Western Taxidermy

by Barb Howard

  Later in the evening, I’m the first to the pit so I light the fire. Kathy and her kids come down for a visit. Kathy has a bottle of wine. A few of the other Happy Sands residents show up: the family from Alberta with four kids, the kissy young couple with a baby, two men who have just pulled up in their boat after a dusk fishing expedition. Mrs. Edwards comes down for a mingle too.

  “Tracey,” she says. “I’ve got your money.” She holds out a twenty-dollar bill. Flapping it around so everyone can see it in the firelight.

  “It’s actually sixty,” I say, taking the bill from her. “It’s always been sixty, and a summer deal at that.”

  “It’s not a deal if I feel worse after the massage.” She dangles two more twenties in front of me, one in each hand, and I grab them, stuff all the money into the back pocket of my shorts. I hope she still has a headache.

  Kathy fills a plastic cup with wine and hands it to me.

  “Makes the power-tripping go down easier,” she whispers.

  While Mrs. Edwards regales the group around the fire with moralistic anecdotes from her teaching career, Kathy and I finish off the wine. I pop back to my cabin to get another bottle.

  “C’mon out,” I say to Alistair and Geoff.

  “Maybe later,” Geoff says.

  “Oh c’mon,” I say. “People are starting to think I’m on holidays alone.”

  “Okay,” Alistair says, pushing himself out of the orange couch.

  “Yeah, you go this time, Al,” Geoff says, as though coming out with me is a smelly job to be staggered between the two of them.

  Alistair and I sit beside Kathy. I pour Alistair a little glass of wine, thinking maybe he feels in limbo, stuck between the child and adult world, and the wine will be a signal that he can be an adult for the moment.

  “Wouldn’t it be great if there were two massage therapists staying at Happy Sands?” Mrs. Edwards says loudly, to everyone around the fire. “Maybe someone who does active release.”

  “We all do active release,” I say.

  “I’m only saying,” Mrs. Edwards says, holding up her palms as though she is making an offering to the crowd, “that competition is never a bad thing.”

  Alistair is looking at me, eyes wide, the most alert I’ve seen him in days.

  “That’s nothing,” Kathy whispers to Alistair. “You should have seen how the old bag paid your mom earlier tonight.”

  Alistair looks at me expectantly. I shrug.

  “Do something,” he says.

  I take a drink of my wine. Alistair stands up, hands me his glass. I watch him walk out of the firelight and disappear into the dark. He wants me to do something? As if he’d be an authority on that. He’s probably going to lie down.

  I’m up early the next morning and head out for a swim before breakfast. I strap on my goggles, wade in, and, when the water is at my thighs, start swimming. The nights have been warm, as usual, and the water isn’t a shock. My system is to swim parallel to the shore until I reach one edge of Happy Sands, then swim in the other direction. This morning, I start with front crawl, then breaststroke, then, before I get to the backstroke, I hear a woman yelling. I slow to a tread and spot Mrs. Edwards.

  “Traceeee!”

  I dunk my head, swim along the bottom of the lake. She couldn’t yell like that if she still had a headache.

  “Traceeee!”

  I can even hear her underwater. I stand up.

  “The jockeys are gone,” Mrs. Edwards says.

  I look towards her cabin. No jockeys. Hallelujah.

  “I want them returned immediately,” she says, pointing to the empty spots beside her door.

  “Mrs. Edwards,” I say. “I didn’t take those jockeys.”

  “It was you. You and your holier-than-thou political correctness. I know what you’ve been saying.”

  “What?”

  “Check your American history, missy. Those jockeys are a tribute to Jocko Graves, a black boy who helped George Washington.”

  Sure. And Chiquita is a tribute to Carmen Miranda’s hat.

  When I get back to the cabin, Geoff and Alistair have arisen from their beds. They’re both sitting at the kitchen table, Geoff in his briefs, Alistair in his boxers. The cabin stinks of stale coffee, depression, and unshowered males.

  “Anyone want bacon and eggs?” I ask, pulling open the blinds to let in the light of another glorious Okanagan day.

  “No thanks,” Alistair says.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” Geoff says.

  They can’t help it, I think. Geoff is sick. Alistair is a teenager.

