Before he got sick, his hands had always been covered with paint. Knuckles and fingernails stained purple and red. When she was a girl, he showed her how to mix colors by blending them right on his skin. The backs of his hands and the space above his wrist. He used his entire palette to create one tone. He told her there was no true white.

They stop in front of the bear, still posed with its head lifted, the leg precariously askew. Her father is interested in the teeth. Mary pushes the wheelchair up to the mouth and recognizes the smell coming from it. The same combination of mildew and rot has been on her father’s body for weeks. When she washes his arms and legs and neck, even the sponge comes away with the smell, even the water. Mary grabs hold of her father’s shoulders as if he might be taken right from the wheelchair, and pushes him away, down the hall.

“I wasn’t finished,” her father is saying.

They are reflected in each diorama as they pass. She can see her father waving, trying to get her to stop. If she could, she would preserve him in a window of his own. Paint the Chinese letters of the noodle factory across the wall. Arrange the tubes of oils, spread the brushes, hang the works in progress, prop the bed up in the corner. She wants to keep every part of him for herself. She wants to scream.

Dr. Fisher hurries to keep up. The bear, he says, has no natural predators. It can run up to thirty miles per hour. He looks distraught and tries to catch her eye. He wants to know if he has done something wrong.

Mary turns quickly and glances back. The dioramas are lit up like show lights, and on the pedestal, where the bear should be, is nothing at all. She feels the urge to run. To push her father straight through the emergency exit doors. Instead she focuses on Dr. Fisher’s voice. He says that bears hibernate for six months at a time. Their heartbeats drop. They barely breathe, but they are still alive. Mary imagines waking from a sleep like this. The hunger sure to follow. She can sense the animal, with its sad stitching, stumbling behind them.

Slim’s Last Ride

slim’s last ride

I don’t know why Rick thought the rabbit could fly. He knows he can’t. He knows I can’t. He must have thought something would keep it from falling, or he never would have let it go.