Taxidermy for a Wolverine Skull

The black plastic garbage bag snagged on a rusted nail protruding from the baseboard. Harry yanked it. The plastic shrieked, tearing open from top to bottom. Dust puffed into the air, catching the sharp, fading summer sunlight that sliced through the single unblocked window. Harry coughed, rubbing his gritty eyes with the back of his wrist. He stumbled backward over a stack of yellowing TV Guide magazines from 1998.

From the torn plastic spilled a monster.

It was a taxidermy wolverine. The fur was patchy, exposing dry, gray skin beneath. Its jaw was wired open in a permanent, crooked scream. The left glass eye stared at the popcorn ceiling. The right eye stared at the floor. The front left paw was missing entirely, leaving a stub of wire wrapped in brown thread.

Harry sat on the floor, breathing hard. Sweat prickled his hairline. The apartment was an oven. The air conditioner in the window was a dead, gray block of useless plastic.

"What on earth is that?" Betty asked.

Harry looked up. His aunt stood in the doorway of the kitchen. She wore a pristine white blouse and sharp black trousers. She looked like she belonged in a boardroom, not standing amidst towers of empty cardboard boxes and broken toasters.

"It's a wolverine," Harry said.

"It looks like a mistake."

"Dad got it in Kenora. On a hunting trip."

"Your father never hunted a day in his life," Betty said. She stepped carefully over a pile of tangled extension cords. Her black leather flats clicked against the sliver of exposed hardwood floor. "He probably bought it at a yard sale because he felt sorry for it. That was his problem. He collected broken things."

Harry glared at the wolverine. It looked ridiculous. It looked mean. He hated it.

"Grab a trash bag," Harry said. "A new one. A strong one."

Betty did not move. She tilted her head, her sharp bob of gray hair swinging slightly. She crouched down, her knees popping with a loud crack in the quiet room. She reached out and tapped a manicured fingernail against the wooden base the wolverine was mounted on.

It made a hollow, echoing thwack.

"Solid wood doesn't sound like that," Betty said.

"It's cheap plywood," Harry said. "Just bag it."

"Hold on."

Betty stood up. She walked over to a nearby mountain of junk on the coffee table. She dug through a pile of loose batteries, a rusted whisk, and a ceramic mug shaped like a frog. She pulled out a flathead screwdriver with a cracked yellow handle.

"Betty, don't," Harry said. His stomach tightened. The room felt entirely too small. The ceiling pressed down on him.

"I want to see," Betty said.

She knelt beside the wolverine. She jammed the flathead screwdriver into the seam where the bottom piece of wood met the base. She twisted her wrist. The wood splintered. A loud crack echoed off the bare walls.

"Stop it," Harry said, his voice rising.

"Almost got it," Betty muttered.

She leaned her weight into the screwdriver. The bottom panel of the base popped completely off, flipping onto the floorboards.

Harry blinked. The inside of the base was completely hollowed out. Stuffed tightly inside the cavity was a thick stack of envelopes. They were wrapped tightly in thick, blue rubber bands. The paper was yellowed at the edges.

Betty dropped the screwdriver. It clattered against the floor.

She reached into the hollow base and pulled out the bundle of envelopes. The rubber band snapped violently when she tugged it, snapping against her knuckles. She winced, shaking her hand, but she didn't drop the letters.

"What are those?" Harry asked. His voice sounded small. He felt like a six-year-old sitting on the floor, staring up at the adults doing things he didn't understand.

"Letters," Betty said. She flipped the top envelope over. "Addressed to him. But there's no stamp. No return address."

"Open it."

Betty slid her sharp thumbnail under the flap of the top envelope. It ripped easily. She pulled out a single sheet of lined notebook paper. The handwriting was cramped, dark blue ink pressed so hard into the paper it left physical grooves.

Betty read the letter in silence. Her eyes tracked back and forth. The muscles in her jaw tightened. The bright sunlight caught the deep lines around her mouth.

"Well?" Harry demanded. He pushed himself up off the floor, his knees aching.

"It's from a man named Silas," Betty said softly. Her voice lacked its usual sharp edge.

"Who is Silas?"

"I don't know." Betty flipped the paper over. "But he says your father owes him forty thousand dollars. And he says if he doesn't pay by the end of the month, the Spades are going to take it out on you."

Harry stopped breathing. The room spun slightly. The wolverine's crooked glass eye seemed to gleam in the shadows.

"The Spades?" Harry repeated.

