Free The Selected Short Fiction of Lisa Moore by Jane Urquhart, Lisa Moore Page A

mostly deserted, except for the games arcade which shoots out synchronized pings and buzzes. Most of the stores have been in various stages of renovation all winter. Someone has been going at a cement wall with a jackhammer. Chunks of cement have fallen away and rusted bars stick out.
    When Olivia turns the corner she sees the exhibit by a taxidermist from British Columbia named Harold. He’s standing next to a chair, one hand on his hip, his index fingers looped through his change apron. When he sees Olivia he becomes animated.
    â€œStep this way beautiful, beautiful lady. Let me take you on a whirlwind tour of purgatory’s wild kingdom. Here you will see beasts miraculously wrested from the claws of decay. Theyhave looked death in the eye. They have been consumed by death, but they are not dust. Thanks to the strange alchemy of embalming fluid and my own artistic wizardry, they live. They live.”
    He does this with a little flourish of his hands and a slight bow. Then he sighs as if he has used up all his energy. Pinching his nose, he says, “Two-fifty if you want to see it.”
    Olivia is twenty minutes early for the movie, so she says, “Sure, I’ll treat myself, why not, it’s my birthday.”
    Harold has a thick mop of black hair with silver at the sides; his body is very tall and thin. One of his eyes is lazy, straying off to the side.
    The display takes the shape of a mini-labyrinth made of ordinary office dividers. At each turn the viewer comes upon another stuffed animal.
    â€œMost of them are from endangered species. But the truly unique thing about this exhibit is that these animals have all been hit by trucks. Trucks or cars. Every one of them. Please don’t think I would ever hurt these animals for the sake of the collection. I collect them only after they have been killed.
    â€œI’m different from those taxidermists you see on the side of the road during the summer, of course. I’ve seen them in this province, in Quebec and Alberta as well, lined up in roadside flea markets next to tables that display dolls with skirts that cover toilet paper rolls. Those guys have a few birds, maybe, a couple of squirrels mounted on sticks, a few moose heads in the back of the station wagon. I take my work seriously. I’m always trying to get a lively posture.”
    Olivia has stopped in front of a moose. The moose is making an ungainly leap over a convincingly weathered fence, one end of which had been neatly sawed off for the purposes of the exhibit. The moose is raised on its hind legs. Its head and neck are hunched into its shoulders, as if it were being reprimanded.
    â€œThis moose looks funny.”
    Harold points to the neck, saying, “A less experienced man might have stretched the neck forward, and if I wished to be true to a moose in this position, that’s what I would have done. I took this artistic license with the moose because it died on the hood of a station wagon. The antenna of the car, unfortunately, entered its rectum and pierced the bowel twice, like a knitting needle. After that I felt this moose should be preserved in an attitude of shame.”
    â€œAre you serious?”
    â€œI travel the continent with these animals, setting up in strip malls all over the United States and Canada. I have a license. It’s educational. Ottawa pays me. I am very serious. People have to know what we are doing to our wild kingdom. I try to respect the animals as individual creatures. Every sentient being deserves respect. Some of these species may never roam the Earth again. They’re dead, of course, but I have preserved them. My part is small, I guess. I’m like a red traffic light. That’s how I see myself. I do my thing, I make them pause for a minute, before they march off into extinction. It’s a chance to say goodbye. We can’t forget what we’ve destroyed.”
    The last animal is a polar bear. The office dividers are set