From the outset, the lessons have been all feathers:
the first day, a rook found dead and dew-damp,
on another, a male grouse brought down by buckshot,
most recently, pigeons fallen victim to a stray’s claws.
Over the last two months, during our daily hour
together, I’ve observed growing confidence steady
his hands—the blade gliding smoothly along the keel,
fingers slipping red-wettened between skin and muscle
to remove the superficial coat of flightworthy quills.
As we’ve progressed past the basics, the wish has grown
inside me to show the boy something beyond Britain’s
drab plumage, but alas, Demerara lies an ocean away,
so as we work side-by-side here in the museum,
I share with him stories, my words vibrant stand-ins
for distant feathers, red and cobalt wingbeats bursting
from treetops that we felled on the timber plantation—
Yesterday, I told him of how, in the forest’s darkness,
I would see birds orange as if ablaze, a semicircle
of feathers fanned on their heads like the sun half-risen
over the horizon, before telling him of canje pheasants,
a bird he knows as a hoatzin, and how one can see
their chicks scamper among branches overhead
by means of the claws borne double on their wings—
When I finished these recollections, he remarked
with eyes waxed wide as saucers that I was lucky
to have seen the wilds of South America. Perhaps
the boy needs instruction in luck more than in skinning,
for although the sound of the canopy’s dawn chorus
has stayed with me here in Edinburgh, and I miss glimpses
of anteaters and jaguars among emerald thickets,
I would gladly know nothing of South America’s
plants and animals, if it would have spared me
that continent’s whips and shackles, the arm-numbing
labor of cutting down gargantuan trunks to haul bole
and bough to the sawmill’s dull blades—Lucky indeed!
Such unthinking curiosity does not come from malice
but rather has its roots in his enthusiasm; nonetheless
his mouth is not immune to the nonsense commonplace
on the tongues of his countrymen. One instance:
in his first week under my tutelage, he dared ask me,
as a former savage, are you still handy with a spear?,
completely oblivious to the fact that he depends upon
this “savage” for the knowledge of how to stuff birds,
a profession that I perform spear-free, mind you!
And just a week after that, he had the gall to utter,
do you find yourself helplessly fancying to lie in bed
with all our white women?—If it wasn’t for the harm
that his family’s standing could wreak upon me,
I would have told him to ask his mother, for she
knows firsthand what I fancy! This from a boy who
boasts proudly of having abolitionist grandfathers!
Still, I’m afraid that I have to confess that given
his eagerness to learn, I do enjoy teaching him my trade,
and I admit that I’ve developed some fondness
upon seeing how he craves my memories of Demerara,
far more so than anyone else in Edinburgh, but
after these months of lessons on how to stuff fowl
taught with my own hands, I have to wonder if by now
he’s learned to fix no judgement on my color
and recognized each day’s unspoken message: skin is
nothing more than an empty sleeve encasing a body.
Watching him today during our last session together,
fingers laudably filthy as he prepared a peregrine,
I have to conclude that his talents are more than passable,
though, maybe owing to youth, he is prone to rush.
His father would surely never permit taxidermy
for his future, but it would be no surprise if the lad
drops his studies at first chance of passage
across the Atlantic to verify with his own eyes
my accounts of South America and the knowledge
he’s gained in the university, no doubt with hopes
of new discoveries bringing him fame. I wonder, though,
if the boy ever amounts to anything beyond ambition,
would he reminisce over his training at my hands, time
spent with the skins of birds and my own dark skin?
If his name should even somehow attain the company
of the likes of Linnaeus, Cuvier, and von Humboldt,
would young Mr. Darwin at all cite my name
when recounting his own origins as a naturalist?
