Garden of Stones - By Sophie Littlefield Page 0,75

sort of wooden support. Pink flesh dappled the thing nearly to the ruff of fine black-and-gray fur at the top edge. It took Lucy a moment to realize that the creature was inside out.

“I’ve asked you to knock,” Garvey muttered.

Mrs. Sloat shrugged. “Well. You wouldn’t have heard me.” She turned to Lucy. “Garvey has his own bathroom. It’s specially fitted for his needs. Cost a pretty penny, but what can you do? Hygiene can be quite time-consuming for him.”

Lucy blushed, discomfited not just by the discussion of private matters, but by the tension that filled the room.

“I don’t want that girl in here.”

“She’ll have to come in, to clean,” Mrs. Sloat said blandly. She picked up a small muskrat from a nearby shelf, one of the more conventional ones. Three of its paws were attached to the board on which it was mounted; the fourth was raised as though in admonishment. Its mouth was open and its pink-and-black gums seemed to glisten. Lucy wondered how Garvey accomplished that. Far from being put off by the stuffed corpses, she wanted to examine each more closely, to search for evidence of seams or means of death, to understand how he had created such lifelike replicas of tissues which surely could not last, like tongues and gums and glistening lips and pearly-pink translucent ears.

“Hold it by the base,” Garvey snapped, and Mrs. Sloat set the thing back on the shelf. “She doesn’t have to come in to clean. I clean just fine.”

“And look at what a splendid job you’ve done of that,” Mrs. Sloat retorted, pointing at the walls. It was just like outside—anything that Garvey could reach from his chair was dusted, polished, arranged with care. But thick cobwebs hung in all the corners, and the upper third of the walls were grimy and streaked with dust. “If you don’t want to get buried in dirt, you’re going to have to let her help.”

“I don’t want people in here,” Garvey protested, a note of panic coloring his petulance.

“And I don’t want you here,” Mrs. Sloat shot back, “but neither of us has ever got what we wanted, have we?” A moment later she added, in a calmer tone, “Garvey makes good money mounting trophies for other people.”

“Fish,” he said, as though it were a curse word. “Deer.”

Mrs. Sloat ignored his interruption. “Owens Lake is less than twenty miles down the road. There’s a fellow, Mr. Dang, who runs a fishing camp there. We buy from him sometimes for Sunday dinners. He could give Garvey all the work he could handle. Gentlemen come for vacation, they want something to take home, to show off. And let me tell you, there’s big money to be made from the tourist trade.”

“Well, I’m not about to work for some goddamn Chink, that’s for sure.”

“Not if you can sit in here playing with your little glue pots while other people put bread on the table,” Mrs. Sloat said. “God forbid you should contribute to this household.”

Lucy wasn’t sure of the source of the siblings’ antagonism, and she sensed that her only power lay in alignment. But she would have to choose carefully.

“You Japs eat fish?” Garvey asked.

“Garvey.”

“I know they turned up their noses at perfectly good food in that camp. When our boys were making do with K rations.”

Lucy could have told him about the slop that passed for food, the scarcity of decent meat, the shortage of fresh produce. But instead she remained quiet and focused on the pelt stretched on the stand. She thought she could make out knobby fissures where the creature’s eyes should have been. Seeing them from the inside was strangely fascinating.

“It’s a burn, right?” Garvey prodded, when she didn’t respond. “What happened to you? Grease fire? Electric?”

Lucy knew better than to let him rattle her that way—she’d had plenty of practice telling this particular lie. “It was an oil fire. A stove exploded.”

“Who knows. Maybe getting burned improved you,” Garvey said, but it was his sister he stared at as he spoke. “Nothing uglier than a Jap girl.”

“Garvey!” This time Mrs. Sloat advanced on him, lurching as her bad leg came down too quickly, and she had to grab the workbench to steady herself. Garvey’s face flickered with victory.

“A pretty face is nothing you’ll need here, anyway,” he muttered. “Now get the fuck out of my house.”

28

This room was an insult, smaller and filthier than the one she’d shared with her mother in the camp. Lucy found it hard to sleep