Salvage the Bones Read Online Free PDF Page B

even though he’s only eighteen.
    â€œBig boy like you, I know you know all about that.”
    Daddy is leaning into Big Henry’s bulk so that he is cloaked in his shadow, and Daddy looks like he doesn’t know whether he wants to poke or punch.
    â€œThem women like to have something to hold on to.”
    Daddy elbows him in the ribs; he has his head down and he’s grinning. This is the way he tells a joke.
    â€œCost me some women back in the day, not having nothing to me.”
    Daddy rubs his hand over his stomach, which I know is flat under his shirt, lean and dark with a thin layer of skin and fat that hangs over his muscle like a light T-shirt. With all that beer, you’d think he’d have a bowling-ball gut, but he doesn’t.
    â€œUsed to tell me, ‘Claude, I need a little more man than you. Need something warm. Don’t want no bony hard legs up on me at night.’ ”
    Big Henry nods like he’s agreeing. Opens his eyes like Daddy’s interesting.
    â€œUsed to say, ‘You know how them big men is.’ ”
    Big Henry hands Daddy the beer he’d been sipping on and slumps over the top of Daddy’s truck. The last of the jugs from under the house catches the light; the soap and water look like diamonds inside.
    â€œWhat y’all did to get ready for them hurricanes today, Mr. Claude?” Big Henry asks. He scans the yard for Randall, for Skeetah, and when he doesn’t see them, snags on me and, resigned, shrugs.
    When we were little, Big Henry used to let me ride on his back in the deep part of the pit, the part that was lined with oyster shells. He used to carry me so my feet wouldn’t get cut, even though his feet were bare as mine. They never bled. He hasn’t touched me since then. I thought that one day we would have sex, but he never came for me that way; since the boys always came for me, I never tried to have sex with him. He’s always around, moving in that big careful way of his. He bounces when he walks, sways side to side on his tiptoes. He swings his arms like he’s wading through water. He holds his beer bottles with three fingers.
    â€œI’m going for dog food. Want to come?”
    Skeetah asks me this as he rounds the side of the house; Big Henry looks relieved. Skeetah hits the shed, makes China yell. The jugs sit still in the dirt, but the water won’t stop shimmering and swishing inside. Big Henry cranks his car, and we ride.
    Most times when we go to the grocery store in St. Catherine, cars fill half the parking lot. Now the whole lot is full, and we have to ride around for ten minutes waiting on a spot. The heat beats at the car like Mardi Gras parade-goers looking for a ride. It slinks in the seams of the windows like beads. Big Henry’s air-conditioning brushes across my face and chest, light as cotton candy, and melts like the heat is a tongue. The walk across the parking lot is slow and long, even though we have a decent spot that’s almost in the middle; Skeetah walks so quickly, he leaves me dragging through the heat, but Big Henry lingers, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.
    Inside, I follow Big Henry, who follows Skeetah, who bumps past carts pushed by ladies with feathery-light hair and freckled forearms pulling tall men wearing wraparound sunglasses. The rich ones wear khakis and yacht club shirts, the others wear camouflage and deer prints.
    â€œWe need water and batteries and …,” one woman lists as she swerves her buggy away down an aisle, a teenage boy with a mop of big curls loping along in her wake. He is not listening; he looks over Skeetah and Big Henry, and away.
    Skeetah ignores everyone like they’re pits of inferior breeding. Big Henry dances past, mumbles “Sorry” and “ ’Scuse me.” I am small, dark: invisible. I could be Eurydice walking through the underworld to dissolve, unseen.
    There are only a dozen or so different kinds