ODOCOILEUS VIRGINIANUS— CUTANEOUS DEER FIBROMA
How we slice the skin:
Carefully, that’s a given. Cutting with precision sounds like the same thing, but it’s not. Consider the following: you’ve pared the flesh from a mango for a bowl of fruit salad. Have you done it thoughtfully, preserving the sweet yellow flesh, or have you done it with the clinical detachment of a surgeon?
There’s gotta be some tenderness. There’s gotta be some love.
Our father said this as he slid his knife into the coat of a white-tailed buck. It was unusual. He never let us close to the table while he worked.
You’ve gotta want it. He pointed to the throat, tapping lightly with a fingertip. Start below the cape, here. Like you’re unzipping a jacket.
Milo and I crowded at either side of the metal table as our father gently opened the body, his hands blue-gloved and steady, as if delivering a baby. We were nine and ten and treated the shop with its creatures like our personal toy store. Other kids had stuffed animals; we had preserved skinks and mounted bass and antlers coated with Varathane.
Gimme a little elbow room, guys.
We each stepped back half a foot, then moved in close a few seconds later. The buck was large, but I’d seen bigger. The deer had already been drained of its blood and lay limp, limbs sprawled like a dismantled puppet. It was a nine-pointer and the man who’d brought it to the shop was a regular, someone our father had over for beers in our living room.
Why the whole deer? This wasn’t just a mount—the entire animal would be processed: chest, rump, legs. I couldn’t imagine why someone would keep the whole thing as a trophy; most hunters left the remains to rot out in the woods after their field prep.
Our father’s eyes were bright with excitement. It was a new challenge for him, a way to put creativity into his work. He hummed under his breath. It made me want to sing too.
Inside was cool with the constant hum of central air, but still humid enough to draw sweat over my lip. The sign in front of the shop was just as big and yellow as it had been when our grandfather ran the place: MORTON’S TAXIDERMY (& MORE). The marquee promoted sales, whatever was in excess that week: pig ears, deer antlers, rabbit pelts.
Our father didn’t look at us while he spoke, just kept his voice at a low buzz that zinged in my brain. If it’s not done with some kind of feeling, the customers can tell. It won’t look real.
Buckets sat at our feet for any leftover innards the customers hadn’t disposed of already, white plastic tubs that had at one point housed pickles soaked in yellow brine. Some entrails we saved, some we didn’t, but we always made sure the floor stayed clean. The smell of bleach saturated my cloud of dark hair, even when my mother braided it out of the way.
Milo and I both wore old Publix bag-boy aprons, tied around our necks and backs in looping double knots. Though I was older by a year, Milo stood half a head taller than me—taller than anyone in the fourth grade. We leaned close to our father’s elbows, trying to catch the knife’s movements, until he cleared his throat and we both moved back again. He wore a black rubber apron that he’d rinse off in the back sink, slicking off the intestinal remnants of our daily autopsies with lemon-scented dish detergent. Our mother would wash ours and hang them in the front closet, next to our muddy sneakers and raincoats and the mothballed sweaters that we wore only once a year.
Jessa-Lynn, hold the neck steady. I moved to the front of the table and dug my hands into the fur until the spine and tendons compressed beneath my fingers. I fought the urge to massage deeper, to let my hands crawl spiderlike up the column and embrace the muzzle.
Now come here, son. It’s not gonna bite.
From behind the deer’s fuzzy cheek I watched my brother take the knife from my father, a double-sided scalpel. On the table beside it sat the half-moon of the fleshing blade he’d use to strip the wet hunks of flesh from the skin. Its curve caught the light, blinking silver under the fluorescent bulbs that lined the paneled ceiling.
Like this? Milo clutched the knife like he would a sharpened stick, something to gouge and mutilate. He fidgeted and nearly dropped his grip as he dug down into the deer hide.
Let me show you. Flex your wrist. Press steady, slow. Not too deep.
Prep meant our father would completely skin the buck and assess the skeleton. See where the shot penetrated and reconstruct the animal’s body, fortifying it with thick patches of wool and cotton padding and strong wiring to hold the pose. Most shops worked only off prefab mannequins and forms, but my father liked creating his own—even if it meant every piece took two weeks longer than it would at a competitor’s shop. Customers looking for specialty work were willing to pay for the extra labor, but most weren’t after the art my father wanted to make of their kills. It didn’t matter to Dad; he’d put in the time regardless. Even if it meant losing business.
He’s got a gristly patch here, push harder.
According to our father, customers wanted something commanding in the animal’s pose. Most were hunters, and if they chose to have their kill mounted, they wanted it larger than life, as if the animal might reanimate and attack. They wanted bigger, stronger, more muscled. Our job was to grant that wish, even if the person had shot the animal from behind as it nosed through a garbage can.
Milo sweat through the neck of his shirt. It was cool in the back of our shop, low sixties to keep the inevitable rot at bay, but my brother looked like he’d just run in from the playground. I’m not sure. Like this? He pulled up the knife—jagged, moving too quickly. There was a purring tear. Sorry, sorry!
Grunting, my father took my brother’s hand and guided it back down to the work. That’ll have to be repaired. You’ll have to stitch it up after we tan so the lines won’t show through crooked.
Sorries wouldn’t fix the coat. There would always be a scar, something out of place to mimic the fat bullet hole behind its tufted ear. Ripped pelts weren’t ideal, but there were ways to cover them: mud flecked up on an ankle or the fur combed over in a way that suggested muscle mass beneath the skin. I ran my thumbs down the buck’s neck to the softest place at the heart of its throat. Its white hair had grown in a clumped oval, framed by the thicker, slick stuff that coated its back—the dense coat that grew in for winter, even in Florida. Usually my father would brace the deer’s antlers in one of the clipped tracks that hung from the ceiling. We’d never been so involved in the process before; certainly never been allowed to use his tools or cut into any of the customers’ prized pelts.
There. Push hard, just below the fetlock. You gotta scoop along, like you’re pulling open canvas. Let the knife become an extension of your arm.
Our father’s cuts were seamless. He’d been doing the work for almost thirty years, alongside his own father, who’d died the year Milo was born. In pictures, our grandfather looked like a harder, grayer version of my father: tattooed and T-shirted and grizzled, the kind of man who smiled only when he needed to stretch his mouth. His picture was still up in the front of the shop, near the register. It sat between the mountain lion he’d shot and stuffed and a BEST OF CENTRAL FLORIDA TAXIDERMY plaque with years pinned underneath it dating back to 1968.
Milo’s blade slowed. They’d reached a blockage behind the back right leg. My father took the scalpel from my brother and squatted down to view the situation, lifting the carcass and turning it deftly. One hand pulled the skin taut while the other slid the knife below the lump that protruded from beneath the fur. He quickly sliced the flesh and poked the knife beneath, flicking the tip upward until the mass was exposed.