Hummingbird Salamander(33)
“We praise your modern machinery and your art which converts our raw greasy skins into attractive fur pelts and thus preserves us for a lasting existence in our second being. We admire your artistic design when you cut, sew and nail our skins to fit the patterns designed to meet the demands of modern fashions.”
Worse things than cattle led to market. Worse things than being reduced to a piece of taxidermy. But how much worse and why? Did the amount of suffering matter? Did wild or domesticated matter? We interfered with all, left nothing alone, as Silvina said. We could not leave anything untouched. And, for some, the compulsion grew not to simply do the deed, as my father did, but to be heroic for it. There, with the suffering, lay a further crime.
“For those of you who intimately understand us will be able to recognize us regardless of change of shape or color. However, to those who are not thoroughly acquainted with us, the parts we play in this story shall feature our distinguishing characteristics, that will immediately identify us in any disguise … This is Our Inalienable Right.”
How did the wildlife trafficking cartels justify it? I hardly thought they cared. But someone must, along the way. That a family would starve if not for a dead pangolin? That if not me, then someone else will do it. This is the way of the world.
Or, better: this is progress. The new thing murdered, wanton and alone, gifted with credentials not yet earned.
An old bookmark advertising Carlton Fusk’s antiques store fell out while I was reading. I snatched it up, placed it safely back between two pages. But my husband hardly noticed. Me and eccentric books had happened before; I liked to read out-of-date cybersecurity manuals. I found them comforting.
The bookmark had a black-and-white photo of Fusk, much younger, beardless, but recognizable. Fusk proudly held a taxidermied armadillo. The legend read “If it’s dead, we can fix it.” Even after death, we couldn’t leave anything alone.
Fusk. The gun. Just an old eccentric who didn’t want to be questioned? Or something more? Hard to tell what was more unlikely: Fusk reaching for a gun so quickly on impulse or because the photo of the hummingbird had triggered that response. I began to feel the impulse to contact him again, across the safety of a continent.
I lay awake long after we’d turned out the lights, thinking about Fusk. Thinking about Silvina and her family. Unsure what part of the puzzle ate at me the most. The moon was bright that night, and I rose to stare out the bedroom window down into the wooded fringe. Which was veiled by shadow. When I began to imagine I could make out the singed tiny red circle of a cigarette, I went back to bed.
I dreamed not of hummingbirds that night, but of salamanders. Giant salamanders and flooded rivers and the slack face of my brother, staring at me, half caked in mud.
[40]
The next morning, headed for the 3215 address, I rechecked my car first. For surveillance devices. Found nothing. Hoped I had done the check right. There had been a lecture on current procedure at the conference, but I’d skipped it. I laughed and hit the steering wheel as I drove. Realized I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t done my check based on what I’d seen on TV shows.
The apartment complex was an anonymous block of concrete painted a pale blue. Staggered concrete balconies jutted out at irregular angles like gun emplacements, up the full five stories. The balconies cast shadows on the dull gravel path leading to a covered garage in the basement. A few scraggly decorative trees didn’t seem up to the task. Stink of asphalt from something new around the corner. The established neighborhood beyond had been subdivided to hell and back, most of the trees cut down.
I parked down the street, up the hill from the apartments. Thankful the address wasn’t in a gated community. Yet. The walk down to the apartments, I felt exposed, observed, but no one was around. It was midmorning. I should’ve been at work. But everyone else was.
My husband texted, the sound startling, shrill.
>>The office called. Urgent. Asking where you are. Something’s urgent there. Where are you? Something was always urgent. Something that could always wait.
>>I’m on my way, I lied, and turned off my phone.
Silvina’s property lay on the third floor, hidden from the street by a covered walkway beyond the stairs. The gate to the garage had a hitch, so it didn’t close right away after a car went through. But the stairs, although more open, made me feel less like a thief. Just a visitor.
The blue door made me rethink what I was doing. Of course there was a locked door. What did I think would be there? An open archway? A welcoming committee? Some refreshments?
Because: what was I doing? I’d have to break in.
Fusk pulling the gun on me. Fusk telling me to leave well enough alone.
No.
I broke in. The method isn’t important. I’ve done it since. Several times. Each time it feels less like crossing a boundary or a border. Each time, there’s less resistance.
Inside, I tried to think like a detective, to be a detective. Trusted my first thought inhabiting that: everything I’m seeing has been staged. Just like in the storage unit. Maybe because there was so little of it. Hardwood floors, rich grain, and tiny pillbox windows, and the sliding glass doors to the balcony at the far end, and, before that, a living room with a fake fireplace and an open-concept kitchen, with the office and bedroom down a corridor to the left, beyond the balcony.
It struck me that if Silvina had lived here, or visited, she must have hated it. She must have loathed this place. Even if there had once been more here. Even if she’d found some way to make it resemble a cave. But she had lived here … why?