Salvage the Bones

Esch wakes up to hear Skeetah hammering; he is building kennels for China’s pups. Skeetah shows Esch the puppies and tells her, while musing over the miracle of life, something that he was never impressed by before, that “them puppies is real” (21).

Esch goes off looking for eggs hidden by their hens, in the way that she learned from her mother, “by touch, not by sight” (22). She likes to search for eggs because she “can wander off by [herself]…feel like the quiet and the wind” (22). While alone, she reflects on the first time she had sex, when she was 12. She said it was “Easy for [her] to do…it was easier to let [the boys] keep on touching [her] than [asking them] to stop…It was easier to keep quiet and take it than to give [them] an answer” (23).

She cooks the eggs she finds and takes a plate out to Sketch and he feeds them to China. He shows Esch how the puppies are nursing from China and Esch leaves to vomit. She feels like Skeet is watching her, and he “touches [her] back…how he touches China” (26).

Skeetah, Big Henry and Esch head into town to get some dog food. The store is packed with people gathering supplies for the hurricane. Skeetah wants the most expensive kind of dog food. Their dad bought the generic dog food one time and it was not good enough for China. Skeetah does odd jobs to earn extra money to buy the more expensive food for China. Esch steals a pregnancy test and they leave the store.

On their drive back, they come across a traffic accident; a woman is lying in the grass unconscious and another man is on a cell phone with 911. Big Henry offers to help and the 911 operator asks him to stay with the couple until help arrives. Skeetah protests because he needs to get back to China. She doesn’t know how to take care of the puppies yet and she’s hungry and nursing. He thinks that the distraught couple is lovers and this observation surprises Esch, because she thought the only thing he paid attention to was dogs.

When they return home, Esch retreats into the bathroom to take the pregnancy test. There are two lines, which signal that she’s pregnant. The chapter ends with her understanding “The terrible truth of what [she is and it] flares like a dry fall fire in [her] stomach, eating all the fallen pine needles. There is something there” (36).