  No massages on Saturday. After my breakfast of bacon and eggs, I get my murder mystery book, ball cap, and sunscreen. I sit on the deck and reread the same paragraph three times. The thing is, I don’t even care who murdered whom. I’m just reading the book because it’s set in Thailand and I’ve always wanted to go there. Maybe I have a hangover. My stomach feels churny. I wish I had a bottle of water. I doze off for a while. It’s going to be a smoking hot day today. Hotter than Thailand. Drier.

  Eventually, I finish a chapter of my book. I unseal my sticky body from the chair and go inside. Alistair and Geoff look the same as ever.

  “I’m going to go cool off in the lake,” I say to the still room. Then I tiptoe across the burning hot sand to the beach.

  I am at the water’s edge, trying to stuff my hair through an elastic in a ponytail, when Alistair appears. “I’ll come,” he says, bone thin, in last year’s bathing suit.

  I offered to buy him a new one at the beginning of summer but he said no, no point. A far cry from last year, when he had to have two pairs of the latest board shorts. I guess that’s part of growing up, not getting caught in every trend. And offering to come for a dip with me, even if he’s not that keen. The fresh air and exercise will do him good.

  We swim to the raft and climb on. Kathy is there, wearing a red one-piece, lying face down. One of her shoulders rides higher than the other, same as it does when she lies on my massage table. I’ve given up trying to fix that when I work on her. Tara and Todd sit on the edge of the raft, dangling their legs, watching for fish. I join them.

  Alistair walks to the end of the diving board and stares into the water. He turns, looks at me. I blow him a kiss. He looks in the water again, gives me two thumbs up, and then blows two kisses back at me. It’s the most animated I’ve seen him all vacation. To top it off, he springs into the air and jackknifes into the water.

  The twins squeal at the spray from Alistair’s jump. The raft rocks in his wake. Todd runs to the end of the diving board. Stops. “Mom, should I go off like Alistair?” he asks.

  “See if I care,” Kathy says without raising her head.

  Kathy, I think, may have a bit of a hangover herself. The waves from Alistair’s jump don’t seem to be sitting well with her. Her fingers stiffen, clutch at the boards.

  I watch Alistair wade into shore, pick up my towel, rub his head, drop the towel back on the beach. As he walks to the cabin he stops a few times, jerks his head to one side as though trying to get water out of his ear. It is his dad’s gesture. My chest tightens at the similarity between father and son, at the power of genetics.

  Todd retreats from the diving board, comes back onto the raft.

  “Chicken,” Tara says, hopping up.

  “No, it was my idea,” Todd says, catching Tara’s arm as she steps on the diving board. Tara swats at him.

  “Stop it right now or I’ll kill you both,” Kathy says.

  Todd lets go of Tara’s arm, walks to the end of the board. He looks over the edge where the water has calmed since Alistair’s jackknife. “Mom,” he says, looking past his feet and into the water, “there’s a face down there.”

  “Mm?” Kathy says.

  “Mom,” Todd says more urgently. “Mom!”

  Kathy pushes herself up and walks over to the board.

  “Look,” Todd points down.

  “Let me see,” Tara says, running to the end of the
board ahead of her mother.

  “Oh,” Tara says. “I can see the eyes.”

  Kathy, halfway down the board, peers over the side.

  “I can’t see anything,” she says, first to the water, then to me with a shake of her head and an exasperated why-do-I-have kids? look.

  “Try from here,” Todd says.

  Kathy walks further down the diving board. With the three of them at the end, the board bows into the water. Kathy peers over her children’s shoulders.

  “There are two faces! It’s the jockeys!” Tara squeals. “Mrs. Edwards’ jockeys don’t know how to swim.” She pushes Todd off the end of the diving board. He screams like he’s been thrown into a pool of blood. Tara jumps in after him.

  Kathy tries to steady herself on the bouncing board, the rocking raft. She carefully turns, takes a few steps.

  “Is it really the jockeys?” I ask. I walk onto the board. The water is choppy from Tara and Todd splashing around. I can’t see the bottom of the lake.

  “Yep,” Kathy says, lying face down on the dock again.

