Mostly Dead Things

by Kristen Arnett

  “Dear Jesus.” Travis breathed out reverently, his eyes huge. “He’s right there on top.”

  Mounted atop the buffalo’s back was a mannequin. It wore a tight suit made out of patent leather, showing off lean muscle in the thighs and chest. Almost the entire body was covered, aside from the face, which peeked ghostlike from the opening in the leather.

  It was my father. Wasn’t it always him? Sprigs of dusky gray hair showed just below the press of the black patent leather coating his skull. His mustache was full and bristling above a gentle smile. The glasses were missing, but it was unmistakably his face—the one that hung over me when he tucked me into bed at night. The eyes that squinted into narrow slits when he laughed. His full cheeks. Crooked nose. Unlike the buffalo, with its snide look of dripping lust, my father seemed nearly beatific. Peaceful, for once in his life.

  “He doesn’t have anything covering his ass,” Bastien said, laughing. “It’s just hanging out there for God and the world to see. Holy shit.”

  My mother stood there, admiring her work. She kneaded the buffalo’s coat, combing through it like dolls’ hair. My faux father’s knee glanced against her shoulder. She patted it absentmindedly. Even though I’d known what to expect—more so than anyone else in the house—it was still unnerving to view the piece in my childhood home. How many times growing up had we spent Thanksgiving dinners just this way: friends and relatives sitting on folding chairs, eating food everyone had prepared in our family’s kitchen, sharing stories we’d all heard a thousand times. Eating pie. Drinking too-sweet coffee. Here we were, back again, except my father, instead of lounging in his recliner, sat astride a buffalo in S&M gear. It was surreal to see him on display, to watch people we knew look at our family; watch them reassess everything they thought they knew about us.

  “That’s really something.” Vera set the plate down on the floor beside her chair and scrubbed at the strawberry juice with a napkin. “That’s just . . . really something.”

  My mother took a deep breath and smiled, hand still cupped around the figure’s knee. “I have a couple more things I’d like to show you all. But first, who’d like some more pie?”

  PROCYON LOTOR—COMMON RACCOON

  Gripping the pelt made me feel less like ripping out my own hair. I wanted to pull handfuls of it straight from the root, until the pain in my scalp forced me to stop thinking. Instead I dug mercilessly into the still-wet raccoon, gouging holes in the soft spots closest to the tail. Its skin hung limp, too big for its baby body.

  The skeletons sat beside me at the table next to a collection of felt and wire. Thread unspooled and dripped onto the floor. The bones were nearly ready for an acid bath, but I couldn’t stop shaking long enough to scrape free the last of the gristle. Flipping the pelt again, I looked at the places where my thumbs had torn angry divots into the snout. The baby was tiny. Its jaw still held milk teeth.

  Setting the raccoon down on the table next to its twin, I wiped a mixture of blood and sweat on my jeans. Then I pulled my braids from their elastics and took down my hair. Digging my fingers into it, I yanked and yanked, but it didn’t help. As usual, I felt nothing.

  Earlier:

  Milo said that when he hit the babies with his car, they’d just been sitting together in the middle of the road. Instead of leaving them there, he felt the old taxidermy impulse kick in. We couldn’t ever leave roadkill behind. Something inside us always made us stop to pick up dead things.

  Funny, right? Hit a dead animal and I immediately think of Dad. Don’t be wasteful, Son. Couldn’t help but bring them home. He’d carried them beneath his arm like a couple of stuffed toys.

  He laughed, but it was the flighty kind that verged on tears. Wiping his nose on his bare arm, he left behind a shiny trail of snot. I glanced inside the plastic bag and saw them curled up against each other. They were fully intact. They could have been sleeping.

  It was late and I was tired. You didn’t mean to. Don’t get upset.

  I know that! Milo’s eyes leaked steadily. They’d been bloodshot for weeks and he just let them drip, like he couldn’t even feel tears anymore. My own eyes were so dry they felt tacky with grit. He stood there looking shamefaced and I couldn’t even empathize. I just wanted to smack him.

