What Are You Wearing to Die?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  “She asks everybody that,” said the older child in a voice full of scorn. “Can we buy him some flowers, Mama?”

  “One pot from the two of you together.”

  Almost any single mother’s finances are tight, and Robin was still paying off that truck. If I’d been at the register, I’d have given her that last pot for free. Evelyn could have, too, and she knew it. She didn’t offer.

  “Come on, Anna Emily, let’s pick the very prettiest ones!” Two pairs of feet scampered toward the display at the front.

  While they were occupied, Evelyn asked, “How’s Trevor doing?”

  “Not good. I would have thought he’d get over Starr’s death by now, but he still hasn’t.”

  “I doubt he ever will. That child was his life. Last time I saw him, he looked like he was being eaten up inside.”

  “I know. I do what I can for him and Bradley, but—”

  “Look, Mama!” The girls clattered back.

  “I picked them, because I’m five,” the larger girl told Evelyn. “Anna Emily isn’t big enough to pick good yet. She’s just three.”

  Robin spoke sharply. “That’s enough chatter.” I agreed that her daughter was a chatterbox, but I hated to hear a mother use that tone with a child.

  Not that I hadn’t been overheard using it with my own a time or two…

  Evelyn concluded the sale and wrapped each pot in brown paper to keep it from messing up Robin’s car. That’s one of the services smaller merchants offer that big ones don’t, but it doesn’t bring in customers in droves.

  When the Parkers had gone, Evelyn called, “You can come out, Mac. They’ve gone.”

  “I wasn’t hiding,” I informed her with dignity. “I was counting clogs.”

  “Next time I’ll count clogs and you can wait on Miss Robin. Do you think she’s set her cap for Trevor?”

  I had a chance to evaluate that possibility the following Saturday.

  Bradley had spent the night with Cricket, and Ridd brought them Saturday morning to the Trick-or-Treat Morning thrown by the downtown merchants. Around eleven, Ridd mentioned to me that they needed to leave soon, because his family was going to the football game at Bethany’s college.

  “Why don’t I take Bradley home, since Trevor lives in the opposite direction?”

  Ridd gladly accepted.

  On the way, the child grew quieter and quieter.

  “You’re mighty silent back there,” I joked over my shoulder when we were about a mile from his place.

  His voice was so soft I almost couldn’t hear it. “I wish I could go to your house. My house isn’t any fun.” In my rearview mirror I saw that his eyes were wide and anxious.

  When we pulled in the drive, it looked like the yard hadn’t been mowed since Starr’s death. Oaks, poplars, and hickories had shed on the unkempt grass, while unopened newspapers lay on the leaves like discarded loaves of bread. I wondered why Trevor didn’t cancel his subscription, but figured he couldn’t even summon the will to do that.

  “Will your granddaddy be here?” I asked as I pulled in the drive.

  “He’ll be working.” Bradley struggled with his seat belt. “He’s always working. I’ll color at his desk.”

  “Shall I walk you in?” I had no idea what I’d find in a taxidermist’s shop, or whether I’d have the stomach for it, but if Bradley could stand it, surely I could.

  “Yes, please.” He tucked his hand into mine and we shuffled our feet in the leaves, making a satisfactory crunch and crinkle. It may be heresy for a woman in the lawn maintenance business to admit it, but I have a fondness for places where leaves have not been raked.

  Bradley pushed open the door, setting a bell overhead to jingling. “T-daddy? I’m home. Me-Mama brought me.”

  I followed him into a large room with a desk in the far corner and a number of what I presumed were samples of Trevor’s work and customer orders waiting to be picked up. Buck heads gazed down at me from all four walls. A largemouth bass affixed to a plaque was chasing realistic-looking minnows past water grasses. Turkey feathers hung in a fan over the front door. A member of the cat family lurked in the far corner. An elegant pheasant stood in tall grass under a glass case. On a low oak pedestal, a fox crouched in a circle of fake mud, contemplating a rabbit. The fake mud even had tiny paw prints, and not only did the fox look alive, but he had a grin and a gleam in his eye like he’d spotted dinner.

