Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) Read online

  Michael Landon and Andie MacDowell were mute.

  “Okay. So I’m sitting at the end of the bleachers and I hear that rats have been found in Kentucky Fried Chicken. You know, they fell into the vats. But that isn’t why they’ve changed their name to KFC; it’s because their chicken isn’t a regular chicken —it’s genetically engineered, and I think I understand what that means. Somebody’s trying to create the perfect chicken! Using human-engineered genes. Isn’t that cool?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  My days sheathed in The Beaver lasted only five years. By senior year, when the library and the rest of the school got computers, the Internet became my new encyclopedia. Scientists were manipulating genes, adding and subtracting them to optimize everything from enzymes to animals! That meant I could alter genetic make-up if I could understand what nuclease and homologous recombination meant. Which meant I had to get grades and a job to go to college. Momma laughed.

  In class I learned to sit up front because my grades suffered when I couldn’t see the blackboard: the albinism. I quickly grew uninteresting, which was better than terrifying. I was better forgotten.

  I barely altered my routine. I swam, I did my homework, I cleaned the farmhouse and I performed in The Beaver for my high school classmates almost every week of every school session and at every sport, even hockey, where Carly was beginning to be a star. Yet not a single person ever asked my name or even spoke to me. Actually, that’s not true. Twice, visiting students asked the way to the bathroom. I pointed.

  I appreciated that my schoolmates didn’t talk to me. I took it as respect for what The Beaver represented, a kind of fairy-tale life force, like one of Mrs. Petrick’s fables. And as I say, I could watch, I could listen. It wasn’t science, but it was a kind of research. And along with the Internet, I was learning a lot.

  Once, I happened on Victor King. Just me and him and a girl I’d never seen before. Under the stands, next to the Zamboni, coming out of the locker room before the game against Moorhead. Victor had his skates and the girl around his neck. I thought he’d welcome me.

  “Beave,” he said to me, “what’re you doin’ here? You should be on the ice.”

  She slipped a small packet into his palm and gave it a squeeze.

  “Thanks,” he said to her. “My headache feels better already.”

  She blew him a kiss, opened a side door, and walked away from the rink.

  “C’mon, man,” he said to me, “this is a big game. We need you to get the crowd psyched.”

  “There you are.” Perfect Teeth Melissa, his girlfriend, trotted up beside him, ran her fingers through his hair. “Coach’s already got the guys on the ice taking warm-up drills. Thought maybe you were messin’ around with someone down here.” She winked.

  “No, just me and old Bucky. Some piece of tail, huh?”

  “You’d be pretty hard up.”

  “I’m only hard up for you.” He slipped the packet into his skate. “This clown,” he said derisively, “is for the crowd.” With that he shoved me forward up the ramp into the arena.

  Clown!

  ***

  In the meantime little was patched or painted or rehabilitated in or around the house, even with all three of us kids taking Momma’s sporadic, often chaotic, direction. It seemed to me that she simply didn’t want anything to change. Including me.

  Momma told us, “We got spirits settled in. We know them; they know us. I don’t need no more sufferin’. Long as the wind don’t bring in heks or tussers, we’ll be alright. Still, you be watchful, don’t bring us no misery.” She looked at me and shook her head.

  I did my homework. For fun I read more of Momma’s magazines. Fascinated by people and why they did what they did. Usually infidelity or money or both played a part. The “milkshake murderer” was one of those. She killed her husband by having her unsuspecting six-year-old daughter serve him strawberry milkshakes laced with sedatives. She drowned him in milkshakes. Then with the children out of the house, she bludgeoned him to death. I went to bed. I slept if the wind left me alone.

  Just before I completed high school Momma explained that she expected me to pay rent for my space underneath the farmhouse and that, of course, I would have to get a job. “That don’t mean you’re gonna stop shoppin’ for me or cleanin’ this scrapheap or gettin’ my pills neither. You understand that, right? You pay for your food too.”