  Brynn would’ve told him to suck it up. She’d have dug a finger in his side to try to make him laugh, even though he hated to be tickled. He sniffled again, and my fingers clenched on the bag’s handle, dead bodies rustling against the plastic. Most taxidermists didn’t even take on raccoons, and he should have known that. The threat of rabies was too great.

  There wasn’t time to clip the wheel, he said. They just looked so surprised.

  Don’t worry about it.

  It was hard to talk to my brother without yelling about everything he’d done wrong. Wasted tears over dead raccoons when he should’ve been doing anything to fix what was actually broken. All those years fighting to keep Brynn with me, bottling my feelings because I knew they made her flighty, and he’d dumped his emotions over her like a leaky roof. Yet there he sat, crying, knowing Brynn would never stick around for it.

  You did this to us, I thought, hating the stupid, woebegone look on his face. You did this, and you knew better.

  It was two o’clock in the morning and pitch-dark, no stars out to pinprick the sky. Lolee was curled on one end of my parents’ couch. She’d tried waiting up for Milo, her back rigid, like maybe if she sat up tall enough, she’d keep her eyes open. The news came on, then a movie I didn’t watch. There were car chases, gunshots, wrecks, and siren shrieks until my father came out and dialed the volume down to a low whimper. Lolee fell asleep with her head buried between the cushions. As the blue lights bounced off her pale, wheaty hair, I thought how strange it was to see her sleep the exact same way as Brynn, knowing that it might be the only way I’d ever see Brynn sleep again. Through her children.

  But back to the work.

  I finished my last beer and carted the raccoons out to the truck. Milo had fallen asleep in my father’s recliner, so I’d put Lolee to bed myself, knowing he’d never do it.

  The raccoon bodies were still warm, as if they might wake up and crawl out of the bag and onto my lap. There were no open wounds. Nothing stained the bag, no blood or fecal matter.

  They could’ve been mistaken for sleeping if it weren’t for their necks. Their skulls lolled, flopping back limply against their tiny backs. Nothing made an animal look less alive than tension leaked from the spine. It was why we worked so hard to pose our taxidermy just right. Too loose or cricked and you couldn’t help but imagine their death.

  I’d only ever seen it once on a human body.

  Before Lolee was born, we’d gone out to the lake as a family. It was just the four of us down at the water: Milo, four-year-old Bastien asleep on a towel, and me and Brynn splashing each other in the wake from the boats. When my brother picked Bastien up to take him to the shade, his head rolled all the way back, hanging limp over Milo’s arm. Brynn screamed and crossed the lakefront in wild strides, the towel around her waist flopping off into the water. When she grabbed him from Milo, I worried she might accidentally hurt the kid.

  Don’t you do that, she muttered into his neck. Don’t you ever, ever do that!

  Bewildered, Bastien clung to her and cried. They stayed like that for a long time. Her clutching him, his chubby kid legs dragging down her body. Her top had twisted to the side, nearly exposing her breasts. Milo tried to drape a towel around her shoulders and she turned away jerkily, baring her teeth.

  When she got like that, I knew from her body language to leave her alone, but Milo never knew when to quit. He was good at listening and empathizing, but he was always too close, too present. Sometimes Brynn needed space; she needed to feel bad and be by herself. In that moment with Bastien, he wanted to touch her even though she looked feral. When he dropped a hand onto her shoulder, she tensed, but let it rest. I gathered up our things while the three of them huddled together. She’d
needed that and I hadn’t known.

  Brynn liked the solidness of married life. She told me this constantly, pointing to her mother as an example of what she never wanted to be: thrice married, living in a trailer, working at the same shitty job for fourteen years to support kids she never spent time with. If my marriage doesn’t work out, I’m not sticking around. I’m not gonna be one of those women who stay in the same place all their life. It’s too fucking depressing.

  I knew her marriage would work out because I’d given her exactly what she wanted: a stable household, kids she hardly had to raise, and a normal husband who’d love her despite her flaws. Someone who was thoughtful, did romantic things like buy flowers for three-month anniversaries. A guy who’d listen and care about her hurts and share his own feelings. I’d given her someone I could trust. I knew he’d love her almost as much as I did. Almost.

