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for the poor, stuffed animal. Frankly, given his history of delaying marriage while he flirted with careers, Erroll didn’t seem in much of a rush to become as one with Harriet.
    Taxidermy was already taking much longer than anticipated.
    He’d had to repeat the fur course, she’d told me, because he’d gotten the flu, and prior to the groundhog tongue issues, he had difficulties with the bird course. Turkeys, she’d informed me solemnly, were difficult. “Not the fat kind we have for Thanks-giving. But with the wild ones, the body making isn’t easy, and he had problems with it. He has to try again with a new bird, poor man.”
    Run, turkeys, run! Or better still—you’re birds—fly! Could those infamously ineffective brains—I’d heard that when it rains, 37
    A HOLE IN JUAN
    they look up to check the weather, and drown—could those brains anticipate danger?
    I did not want to become emotionally involved with the fate of wild turkeys, so I reverted to her other topic: her marriage-in-waiting. “Wedding bands, eh? Does this mean Erroll’s about to . . .” I wasn’t sure if people graduated from taxidermy school or received any sort of degree. “. . . finish?”
    Her tolerant chuckle implied that the idea of completing such a difficult course of study in a matter of mere years was so naive, one could only laugh. “His licensing is a way off—but looking can’t hurt, can it? Did I tell you about when he won an interschool competition? He stuffed a raccoon with amazing results.”
    Run, raccoons, run!
    “You mark my words—he’ll be a master taxidermist soon.”
    I never knew how to respond to these anecdotes. Taxidermy school was apparently very hands-on, and Harriet had related an unending series of triumphs with everything from a vulture—
    apparently the body work on vultures was a snap compared to wild turkeys—to a dog. “Euthanized, the poor old thing,” Harriet had said. “The owners were quite pleased, and Erroll topped the class once again.” The taxidermy school sounded close to a sweatshop, using students to offer cut-rate pet preservation services.
    “Will he . . . when he’s finished studying—will he be on his own?” I couldn’t recall ever passing a taxidermy shop. Where was the vast reservoir of need for such services?
    “We simply don’t know that yet,” she said. “People come recruiting, but we haven’t decided.”
    I envisioned sober-faced men going to interviews, their briefcases filled with small, stuffed creatures—the fur of which Erroll would have finally learned to make glossy and natural-looking. I pictured a résumé stuck with hair and bristles.
    “Oh look! I so enjoy talking with you I didn’t realize they GILLIAN ROBERTS
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    were done, so here they are!” Harriet handed me the stack of revised exams and the master. She was a great school secretary, and for that I’d listen to anything she wanted to say about Erroll’s bright future, and the decimation of wildlife everywhere.
    En route back to my classroom, I saw Nita Kloster and Allie Deroche once again in a huddle not far from my—locked—
    classroom door. What was it about that spot? Their heads were close and their hunched shoulders and hand gestures suggested an intense conversation about something less than pleasant. Either a romance was breaking up, which would necessitate endless analysis and conferencing, or they were disagreeing about details of Friday evening’s school party. They were the co-chairs of the committee and maybe there were unresolved issues such as whether Mischief Night had the same orange-and-black color scheme as Halloween.
    They saw me and stopped talking. “You’re early for class,” I said. “Everything okay?”
    They glanced at each other. “Sure. It’s too noisy in the lunchroom,” Allie said.
    I agreed, but nobody under thirty had ever thought so before.
    “Everything going smoothly with the party?” I asked.
    They stared at me and then at each other, as if