Mostly Dead Things

by Kristen Arnett

  Milo showed up fifteen minutes later. He was still wearing his suit, though it was considerably rumpled. The shadow of his incoming beard was so thick it looked fake, like something he’d put on as a prop.

  “You want some coffee?” I tossed some shit off the only other chair in the room. Milo threw himself down on the couch, and I perched on the edge of my seat. The apartment smelled like old food and rot. I hadn’t taken the garbage out in a couple of weeks, and there was the cloying, syrupy scent of meat gone rancid permeating the air.

  “I’d like a beer.”

  I hadn’t expected that response. “What time is it?” I asked. It couldn’t have been later than seven.

  “Morning. Barely.” He stretched out his legs until they nearly knocked over the coffee table. “And I don’t care. Just gimme a fucking beer.”

  I went into the kitchen and rolled my shoulders, trying to relax. There were a couple of Millers stuffed in the door beside some ancient bottles of salad dressing, a two-liter of flat Coke, and an expensive jar of fancy champagne mustard Lucinda had left behind. I grabbed the beers and wondered if she ever thought about that stupid mustard. It cost more than fifteen dollars a jar, mustard that made your mouth tingle when you slathered it on crackers. It was an awful waste of money, and I couldn’t help but be charmed by the fact that she’d buy something so pointlessly impractical.

  Scrounging around for some kind of snack to settle my stomach, I unearthed a bag of stale chips in the back of the cabinet and brought everything back out to the living room. Milo hadn’t turned on any of the lights. He lay flat on the sofa, legs extended over the arm. He’d tossed his shoes onto a pile of my dirty clothes.

  I handed him one of the beers and took a long pull of mine, emptying a third of it. A tension headache brewed behind my eyes. I set down my beer on the edge of the coffee table and unplaited my braid; it loosened incrementally, a painful kind of pleasure. My hair still smelled like shampoo. I draped it over my face and inhaled.

  “So you’re not even going to ask?”

  Milo stared up at the ceiling, as if he could see through the cheap speckled popcorn coating and into the steadily blueing sky above.

  My fervent prayer was that Donna had pulled through to cancel the event. Milo showing up seemed to confirm that possibility, though maybe it was wishful thinking on my part. One voicemail didn’t mean shit in the grand scheme of things. I thought of my mother with her painted head, standing next to the figure of my father she’d posed atop the water buffalo. The boar with its wounded sides, our family Christmas lights pouring and puddling on the ground like gore.

  “Worse than we thought?”

  He hummed, rubbing his cheek against a stained throw pillow. Lucinda had spilled a whole glass of wine on it and I’d never cleaned it up, so the fabric smelled like hell. I needed to throw it out.

  “Never even went inside. The whole place burned down.”

  I nearly upset the beer into my lap. “The fuck are you talking about?”

  “Yep.” He shook his head, pressed the bottle to his temple. “Huge. Place smelled like burnt rubber.”

  Maybe he was lying to make me feel better.

  Shrugging, he dug at the beer label with his thumbnail. “All of it, gone.”

  No, it couldn’t be true. It was too convenient. A massive fire, suddenly obliterating all of my problems. All of my family’s problems. Lucinda’s problems. Donna’s too.

  “How’d it happen?”

  “Who knows.” He was biting his lip, hard. The skin looked ready to break open. “Unless you have something you’d like to tell me.”

  I did not want to tell him anything. Definitely not about the phone call, and not about Bastien murdering any of the animals. “I’m not even gonna respond to that.”

  We sat in silence for a minute. Birds chirped away outside, annoying as hell. But I couldn’t let it go. It bugged me. My own brother, thinking I would commit arson. “You really think I did that?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  He dug the remote out from between the couch cushions and turned on the television. He muted it and surfed channels before stopping on a local news station. A reporter was on location at the gallery. Smoke drifted from the roof and wafted into the street. Yellow tape blocked traffic, orange cones set up to allow only news vans and fire trucks through. At the bottom of the screen, the ticker read: LOCAL GALLERY BURNS, ELECTRICAL FIRE SUSPECTED.