  Where was I?

  I made my way through the dark store with practiced ease. I knew how many feet from the register to the shelving units on the opposite wall, knew the breadth between the boar’s tusks and the magazine rack. I knew where the bin of gator heads sat and where to walk to avoid knocking them over. When I flipped on the lights in the back, they produced the familiar buzzing that signaled peace to my brain.

  I set the grocery bag on the metal table and removed the raccoons. They lay pliant. Eyes liquid, hands still reaching for each other.

  Where’s your mother? I asked, picking up the one on the left. Stroking a finger down the length of its soft back. Where’s your kin?

  I busied myself with the prep work that usually calmed me: laying out the tools in neat, orderly rows. The coupled fleshers, the scraper. Small scalpels and sharp kitchen scissors I used to clip the tough bits of ligament. I washed my hands, waited for the water to warm up, and then washed them again. Pulled out my apron from the closet and settled it over my body like an afghan. Standing in front of the table again, I looked down at the raccoons and to my amazement found I couldn’t concentrate.

  I grabbed a six-pack from the fridge and set it on the metal prep tray before cracking one open. Then I picked up one of the scalpels, testing the blade against the ball of my thumb. Maybe they weren’t sharp enough. Pulling out the whetstone from the drawer below the sink, I sat down and methodically sharpened every blade. The steady scritch-scratching added to the cloudy fog the beer had already stewed in my brain. Once everything was sharpened and I’d finished my drink, there was nothing left to do but look at those two dead babies.

  Hands smaller than half-dollars. Soft, tufted ears. Their faces looked nearly human. I picked up the one on the left and turned it over to make the first long incision across its belly.

  Back, back.

  Whenever Brynn talked about leaving, she made it seem like a big production, like the plot to one of those stupid movies she liked on the Hallmark Channel. Never anything remotely believable. I’ll go to California and live next to the desert, she said, cutting crusts off the kids’ PB&Js. There’s still time for me to get into acting. Like, I could do character work or something. Only wear linen dresses.

  What about Milo? I asked, pushing a hunk of dirty hair behind her ear. You’re gonna abandon him and take the kids? Heartless. Beautiful and heartless.

  She laughed and kissed me. You know I’d never leave you guys. Who’d take care of me?

  It was true that we both knew what she wanted. What she liked. We were willing to give those things to her, no questions asked. Milo worked, brought home money, and listened to her when she was upset or hurting. We both took care of the kids without complaint, soothed her fears when she worried and fretted and hated herself. I gave her friendship and passion and provided an outlet for her anger. Milo was the one who could calm her, make her feel sane again. When I wanted to strangle her, he was there with a hug and a sweet, romantic gesture like a stuffed toy or some stupid candy she liked. When he was too sentimental, I let her be selfish. She could be kind and sweet around Milo and not feel vulnerable. She knew she could be mean and awful around me and I’d love her anyway.

  I’m too much for one person, she whispered to me once, biting the shell of my ear.

  But she didn’t go to California, and she didn’t take the kids. She left us all a little after lunch on a Tuesday. There was nothing special about it. No precursor to the event, no giant fight or ultimatum. It was like any other day.

  I thought about that a lot, after. How mundane it was. It was so unlike her to make it into nothing. Just a regular, average afternoon with lunch and work and home. I felt cheated.

  We all ate together. My father and I home from the shop, my mother heating bowls of chicken noodle soup in the microwave. Milo was working a late shift, and when he left, Brynn kissed him hard on the mouth and smacked him on the ass. She brought out a roll of paper towels and gave Lolee and Bastien their soup. When one of the kids spilled a Coke on the table, she didn’t even get upset. We cleaned the dishes together, and I stood outside with her on the porch while she smoked a cigarette. She wore an old dress, faded blue and sleeveless, and scuffed around in my brother’s oversized flip-flops. Then my father and I left to go back to the shop, and my mother ran to the store.

  I was only gone for twenty minutes. My mother shook her head, as if trying to calculate how Brynn could’ve gotten all her things together and left in such a goddamn hurry. I never thought she’d leave the kids there, not alone.

