I took on more work at the shop, happy to let Bastien man the front. I slipped skins with relish, slicing and curing, my fingers clenched into the shape of the tools long after my shifts were done. When I got home, arms aching from the strain, there’d be globules of gristly muscle stuck to my clothes. I drank and slept hard; I didn’t want any more dreams.
The shop was doing well. Bastien fielded marketing and added social media, something my father would never have done and which I barely understood. Our client base grew until we were pulling in a fair amount of work again. The old business was dying off, but we found new footing with a younger crowd that I’d never imagined would be interested in taxidermy. It was good money, though, and I didn’t care what they wanted. I never questioned any of it until a woman approached me one afternoon with a coupon.
“Excuse me. I have one of these?” She waved a wrinkled paper in my face. “This is Morton’s, right?”
She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. She wore red corduroy shorts and a white middy blouse cropped above her navel. Not our usual kind of customer; those were always cranky men in their late fifties who talked at me, like they thought they could teach me something.
“Yeah, that’s us, but we don’t have coupons.”
The woman thrust the paper under my nose until I was forced to take it from her or inhale it. It was printed and the ink had smeared along the top edge, but there was our logo, smack on top: MORTON’S in all caps with the weird apostrophe that almost looked like a demonic tadpole.
“I heard you might be getting in some peacocks?” she asked, as I shrugged and contemplated our ad, in print. New things happening in the store now, all the time.
Bastien laughed and I turned to look at him, curious what was so funny. He never laughed unless someone fell down or made a joke about using the bathroom.
“Later this week,” he told her, snagging the paper from my hands. “Gotta pick ’em up first.”
Bastien and I grabbed Lolee on the way to get the birds. She spent most nights at her friend Kaitlyn’s house since my mother was always holed up at the gallery. Kaitlyn was a short girl with a bulldog face and a sweet smile. They played in the marching band together, both of them flutes. Lolee liked being over there, and I didn’t blame her. My mother was so busy that she’d stopped making regular meals. Last time I’d been in the house, every leftover was gone and there was nothing to eat but some questionable milk and half a box of stale cinnamon Life cereal.
Bastien drove my truck down purpling streets while I drained my first beer of the night. It sat wedged between my knees. He flew into Kaitlyn’s driveway and my sip dribbled down my chin and soaked the collar of my shirt.
“Where we headed?” I asked, cracking open another and wiping the condensation off on my jeans. “Is there a wholesale outlet? Never did one of those.”
“Nah, not that. Something else. Fresher.”
Lolee wandered out in ancient pajama shorts and my old high school sweatshirt. “Climb in the back,” Bastien yelled through the window. She boosted herself along the bumper, flip-flops slapping at the corrugated bottom of the bed.
Pressing her mouth to the back window, she made a monkey face, tongue streaking the glass with her spit.
“Keep your shoes on,” I said. “There might be broken bottles back there.”
Bastien drove haphazardly, zigzagging across a few of the wider residential streets, making Lolee screech as she tumbled around in the back. Instead of taking us out one of the exits, he circled closer to the heart of the neighborhood, nearing the golf course that ran through the middle. Despite its name, Fawn Creek didn’t have any kind of running water, just retention ponds. A fountain spewed water from its center, turning colors on holidays: red and green for Christmas, patriotic hues on the Fourth of July.
Dusk came quickly, shepherding in a horde of bats. They fluttered spastically in the orange-washed sky, tripping over each other mid-flight. Bastien turned down a side street. It was poorly paved; the truck bumped along the divots in the asphalt, bouncing my beer until some spilled on my pants.
“Slow down, dick,” Lolee yelled, slapping her palm against the glass. “I’m gonna crack my head back here.”
Bastien laughed and revved the engine, then cut a tight corner at the back of the golf course. I’d never been to this area before. It was where the workers came to unload stuff. I had a sudden memory as he parked his truck near the cages of balls and unearthed a key chain from his pocket.
“Didn’t you used to work here when you were in high school? Like a caddy?”
“Nothing that glamorous.” Bastien hopped down from the driver’s seat and cracked his back, stretching his arms high overhead. “I mowed the grass. Sometimes I drove the truck that picked up the balls people shot out on the driving range? It sucked.”
Lolee stood up along the side and the whole truck dipped under her weight. Bastien helped her down, dropping her in the grass with a grunt.
“You’re not as strong as Daddy,” she complained, then leaned over to massage her calves.
“I’m not as nice, either.” He pressed down on her head until it went almost between her knees. Lolee screamed and swatted at him.
“Okay, seriously.” I drank the rest of my second beer. There were three still in the truck and I thought I might need them soon. “What the hell are we doing here? I’d like to get dinner.”
Bastien’s chin had a scraggly growth of beard coming in. His eyes were colorless in the foggy evening. “Shouldn’t take long.”
I ghosted along behind the two of them as we moved farther away from the lampposts that dotted the periphery of the smoothly mown green. It was quiet except for the occasional switch of our legs sliding through the grass. There was a dank, creepy little shed near the back of the lot. I stopped to look while Bastien and Lolee trudged toward it.
“Hey,” I called. Lolee turned around and trotted back. “What is this, what are we doing?”
“Getting the peacocks.” Lolee pulled her hair up on top of her head and knotted it with one of the elastic bands she kept looped around her wrist. She danced around me, spinning, twirling like a little kid.
I could barely make out Bastien in the murky light. Our shadows were long and fragmented over the shitty grass that made up the far corner of the course. Lolee and I walked together, swinging our arms in tandem. I wondered when I’d get home so I could drink in peace and forget about the day.
Closer up, the shed looked less like something out of a horror movie and more like something from Little House on the Prairie. The roof was slanted and angled with wooden planks, and a long gravel drive sat behind it. Someone had painted the slats slate gray at some point, though they had started to peel in the humidity. A sign posted on a two-by-four out front said NO TRESPASSING in very collegiate font.
Close to the shed, the air turned thick and gamey. A peacock stuck its pinhead out the door. Another appeared above it, creating the comical impression of two kids peeking around a corner during a game of tag.
“Are those alive?” I asked. “They’re fucking alive?”
Three peacocks strutted through the open doorway. Bastien followed along behind them, golf club tossed over his shoulder as if he were about to tee off. The birds walked ahead of him, feathers glossy gold-green in the moonlight, unafraid.