"It's a poker ring," Betty said. She pulled another letter from the next envelope. She scanned it rapidly. "Underground games. Down on King Street. He was playing with very bad men, Harry. Very bad men."

Harry looked at the piles of junk surrounding them. The broken lamps. The towers of old newspapers. The empty picture frames.

"He didn't have forty thousand dollars," Harry said, his hands curling into tight fists. "He didn't have forty cents."

"I know," Betty said. She looked down at the letters, the blue ink stark against the white paper. "I know."

The Blue Rubber Bands

Harry snatched the letters out of Betty's hands. The paper felt rough, grainy against his sweating palms. He read the words himself. The Spades. Forty thousand. The kid. The blue ink blurred as his eyes darted across the page.

He crumpled the letter into a tight ball.

"Harry!" Betty snapped. She reached for his wrist.

Harry yanked his arm away. "We're burning these."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"I'm not being ridiculous!" Harry shouted. His voice cracked, echoing loudly in the cramped, junk-filled room. "Look at this place, Betty. Look at it. It's a disaster. He was a disaster. And now you want to keep proof that he was a degenerate gambler who put a target on my back? No. We burn it."

Harry turned in a tight circle, his sneakers squeaking against the hardwood. He kicked a cardboard box full of tangled wires. It slid across the floor and crashed into the wall.

"Where are his matches?" Harry muttered, frantically tossing magazines off the coffee table. "He always had matches."

"Stop it right now," Betty said. She stepped directly in front of him, blocking his path. She was shorter than him, but she felt ten feet tall. Her eyes were hard, unblinking.

"Get out of my way," Harry said.

"No."

"He was a coward, Betty. He was a coward and a loser, and I am not keeping a detailed record of how much he failed."

"Ignoring the truth is a coward's game," Betty said. Her voice was dangerously quiet. "Is that what you want to be? Another coward?"

Harry froze. The words hit him like a physical blow to the chest. He dropped his hands to his sides. The crumpled ball of paper slowly expanded in his tight grip, making a quiet crinkling sound.

"I'm not him," Harry whispered.

"Then don't act like him," Betty said. She reached out and gently pried the crumpled paper from his fingers. She smoothed it out against her thigh. "You think destroying the paper destroys the past? It doesn't. It just makes you blind to it."

"Am I going to turn into him?" Harry asked. The question slipped out before he could stop it. It was the question that kept him awake at night. The terrifying, magical logic of childhood that still gripped his brain. If the tree is rotten, the apple is rotten. If his father was a liar, a hoarder, a gambler, a coward... what did that make Harry?

Betty sighed. The anger drained out of her posture. She looked incredibly tired. She looked at the wolverine on the floor, its absurd, wired jaw.

"People are not photocopies, Harry," she said. "You don't inherit sins like you inherit eye color. You are a blank slate. Every single morning you wake up, you are a blank slate."

"That's a lie," Harry said bitterly. "I have his hands. I have his nose. Why wouldn't I have his brain?"

"Because you're arguing with me," Betty said. "Your father never argued. He just hid. He built walls out of trash and hid behind them. You are standing here, fighting me. That's different."

Harry looked away. He stared at a stain on the wallpaper. It looked like a bruised plum.

Betty tapped the letters against her palm. "There's something else in here."

Harry turned back. "What?"

Betty pulled a small, stiff square of cardboard from the bottom of the hollowed-out wooden base. It was bright yellow.

"It's a pawn ticket," Betty said. She squinted at the faded black text printed on it. "From a place on Spadina. Dated three weeks before he died."

"What did he pawn?"

Betty flipped the ticket over. "Grandpa's pocket watch."

Harry felt a cold spike of adrenaline hit his stomach. The gold pocket watch. The only thing of value the family had ever owned. His father had promised it to Harry for his eighteenth birthday. When the birthday came, his father claimed he had lost it in the move.

"He pawned it," Harry said softly. The betrayal tasted like ash.

"He pawned it for a thousand dollars," Betty said, reading the ticket. "And there's a note scribbled on the back."

"What does it say?"

Betty handed the ticket to Harry. The handwriting was a chaotic scrawl.

Paid the interest. Silas says it buys me one more month. Need to find the rest. Need to protect H.

Harry stared at the letter H.

"He didn't gamble it away," Betty said quietly. "He was trying to pay them off. He was trying to buy time."

Harry shook his head violently. "No. No, he caused the problem in the first place."

"Let's go find out," Betty said. She grabbed her leather purse from the only clean chair in the room. "We're going to Spadina."

