“Don’t you need to get back to work?” I hooked my thumbs through my belt loops and yanked up my sagging jeans. Unlike my mother, I’d gained weight in the past year. I drank in excess, sleeping most nights in the shop. My belly sat over my pants and pushed them down my hips. Nothing fit right. Everything I owned felt uncomfortable.
“Marleen’s got the counter.”
Our reflections meshed into the scene in the glass: his weathered skin and dark, sunken eyes, my squat frame in the usual gear—old jeans that needed washing, linty flannel, and a round face so full of freckles that I still got carded at bars. We hovered ghostlike over the animals, more voyeur than even the wild boar.
Behind us, a bus pulled into the parking lot, transporting a load of retirees. “Looks like the Towers decided to come in a little early today,” I said.
Travis grunted and reluctantly turned to stare across the parking lot, where the bus was letting down the first of the elderly wheelchair occupants. “Your mother’s got a real talent, you know that?”
That’s not the way I would’ve described taxidermy propped to resemble fucking, but I let him have his say. My mother had always had a penchant for crafting. Domestic arts, my father called them. She embroidered, made her own clothes, threw pottery, scrapbooked. It was flower-arranging shit, the kind of stuff moms did because they needed activities to pass the time. I knew she liked art because my father mentioned something about it once while we were stuffing Canada geese. He mentioned how she’d wanted to sculpt, then shook his head and showed me the best way to place the birds’ wings so they didn’t look lopsided. It was just stuff she did. Nothing important. Nothing to take away from our time together.
Travis walked back over to the Dollar General and I went inside to assess the damage. The panther was easy to move, but I knew that I’d have to spend a while on its paws. Aside from facial reconstruction, feet were always the hardest to render. It looked as if my mother had actually yanked the cat straight from the branch. Bits of its fur were still adhered to the wood.
The mount was smoothed with a lathe to make a flat surface. When I turned it over, there they were, carved into the bottom: PTM. My finger followed the groove of my father’s initials, from the delicate swoop of the P to the tight peaks of the M. He’d pulled the branch from a larger limb that fell in our backyard after a thunderstorm. My father had an eye for scene and setting. He could make props out of anything: discarded pieces of furniture, wooden pallets, old window frames. He’d looked in that tangle of downed limbs and seen the perfect match, a mount so well suited that it made the cat look ready to pounce onto unsuspecting prey.
I brought him an abandoned sled the week before he died. It was ancient, the crackling red paint sloughing off in hunks, dangling runners spotted with rust. We had ducks in that week. Pristine white mallards with bright orange beaks and feet. I put the sled up on the metal countertop beside their bodies and asked if he thought it was a good match—that out-of-place pairing.
Perfect, he said. Exactly what I would’ve picked out.
Remembering how he’d left himself laid out on that same counter ruined the memory for me. I threw the branch off into the corner and knocked down a rack of miniature lacquered alligator skulls. They rattled around on the floor, spinning and knocking against each other. A few of them broke, dislodging teeth that scattered across the floor like uncooked rice.
I ignored that mess and focused on carefully removing the condoms from the ficus. My hands were coated in spermicidal lubricant. It took three strong washes to remove the gunk. I was nervous to look at the Bagot’s coat, sure my mother hadn’t been nearly as cautious. I left it propped in the window. The light threw pastel highlights on the work I’d done to its face and ears, making it look inquisitive and alert. It was the only good feeling I’d had all morning, staring at that goat and knowing that at least I hadn’t fucked that up.
In the interest of my back, I left the ficus where it stood. “Come on, buddy.” I tugged at the boar’s rump until it scraped backward toward me across the linoleum. “Let’s take a look at you.”
When I removed the binoculars from the boar’s tusks, the right end chipped off, sending white dust pillowing onto the floor.
We hadn’t had any new business in weeks, aside from assorted small fry and the occasional regular who dropped off a pity kill, but that wouldn’t pay the bills. Money problems were another legacy left to me by my father. I’d always thought he was so capable, that he’d handled everything with money to spare for things like groceries and car insurance. What I’d discovered was a black hole of debt. I’m sorry, he’d written, his pen digging wounds into the paper. I’m so sorry. I looked around at the mess piled up around the shop: the fly-ridden garbage, stacks of bills and trade magazines slipping over the counters and falling to the floor, mingled dust and hair dotting everything.
The bell clanged as the front door opened.
A woman stood in the doorway. Morning sun poured through the gap and shrouded her figure in shadow, but based on the nice clothes and shoes she wore, I didn’t think it was anyone I knew.
“What happened to the display?” She pointed at the window. The boar still sat there awkwardly with its broken tusk, like an uncomfortable patient in a dentist’s office.
“The what?”
She molded the air with her hands, as if trying to sculpt the image. “You know, the window scene. My friend Denise sent me a picture. She caught it on her jogging route this morning.”
“That wasn’t supposed to be up.”
“Why not?” She stepped precisely around the clutter on the floor. She wore patent leather pumps that made her legs look great and a professional business skirt with a pleat cut in the back. I wiped my hands on my jeans and assessed my work boots, which were stained with an accumulation of varnish and tanning preservatives.
“It was obscene,” I said. “My mother’s going through a rough time right now.”
The woman was a foot taller than me, lean and angular and handsome. She stopped next to the boar and kneeled beside it, assessing its face. One long finger probed the broken tusk. “I’m Lucinda Rex,” she said, cupping the animal’s face. “I run the gallery over on Morse.”
“Jessa Morton.” I poured myself a cup of the weak coffee that still sat in the bottom of the pot in order to give myself something to do with my hands, which were suddenly sweating.
“It’s fascinating stuff.” She looked up from where she crouched beside the boar. Her eyes were dark and thickly lashed. “You did these yourself?”
“Most of them. Some my father did.”
“They’re very lifelike.” She unfolded from the floor and continued standing beside the boar. Its broken tusk pressed into the smooth skin of her leg and left behind a pink scratch.
Lucinda was the kind of lady I liked to look at, but generally avoided because they were way too classy for me. My usual type was a messy woman, the kind of person who’d go out with me on a date and inevitably leave the bar with someone else. “Was there something you needed?”
“Yes. How much for this one?”
“How much?” I repeated, watching her pet the boar’s head. Her hands were slender and her fingers were very long. I imagined them touching my face, stroking a line across my collarbone. “How much.”