  “Was anybody hurt?” Everyone we knew was supposed to be at that opening. My mother, the kids, Lucinda. All the people from the neighborhood. I couldn’t imagine being trapped in a fire with all those taxidermied animals. The chemicals from their skins—the tanning fluids, the formaldehyde—would fill the air like a poisonous, smothering blanket.

  “I don’t know.” Milo covered his eyes. “I don’t think so. They didn’t find anybody in the building. Mom’s traumatized. Vera had to drive her home and give her a Xanax.”

  “Where are the kids?” The last time I’d seen Bastien, he’d been tallying the register. There was gel in his hair and I remembered thinking how dumb it looked, spiking up the front.

  “Lolee’s over at Kaitlyn’s. I haven’t seen Bastien.”

  My stomach burbled so I stuffed a handful of potato chips into my mouth to try to tamp down the acid. There was a subtle, acrid smell coming from beside me, and I realized smoke and chemicals were embedded in the fibers of his jacket.

  How had things gone wrong so quickly? Of all the things my father had wanted from me, the number one thing he’d stressed was everyone’s safety and security. Not their happiness, not their wants, but that word again—the one he’d used against himself. Need.

  What did my family need from me? What was it that I was supposed to give them?

  The news switched over to a weather report. I turned off the TV and straightened some clothes piled on the floor next to my foot. Then I took the beer from Milo’s slack hand and grabbed a semi-clean afghan from the closet in my bedroom. He was asleep before I’d even finished covering him up. Every wrinkle and vein around his eyes stood out, a burst blood vessel prominent in his nose.

  I stared down at Milo and understood I was looking at a stranger. This was a person I’d allowed to grow apart from me, someone I’d never tried to understand out of the context of our relationship as children. I’d expected my family to understand me as an adult but somehow thought they’d always stay the same—a family encased in the skin I’d stretched over them, ill-fitting and irregular.

  I called Bastien. He picked up after the second ring, and the relief I felt when I heard his voice was like a live thing scrabbling in my chest. I told him that he needed to get some animals into the shop immediately. He needed to find his sister and bring her there too. That I needed it all done by two that afternoon. When I hung up, I took a shower and put some clothes in the wash. I ate some toast. I brushed my hair.

  The coffee in the cabinet was so old I worried it might poison me, but the smell as the first drip landed in the dirty machine made my mouth water. I chugged three cups, drinking until my body turned jittery. Woke up my brother by setting a cup on the table closest to his face.

  He cracked a lid and peered up at me.

  “Get up and go to work.” I nudged the coffee in his direction until a little spilled over the lip. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Bastien brought a muskrat, a coyote, two red-and-yellow parrots, a possum, a couple of raccoons that looked like they’d been scraped directly off the pavement, mallards, squirrels, and another peacock that was jaw-dropping in its iridescent splendor. When I stroked its tail feathers, they fanned magnificently, a beautiful spot in the dim gray of the workroom.

  “What do you think?” He scratched at his chin and dug loose a zit. It sprouted blood and left a trail leaking down his neck.

  “Not enough, but it’s a start.” I tapped one of the squirrels with a gloved finger. It was quickly settling into rigor and was probably useless. I’d need him t
o go out and get us some more, but I was hesitant to send him out for anything live. Recently I’d noticed a pinched look to his face whenever he came back with something fresh. He didn’t like it as much as he pretended; he was just very good at hiding his feelings. Very Morton of him.

  Lolee snorted and rolled over on the cot, turning to face the wall. Bastien had picked her up at the bowling alley. She’d been hanging out at the snack bar with a senior from the high school, a boy with a rattail and a bottle-blue pickup truck with lightning bolts painted freehand on the sides. Bastien looked ready to strangle somebody, most likely Lolee, who kept growling at him whenever he walked too close to where she lay pouting.

  “So should we gut these? What’s first?”

  “We head over to the gallery. I want to see what we can salvage.”

  Bastien laughed. “That stuff is wrecked. Toasted crispy. No way you’re gonna be able to use any of it.”

  “We don’t have enough here. Not for what I’m thinking. We can use some of the pieces from the front of the shop, but we’re going to need more.”

  “I’ll go clean out the truck.”

