He hoists the hind legs—they are bulky, prodigious—and all at once the spine and the forelegs are positioned straight on the mount and the hind legs take their shape into a thick, splendid Z. How low the tailbone is, Downing observes as he wets both of his hands in a bucket. How like a dipped oar, nearly touching the two jaunty rear heels!
Although some taxidermists use only the leg bones and skull, slap-dashing the body and neck with odd cloths, with netting, burlap or sisal, which is then dipped into plaster, Downing uses everything that Ostlet has sent him, all the way down to the last wee bit of vertebra as there is less chance of an error this way, and he is, after twenty-five long years of practice, by now quite comfortable affixing the bones with water clay, and the water clay is sort of his favorite part, actually.
Titus Downing stares at the completed skeleton of the aardvark. He licks his lips, throws his dripping hands into the thick blocks of clay, and then the taxidermist begins his shaping.
* * *
“Crank That” is blasting at top volume as you thumb through your now 389 unread text messages and 221 unread emails and head toward Alexandria via the George Washington Memorial Parkway, and you like taking the Parkway because it runs right past National—Reagan National—your favorite airport of all airports, with the most awesomesauce view of the Potomac, the Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln monuments, and it is your favorite route because, while you take it, you enjoy imagining there one day being an Alexander Paine Wilson (R) monument.
Ronald Reagan’s middle name was Wilson. You are not related. Nor are you related to Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat whose economic policies disgust you but whose international policies you admire (neo-imperialist Wilsonianism, now that’s some shit you can get behind); but you are, as it happens, in a webby way, actually related to Thomas Paine, founding father, author of the famous 1776 Revolutionary doctrine Common Sense, and it is in the spirit of Thomas Paine that you have been working on your own missive for your reelection campaign.
The document, punned Plaine Truth: Addressed to Reasonable Citizens of America, is a combination of the original title of Common Sense and your middle name, and although none of your staffers is yet 100% behind Plaine Truth, you know that Fox will go crazy for it. Just like your relative Thomas Paine vigorously advocated for the separation of the colonies and Great Britain when he wrote, “the weeping voice of Nature cries, ’TIS TIME TO PART,” you vigorously advocate for the separation of the United States, Democrats and Republicans. “It’s time for Two Americas,” you have written in Plaine Truth, “ ’TIS TIME TO PART,” and should this not, you explain to your staffers, be your rallying cry? Can’t they, like, even see the bumper stickers?
DIVIDE TO UNITE
ALEXANDER PAINE WILSON 2020
When Greg Tampico read Plaine Truth, he got very choked up. He knew you were a Federalist, he said, and this idea was radical but it was also maybe kind of genius, he said, and wanted to know was there a map in the works? What would be the new borders?