  Momma went on to explain that Carly was already making her way just fine and had to keep herself focused on her studies and her sports. Momma had decided the college hockey scholarship looked like a sure thing, even if it was a few years away. Lyle was still too young to be useful she said, though he was sixteen, only a year younger than Carly and only three younger than me. He’d started sleeping on the couch.

  “You understand, right?” Momma repeated.

  I understood. I understood that without a job I’d never go to college and become the next Gregor Mendel or Christiaan Barnard. So I devised another of my lists, I put my atoms in order.

  “That’s ghoulish.” Lyle sipped a Keystone from Momma’s stash.

  “Osteologist? It’s science.”

  “Studyin’ bits of dead folk’s bones?”

  “People want to know what killed them.”

  “They’re dead, they don’t give a shit.”

  “I’m talking about their loved ones. In twenty percent of all deaths, no cause is found.”

  “You tell Momma? I’ll bet she’ll freak.” He cocked his head and saluted with the beer can.

  All I could do was close my eyes. Of course he was right, and maybe if I was in St. Paul, but Momma was depending on me. A job like that in Bemidji, doubtful, although . . .

  I thought out loud, “How about old man Carver?”

  “He gives me the willies. The whole thing does, so it’d be right up your alley.” Lyle took another sip, went back to strumming his guitar.

  ***

  “I don’t want anyone seeing you. You stay in the back room,” said Mr. Carver after explaining the tools and chemicals I would use to assist him. “Not that you should be ashamed of what you’re doing. It’s an art. That’s why,” he sniffed, “you aren’t doing any of the skinning.”

  He adjusted his coke-bottle glasses. Anyone could see Mr. Carver’s eyes were going fast. He needed an assistant. He couldn’t seem to keep them though, whether it was the chemicals, the dusky physical space, or the gloomy space in Mr. Carver’s head. The large dark sign outside said it all, supported by two thick timbers and Mr. Carver’s eyes looming over “Carver’s Taxidermy.” Under that: “Preserve beauty forever.”

  “You’re not squeamish, are you?”

  “No.” I meant it. Who had the luxury of being squeamish? But I did feel uncomfortable turning beautiful living things into trophies.

  “Good.” Mr. Carver pushed the coke-bottles back in place. “There’s a whole history to this.” He stretched a shaking hand over his domain of wings, paws, fins, skins and skulls. He did a brisk business. His tools lay neatly in rows or hung on the pegboard, ready for cutting, pulling and scraping; the same kind the dentist used, though I hadn’t seen a dentist in a while. He even had a crochet needle for tugging the skin back or over.

  A hanging spotlight illuminated each workbench, making the rest of the sprawling building a series of black holes. My comfort zone.

  “The English Victorian Era,” he said launching into his homily. “That was the golden age of taxidermy.” I was attentive, though he barely laid eyes on me. One-by-one he rested his attention on each body part in the room, all but mine. “The well-educated, or those who wanted to be, placed birds and animals and fish all over their homes. Things of beauty, if the man, the taxidermist, was an artist and not some ‘stuffer.’”

  Only men were taxidermists? Women could understand beauty too. But back then it probably was a male profession. I didn’t ask Mr. Carver. I already felt his agitation.

  He sniffed again, as if he had been inside my head, heard my t
houghts, and already dismissed them as trivial. “Anyway, I’ll not accept rogue taxidermy assignments. You don’t need to worry.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  “When some jackass creates a Frankenstein, like a jackalope or a skvader, that’s rogue, not sticking to nature.” Momma had talked of the skvader, a fictional hybrid, front half and head, hare; the second half —torso, wings and tail— grouse. A flying rabbit.

  “I’m no Dr. Frankenstein. I don’t care if it’s their favorite mystical creature, I won’t do it. I won’t be part of their sick ideas.” This time he filled both nostrils, a hillside of open pores inflating his already sizeable nose.

  “Dragons, water fairies, sirens of the deep, chimeras: a bunch of myths and bad luck. I don’t like mixing body parts. It brings bad luck.” He stared off to a darkened corner of the shop, but still not at me. “If I ever ask you —assuming I want to keep you— to help with that superstitious crap —excuse my language— then tell me to ‘just remember,’ and that’ll do the trick.”

