Hummingbird Salamander

by Jeff VanderMeer

  Slowly, I made my way through the junk to the corner devoted to taxidermy. A desiccated bobcat. A fox with a strange gleam to the eyes and a sparkly lacquer to the fur that I realized after a moment meant someone had petted its back so much the fur had changed texture. Deer antlers. Spent shotgun shells. I guessed the best stuff was behind the back counter.

  Books on taxidermy and related subjects, too. I picked one up as cover, pretended to read it. Then actually began to read it. Oddly Enough: From Animal Land to Furtown, from the 1930s. Even a glance told me it was perverse, wrong, possibly evil. Something an anthropologist studying cultural bias might study.

  “We, as the fur bearers of the world, in order to be enthusiastically welcomed to your fur industry, must live a determined double life. First, we exist as ‘an animal’ following the vigorous paths planned by nature. When we depart from this existence as ambassadors of the wild, we will then live our second glorious and commercial being … a life as a fur.”

  Did the hummingbird on a pedestal exist separate from this philosophy? Silvina would say it didn’t. That “fur” was a separate religion from “taxidermy.” Yet, somehow, that paragraph made what had been done to the hummingbird more grotesque.

  “Transpose what is done to an animal onto a human,” Silvina said in the video. “If it is disgusting, wrong, unethical, immoral, then you know what the truth is.”

  I took the book to the back, to the guarded high counter. The man behind the counter had craggy white hair and a ruddy, deeply lined face, wore a plaid lumberjack shirt and jeans, with a vest over the shirt, in an unironic way. He was almost my height, and, if I’d had to guess, mid-sixties, and had spent most of his life outdoors. He had a sleepy left eye.

  “You’re Carlton Fusk,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s me. The one and only. That all?” he asked in the gruff voice I expected. Smoker, or ex-smoker.

  “No.”

  “What else?”

  “I have a question about taxidermy.”

  “The book’s about fur.”

  “The question’s about taxidermy.”

  “Sure. I know something about taxidermy.” Said like we were somewhere in Upstate New York and I was a clueless tourist.

  “You ever seen something like this?”

  I unfolded a color printout of a photograph of the hummingbird, from the internet café.

  Fusk took the photo from me without breaking eye contact. Then looked down with caution, as if I might be dangerous. When he was done looking, he let it fall from his hand onto the counter. For some reason, I’d thought he wouldn’t give it back.

  “And there’s this,” I said, pulling out a photo of the “R.S.” on the bottom of the hummingbird’s stand.

  A flicker of interest? Maybe.

  I pulled out my photograph of Langer. “And what about him?”

  Fusk’s bad eye widened. Then went slack again.

  “You a cop?” Fusk asked.

  “No. Detective. Private eye.” I said it without thinking. I couldn’t tell you why, except it seemed like the truth. Pursuing a mystery made me a detective.

  “Identification?” Fusk asked.

  “I don’t have to give you that.”

  “Then I don’t have to answer your questions.”

  I sighed, like this scene had played out before. Even if my heart beat fast.

  “I’m out-of-state. You don’t have to answer, but then I’ll liaise with the police department and maybe you’ll have to talk to them instead.”

  A huge adrenaline rush as I said the words. Overwhelming. I had to steady myself, as if a wave was about to knock me over.

  Fusk considered that. I’d never play poker against him, but something shifted in his expression. I’d shifted it with my threat.

  Then he turned to the shelves behind him, found a book, turned back to me.

  It was a second copy of Furtown. In much better condition.

  “The one you’ve got isn’t a first edition,” he said. “This one is. It’s five hundred bucks, not thirty. You should really get this one.”

  I started to argue that I didn’t care what edition I had, then understood.

  “Sure.”

  Five hundred dollars. Why didn’t I hesitate? Why didn’t I walk away? Because: I had five hundred dollars on me. In fact, I had a thousand. Just in case. I hadn’t known what I would need or when I would need it. Withdrawn from the bank before I’d left the West Coast.

