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Something Indian
Bobcat-tooth necklaces were popular with tourists who, as Moogie's dad said, "wanted to buy something Indian". A well-made necklace could sell for forty dollars or more. Moogie would be going to school for the first time this year. She would need new clothes and school supplies. Moogie's dad knew this, so he made necklaces.
He never killed bobcats himself. Moogie liked animals, and she would never forgive him if he killed one himself. Instead they had gone to the taxidermist's, who gave them five bobcat heads in a green plastic garbage bag.
"Won't his bobcats need heads?" Moogie asked her dad. They were waiting in a warehouse filled with animals frozen in time.
"Well you see," Moogie's dad explained patiently to her, "a taxidermist just mounts the skin over a fiberglass mold of the animal, so the insides are like leftovers."
As her dad made the deal with the taxidermist Moogie stood by the door, staring up at a ferocious-looking raccoon.
"You're just plastic," she told it. "You can't hurt me."
Bobcats don't eat candy, as a rule. So their teeth are really firm in their sculls. If you're going to get them out you have to boil the heads to loosen the gums. When the water heats up to full boil the heads float to the top of the pot. Moogie's mother remarked that it looked like a Halloween game you might play in Hell.
"I'll never use that pot again," she said, although of course they would.
When the stench became unbearable, even with all the windows in their two-room house open, Moogie's dad decided the heads were done. He put on a thick leather glove and held the steaming lumps of flesh steady as he pulled the teeth out with a pair of rusty pliers. Moogie, anxious to feel useful, scooped the hot teeth up with a spoon and put them in a glass of Javex to whiten. Tourists liked their jewelry to look clean.
The last head evaded him, moving away from the pot's edge and hiding under the hot water. Moogie pulled a chair over to the stove to watch him catch the last head. Her dad grabbed a long BBQ fork to spear the head and pull it up within reach of his glove. The fork punctured the eyeball and he lost his grip. The head plunged back into the ugly grey water. Slowly it bobbed back up and rolled to expose the bulging boiled eye in its socket.
Too young to feel revulsion or danger Moogie peered forward and watched the eye. It was peeling away in layers, like an onion. Slowly at first, then faster. The layers split from left to right, then from top to bottom. Moogie thought of her mother's wooden Russian dolls, one inside another inside another, each one identical, but smaller than the one before.
Without warning, the eye exploded, spurting hot sticky burning pulp. It hit Moogie's face and clung to her long black hair. She cried and staggered backwards, her dad catching her just as she tumbled off the chair.
"Oh Moogie. I didn't know it would do that."
It took a week to make nine necklaces. One of the teeth cracked when Moogie's dad drilled a hole in it, and it couldn't be used. They all sold to a collector from South Carolina, who would resell them at her boutique.
"It'll be so nice," she drawled at them, "to have something Indian."