  “Hey, Bradley.” Trevor came through a door in the back wall and ruffled Bradley’s hair. In spite of what Robin and Evelyn had said, I had not imagined such a change in the man.

  His weight had melted off like chocolate in August. He wore a long-sleeved shirt open over a white T-shirt, and the outer shirt hung around him in folds. His jeans, cinched in by his belt, bunched around his body like a gathered skirt. His hair—once fluffy and electric—hung lank and untrimmed. His hair and beard had gone gray.

  “I appreciate your bringing Bradley.” Even suffering, Trevor didn’t lose his old courtesy or fondness for the child. He pulled the boy close to him as if drawing life from the warm little body.

  “No trouble at all.” I gestured toward the fox. “How do you get the eyes to look so real?”

  “Buy best quality.” He nodded toward a buck head. “Cheap deer eyes, for instance, don’t have a white rim, so they don’t look realistic. The eyes need to match the live animal’s eyes.” He jutted his beard toward the fox. “But that’s Robin’s work. She’s real good.”

  I spoke on impulse. “If it’s not off-limits, could I see what you all do? I’ve never been in a taxidermy shop.”

  He stepped aside and waved. “Sure, come on back. We knock off at one most Saturdays, anyway. Just let me get the boy settled first. Children are not allowed in the workroom. Too many chemicals and sharp objects.”

  He pulled open a drawer of the desk and took out a bedraggled coloring book and some well-used crayons. Bradley moved over to stroke the ratty-looking member of the cat family that had been banished to the darkest corner. “This is my favorite. I call him Bucky.”

  Trevor grimaced in embarrassment. “Poor Bucky came in for some restoration work, but his owner died.”

  “Pooh DuBose?”

  He nodded. “She was a fine shot. Got that lynx out west somewhere years and years ago. He’s past repair, and I’d throw him out, but Bradley loves that beast.” He tousled the child’s hair. “Okay, Bradley, I’m going to show the judge what T-daddy does, and then we’ll go get us some lunch.”

  I steeled myself for the sight and stench of blood, but what I noticed first was the scent of salt. Next, I noticed the cleanliness of the room. The concrete floor was as clean as any kitchen, and I did not see blood anywhere except on a large white table at the back of the room, where Robin, wearing rubber gloves, was skinning something on a sheet of plastic. To one side of her work space were the double doors I had seen from outside while I was at Missy’s.

  Trevor gestured toward what looked like a pile of stiff rugs in the middle of the floor. “Those are hides that have already been salted and dried to kill all the bacteria, and then rehydrated in a saltwater bath and air-dried in front of that fan to make them pliable. We use a wet tanning process, because we want the skin to draw up tight and show every muscle detail.”

  From the size of the pile, it looked like he wasn’t going to run out of work anytime soon.

  From the back, his two helpers looked exactly alike, for they were about the same size and both wore long-sleeved shirts with the tail hanging down over jeans. The main difference was that Robin wore her brown ponytail higher than Wylie wore his.

  Wylie sat at a high bench on one side of the workroom, plying a strange S-curved needle threaded with what looked like dental floss. He chewed on his tongue as he sewed something that looked like a piece of suede with a short hairy mane, like a zebra’s. His eyes smoldered as they looked up and met mine briefly. I wondered what I’d done to anger him, but then I remembered he was probably still grieving for
Starr, too, in his own volatile way.

  “He’s stitching up an elk someone got in Idaho back in September,” Trevor explained when Wylie didn’t speak.

  That must be the animal Missy and I had seen them unloading. I didn’t see any reason to mention that fact.

  “The needle has three sharp edges and the nylon thread is waxed, so they go through the hide more easily.” Trevor leaned over and murmured something too soft for me to hear. Wylie swore and started taking out some stitches. I saw then that the elk hide was wrong side out. What I had taken for a mane was simply the hair on the other side.

  “Do you cut the animal up the stomach?” I asked, ambling closer.

  “Along the back.” Wylie spoke curtly, annoyed at having to correct whatever Trevor had mentioned.

