Picture this scene as a museum diorama, all the life-size human figures as motionless as the furniture, modeled to evoke an animated gathering among women of the American leisure class in the late 1920s. Imagine that all the details are so painstakingly exact, the whole scene so convincingly realistic, that it asks for your apology, as though history required an invitation and you had come without one.
On the plush pink satin-buttoned settee is Mrs. Audrey Stone, fifty-seven years old, not at all the rigid woman that her name implies but fat and pliant, her skin shining like the stretched surface of a balloon. She has pinned a yellow silk rose to her cloche, and perfect kiss curls, dyed black, hide her ears. She wears a shin-length pleated voile dress with a sailor collar and a navy belt, white nubuck shoes, and white silk stockings. Her hand is poised above a tray of teacakes, her mouth already open in anticipation.
Nearby sits the hostess, Mrs. Craxton, dressed in a red silk lounging gown. She is seventy-five years old, and during the eight years since she fell and broke her hip, she has lost interest in her canes and instead prefers to pass her day in her wheelchair. Her white hair hangs like bands of gauze down to her shoulders. Her feet, in black kid-leather tie shoes, rest on the leather bar a few inches above the floor. She has draped her pearls, as large as pigeon eggs, in long loops around her neck, and her mouth is puckered, as though she were pronouncing a pu sound: “putrid” or “prudent.”
The young woman across from her is Lilian, Audrey Stone’s daughter, by many years the youngest woman in the group. She is also the most fashionably dressed, in a knee-length straight jumper—sleeveless, despite the season—a slave bangle around her arm, an ostrich-feather fan on her lap. She sits in an armchair by the window, and though she faces the center of the room, her eyes seem to focus past Mrs. Craxton on the window and the garden.
The other elderly women, Dorrie Cooper and Edna Jacobson, sit on the sofa side by side, their hands folded in their laps. Dorrie wears a brown linen skirt and muslin blouse. Edna wears an ankle-length pleated gown of Victorian character, though with a few touches of contemporary fashion, such as the low waist and wide shoulders.
The remaining figure in the group, the housekeeper, leans over the settee’s arm to present the tray of cakes to Audrey Stone. She wears a gray rayon dress with a white apron and has pinned her hair up in a tightly wound bun.
Inside the diorama, lights have been positioned to illuminate Mrs. Craxton and her guests independently, so you can see the subtle differences as well as the more obvious ones—the grains of powdered rouge on Audrey Stone’s cheeks; a scar cutting down from Edna’s ear to the corner of her lip; the liver spots mottling Mrs. Craxton’s neck and hands. Only the housekeeper is partially obscured by shadow, more for reasons of composition than to suggest something about her character or class. Murals on the three walls give the illusion that the conservatory extends to broad windows on either side, and in back to a grand piano and an open door crowned by magnificent elk antlers. To ensure continuity, two plastic potted palms in the space are repeated with two painted images. Through one window you can see the yellowing leaves of a trumpet vine; the unobstructed view through the other window is of a hillside, the sky, and dabs of clouds.
Life as it was among genteel ladies in western New York, 1927. The culture expected them to wear their clothes and carry themselves and speak exactly so, and they complied, since even though the culture was severe, it was also devoted, like a child to her dolls, and loved best the fact that they were helpless.
* * *
At the last gathering of the Wednesday Friends, Audrey Stone had described the plight of her daughter with such histrionic gestures that at one point she threw her hands back, forgetting that her cup was full of coffee, and the liquid flew like a quick brown bird, a swamp sparrow, and splattered the yellow satin floor-to-ceiling drapes. Ellen and Eva had devoted considerable effort through the week to trying to remove the stain, but still the outline remains, and you can see it in the late afternoon, exposed by the setting sun.
