“No,” Randall says. “You can see them from here.”
I push up from the hill, ready to walk over. Skeetah grabs my arm, stops me mid-rise, and it hurts almost, the way he pulls at the shoulder. He is shaking his head, and I cannot understand what is in his face. He points to the ground, tries to pull me down next to him so I won’t let them know where we are, what we’re about to do.
“They can help,” I whisper. “More eyes.”
He still has my wrist, pulling it tight to him like a rope to his side, as if he can make me heel. I snatch my hand from him, and it slides through his grip like a wet fish.
“Yes,” I say, and I start walking. He doesn’t have any choice but to follow, so I don’t even look back. There is a rustling and a wet crunch of pine needles, and I know that he is following.
Randall, who is all edges and honed sharp to see what others can’t, hear what others can’t, is the first to hear us.
“I thought I saw y’all coming back here.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Why y’all was running so fast?” Randall asks. Big Henry is resting on a tree, bent over so that he is sitting on air, the trunk his chair back.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Behind me, Skeetah speaks.
“You need to take Junior home.”
“What’s wrong with him being out here?”
“I got to get something.” Skeetah folds his arms.
“From where?” Randall asks. And then he looks at Skeetah, and his head nods and his mouth opens so that he looks like a gulping fish. “Oh,” he says, and he is quiet.
“What?” Big Henry asks.
Skeetah breathes hard, once, and then pulls his arms tighter across his chest.
“For the dogs,” I say, because Skeetah will not speak.
“No,” Randall says.
Skeetah just looks at him, his muscles ropes in his crossed arms.
“You don’t know what them white people got up in that house. They could have a gun,” Big Henry says.
“We ain’t going in the house,” I say. “We going in the barn.”
“We ain’t going in no barn.” Skeetah speaks up, his lips tight. “I’m going in the barn and you keeping watch like I said.”
“Neither of ya’ll going nowhere.” Randall spreads his fingers, long and skinny, shakes his head, snatches at Junior’s arm, who is watching beside him. “Y’all coming home with me.”
“Aw shit,” Big Henry breathes.
“We ain’t going nowhere.” Skeetah unlashes his arms and they come whipping out from his sides, and his voice is loud, and he’s like those little firecrackers we get on the Fourth of July that throw out sparks from all sides and jump in bright acid leaps across the hard dirt yard. “First of all, me and Esch done walked all around this field and watched the house for damn near an hour. Ain’t nobody home, and all they got is a puppy on the other side of the house, over by that driveway. And I know what I need and I know where it’s at. And it ain’t like you won’t get nothing out of this. If my dogs live, I can make eight hundred dollars off them. Eight hundred dollars. Do you know what we can do with eight hundred dollars? You won’t need to beg Daddy for the rest of the money for basketball camp week after next, and you won’t have to stress over playing good enough in the summer league to get one of those scholarships for it either. I know you want to go, just like you know Daddy don’t have it.” Skeetah fizzles, his hands down by his side. Now he’s just trailing bitter, sulfurous smoke. “You ain’t the parent,” he mutters.
“This is stupid,” Big Henry says.
“I’m the fastest,” Junior says as he yanks on Randall’s arm.
“Shut up, Junior,” I say.
Randall pulls Junior to him and puts his hand on his head the same way I put mine on Skeet’s when he was wiping off the blood. Junior quiets, turns to face us, and Randall’s arm is around his neck like a scarf. Junior’s still smiling; he still thinks he’s about to run with us.
“You ain’t running nowhere, Junior.” Junior’s face pulls. Randall’s arms cradle him by the chest. Randall looks down at Junior’s head, wipes away moss caught in his hair. “You’d do that for me?” Randall speaks to Junior’s head, so at first I don’t know who he’s talking to, and then I remember Skeet, who is nodding next to me now. With each dip of Skeetah’s head, sweat drips unimpeded from his crown, past his strong nose, his downy upper lip, to fall from his chin like a weak summer sprinkle.
“Yes,” Skeetah says, still nodding. “Yes.”
Skeetah sketches the plan. It is what makes him so good with dogs, with China, I think, the way he can take rotten boards and make them a kennel, make a squirrel barbecue, make ripped tile a floor.
“You too big to be out there in that field.”
“Wasn’t going to go anyway,” says Big Henry. Skeetah shrugs.
“So you stay here in the woods with Junior. Shut up, Junior. This is serious. You ever heard of Hansel and Gretel? Well, that’s who own that house, and they want to fatten you up like a little pig and eat you. So shut up and stay in the woods with Big Henry. And if you sneak out like you did last night-shut up, Junior, I saw you-I’m going to catch you and whip you. That’s if the white people don’t eat you first.”
“You want me to help you get in the barn?” Randall asks.
“No, I don’t need no help. Besides, you too tall. You going to be at the edge of the field, right by the fence, and keep watch on the whole field. You see anything, you whistle.”
“What about Esch?” Randall says.
“Esch going to be in the middle of the field, laying down by them stumps right there: she got a better shot of the driveway than you ’cause she going to be closer. If she see something, she going to whistle. And loud, Esch. No baby whistles.”
“I knew how to whistle with my fingers in my mouth before you did, Skeet,” I say.
“I know,” he says. He glances at me when he says it, and he and I both know that he is telling the truth. “Well, all right. Is everybody ready.” He says it like that, like a statement rather than a question. Skeetah is not giving us any room to not be ready. “All right, then. Once you see me come out that window, I want everybody to start running. Don’t look back. Run.”
There is a line through us all, stringing from one to another across the field; Skeetah with his knees bent, his back a black ball, running toward the barn window. Me on a low rise, grass tufted up unevenly around me in bunches, lying like a snake in wait behind the tree stumps. Randall hidden in the woods behind me, crouching behind a large, low bush with leaves the size of my fingernails. And Big Henry and Junior, even farther back behind Randall. When I left them, Big Henry was bouncing back and forth on his feet, and Junior was squatting on the ground away from him, his feet splayed out in a Y, digging with a stick to raise the pine needles into peaked roofs.
The cows rip bunches of grass away, feed steadily, chewing and swallowing and yanking. The egrets flap, walk in small couples. One leaves its mate to wander over to me, pecking between each step so that his beak is another leg. It walks him closer. I hiss at it so it stops. It is whiter than the other egrets. Its feathers are soft, downy, as if it is younger, recently born; a fluffy, warm body beats under the down. I hiss again, and it is a flailing pillow, beating away. The cows ignore Skeetah as he runs by unless he brushes too close to their salad plate, and then they skitter away a few feet to settle. Skeetah crawls under the other edge of the fence and sprints to the window he showed me, a leaping shadow. His hand moves to his face and away again, and I know that he must be taking out the razor. He jumps and pulls himself up onto the window’s ledge, balancing with his feet braced against the wall, and he begins to fiddle with the window. My underarms feel flushed and swampy.
“What is he doing?” I talk myself into hurrying him. “Now, Skeet, do it.”