  I counted out the bills on the counter, let him pick them up. Then he slid the book across to me, took the other one back. I wondered if Furtown had been a big seller back in the day.

  “After, I never see you again,” Fusk said.

  “Sure.” Easy enough to say.

  “Okay. But I’m taking a break. You like coffee?”

  He put the closed sign up, led me through the back and up some stairs and into a second-floor living room with a wrought iron balcony looking out on a closed-in courtyard full of unexpected fruit trees. Somewhere beyond the living room was a little bedroom and a bathroom. I realized later I had followed him like “private eye” was some kind of armor against calamity.

  He brought two lawn chairs onto the balcony. There was no coffee.

  I held out the photos again. “So, what can you tell me?”

  But Fusk didn’t answer. He’d taken a gun out from under an overturned pot next to his chair. So casual. Like he’d done it a lot over the years. And yet beatific in its purpose, that action. I saw a light in his eyes that showed me how he’d been much younger.

  The adrenaline left me, and I felt so ancient and so weary. My mind didn’t want to focus. All I saw was the gun. Heavy and dangerous-looking, with six chambers. Old, but clean and well-maintained.

  He could have shot me. I would have done nothing. That’s how helpless I was back then.

  “Listen to me and really hear me,” Fusk said. “Understand this: I don’t know who you think you are, but if I ever see you again, I will use this thing. Get out of here and never come back. Don’t ask questions. Don’t show people these photographs. I’d say take another case, except you’re not a private eye.”

  I didn’t argue, like a switch had clicked off.

  Stumbled out of my seat and stumbled back into the living room and stumbled down the stairs and stumbled out into the shop and then through the front door, out into the light of the street.

  I didn’t stop until I had walked another four blocks and had no real idea where I was, caught my breath, tried to slow everything down.

  A coffee shop looked like a kind of haven. I sat down heavy in a seat, ignoring the frown of the barista cleaning tables.

  I kept picking up my regular phone to call the police. Putting it back down again on the table. I ordered a Red Eye. I drank it quick, even though it scalded my throat. Should I call the police? And tell them what? That Fusk had threatened me after I impersonated a detective? What kind of offense was that in this state? How would this tip my hand to people who might be watching? To whoever had tracked my search on Larry’s computer.

  Had I given my real name? I couldn’t remember. Had I done anything that Fusk could trace back to me? Didn’t think so. Couldn’t be sure.

  I was still clutching the book about fur. Even though the words were meaningless now.

  [34]

  A layover in Chicago on the way back, because of bad weather in our path. The kind you can’t fly through. Also, once we landed, some mechanical issue. So we would have to change planes. Another delay. Well, that was the way of it with miracles like flight. The magic had become tawdry, tattered, excruciating.

  By the time I had had a couple drinks in an airport bar, my panic had faded and the encounter with Fusk taken on an almost daring, swashbuckling tinge. Memory fucks with you when it tries to protect you. A third bourbon and Coke, and part of me thought I’d been calm when Fusk pulled the gun. That I’d expected something like that. That I could’ve subdued him in close quarters if I’d needed to, with an M
MA or wrestling move. Cheers—have another drink.

  Fusk, I decided, had been the kind of encounter I’d been seeking at the hotel bar. The purest distillation of it. The kind that’s dangerous but not dangerous. The gun probably hadn’t even been loaded. I’d tell my grandchildren about it someday. How foolish their grandmother had been.

  Which made guilt well up, and I texted my daughter. Direct, not through my husband.

  >>Headed home, kumquat. How’re you? School good? Dad picking you up on time?

  Nothing for several minutes. Then:

  >>Not much. It’s all cool. Dad’s out in the yard a lot. Patrolling. See you soon.

  Smiley emoticon back. I knew not to push it. Didn’t think to ask why my husband was out in the yard. “Patrolling.” He hated yardwork. We had someone for that.