At today’s gathering, Audrey brought along her daughter to explain her predicament in her own words. Ellen had to leave the room to fetch the cakes and again to refill the creamer, but from what she did hear she surmised that Lilian Stone’s version of the affair was quite different from her mother’s. As Audrey had told it, the gentleman pursuing her daughter was a penniless cad. In Lilian’s version, he was a decent fellow, not without charm, though she acknowledged that there were more distinguished husbands to be found. From the way the young woman kept eclipsing her sentences with sighs, Ellen wondered whether she might have been lying about her disinterest. Lilian agreed with her mother that she would benefit from a period of seclusion. And since she didn’t want to be too far from her own family, who summered in Millworth but returned to Rochester at the first dusting of snow, she hoped to make the Manikin her winter home—if Mrs. Craxton would have her.
It had been Audrey’s idea, and she’d tried it out on Mary Craxton last Wednesday. Mrs. Craxton had been overjoyed at the suggestion. She would have company through the long winter ahead: a charming, educated young woman. They could play patience together. They could work on the intricate puzzle of the Swiss Alps that her son had brought to her after his last trip abroad. She had always wanted a daughter, and now, after a few exchanged courtesies, she had one—on loan, so there was no question of inheritance. The girl didn’t want Mrs. Craxton’s money; she wanted only a temporary refuge.
But Ellen wasn’t convinced of Audrey Stone’s innocence. And the girl, Lilian: Why would she cloister herself on a remote estate with a seventy-five-year-old invalid woman? There are easier ways to avoid a lover—or to test him, if that’s what she really intends. Surely there is more to it, and though Ellen had hidden her suspicions as she passed the cakes, she kept eyeing Audrey and Lilian, especially Lilian, searching the girl’s face for another motive, one that put Mrs. Craxton at risk.
“Ellen, tell Sylva that starting Sunday there will be another mouth to feed!” Mrs. Craxton says proudly, after her last guest has left. Just like a woman announcing her pregnancy, Ellen thinks, and wishes she were in the position to warn her mistress. But that position would leave her without any position: the messenger pays with his life. She’ll keep quiet. But she’ll also keep watch and gather evidence, and if Mrs. Craxton ever asks her what she thinks about Lilian Stone, she’ll tell.
Mrs. Craxton won’t ask, however—she never asks Ellen anything, except for the time. The grandfather clock in the front hall chimes every fifteen minutes and is joined on the hour by a glass-domed rococo clock with revolving brass antelopes in the living room, a mantel clock with monkeys that clash tiny cymbals, and assorted smaller clocks scattered around the house, but still Mrs. Craxton relies on Ellen to keep track of the time. Perhaps she believes that implied in the question is a sense of urgent purpose, as though she, like the White Rabbit, had an important date to keep.
She does have a date, at last: Sunday afternoon, when Lilian Stone will arrive with her trunk full of winter clothes. The girl will be the antidote for Mrs. Craxton’s most dreadful ailment—boredom—though the old woman doesn’t stop to consider the high price she’ll have to pay.
“Ellen,” Mrs. Craxton says as the housekeeper adds another empty cup and saucer to the stack on her tray, “we must make her feel at home.”
* * *
Bird. Beautiful bird. From the tip of her head to the tip of her tail an amazing twenty-seven inches! Wrapped in her abundant feather coat, the white plumage speckled with gold, her beak almost concealed, one eye still staring with wild intensity, a bloody crater where the other eye had been. This is the way the world will end, Boggio dreamily tells himself, turning the bird from one side to the other. It will be shattered, the center will spill into the sky, the shell will collapse. Foolish bird, to have wandered thousands of miles from your circumpolar haven to Craxton’s land. Well, Boggio will repair you. Whoever you are. Emblem of wisdom, companion of witches. If you tie an owl to a tree and walk round and round, the owl will keep revolving its head to follow you until it wrings its own neck. Beautiful bird. Owl the far-seer.