  The next morning, as I grab a breath in my front crawl while swimming lengths, I see what appears to be a scuba diver from an early James Bond movie. In the tradition of a true frogman, he wears a thick one-piece suit, weighted shoes, and a full-face mask. As he walks mechanically from Mrs. Edwards’ cabin towards the water, a scrum of young children, including Todd and Tara, form around him. Hurrying along behind the group is Mrs. Edwards.

  “Clear the water!” she calls.

  I’m the only person in the water. I wade out to join the kids on the beach.

  The frogman stands, wide-legged, taking an overly dramatic pause at the water’s edge. With his gloved hand he signals the children and me and Mrs. Edwards to stay where we are. Then he walks into the water, going deeper and deeper. His legs go under, then his torso and the diving canister on his back, then his rubberized head. He completely disappears, except for a few air bubbles, which eventually appear in front of the raft.

  A few minutes later, the frogman’s head rises in the water. He’s coming out. The children are beside themselves with excitement because he has an armful of junk from the lake. He gives each child a souvenir. Tara gets a corroded bracelet. Todd gets a slime-filled Coke bottle.

  “My figurines?” Mrs. Edwards asks.

  The frogman stands for a moment as if he hasn’t heard her, which he probably hasn’t since his head is covered by a rubber hood. Mrs. Edwards holds her arm out as though holding a lantern, then she gestures, demonstrating the height of jockeys. The frogman nods, turns and walks back into the water. He returns with one porch jockey under each arm and lays them at Mrs. Edwards’ feet. He then bows to the audience, which now contains several adults along with the children. Everyone claps and cheers. One of the Albertans whistles.

  “Just a minute,” Mrs. Edwards says to the frogman, “I’ll get my purse.”

  I notice Kathy has joined the group; she’s laughing with Tara and Todd. It’s too bad Alistair and Geoff aren’t here. Even from inside the cabin they must have heard all the commotion. I guess they’re not up for commotion today.

  The porch jockeys lie on the beach. They are wet and sandy, but otherwise in good shape, despite their time at the bottom of the lake. I feel a sense of relief, which, at first, surprises me. And I feel deeply grateful to the frogman, and even to Mrs. Edwards, of all people, for bringing those two jockeys back to the surface.

  BREAKING THE MOULD

  If tonight’s dinner with the Norgay-Hillars is going to be a success, Margaret will have to do all the preparations herself. The hostess with the mostest. She can’t complain, she knew the job description when she married David fourteen years ago. In fact, she created the position herself by getting up that first morning in his apartment and coddling him an egg for breakfast. Yes, coddling. And now she’s about to coddle the Norgay-Hillars. Again. Every time the Norgay-Hillars phone and report that they are in town, recently returned from a physically exhausting vacation in the exotic locale of blah-blah, Margaret doesn’t know how to respond, how to end the call, other than to invite them to dinner. The pattern has been solidifying for more than a decade. The Norgay-Hillars never reciprocate. For all Margaret knows, the Norgay-Hillars live in a tent. A high-end, durable tent, mind you. Surely a tent that has proven itself on Everest.

  Margaret doesn’t have to look at the TV Guide to know about the Blue Jays game. To start with, David was humming after breakfast as he read the sports page. Humming tunelessly, Margaret thinks, like an inefficient refrigerator. Then he left his cereal bowl and coffee cup on the table. No time, apparently, to bus his own dishes. Now he’s in the shower—his usual ritual before settling in for several hours of televised baseball. Margaret is certain that David won’t give a thought, all day, to dinner, or the Norgay-Hillars.

  Tanya Norgay and Edmund Hillar. Even though they have kept their own surnames, Margaret thinks of them as the Norgay-Hillars, a hyphenated couple, tied together with a short section of climbing rope. They once told Margaret that a modern climbing rope could support a bungee-jumping Volkswagen. That is the sort of thing the Norgay-Hillars talk about.

  Tidy the kitchen first. Luckily, there are no children or pets to clean up after. That’s one thing Margaret and David have in common with the Norgay-Hillars. Child-free. Pet-free. What else is there in common? They all eat. Margaret and David enjoy—about as much as most married couples—their breakfasts and dinners together. But the Norgay-Hillars, Margaret thinks as she stacks dishes, like to eat frequently and heartily, and always together. With their leathery faces and zip-off pant legs, Margaret wouldn’t be surprised if the Norgay-Hillars carry a just-in-case stash of trail mix to share for the walk from one room to another. Not that Tanya and Edmund are fat from all their eating. No, they are far too active for that. They are muscular peas in a pod. Tough people with wool socks and lug sole boots.

