his stride. Skeet seems surprised at the way Daddy’s fingers slip from his arm, and Daddy looks at me, just for a minute, like he’s confused. Skeetah stops and turns, and Daddy points up to the attic.
“Gotta new storm in the Gulf. Named José. Supposed to be hitting Mexico.”
Skeetah’s eyes open like he wants to roll them, but he doesn’t.
“You see them pieces of plywood up there? Them two that don’t look too rotten?”
Skeetah nods. I’m surprised that Daddy doesn’t have that sweet bread scent of morning beer on him.
“Yeah.”
“I need you to take this hammer and pry them up off the wall and throw them down. Me and Esch will carry them outside and put them on the tractor.”
The ceiling in the living room fell in years ago, so now it’s easy to see through it to the attic above, where the beams of the roof are showing in snatches. Skeetah tries to jump and hoist himself up, but even though he can jump that high, he can’t grab the beam because the plaster that sticks to it like barnacles makes it difficult for him to grab it.
“Esch, let your brother climb up on you.”
Skeetah looks at him like he’s crazy, but he doesn’t say anything.
“I can do it.”
Daddy could be a ladder for Skeetah if he wanted to, hoist him up with his hands tough as rope, but he won’t. We all know it.
“Come on, Skeet.”
I lunge like I see the cheerleaders do at school when they climb all over each other to make their pyramids, a human jungle gym: my front knee bent, my back leg straight, as solid and steady as I can make them. Daddy’s got his arms folded, looking up into the attic.
“Naw, Esch. I can jump.”
“No you can’t,” Daddy says. “Go on.”
Skeet puts one hand on my shoulder. I’m surprised by how hard his skin is; his calluses are like pebbles embedded in the soft sandy skin of his hand, where Daddy’s whole hands are like gravel. When Skeetah isn’t smiling, the corners of his lips turn down. Now that he’s mad, his chin looks hard, and his mouth is a straight line.
“I’m going to step and grab, okay? Quick as I can.”
I nod. Skeetah looks at me for a moment more, and says it again.
“Quick as I can.”
When Skeetah steps, his sneaker bears down on my thigh and the rubber grooves feel like cleats. It hurts. I can’t help but let a little sound come out of my throat, but then I close it off so that I can’t even breathe. He stands and grabs a ceiling beam behind the plaster. My leg is shaking.
“Right there,” Daddy says.
When Skeetah pushes off my leg and pulls with his arms, it feels like his foot is grinding into my skin. Another noise surprises its way out of my throat, and I breathe hard, ashamed. When we were little and we would fall and skin a knee and cry, Daddy would roll his eyes, tell us to stop. Stop. I straighten up and rub my leg.