The Neon Open Sign

The heat outside the apartment building hit them like a physical wall. The Toronto pavement shimmered in the late afternoon sun. Harry squinted against the brutal glare, the sound of traffic roaring in his ears. The streetcar rattled past, a massive red metal beast grinding against steel tracks. The noise was deafening.

They rode the streetcar in silence. Harry stared out the scratched plastic window. The city looked too bright, too fast. He felt entirely disconnected from it, anchored only by the heavy yellow pawn ticket sitting in his pocket.

The pawn shop was squeezed between a bubble tea cafe and a boarded-up convenience store. The neon OPEN sign in the window flickered rapidly, emitting a high-pitched electronic whine. The glass door was smudged with fingerprints.

Harry pushed the door open. A bell clattered violently above their heads.

The shop was a chaotic cave. Guitars hung from the ceiling like colorful bats. Glass display cases were crammed with tarnished rings, digital cameras, and power tools. Behind the main counter stood a young guy in a faded band t-shirt. He had a barcode tattooed on his neck and was staring intently at his phone.

Betty walked straight to the counter. She placed her hands flat on the scratched glass.

"Excuse me," Betty said loudly.

The guy didn't look up. His thumbs flew across the screen.

"Excuse me," Betty repeated, sharper this time.

The guy sighed, locking his phone and sliding it into his pocket. He looked up, his expression entirely bored. "What's up?"

Betty pulled the yellow pawn ticket from her purse and slapped it onto the glass counter. "I need to inquire about this item."

The guy picked up the ticket. He flipped it over. He squinted at it, then typed something into a laptop sitting next to the register.

"Yeah, nah," the guy said. "That piece is ghosted."

Betty stared at him. "I beg your pardon?"

"It's gone. Ghosted. Outta here. Past the hold date by like, a year. We sold it."

"Sold it to whom?"

"Bro, I don't know," the guy said, leaning back. "Some dude. Cash transaction. No cap, it was a nice watch. Gold. Heavy. But your guy missed his payments."

Betty turned to Harry, her face a mask of total confusion. "What is he saying?"

"He means it's gone, Betty," Harry said. He stepped up to the counter. He looked at the guy with the neck tattoo. "Can you look at the account? The name is Arthur Pendelton."

The guy rolled his eyes but clicked his mouse a few times. "Pendelton. Yeah. Arthur. Dude came in here sweating buckets. Always looking over his shoulder. Big nervous energy."

"Did he pawn anything else?" Harry asked.

"Nah. Just the watch. But he came in every week to pay the interest. Kept the ticket alive. Until he didn't."

The guy clicked another button. He frowned.

"Weird," the guy said.

"What's weird?" Harry asked.

"The notes on the file. My boss wrote this. Says Arthur brought the watch in, but the cash payout didn't go to him. The check was cut to a guy named Mark Victor."

Harry frowned. "Mark Victor?"

Betty gasped sharply. She grabbed the edge of the glass counter. Her knuckles turned stark white.

"Betty?" Harry asked. "Who is Mark Victor?"

Betty didn't answer immediately. She stared at the scratched glass case, looking at a tray of silver spoons. Her breathing was shallow and fast.

"Betty. Who is Mark?"

"Your Uncle Mark," Betty whispered. Her voice was shaking. "Your mother's brother."

Harry felt the floor tilt beneath his sneakers. "Uncle Mark? But he... he moved to Vancouver ten years ago. We haven't seen him since I was a kid."

"He was an addict, Harry," Betty said. She turned to face him. Her eyes were completely wide. "He had a gambling problem. A massive one."

Harry looked back at the pawn broker. "The debt. The poker ring. The Spades. Was the debt in Arthur's name?"

The guy clicked again. "Nah, man. Looks like Arthur cosigned a marker. A marker for Mark Victor. Arthur took the debt on so Mark wouldn't get his legs broken."

Harry stepped back from the counter. The high-pitched whine of the neon sign suddenly seemed overwhelmingly loud. It pierced his eardrums.

His father didn't gamble the money away.

His father took on someone else's debt. He took on Uncle Mark's debt to save him. And he pawned his own family heirloom to pay the interest, keeping the violent men away from his son.

"He didn't do it," Harry whispered. He looked at Betty. "He wasn't the gambler."

Betty put her hand over her mouth. She nodded slowly.

"He was paying for Mark's mistakes," Betty said. "He took the fall. And he never told us."