  Two hours to kill and I felt brave enough for risk again. Time to analyze Vilcapampa property holdings. Had to get ahead of this thing. Had to carve a path forward.

  Didn’t I?

  * * *

  The Vilcapampa “umbrella,” or “octopus,” looked straightforward because it was so crude at times. A classic autocratic, top-down, family-run company that happened to produce net revenues of just under one trillion dollars a year. Blunt, in how organized, at least from public records. The senior Vilcapampa served not just as the founder and owner but also as CEO. The CFO was his younger brother. The ruling board was riddled through with other relatives. Anywhere Vilcapampa could promote from within the family, he did. This had clearly hurt them in some areas, as the expertise of those appointed didn’t match up with the responsibilities.

  Wince-inducing: there was even a Vilcapampa Institute in Peru that traded off the faux indigenous connection to “help” traditionally oppressed Indian groups in the mountains, near ancient Incan ruins. Just enough distance from Argentina that the institute could, with apparent impunity, help launder monies from the less savory of their side businesses, as far as I could tell.

  In addition to the main corporation and its subsidiaries, there were, as always, a flurry of shell companies and investments in other corporations. (Incorp Corp, Inc., was my favorite.) Which was where the crude and the blunt became a knot.

  I wasn’t yet ready to undo the knot. I just needed to know what company names Vilcapampa had operated under in the Pacific Northwest, to get a sense of other physical locations that might hold the clue to a hummingbird, a salamander.

  The easiest thing was to locate the properties Silvina herself held or leased. What was in her name? The storage palace, until recently, because so unprofitable, no doubt. The history there was fraught. Her father had basically bought the whole mountain, fenced off most of it, and had briefly intended to continue an abandoned mining operation near the summit. Except permits had been difficult to get due to community concerns, and he’d withdrawn from the effort after a year or two. Contented himself with some halfhearted logging.

  Which fit a pattern: whenever Vilcapampa Senior seemed on the verge of being in the public eye, the shell companies would retreat and he would move on to something else. But he rarely parted with the properties, clearly preferring they lie derelict than be sold to anyone else. In 2007, perhaps at Silvina’s initiative, a lot of money had been sunk into trying to create a second storage palace farther up the mountain, and they’d even broken ground. Perhaps to salvage the initial investment. But then the 2008 recession hit, and Silvina or her father had decided to abandon the idea. Leaving just a storage unit business in the foothills that dipped in and out of the red. Tax shelter?

  Shortly thereafter, it felt as if her father had lost his last scrap of patience with Silvina. Or he’d discovered the money she’d stolen from him. I couldn’t tell which came first. Or if the company had recovered the funds. Nor even how much money Silvina had stolen. It must have been a lot, because from then on she had to provide for herself.

  I also found an apartment that she’d owned until a year before and then sold. Occupied. Had been rented by Silvina to a series of what looked like college students. No clues there.

  But: where had Silvina lived while surveilling me? No record of it.

  After another drink, another thought: that she could have been watching the house. That she could have known all kinds of facts about my family.

  The veering, the drift—it told me I was rattled. I bore down, there at the bar, holding court with my fourth drink. Ten in the end. Ten companies I could find with connections to Vilcapampa. Thirty properties. I scanned the lists trying to visualize the parts of town. The neighborhoods. The purpose of each. Some were leased as gas stations or hardware stores. Others as restaurants. A fair amount of commercial property. But also apartment complexes.

  It wasn’t until I wrote the addresses down, until I looked at the full list, that it hit me.

  The numbers. From behind the hummingbird’s eyes: 23 and 51.

  And right in the middle of Silvina’s properties: 3215 Avalon Boulevard.

  That had to mean something.

  Registered to a tenant that didn’t exist. Alexander Humboldt. Clever, but not clever.

  It wasn’t that I suddenly became sober. It was that I was exuberantly, profoundly drunk. Maybe because it made me forget about Fusk. Maybe because it felt manageable: checking out an apartment in my hometown.