  Margaret turns on the dishwasher and wipes the counter. She already has the dessert strudel in the fridge. She often makes a strudel for the Norgay-Hillars because it seems so appropriate, something a European hiker might eat after an expedition in the Alps. And for the entrée? Pork tenderloin, she decides. The Norgay-Hillars are carnivores. Pork should give the meal a more professional, less bloody finish than the beef she usually does up for them, especially once the tenderloin is sliced cross-grain alongside Gremolata tomatoes and salad. And her sourdough buns, of course. The Norgay-Hillars need their carbs.

  “I’m leaving,” Margaret calls as she gathers her purse and her mesh shopping bag that she bought in a craft store in Pincher Creek. She knows David can’t hear her over the shower, but she doesn’t care if he spends a few minutes discovering that she isn’t in the house. Why does he have to shower now when the tenderloin hasn’t even been picked up?

  “I’m leaving,” Margaret calls again, because it felt so good the first time.

  She walks quickly through their neighbourhood. It was a simple, straightforward neighbourhood when they moved in a decade ago. All the houses were similar three-bedroom bungalows with an occasional bay window thrown in for variety. Recently though, everything has become cluttered. Tall, narrow houses are infilling the larger lots, people are painting their houses in juvenile primary colours, and cars are parked along the curb so that the street never gets properly cleaned. Thankfully, the strip mall down the street has not changed. There is still a butcher shop and a convenience store.

  Selecting the pork tenderloin is easy. “How can I help you today?” the butcher asks in her soft, attentive voice. Margaret is always fascinated by two aspects of the butcher: first, her bleached blonde updo, built on top of her head like a plate of beef tournedos; and second, the way she genuinely seems to want to help. The butcher would be a desirable dinner guest, Margaret thinks.

  After she leaves the shop with her purchase, Margaret worries that she should have started marinating the meat last night. No matter, tenderloin will be refreshing for the Norgay-Hi
llars, who have come back from cycling (had they really said cycling?) in Nepal and probably haven’t had pork recently. Or maybe they have. They never talk about the food they eat on these trips but, rather, the height of the summit, the depth of the dive, the vertical slope skied, and the ensuing trauma to their bodies.

  For Margaret, a good holiday involves car touring, alone, in Alberta, and perhaps finding a coffee shop or tea room with a homemade soup and sandwich special and a few local crafts for sale. David doesn’t like to vacation at all, although he always seems interested in the Norgay-Hillars’ sporty escapades. When it comes to outings, there certainly is no climbing rope between Margaret and David. More like a glacial crevasse.

  Margaret enters the convenience store. She intends to pick up cranberry juice, since the Norgay-Hillars drink litres of the stuff. Margaret suspects they are prone to bladder infections, maybe from all that peeing in the wilderness, but it is not the type of information the Norgay-Hillars would share.

  In the store’s fridge, beside the drinks, Margaret notices a shelf of ready-to-cook baked goods. Why spend all afternoon mixing and kneading when she can buy her sourdough buns in a tube? The result won’t be as good as the sourdough she makes from scratch. Perfect. Then maybe everyone will realize that these dinners take effort.

  A teenage boy in a sleeveless T-shirt and with an Afro the size of a beach ball works the cash register. When Margaret reaches the counter, he closes the paperback he’s been reading and looks at her expectantly. “At your service,” he says. There, Margaret sighs to herself, he’d be an interesting dinner guest. A guest worthy of homemade sourdough buns.

  On the way home she reflects upon the first time she and David met the Norgay-Hillars. They were at the university Phys. Ed. ball—sitting together by chance since the tables had filled quickly. After several hours of beer and chatting, the Norgay-Hillars suggested they all go on a weekend canoe trip down the Kootenay River. David was up for it. You wouldn’t suspect it now, but before his admin job, David was an athlete like them. Margaret said she would be happy to stay home and read. David had a few beers in him and kept pestering, finally going as far as to say, “It wouldn’t hurt to break out of your mould for one weekend.”