Boggio measures the wingspan, the tarsus, the claws and head, and in his haste he records the measurements right on the table. He pants lightly, as though he were overheated. And there is the problem with his fingers again—their rebellion. They are more docile when engaged in some mundane task, so he sets the owl aside and begins sorting his tools. A penknife, a pair of six-inch cutting pliers, forceps, a nine-inch flat file, a stuffing rod, wire, a piece of wood, bundles of straw. He inhales deeply, draws in the dusty, summery smell of straw. How he loves this work: the art of lifelike representation. Long ago, men preserved skin and horns and skulls as souvenirs. In the sixteenth century an Austrian baron mounted skins of aurochs over a framework of boards. Darwin mastered taxidermy before he composed his theory of evolution. And then Jules Verreaux purchased a booth at the International Exposition in Paris in 1867, and his display of two lions attacking an Arab courier on a camel became a great sensation. Henry Craxton Senior happened to attend the exposition on its opening day; as he stood admiring the Verreaux diorama, he invented the company that would make him rich: Craxton’s Scientific Establishment. And with the help of such men as Critchley, Webster, Denslaw, Hornaday, Akeley, and Boggio—yes, Boggio was preeminent—he built an empire.
Mad old Boggio. He knows what people say about him. But Craxton wouldn’t have been so successful without Boggio’s help. He has a chance, at last, to revive not just the memory of the living owl but of himself as a respected young man.
The first thing he must do: break the bird’s wings. Snap, snap. The effort makes him light-headed. He sits back on his stool to rest for a moment. He doesn’t mind handling the carcass. What unnerves him is the commitment—once the wings are broken he cannot turn back. Some taxidermists make sure to have two animals to work with, in case of error. Boggio has never needed more than one specimen. But he’s not as steady as he used to be.
Rain splashes the studio window with each gust of wind. Boggio pushes a wad of cotton up the bird’s vent. He cuts open the bag of cornmeal, stolen just this afternoon from the kitchen, and fills a bowl. He moves the lantern closer to the bird. He prepares to make the first cut, but his fingers give such a twitch that he drops the penknife. Old man—ridiculed by his own body. Listen to the storm, heaving and bursting wickedly. If Boggio is mad, then he caught his madness from the natural world. Mad nature, rabid, vicious. It has passed its frenzy to mankind. Boggio wonders how it began: as a dance, perhaps. Women danced, men beat stones, but the madness didn’t yield, so the people made arrows and ploughs and inflicted the first injuries upon the earth, and then upon each other. The Age of Stone gave way to the Age of Iron. We live in the Age of Gunpowder—Boggio believes it is only a matter of time before civilization commits the ultimate violence and turns the gun upon itself. Madness. Wildness. Boggio is the sanest of all because he understands what is happening. The sky laughs and spits; his fingers tremble. Wildness will undo the work of mankind in one agonizing fit. Death will follow. Everyone will follow Boggio. They try to deny it, but Boggio knows what’s coming. Everyone will die. Boggio’s job is to bring life to death, to wrap a skin around a wooden frame and keep memory alive.
Keep the hands moving and the mind can’t wander. Now his hands want to move of their own volition. Not surprising to a man who has always known his control to be tenuous. Boggio has devoted himself to representing the sublime as perfectly as possible, and yet he has always left out the vulgarity of nature—the slavering and convulsions. The point has been to improve life, not to reveal its depraved secrets.
But now that he is so close to death himself he wonders whether he has cheated his work of its potential power. In the form of the single animal rests the wildness that will undo mankind. Expose it, represent the living animal exactly, capture all its virulent madness, and perhaps the madness can be resisted.
Boggio loves the natural world; fears it; hates it; believes himself to be, even in his self-acknowledged madness, a prophet. He assumes that age and a solitary life have given him an advantage: Boggio the far-seer. He will use the owl to convey what he knows—how to do this he’s not sure. Somehow he must revise his old methods. But the ambition is clear, as well as the importance of speed. Time is running out.
He lays the bird supine, parts the feathers in a straight line, and holding the penknife firmly he plunges in and cuts the skin from the center of the breast down to the end of the breastbone. He’s careful not to slice through the abdominal wall—what a mess of intestines he’d have on his hands then. And as though his hands want to avoid that trouble, they remain docile, willingly follow their master’s directions. His confidence growing, he skins down each side of the bird to the knee joints, turns the skin of the legs inside out, snips off the tail and both wings. He stops to spread a paste of cornmeal wherever the sluggish blood has begun to ooze, and then he thrusts a metal hook through the pelvis and hangs the bird upside down. He separates the skin from the back, pulls it down over the neck and head, stretching it with his thumbnail to lift over the skull. He cuts through the membrane around the remaining eye and skins to the base of the beak.
