Skeetah and his friends are planning on hanging out in the woods later that night, and Esch spends the rest of the afternoon with him gathering supplies from the house and hunting squirrels in the woods.
Skeetah decides to separate the puppy from the rest of the litter and keep it comfortable until it dies. Skeetah tries to get China to feed the sick puppy, but she barks viciously and pushes it away. He leads Esch out to the shed where he points out one of China’s puppies, sick with parvo-a gastrointestinal virus which is highly contagious in dogs. When she wakes a second time, she reads from her mythology book for a while, studying the story of Jason and Medea she identifies with Medea, who has had her heart stolen by a man against her will.
The following morning, Esch wakes up feeling sick she goes into the bathroom and throws up, then climbs back into bed and sleeps some more. Once home, a disoriented Esch locks herself in the bathroom with the test, and discovers that she is indeed pregnant-the baby, she knows, is Manny’s. On the drive back home, Big Henry drives past a bleeding man and unconscious woman who have just been in a serious car accident he calls the police and waits with the couple until help arrives. At the grocery store, while Skeetah selects an expensive bag of food, Esch shoplifts a pregnancy test. Later in the afternoon, Big Henry (one of Skeetah and Esch’s eldest brother Randall’s friends) arrives to take them into town for dog food. At the sight of China’s swollen teats, Esch runs outside and vomits. Skeetah excitedly brings her into the shed out back to show her the puppies nursing. The next day, Skeetah builds a kennel for the puppies while Esch hunts for chicken eggs in the yard. Esch is obsessed with Greek mythology since reading a book about it in school, and thinks that the love between her and Manny is fated to be a love as great and terrible as that of Jason and Medea. At the end of the night Esch gets into bed and thinks about her crush, Manny, one of her brother’s friends whom she occasionally sleeps with. As the puppies begin coming into the world, some live and some die soon there are five puppies in all. Earlier that day, Daddy roused Esch and her siblings to warn them that a hurricane was on the way, and that preparations needed to begin-in the Mississippi Gulf town where Esch and her family live, hurricanes are serious business. Esch and Skeetah’s seven-year-old brother Junior is desperate to watch, and though they try to keep him away from the spectacle, their Daddy insists that Junior is old enough to see such things. It is her first litter, and the labor is difficult and gory. Fifteen-year-old Esch watches as her older brother Skeetah’s prize fighting dog, China, gives birth to a litter of puppies.
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