  “I wouldn’t tell you no.”

  “You tell me ‘just remember.’ Part of your job, assuming you do your job.”

  “Why ‘just remember?’”

  “End of lesson. Be here six o’clock tomorrow morning.” Again he swept his hand over the multitude of half-completed projects. “Plan a long day.”

  And they were long days. The more Mr. Carver disintegrated and decayed before my eyes, the more taxidermy prep and finishing I took on, though he never asked me to skin, and I was glad of it. I watched him skin a fox, then decided I’d prefer not to see that part of the process again. I turned away from him whenever he started cutting and scraping, and he never mentioned it.

  But there was one moment . . . In that second week, arms stretched out in front of him and more willing to glance at me than the pre-historic fish he carried, he said, “Take care of this.” He thumped a gargantuan fish on my workbench. Then pulled gloves and a jowl spreader from his back pocket and laid them next to the fish.

  “What is it?” I asked, heart rate up.

  “Muskellunge.” Clear distaste in his tone. “Frozen. Can you handle it?”

  It was light-silver, mean looking and the largest fish I’d ever seen, almost 6-foot long, close to 50 pounds with sharp needle-like teeth. “What do I need to do?” I swallowed.

  “I thought you weren’t squeamish.”

  “I’m not.” I stood straighter.

  “Clean it out, don’t rupture the skin.” He wiped his hands on a rag, threw it on his bench and walked away, then stopped at the office door. “It’s a near-record, don’t screw it up.” Then closed the door behind him.

  I starred at the monster. It starred back. Spitefully. But it was a water creature. I needed to make friends with it. Reluctantly I lowered my hands to its skin, then stroked it. “Pals?” It wasn’t amused.

  I heard Carver already on the phone with a customer.

  I slipped on the gloves. They were oversized and too big for me. I inched the jowl spreader into its mouth. A crackling sound. “Oh no, no!” I said pulling my hand back. The crackling stopped. Breathe. I removed the left hand glove. I took hold of the center of its body with my gloved right hand, and with my left I slowly and very carefully reached between the teeth into its belly, straining to stay in its center. Deeper. Almost to my elbow. Something furry and slimy! My hand flew out, tearing open the skin between my thumb and index finger. I pumped air in and out. “Shoot.”

  But no damage to the fish. Another deep breath. “I can do this.” I steadied my breathing.

  This time, past its teeth, my body as frozen as the fish, my arm buried deeper, deeper, until my hand came to rest on the slime. Trembling, I grabbed hold of it, unwilling to even imagine what it was. I pulled at it, and with a sucking sound it detached from the monster’s belly and came toward me.

  At the monster’s mouth I held my breath and dragged it into the dim light.

  I screamed. A large brown and yellow snake with a duckling in its mouth fell to the floor, and with them, as the glove slipped away from my hand, the monster fish slid off the workbench and joined them with a thud on the ground.

  “Oh shoot, oh no!” I looked to the office door. I dropped to my knees and scooped the huge fish into my arms, quickly laying it on the table as Carver came cursing through the door.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Just startled,” I said stroking the monster. I pointed to the floor and the duckling in the snake’s jaws.

  “As long as the Muskie’s okay.”

  I smiled and kept gently massaging the fish.

  “Just get back to work, will you. Just deal with it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  ***

  Before Mr. Carver’s complete decline, I found pleasure in keeping his art high quality. I helped make each animal beautiful by salting, pickling, and tanning the skins; transforming the protein skins to non-protein; and preparing them for rehydration. The process was a delight —no spoilage and so purifying, leaving each body germ free.

  “Always,” he said, “keep them out of the sun and direct heat. Gelatinization and hardening; hair slippage is irreversible. Never stack skins.”

  I learned to rehydrate the skins in 5% solution, to keep the pH below 2.2. “But not too long,” he’d say checking on me. ”It loosens the hair.”