With the skin off—and how efficiently it was done, so quickly and delicately, so little blood!—he beheads the bird, removing what’s left of the brain and scraping away the flesh from the broken skull. Then he cuts the eye from its socket and severs the tongue. When he is through he sits in a chair at the end of the table, cups one hand inside the other, and contemplates his work.
* * *
Money: Lore Bennett has shredded it, rolled it into a ball the size of a cranberry, burned it. Lore despises money the way the teetotalers of his day despise whiskey. Money breaks a man’s back, corrupts his children, destroys his self-respect. Lore lost his wife to money. Lost his home to money. Lost his little bit of savings when a stranger from Cincinnati convinced him to invest in—of all things—a toilet factory. Money’s shit, and Lore flushed what he had down a fancy, imaginary toilet that was never assembled because the factory was never built. Junket doesn’t remember any of it, and Lore has yet to tell his son the details: how they moved into a two-room apartment above the post office in Utica, how that fall the nursery shut down for good, and Lore lost his job, how they had a single kerosene stove for heat, how he and his wife used to climb into bed with young Junket in the afternoon to keep him warm. Unbelievably, they all survived. Spring brought odd jobs and a little income. In May Lore’s wife announced that she was pregnant with their second child. And then in the peak of summer, when their misfortune seemed only a bad memory, Lucy caught a virulent strain of pneumonia and was dead within a week.
The baby would have been a girl, Lore has always supposed, sentimentally picturing her for all these years wrapped in bunting, smiling up at him. After losing his wife, Lore couldn’t stand his own life and knew he had to change it or end it. Fortunately he chose change—he took his three-year-old son Junket by the hand and joined a group of migrants moving west across the state with the apple harvest. They had reached Millworth when the snow began—the other workers headed south, but Lore stayed behind as a day laborer at the Manikin. And when the former groundskeeper retired the following spring, Mrs. Craxton hired Lore Bennett to replace him. He and Junket have lived in the gatehouse ever since.
Lore doesn’t blame the pneumonia for his wife’s death. He blames money, a fatal virus. His fear of poverty is matched only by his fear of wealth. He goes out of his way to avoid an encounter with either of the Craxtons, watches over the property as if it were his own in an effort to avoid any need for directions. Hal Craxton, who doesn’t even know where the family’s land begins and ends, is usually either traveling abroad or busy planning his next trip, and Mary Craxton is too feeble to care, so mostly they leave Lore alone.
But despite the great loss, despite the worn-out longing to hold his wife in his arms again, Lore considers himself lucky. He has a fine job and a beautiful son. The pleasure he takes in his work keeps him vigorous. He thinks of himself as a simple man, congratulates himself for having such simple tastes. How he loves to clutch a fistful of soil in his hand after the last frost of the season or to hear the noise of the crows flocking at dawn and dusk, the rustle of groundcover as a deer lopes through the woods, the crack of a gun. He’d grown up on a small farm in Herkimer County—his father had taught him how to use the natural world, and his mother showed him how to tend it. Now Lore can coax from the orchard the most extraordinary apples—Ida Reds the size of grapefruits, perfect Macintoshes, green apples so abundant that Sylva can hardly boil them down fast enough. Sage, mint, basil, and worm-wort spread in luxuriant tangles in the rock garden, the daylilies alongside the creek grow five feet high, and tender puffballs spring up in Lore’s footprints in the mud, as though the earth were proving its love for him. Even the wild animals seem to respect a contract that gives Lore the right to kill them. It is widely believed that the beaver, grouse, and deer are more abundant on Craxton’s estate than on surrounding land, and such uncommon visitors as moose and lynx have made their summer homes here. Lore tends fairly, if not gently, and over the years has turned this swatch of wilderness into a paradise.