  “Robin is skinning a bobcat.” Trevor led me toward the back of the room, where she was meticulously pulling skin off a carcass, using a knife to cut the tissue that connected them. It was a homely, rather than gruesome, process, not unlike a cook skinning a chicken breast. As I watched, she carefully pulled one paw free. “The tail’s the hardest part,” she informed me.

  I saw Wylie give her a burning, angry look. Could he possibly be jealous of Robin’s skill? The telephone rang, and he answered it above his table. “It’s for you, Trevor. The sheriff.”

  If Buster was just getting around to telling him about the bat, I hated for Trevor to have to hear it.

  11

  Trevor excused himself and went to the front room.

  I moved closer to Wylie and spoke softly. “I’m real sorry about Starr. Evelyn told me you all had been dating.”

  He gave a short, rude laugh. “Not lately.”

  I would have stopped right there, except there was something that had been bothering me. “What did you mean at Trevor’s that night, about offering to lend her your truck? When was that?”

  “The Monday before they found her. She called here that morning saying she wanted to go up to Augusta, but she wasn’t sure the pile of junk she was driving would make it. I told her to come on by and borrow my truck. Trevor would have run me home.” He inched up one shoulder in a slight shrug. “Guess it’s a good thing for me she took the wrong one, huh? But not so good for Miss Robin over there. Not so good at all.” He snickered as he bent over his work. Our chat was over.

  I moved down toward Robin, who had been working steadily and ignoring the rest of us. “Looks like you’re working on a freezer in somebody’s kitchen.” I nodded at the white chest she was using for a table. “We used to have a freezer that looked a lot like that down at our big house, except yours is about three times its size.”

  “It is a freezer.” She started cutting the tissue around one eye socket. “We freeze the animals until we’re ready to put them in the salt water.”

  I gestured toward the pile of dry hides Trevor had already shown me. “Are they ready now to…” I stopped. I didn’t know what the next word was.

  Robin gave them a cursory glance, then resumed her work. “Next they go into an acid bath. After that, they’re neutralized with baking soda, and when that’s done, we use the fleshing machine over there”—she jerked her head in the direction of a big piece of equipment like a meat slicer—“to remove any membranes, fat, and muscle that remain, and to thin down the skin a bit—but not too thin. Finally, we put each hide in a tanning bath for twenty-four hours. When it’s done, we put it back in the freezer again until we’re ready to work it.”

  Robin was a natural teacher, and she knew her business. I remembered Trevor saying she had been experienced before he hired her. “Where did you learn all that?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve been doing this for a long time.”

  Considering that she wasn’t twenty-five yet, how long could it have been?

  Wylie shot her another angry look.

  Robin didn’t seem to notice. She picked up the bobcat again. It hung limp and glistening from her hand.

  “What do you do with the carcass?”

  She nodded toward a box of garbage bags. “Put it in the Dumpster to go to the landfill.”

  It wasn’t illegal, but I wondered if it ought to be. On the other hand, carcasses would decay. Not like plastic bags, which would be around for my great-great-great-grandchildren.

  “Now you know everything we know,” Trevor joked, coming back into the workroom. “You ready to come work for me, Judge?” In spite of his jovial words, his face was ashen. I wondered how soon this nightmare of getting information in dribbles would end.

  I tried to echo his words rather than his face. “Must be nice to work in jeans all day.” I moseyed over to peer up at some large white shapes hanging from the ceiling. Most were labeled with a number. A couple had names on them. “What are those?”

  “Forms. Each animal is unique, just like people. Take deer, for instance. Some have long snouts and some short, some have big heads, some small. We measure each one and order a form most like it in size and shape, but even then we have to work on the form to get the shape right—muscle it up a little, or take a bit off the snout—before we can mount the skin.”

  Wylie gave a bitter laugh. “They bring in Bambi and want it to look like Conan.”

  I was startled. “So you don’t actually stuff them? My granddaddy had a deer head on his wall that used to ooze something I presume was sawdust.”

  Trevor shook his head. “Nowadays we use foam, and glue the hide to the form.”