  I handled all the acids, dressing the fur with Formic acid, bleaching with Oxalic, the poisonous powdered one, and Hydrochloric —muriatic is what he called it— which evaporated easily if I wasn’t careful. Those fumes were lethal and the drops would eat away the skin.

  “Your skin,” he said, “if you aren’t mindful.”

  He appreciated my fastidiousness and rarely complained regarding my work or my presence, though he seldom complimented me or looked at me when he spoke, usually keeping an eye on an otter or a black bear as he skinned or sewed or stuffed, as much as he hated that word. “Talk to your subject and it will help guide your hands,” he said without looking up.

  And it did take me a while, when he broke the silence, to understand that most of the time he wasn’t talking to me.

  I peeked from the workshop through the space between the hinges and the door, and I saw the delight of his customers as they picked up their trophies, their beautiful things.

  As he held on to the skinning, and with diminished coordination he could do less and less of it —he even tore a few skins, ruining them— he began to lose business, and his customers died off.

  But I was able to learn a lot about beauty in those nine years, especially in conjunction with Internet research. For instance, in 1883, a guy named Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, was the first to experiment with categorizing faces. A photographer, he wondered if certain groups of people —vegetarians and criminals— had certain facial characteristics typical to each. A strange choice of categories, but anyway . . . He determined that there was no such match, but he also determined that the composite vegetarian and criminal faces were found more attractive than their component counterparts.

  This led to more recent research that I found useful: Exactly 100 years later Grammer, K., & Thornhill, R. ran experiments on “Human facial attractiveness and sexual selection: the role of symmetry and averageness” in the Journal of Comparative Psychology. Their research suggested that a symmetrical face is the most attractive to the most people, and that the features needed to be average, a consensus derived by the greater population, just as Darwin’s cousin had suggested with his photographic experiments. In other words, no bloated lips, no mile-wide nose, and certainly no large, brown puddles splitting the face.

  ***

  Experiment & Observation: Crafting a symmetrically-faced animal.

  A dead skunk came in for taxidermy. “No skunks or mother-in-laws,” said Carver, but I convinced him I should give it a try. They’re beautiful animals. It took special deodorizer and extra degreasing but I managed. I even did the skinnin
g. I gave it a perfectly symmetrical face. It looked diabolical and mean.

  “No, no,” said Carver. Despite his failing health I thought he was ready to throw me out physically. “It’s too static. Beauty is being alive. Make it alive!” He sounded like Dr. Frankenstein, but I understood. What I learned: It needed a small touch of fluctuating asymmetry, but not too much.

  ***

  I put away money those years, working full-time till I was twenty-seven, even paying Momma when she raised the rent and used some of it for Carly, because Carly did get the hockey scholarship and she did need nicer clothes for college, especially as she was one of the stars of the team.

  “It’s part of the mystique,” Momma said, something she must have read in one of her magazines.

  Lyle still lived at home. Well, in and out without warning, always carrying his prized Martin D-35 guitar and singing for whatever he could get in the Bemidji bars, especially the most notorious —the once grand Markham Hotel— where he scored his drugs until it closed. He started hanging in the Hotel Hell area in Nymore, by the tracks.

  Momma couldn’t see any of it happening. “His voice will be his savior.” But in the latter years she didn’t say it with much conviction.

  In my little free time I kept swimming and getting stronger. I checked books and the Internet for new research, and I continued my own research scrapbook, a thick three-ring binder of body parts clipped from Momma’s magazines, with pages categorized and devoted to celebrity eyes, ears, noses, hair, mouths, facial hair, skins and chins. I’d never thought of chins previously.

  But feeling useful to Mr. Carver sustained me as much as the money and the developing research, which was a shift for me. It added the one-on-one human element that I’d never had. And it buoyed my confidence for other encounters.

  One Saturday, late in the summer of my fifth year with Carver, I was preparing to leave a bit earlier than usual to see a lecture titled “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” by a PhD named Sean Carroll. I’d been anticipating it for weeks. I’d hoped Mr. Carver would already be gone, but he seemed intent on mounting a moose head.