But the one person meant to benefit from Lore’s work has lately grown indifferent. His son seems miserable these days, wandering listlessly through the woods and spending long hours gazing out his bedroom window into the night. What does the boy want? Junk wants something that Lore can’t give. It took him over a year to save enough to buy the Maynard, and look what happened: Junk shot a white owl and in the two days since hasn’t picked up the gun again, not even in practice.
When Lore saw the white bundle of feathers crash against the steep ground and then roll heavily into the lake, he felt such pride—a familiar enough feeling, since though his son has remarkable aim, Lore is surprised every time he hits his mark. The boy’s extraordinary, Lore has said to himself over and over. My boy is extraordinary!
Yet he believes what the Senecas do—that all animals are inhabited by spirits—and fears that Junk will have to pay for his infallible aim. The owl’s spirit must have been as pure as the arctic snow, sacred, untouchable. Maybe Junk regrets bloodying those silky feathers and wishes that he had missed his mark.
On Wednesday evening rain keeps most of the help lingering in the kitchen after dinner. Ellen is still with the old woman. Boggio never showed up for his meal. And Sylva’s husband, Peter, has gone to close up the barn for the night. But the rest have settled back into their chairs, and Sylva has just set a pot of fresh coffee on the table. Billie, the chambermaid, takes out her sewing. Machine lies across the threshold of the pantry and drowsily watches as Sylva’s two boys build and destroy card houses on the kitchen floor. Sylva’s eight-month-old baby is asleep in a bassinet. Sylva’s niece, Nora, a wisp of a thing with splotchy skin and short knots of hair, rinses the dishes. Lore pours his coffee and while he waits for it to cool he contemplates Nora’s skinny backside. She’s the daughter of Peter’s brother and came to the Manikin from Chicago for one purpose: to be fattened with good food. She’s been here nearly six months, though, and Lore hasn’t noticed any change. Must be she’s working too hard, he tells himself. He’ll discuss it later with Sylva.
His gaze moves to Ellen’s Peg, who has moved her chair against the wall and opened a book. She’ll be a handful, Lore thinks. He’s always been amused by her willfulness. She bats Junk around like a cat teasing a mouse. But the boy’s resilient enough—he can take care of himself. Lore turns to look at his son, who sits at the end of the table paging through his old arithmetic primer. In a few years he’ll be every girl’s dream. Lore’s Junket. He adores the boy. All the richness of the physical world is contained in him. He can do anything if he sets his mind to it: shoot the moon out of the sky, shoot the eye out of a snowy owl. An impressive kill, you have to admit, even if it was unlucky.
Lore rolls a cigarette down the table. “Hey!” he calls. His son catches the cigarette, taps it against his open palm, and lights it with an effort at nonchalance. He resembles less a man than a boy trying to act like a man, which only makes him more impressive to Lore. He is at that age just before his prime, when elegance struggles to subdue awkwardness, and the ungainly body works to collect itself into a powerful unity.
What do you want? Lore should shake him to stir his senses awake. What do you want? He’d bring his mother back to life, if he could. I’d do anything for you, Lore tells him in a language that Junket can’t understand, the abstruse language of thought.
Still, he never stops feeling grateful for his son. And for his people: Ellen and her daughter; the colored folks—Sylva, Peter, and their kin; Sid the gardener; Red Vic; Billie; the second maid—a German girl named Eva. And his employers—he’s grateful for them, if not to them. Even Boggio, contemptible old Boggio—he’s a necessary part of the whole. When from time to time he tries to beg a carcass, Lore turns away in disgust. The old sot, so useless and so arrogant, offends Lore’s sense of decency. But he belongs in their midst, as essential to the balance as the devil himself.
If Lore knew that Junket had that same day given the snowy owl to Boggio, he would have been too stunned by the boy’s betrayal to be angry—Junket understands how Lore feels about preserving animals as trophies. But he believes what the boy told him: that he’d carried the carcass back into the woods and buried it, deeply, he hopes, for this storm would wash away a shallow grave.