  I pulled an apron out of the clean stack at the back of the shop, and on second thought, grabbed a couple more. Lolee was still facing the wall, so I slapped her on the butt. She yelped and turned over, frowning ferociously at me.

  “Wow, you look like your momma when you do that,” I said. “Stop acting like a little asshole. Let’s go get your grandma’s shit.”

  Lolee and I loaded up on cleaning supplies and grabbed a supersized box of Hefty bags, my tool kit, tarps, and some paper towel rolls. We threw everything in the back of the truck when Bastien pulled around.

  On the drive over, we rolled down the windows and listened to the afternoon traffic. None of us talked. We just sat and smelled the cool of fall finally coming on, everything in the air permeated by smoke. I thought about my mother and her art showcase. It was hard to imagine what she might be going through. I still found the work repugnant, but it had been hers. The one thing solely hers since my father died. To lose that must have felt catastrophic. So why did it take a catastrophe for me to recognize that fact? What had I thought was gonna happen when I’d decided to unleash hell?

  Yellow tape fluttered on the sidewalk in front of the gallery, but there were no police cars or fire trucks. We went right up to the front and tried the door, which was unlocked.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.” We picked up tarps and loaded them with supplies, carrying them with us into the building.

  A heavy odor of chemicals and char hung in the air. “Careful,” I said after Lolee walked across a bad piece of flooring. It creaked underfoot, giving the room a fun-house vibe. Standing water soaked the corners, full of wet ash. Lolee touched the wall and scowled at the black mess that came off on her hand, scrubbing it on her track shorts. I was glad to see she’d put on sneakers instead of her usual flip-flops. There were too many nails and sharp bits of debris that might scrape up bare feet.

  At the center of the room, Bastien and I crouched near the skeletal remains of the water buffalo. Most of its exterior had charred. The insides were melted, gleaming wire wrapped around the remaining bones. Enough solid work remained inside to leave the animal standing like a half-drowned thing; the kind of black, gunky slop that resembled prehistoric remains in the La Brea Tar Pits. The replica of my father in the patent leather suit had liquefied and dripped down the side of the buffalo. A black puddle stained the floor.

  Bastien dug a finger into the disintegrated fur. He wiped it off on his T-shirt. “Not sure we’ll be able to salvage anything from this wreck. I mean, it’s all pretty wet. Forget field prep. It’ll mildew. Fast.”

  Ceiling insulation had dropped and scattered between the pieces. It was difficult to tell burned building from taxidermy. An elk lay supine near the door, as if it had fallen trying to escape.

  “Just gather everything you think could work.” I stepped over the melted pile and looked around. “Even little pieces. Skins, mounts. Skulls, especially.”

  I avoided shards of bone and scrap metal as I crossed toward the back. Lolee found the carcass of a tiger hidden beneath a fallen chunk of drywall. The back half of it was burned crispy black, but the front was still a vibrant, wild orange. It had a face like it wanted to bite the world.

  “It smells bad.” She grimaced. “Like dead animal stank.”

  “It is dead animal. Put it with the others.”

  She dragged it across the floor, its oversized paws collecting gunk from the muck. I picked up bits of antler and stuffed them into a plastic bag before shouldering my way into the fallen doorway of the back office.

  All of Lucinda’s paperwork had dwindled down to kindling. Her pinup comics were gone, but there was no glass on the floor, no remnants of the frames. I put my palm against the wall, remembering the first time we’d kissed in the office. How her whole body had swallowed mine. It felt good. Safe. I’d hated that because it didn’t feel how I expected romance to feel: stressful and kind of blood-soaked, a constant power struggle.

  I salvaged a deer skull, an alligator skin, what might have been part of a flamingo. Beneath the remnants of the desk there were several layers of thick, clear tarp. When I lifted a corner, water ran down the side and poured along my jeans, dripping into the top of my boot. A metal box covered whatever was below. I didn’t remember seeing it before. It was very large and blocky, and it took up all the legroom beneath the desk. When I lifted the metal frame, I was confronted by the yellowed snarl of a carnivore. Kneeling there in the ashy mess, I dug my hands into the fur of a grizzly pelt.