  But she did. She put Lolee down for a nap and turned on a movie for Bastien, one of the Disney ones they’d already watched a million times. Then she gathered most of her clothes, got in her car, and drove away. When my mother got back, Lolee was asleep and Bastien was still sitting on the couch. Neither knew where their mother had gone.

  Brynn didn’t come home that night, and she didn’t answer her phone. I called over and over again, sure that if I could talk to her for just a few seconds, she’d come back. The phone stopped ringing through after a couple of days. It just went straight to voicemail.

  Work. Always, there was work. If I could focus on that, I’d know where I was. I’d be safe.

  I scraped methodically at the raccoon skin but couldn’t disengage. I was so out of it I hadn’t stopped to put on gloves. Raw meat slid under my fingernails, lodged in the cuticles. The bones were slick with blood and hard to separate. Intestines had burst inside the first raccoon, smearing everything in shit and bits of digested food. Halfway through the first animal, my stomach roiled.

  The raccoon’s eyes were glossy. Its lashes folded over the lid in a charcoal fringe that made it look sweet and bashful. When I pressed down on the back to get better leverage through the rear legs, the lids slid down in a slow blink and opened up again. Brynn had always wanted a raccoon for a pet. She liked how wild they were—one second sweetly playing, the next hissing rabidly at you from a garbage can. Never tell if they’re gonna bite you or hold your hand, she said, showing me a video on her phone. We should get one, Jessa. Little tame raccoon we could take on walks around the neighborhood. Wouldn’t that be cute?

  I set the bones into a dissolving bath and walked straight into the bathroom. I stared at my reflection in the mirror over the sink, breathing in through my nose and hissing air out through my teeth. A bit of raccoon flesh dotted the toe of my boot. I leaned over the toilet and retched up all the things I’d eaten that night: chips and salsa, the beers.

  When I was done, I wiped the flesh off my shoe with a square of toilet paper and flushed it down with the rest. I slapped at my face until color came back into my cheeks. Then I cracked open another beer from the fridge and drank it, ignoring the rawness of my throat.

  I flipped the second body, setting it beside the newly stripped pelt of its brother. Taking the scalpel, I dug a track through the middle of its belly that opened into a deep well of gore. It was the worst trauma I’d ever seen. The raccoon’s entire system had been obliterated; but from the outside, it looked totally normal. Emptying the mess of it into the gut bucket, I started the whole
process over again.

  How to leave the past when it’s staring you in the face all the time? When it’s got its teeth dug into you like a rabid animal?

  After Brynn left, I thought about transitions a lot. The sameness, the dullness of everything. How nothing in my life ever felt like it was moving fast enough, but at the same time I couldn’t stand to leave the one place where Brynn had left me. The last place we’d loved each other.

  Limbo to me felt like remembering pain. The memory of slamming your fingers in a car door or smashing your littlest toe into a wall. It was the shivery feeling you got if you remembered ramming your shin into a desk. You could remember feelings over and over again and they never changed or got any better. They always hurt the same, and it seemed they always would.

  Where did Brynn go? Nobody knew, especially not Milo, who was never home the month before she disappeared. Working overtime at the dealership so they could afford to buy a house instead of throwing money away on rent. It should’ve been funny, Milo working so much though his whole life he’d done anything to avoid it, when in reality it was the work that allowed Brynn to slip away, unnoticed. If he’d stayed home with her, lost that job or just worked at the gas station, would she have ever left?

  I could barely stand to look at him. My whole life I’d loved my brother without fail, without question, but Brynn’s departure had severed our closeness. I’d go to my parents’ house to see the kids and he’d sit beside me on the couch, asking unanswerable questions:

  Have you heard anything?

  Do you think she’ll contact the kids?

  Doesn’t she love me?

  He cried, often. Talked about how happy they’d been, describing their relationship in minute detail, searching for the trigger that had blown up our lives. Their marriage. Their kids. The house they’d wanted to buy—furniture she’d already picked out from the rent-to-own place downtown. I couldn’t tell if I was angry at him for not anticipating her leaving or just mad at myself.