Tomorrow he will wrap the trunks of the blighted elms along the drive with muslin soaked in a solution of baking soda and witch hazel—an old remedy that his mother taught him. Then he’ll take Junk and Peg hunting again, if the rain lets up. There’s been too much rain this season, usually presaging a harsh winter. Come winter, it’s up to Lore to keep meat on the table. He exaggerates his importance, though; unless there’s a full-blown blizzard, Sylva continues to make her weekly trips to the market for supplies that include fresh butter, Florida oranges, and five pounds of grade A aged Angus beef, shipped in from Chicago. But Lore likes to think that all the residents at the Manikin are dependent upon the land, and he casts himself as the leader of the tribe.
Sid and Red Vic share the most recent newspaper—three days old by the time it reaches the Manikin. From time to time Red Vic reads a headline aloud; Sid grunts, turns the page of his section, and sinks back into it as though into sleep.
They all know that the kitchen, where the Craxtons and their guests never set foot, is the only hospitable room in the house. The thick pine table has absorbed the scent of onions and cloves and the bread that Sylva bakes twice weekly. The huge cast-iron stove radiates enough warmth to moisten foreheads with sweat. Copper pots hanging from the ceiling wear skirts of black where the flames have licked against their sides. The wide floorboards have been swept clean. On the windowsill the last tomatoes of the season are ripening—fat orange beefsteaks stained with deepening red. Strings of sausage and dried corn hang in the pantry, and the shelves are crowded with jars of Sylva’s jams and relishes.
A fine life, Lore tells himself, warm with satisfaction despite the burden of his important responsibilities. And my son. Junket is scratching calculations with a pencil on the inside cover of the primer. He doesn’t usually go in for books—it’s unlike him to be so intent. Lore watches him, trying to decipher Junk’s purpose, though he’s still comforted by his solid affection for the boy and by the knowledge that he is his father. My son.
Junket absentmindedly swipes a hand through the air, but he doesn’t look up to see the pair of moths dancing in front of his face. Lore smiles to himself. My son. At that moment, he sees in the boy’s face the child his wife was carrying at the time of her death—not simply resembling but replacing Junket, a baby girl with a shock of black hair, brown-eyed, smiling sleepily. It is an odd sensation, overpowering in its suddenness. And just as suddenly the image disappears as Junket rises angrily from his chair, flinging his pencil across the room. Everyone looks up, and the moths dart off, each to opposite sides.
“Take this rich man,” Junket says, as though intruding into a conversation begun without him, “he gives … let me see … he gives away one fifth, one third, and one sixth of his money to three different charities. So how much does he have left?” No one speaks. The silence of the room is filled by the trickle of rainwater spilling from a drainpipe beside the kitchen door.
“I couldn’t figure it either. I tried. It’s a problem from a fifth-grade primer.” Junket’s voice breaks to a near whisper. He’s relieved that he’s stumped his audience with the problem, but he’s also embarrassed by his outburst.
From the corner of the room comes Peg’s voice, gently condescending. “It’s so simple.”
“What?”
“It’s the simplest kind of problem, Junket. I’ll show you.”
For another moment the boy continues to look baffled, and then humiliation stains his face scarlet. He snaps the textbook shut and rushes from the table, leaps over Machine, who scrambles up and follows him out the door. After he is gone Nora and Billie laugh outright, others exchange smiles, and Peg murmurs, “What did I do this time?”
Sylva cuffs Peg on the ear. “Smart aleck, girl,” she says.
Lore doesn’t bother to defend his son; in fact, he is quietly pleased, not because Junk has been chaffed by a girl but because such corrections help a boy find his place in the world. He looks forward to the day when his son can laugh at his own expense, making and admitting his mistakes with equal good humor. As he watches the smoke rising from the abandoned cigarette, he considers life’s blunt paradox: stuff from nothing. He lazily tries, and fails, to conjure in his mind the faces of the generations that will follow.