“Kilo got it,” Rico says.
“Bullshit,” says Jerome.
“What you talking about? He had him,” says Manny.
“I don’t know what you saw, but it sure wasn’t Kilo winning,” says Marquise.
“Everybody saw Kilo got him,” says Rico’s friend wearing the white shoes, which have turned yellow-brown.
“Everybody didn’t see shit. It was even,” says Big Henry, and suddenly everyone is talking at once. Kilo had him. No, Boss had him. Nigga, you blind? No, you? All the boys argue. The dogs around them bark and roll in the pine and lick their wounds and wag their tails. They raise their wet noses to the moving wind.
Rico rises from wiping Kilo, who bleeds and smiles. Rico clips Kilo’s leash and leads his dog, who saunters with his head down, across the clearing to us. Rico is frowning at Skeetah, who still stands apart on the edge of the bowl, one finger a hair’s width above China’s head. She is so bright it is hard to look at her.
“So when I get my puppy?” Rico asks Skeetah.
“My dog ain’t lose,” says Jerome, clipping and standing.
“Ain’t no clear winner,” says Marquise.
“You hear everybody talking. It’s a draw,” Randall says, and he moves forward to stand next to Jerome, facing Rico. Rico sniffs and spits. I wish the wind would catch it, throw it back in his face or on his white, white shoes. Randall’s stick is across his shoulders and behind his neck, and his arms hang over it like a scarecrow’s. Big Henry shadows him, flanks Marquise. Manny starts walking across the clearing, the boy with the yellowed shoes behind him. They are all coming, all meeting in the middle. Like the dogs.
“I said”-Rico points his finger at Skeetah and China, who pants at his side-“where’s my puppy?” He walks toward Skeet and the boys, who have moved into a loose cell around Rico and Jerome. Marquise is bouncing on his toes, curling his hands. If I were a boy, I would fight like Marquise, I think.
“No,” says Jerome. “My dog didn’t lose. Most it is is a draw.”
“I gives a fuck what you say,” says Rico, his finger now swinging to Jerome, his eyes on Skeetah. “And I want the white one.”
“It’s a draw. It’s a tie.” Randall blocks Rico, stands in front of Skeetah. He rolls his shoulders, grabs the stick in one hand, swings it wide and holds it like a baseball bat. Everyone is drawing together in a knot, tighter and tighter, black against the day. “You can’t decide it.”
“Yeah,” Skeetah says. “We can.” He unhooks the dull heavy chain from China’s neck, smiles; she smiles with him.
How you going to fight her? Randall scream-whispered at Skeetah after Rico started laughing and led Kilo across the clearing to rub him down. She’s a mother! The boys and their dogs spread around the circle of the clearing; the knot loosened, frayed. And he’s a father, Skeetah said, motioning toward Kilo, and what fucking difference does it make? China nosed Skeetah’s side. Her titties, Randall said. Are for the puppies, and you don’t have to worry about that, Skeetah breathed. The puppies, Randall said, what about the puppies? We all fight, said Skeetah. Everybody. Now leave me the fuck alone so I can talk to my dog, he said.
“Randall?” Junior and Marquise’s little brother have scampered down from their mimosa tree. “Skeetah going to fight China?”
“Go back to your tree,” Randall says, “I mean it. Up.”
“Go ’head,” I tell Junior. “And don’t come down til it’s done.”
Junior picks up a stick, throws it at Marquise’s little brother, who wears a bright green shirt dusted with pink flowers from the tree and jean shorts with creases. His mother did that, I think.
“Don’t fall,” I say.
“All right,” Junior huffs, to let me know that I am getting on his nerves, and then they are running away.
Marquise is speaking loudly in the kind of voice that wants to be heard and saying that he thinks Rico is a bitch, his dog is a weak bitch, and hell naw Kilo didn’t win. Big Henry is shaking his head, rubbing his forehead over and over with his sweat rag. Jerome is agreeing with Marquise, loudly. I can see why they are cousins. Boss is lounging again at Jerome’s feet, bleeding faintly, tongue out, grinning again. Blood runs in his eye and he blinks. Kilo lolls on his back in the straw, curving into a C again and again. Randall is swinging his stick back and forth, again and again, like a golf club now, catching vines, ripping them down from their branches. He looks at me, his upper lip tight.
“Well?” Randall swings, and the stick flings up dirt and dry pine needles. “They’ll die. Fucking camp!” he spits.
Across the circle, Manny is watching us. When the dogs were fighting, rolling like the spokes around the wheel of the clearing, gnashing and struggling muscle to muscle, tooth to tooth, it was easy to narrow my vision, to avoid Manny. Manny’s eyebrows are together, his eyes are big; they almost look sorry. I tell myself I don’t care and imagine myself tall as Medea, wearing purple and green robes, bones and gold for jewelry. Even though it feels awkward, I pull my shoulders back when I walk toward Skeetah, who is on the edge of the clearing in a cluster of ground palms, kneeling, whispering into China’s ear, rubbing her so hard her skin slides in ripples with his hand. Skeetah smooths her, talks to her. Her fur looks silver in the shade. China is standing very still, staring across the clearing. Skeetah’s tongue darts out of his mouth and a razor I did not know he had in his cheek flips out and over 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.