  I felt like I’d won the lottery.

  But, really, it was what Silvina wanted me to find.

  THE DAMAGE

  [35]

  I knew the risk in giving myself over to Silvina’s mystery. I did, on some level, know. But on another level, this drift felt more like depth to me. I wasn’t drifting; I was being pulled deeper, and, with each step I took, I learned more, and thought that just around the corner … it would end. I would have the answers and, tug of disappointment, life would return to normal.

  Knowledge was power, right? That’s what Alex liked to say, because he liked to say simple things. But the truth is, I enjoyed the sensation as much as I enjoyed badly lit bars and unfamiliar men, as if losing your balance was a kind of pleasure. That sweet retreat from control and yet you knew someone was in control.

  Because Silvina was always there, far ahead of me, even though she was dead. Beckoning me on, and me too stupid, or too smart, not to follow.

  As the plane landed and I turned my phone back on, I remember thinking: what world was I returning to? Would this be the time something had happened to make it unrecognizable?

  On the familiar route from the airport to the house, the weather had turned warm and humid even though it was winter. In a day or two, it would freeze again. Bees would die in confusion. The plants that had bloomed out of season would fade and decay. Alerts popping up that a pandemic raged in far-distant places.

  Almost dusk, but enough of that dark gold, late-afternoon light. Staring once again out the window, observer in my own life, I saw the holding pond around the corner from home. The crosshatched branches of a beaver’s lodge, there, where the creek became something human-made.

  I hadn’t seen it before, the pond or the lodge. Not really. It had registered as dead branches, just something clogging up the system. And maybe this time, too, for the last time. I can’t recall if I passed that way again; it wasn’t the usual route. But that time or the next, I saw it as a home. As someone’s home. Something’s home. Right in the middle of our subdivision. And how had that happened? Weren’t they supposed to be out there, in the parks, in the wilderness? That was the agreement. Not here. Not with us. Beside us.

  I think now, so late, too late, of the neighbor’s lawn service, using leaf blowers to release herbicide all over their lovely roses. How all of that invisible death didn’t disappear into the air. How it coated us, all of us, and that holding pond. How it masked us from ourselves. How it shone through us and we didn’t even know it.

  Soon, my illness would get worse. I would notice what Silvina had noticed as a young person: how many dead things haunt us in our daily lives.

  “As purses, handb
ags, shoes—even as heads on walls. Or as roadkill, unless it’s a fox or something we haven’t seen a hundred times before. The mind renders them as setting. But now I saw them everywhere—an ongoing, everyday exhibit of dead animals and their parts. A horror show. A vast extermination of lives and minds.”

  Does analysis colonize you? Subject matter become the subject. Truth or cult.

  As my illness progressed, over time, I would see also the complexity of what we took for granted in our landscapes and hidden lines of connection would attach to me until moving through the world was like being wrapped in chains. But it was the links, the chains, that made you free. Once you saw it all, you could never go back. Everything was alive. Overwhelming. I was overwhelmed eventually. Overcome.

  Silvina wrote that even through the poisoned landscape, we must love it. We must love what has been damaged, because everything has been damaged. And to love the damage is to know you care about that world. That you’re still alive. That the world is alive.

  How did I not see the damage for so long?

  [36]

  Husband and daughter—glad to see me, in their separate ways. Husband with the long, all-encompassing hug. Daughter with a wave from the kitchen, where she was having breakfast cereal for early dinner, some weird perk of it being a school holiday or a lenient dad. The relatives had left in my absence. The house had a reassuring silence to it. I could find almost no trace of their former presence.

  “Held down the fort?” I said.

  “Fortress secure,” he replied, hands on my shoulders as he regarded me closely, as if looking for contamination. Had I slept with anyone? I felt a pang of guilt. That I could never stop that thought in him.

  “Glad to be back,” I said.

  “Conference good?”