“How much longer?” Bastien swept the concrete, corralling flecks of foam and antler shards from the deer head I’d been mounting for the past hour.
“I’m not sure.”
“Like maybe forty-five minutes? Fifteen?”
“I don’t know.”
The form I’d chosen was too large. I was having trouble getting the antlers where I wanted them, and instead of pulling off the pelt and starting over, I’d tried to stretch it with my hands. I’d knocked one of the points against the metal prep table and chipped it very badly. It was a rookie mistake, one I hadn’t made since I was in high school.
“But do you think soon?”
“Maybe.”
It was distracting, having another live body in the room with me. I couldn’t concentrate. Bastien liked to talk while he worked. He was twitchy and spastic, moving back and forth across the room to pick up one of the tools I was using, or to fondle a piece of the deer’s pelt. He’d pulled out glass eyes of every color and begun sorting them into piles that I’d have to put away before we left. I’d seen him take the tough linen string I used for sewing and wind it around his palm, making what appeared to be a friendship bracelet. Then he’d given up and thrown the knotted mess onto the floor.
“Is there anything left to do up front?” I asked.
“The floor’s so fucking clean you could eat off it.” The broom stopped for a second. “Sorry.”
“What about the mail that got rained on?”
He shuffled over to the corner and used the tip of the broom to grab at the dirt pockets that always collected there. The tops of his ears were red and the back of his neck was a little sunburned. I wondered how he spent his time when he wasn’t in the shop working. His friends weren’t any good for him to be around.
He gouged at the dust and a couple of bristles broke off. “It’s spread out under the front window where the most sun’s coming in.”
“That’s good. Thanks.”
“I’d maybe think about moving the goat, Aunt Jessa.” He tipped up the broom and riffed his fingers along the frayed edges, breaking off more pieces that sprinkled onto the concrete.
“Why? We’ve gotten more foot traffic in the past week than we have in the last month.”
Dust flicked upward into the air around him, creating a halo. “His fur is fading. It looks powdery or something.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
I set down my stitch remover and flexed my cramped fingers. The deer’s opened face looked up at me, half-dazed from the crooked set of its glass eyes. I’d have to redo the whole thing. “Let’s move it now. Put something else up, maybe.”
Up front looked just as clean as Bastien said it would. The permanent dust that had built up around the shelving had been Pledged to a waxy sheen. Piles of mail next to the register were sorted into a plastic tray system labeled PAST DUE, CURRENTLY DUE, and PAID—the latter a single sheet of wrinkled paper, which I thought might be a mistake.
We each grabbed an end of the Bagot, not wanting to tip it over and spill it; it would likely bust its seams and I’d have to stuff and re-stitch everything.
“Could you pick up Grandma today from the gallery?”
I nearly tripped over an enormous stack of snakeskin he’d moved into the walkway. “You can’t get her?”
“I’m not really supposed to be driving.”
I hadn’t anticipated that I’d need to see my mother’s art, at least not right away. I knew she’d been going over to the gallery most afternoons, but I figured it was just a way to keep her contained while she got whatever weird art jones she had out of her system. That plan didn’t include looking at whatever she’d created. I was positive it wouldn’t be anything I liked.
Bastien staggered back toward the far wall, where the sun from the front window didn’t hit. “She wants to show you something.”
“Damn it. Fine.” I dropped the goat a little less gently than I should have. I examined the muzzle. “You’re right, he’s looking beat-up.” The skin had warped in the direct sunlight. Both ears were crusty and the goat’s nostrils had faint crackles running through them. “He’ll need to be moisturized.”
“I can do that.”
“I’ll just do it when I get back.” Except I had to run to the grocery and pick up Lolee’s marching band uniform at the dry-cleaning place and stop over at the post office to ship out some mail orders.
“It just takes some emollients. I’ll be careful.”
“Emollients?”
He squatted down in front of the Bagot and examined its hooves, which were also looking a little flaky. “Yeah, petroleum jelly.”
“You’ve never done this stuff before.”
Pulling a pad from his back pocket, he jotted some notes. “I’ve seen you do some. Grandpa too, when I was little. There’s also this thing called the internet. You can look up lots of shit there.”
My father would’ve loved to teach Bastien specialty secrets, if Bastien had ever shown an interest when he was alive: how to perk an ear, the best way to debone small game without ruining the pelts. If he were still alive, it could’ve been the three of us in the shop, instead of just me trying to half-ass everything by myself. I remembered the first time my father showed me how to clean and reset teeth. It took us all day, but when it was done they looked nearly perfect in the deer’s jaw. There was something so satisfying about it: working on a piece until you’d perfected it. I could teach Bastien to create like that, I thought. I could show him some of the things my father had shown me.
“Okay. We’ll see how it goes.” I grabbed the keys to my truck from behind the counter.
“Right.” He rubbed at the back of his neck and stared down at his notes. “I’ll just start with some of the small stuff and you can check my work after.”
When I left, he was sitting on the floor in front of the goat, measuring the neck and face with his hands. He looked ready to speak and so did the animal, as if they were already communicating.
There were groceries to pick up and Lolee’s uniform, but what I wanted more than anything was a beer. I drove past the tiny air-conditioning repair shop with the words HEATING & COOLING stenciled in black script across the windows, the barbershop where Milo and I had gotten our first haircuts, and pulled into the parking lot of the only bar my father and I ever drank at. There were no cars out front and I took that as a good sign.
A couple was wedged into the same side of a corner booth, but aside from them and the bartender I was alone. I sat on one of the red vinyl barstools and the bartender dropped a beer in front of me. Jimmy was around my father’s age. They’d gone to high school together, the same one Milo and I’d attended. He wore the kind of shirt my dad always hated to see on Florida guys: a pink floral thing with palm trees in a Hawaiian style, unbuttoned enough to show a grizzled patch of chest hair. A gold chain necklace lay tangled in the nest of it.
I liked being there. It felt cool without the dampness, lacked light in a way that made my eyes comfortable. Outside, juicy green pressed in on you from all sides and sunshine bled so aggressively that you were guaranteed cataracts by age sixty-five, but in the bar you could pretend the world outside didn’t exist anymore.