  I would have liked to ask about the pruning shears hanging on a Peg-Board at the back of the room along with a hair dryer and some wire cutters, but we heard a horn toot outside. When the doorbell jangled, Robin looked toward the front with a frown. “Is it already noon? I thought I’d be done with this before they got here.”

  “Mama? Mama!” That was the piercing voice of her older daughter. “We made dough and I made a long worm. Look!”

  She and her sister toed the sill of the doorway, obeying with obvious reluctance Trevor’s dictum that children were not allowed in the workroom. The big one held up a long piece of green dough that, with a good bit of imagination, might resemble an overfed snake.

  The little one edged a tentative toe over the sill, but at a frown from Trevor she drew it back. “I made a turtle.” She held out a green blob with five blobs attached at random.

  When I bent down to admire it, she said softly, “Can I go home with you?”

  Robin didn’t look up from where she was gently cutting the skin from around the bobcat’s second eye. “We’re going home in a little while, as soon as I finish this,” she said. “Go color with Bradley until I’m done.” They obeyed, obviously unhappy. As Robin bent back to her work, she asked Trevor over her shoulder, “You want me to take Bradley for a few hours? They can watch TV.”

  Maybe Evelyn was right. Was Robin taking care of Bradley, hoping to eventually take care of his grandfather?

  “That would be helpful. I could use the afternoon to work.” He gestured with his head toward a bench where a drab fish lay. “I promised Farrell I’d have that bass ready early next week, and I haven’t started painting it yet.” He added, to me, “I guess I’m getting old. Things seem to take longer than they used to.”

  “You paint it?” I peered down at the dried brown fish.

  “Have to, to make it look natural.” He waved toward a piece of cardboard attached to the wall where somebody had been practicing color combinations. “For hogs and bears, the paint hides the white where the form shows through, but we airbrush all the animals, to even out the color and make them more vibrant.”

  To keep them from looking dead was what he meant, but nobody in that room had mentioned death in my hearing. Apparently taxidermists treated death with as much respect—and avoidance—as undertakers did.

  Bradley appeared in the door, the girls in tow. “Can we go play in the sandbox?”

  “Yay!” The larger girl clapped her hands, flattening her snake. “Can we, Mama?”

  “I’m only going to be
a minute,” Robin objected. “No point in dragging off the cover.”

  “Let them go.” Trevor waved one hand. “I’ll put the cover back on when you’ve gone.”

  Before Robin nodded, her older child was halfway to the front door, dropping her snake on the floor without a thought. The little one put her hand out to me. “Come see the sandbox.” She’d left her turtle somewhere, but her palm was still sticky from the dough.

  Robin looked up and frowned at the child. “Don’t bother the judge, Anna Emily. I won’t be more than a few minutes.”

  “It’s okay.” I didn’t want to disappoint the tug of that little hand. “I’m a big fan of sandboxes. I’ll inspect this one until you’re ready to go. Thanks for the tour of the business.”

  The two older children were already hauling a plywood cover off a big wooden sandbox made from railroad crossties. It looked old. I wondered if it used to be Starr’s. If so, Bradley and Robin’s older girl had inherited it with gusto.

  As we walked across the leaf-strewn yard toward it, Anna Emily said with a shy smile, “I like you. Can I go home with you?”

  “You have to go to your house,” I reminded her. “Your mother is cooking lunch.”

  “Mama doesn’t cook,” she said in a mournful voice. “Just with Uncle Billy. After we go to bed.”

  I had learned years before to take anything children say about their parents with a grain of salt. At eight, our son Walker told his Sunday school teacher with an earnest face that his mama whaled the life out of him if he didn’t do his homework. I had not paddled that child since he was five.

  Anna Emily’s older sister, however, was not so tolerant. “Anna Emily!” She propped both fists on her skinny hips. “I’m gonna tell. You aren’t supposed to say that. You know good and well Mama cooks. She fixes applesauce and peanut butter.” I could hear Robin’s exasperated voice in the child’s.

  Having never been fond of cooking, I could appreciate that Robin probably made simple meals after a day at work, but neither of her girls looked like they were being raised on peanut butter and applesauce. Anna Emily had bright pink cheeks beneath her freckles.