The Torn Paper

The apartment was completely silent when they returned. The blazing summer sun had dipped below the horizon, leaving the cramped living room bathed in deep, bruised shadows. The piles of junk looked different now. They didn't look like the chaotic mess of a lazy man. They looked like barricades. They looked like the frantic fortifications of a man terrified of the outside world.

Harry stood in the center of the room. He stared at the empty space on the wall where a television used to sit. The pale rectangle of clean wallpaper was a glaring reminder of what was missing. Everything of value was gone. Sold off, piece by piece, to keep the Spades away.

Betty sat down carefully on the arm of a plaid sofa. She looked at Harry in the fading light.

"Why are you so angry at him, Harry?" Betty asked. Her voice was gentle, entirely stripped of its usual armor.

"I'm not," Harry said quickly.

"You are. You walked in here today ready to burn his memory to the ground. You assumed the worst about him instantly. Why?"

Harry gripped the sides of his jeans. His hands were shaking. The texture of the denim was rough under his fingertips. He stared down at the poorly taxidermied wolverine. Its crooked glass eye caught the dim streetlamp light filtering through the window.

"Because he left," Harry said. The words tore out of his throat, jagged and raw.

"He had a heart attack, Harry. He didn't choose to leave."

"He chose!" Harry yelled. He spun around, facing Betty. His chest heaved. The shadows in the room seemed to stretch and warp. "He gave up!"

Betty stood up. "What are you talking about?"

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. The memory hit him with violent force. The sound of tearing paper. The hot flush of shame in his cheeks. The blinding panic.

"I found a note," Harry whispered. He opened his eyes. He couldn't look at Betty. He looked at the floorboards. "The week before he died. I was looking for a pen in his desk. I found a note hidden under his blotter. It was addressed to me."

Betty took a slow step forward. "Harry..."

"It was a goodbye letter," Harry said, the tears finally spilling hot and fast down his face. "He said he was sorry. He said he couldn't fix it anymore. He said he was a failure and that I would be better off without him dragging me down. He was going to do it, Betty. He was going to kill himself."

The silence in the room was absolute. The traffic outside seemed miles away.

"What did you do?" Betty asked softly.

"I ripped it up," Harry sobbed. He mimed the motion with his hands, his fingers trembling. "I ripped it into tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet. I was so angry. I hated him so much. I thought he was just a coward who didn't want to try anymore. And then a week later, his heart gave out anyway. The stress killed him before he could do it himself."

Betty crossed the room. She didn't hesitate. She wrapped her arms around Harry, pulling him tightly against her shoulder. Harry collapsed into the hug, his knees buckling slightly. He cried into her crisp white blouse, feeling the stiff fabric against his cheek.

"I'm sorry," Harry choked out. "I'm so sorry."

"Oh, Harry," Betty whispered, rubbing her hand firmly up and down his back. "I suspected. I always suspected there was something you weren't telling me about those last days."

They stood there in the dark apartment until Harry's breathing slowed. The tight, crushing weight in his chest finally began to crack and dissolve.

Betty pulled back slightly. She held his shoulders, looking directly into his eyes.

"He was terrified, Harry," Betty said firmly. "He was drowning in Mark's debt. He thought taking his own life was the only way to sever the tie and protect you from those men. It was a terrible, flawed, stupid plan. But it wasn't born out of cowardice. It was born out of a desperate need to protect his son."

Harry wiped his face with the back of his hand. He looked down at the letters sitting on the coffee table. The blue rubber bands. The frantic handwriting.

He wasn't a gambler. He wasn't a deadbeat. He was just a man who got entirely overwhelmed trying to shield his family.

"I didn't know," Harry whispered.

"Now you do," Betty said. She reached down and picked up the wolverine by the scruff of its patchy neck. She held it out to him.

"What are we doing with this?" she asked.

Harry looked at the monster. The ugly, broken thing his father had kept. A broken thing he couldn't bear to throw away.

Harry reached out and took the wolverine. It was heavy. The wood was rough against his palms.

"We're keeping it," Harry said. His voice was steady now. "It's ugly. But it's true."

Betty smiled. A real, soft smile. "Okay. Let's go home."

They walked out of the apartment. Harry set the wolverine carefully on top of a cardboard box in the hallway. He pulled the heavy metal door shut. He slid the brass key into the lock and turned it. The deadbolt engaged with a loud, final click. He rested his hand against the cool metal of the door for one long second, feeling a strange, hollow peace settle into his bones.