  I yelled for Lolee and Bastien. When they came in, I gave them each a corner. “Keep it up high, way off the floor,” I said. The skin was heavy and very good quality. “I don’t want it dragging in all this shit.”

  “Still smells.” Lolee lifted hers high, higher than the two of us combined. The muscles in her biceps stuck out and trembled from the effort.

  “Smells better than you.” Bastien had trouble keeping his end over his waist. The bear’s head drooped, snout nearly landing in a clump of charred, gummy paperwork.

  “Goddamn it. Focus, please.”

  Outside smelled fresh and clean. Stars pinpricked the sky. Memories slammed into me. Being outside, the three of us. When it had still been good to be the three of us together.

  “Your dad and mom and I used to go to this place to watch shooting stars.” We put the bearskin into the back of the truck, alongside the garbage bags of stuff Lolee and Bastien had collected. “Paynes Prairie, just outside Gainesville.”

  “You could actually see them? Shooting stars?” Lolee petted the animal’s head. It looked like an angry teddy bear in the yellow glow of the streetlight.

  “Oh yeah. They’re crazy bright because it’s so far from city lights. We’d lie on the hood of your mom’s car and hang out for hours, just watching the sky drip. There were gators out there too, and they’d come out of the water to watch us watching the sky.”

  “Gross,” Lolee said, climbing into the truck. “I hate alligators. They look like dinosaurs.”

  “They’re not that bad.” Bastien tossed another bag of burnt parts on top. “How big were they, though? Big as here?”

  “Bigger, definitely.” I threw my tool kit on the floor of the front seat and hugged Lolee’s neck. She yawned and leaned into my arm. I smelled her smoky hair, pressed my cheek against it. “Meteor showers. If it was clear out, they rained down over us for hours.”

  I didn’t tell them how we drank cherry Slurpees mixed with vodka, ice and burn that left our mouths red and raw. Or how high we got, smoking right there on the hood, passing it to people on nearby cars. The stars were so low-hanging I imagined I could pluck them if I really wanted to.

  That last time we drove out, everything had felt fuzzy and wonderful. I’d fallen asleep in the back seat afterward and woken up halfway home, my hair tangled around the seat belt. Rubbed the crust
and sleep from my eyes. Saw Brynn and Milo holding hands, fingers laced together across the center console. She’d leaned over and put her head on his shoulder, smiling in a weird, soft way I’d never seen before.

  “There’s still a lot left to do.” I threw a clean tarp over the bear and lashed it with a bungee cord. “If we hurry, we can stop and get dinner.”

  URSUS ARCTOS—BROWN BEAR

  All the flowers had wilted in the heat, except for the silk ones. I stared at the cluster of silvery-gray asters in Brynn’s hair and fought off the urge to pick out the seed pearls glued along the faux leaves. There were so many bobby pins jammed in her scalp that the flowers would probably be stuck there permanently.

  You look so pretty, like an old-time movie star.

  My mother was curling her own hair, leaning over the mirror. Brynn sat on the cushioned stool in front of the vanity. Her dress wasn’t zipped all the way up the back, and her bra straps showed bright pink against the open triangle of tanned flesh.

  I look like a pig. A sweaty, gross pig.

  Vintage, my mother said, pulling the wand out of her hair and unraveling a curl. Smoke wafted from it. She’d already hair-sprayed the whole mess twice. Like Greta Garbo.

  Brynn and I were very hungover. She was slurping from a bottle of Coke, and every time she set it down, she picked it right back up again. There was a lot of dark liner around her punched-looking eyes, which only exacerbated the circles.

  My mother wore a dress she’d bought at Goodwill a few years prior. It sagged on her, khaki burlap belted in the middle with a green piece of ribbon. I had on my dirtiest pair of jeans and didn’t plan on changing anytime soon. They’d be lucky if I put on a bra.

  Thumps came from outside, where the band sound-checked their instruments. It wasn’t anybody decent, just a couple of Milo’s old high school buddies who still lived in town and played out of a garage on weekends. They covered classic eighties ballads. I thought I heard the strains of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” coming from Dustin’s guitar, but couldn’t be sure. Bastien was screaming somewhere in the house. He was two and hated strangers. We had a house full of people nobody knew.