Out of Duck

"Here we are, Wilson," said Spalding. "104 and 103. I'll hold your Pepsi."

Wilson handed over the drink and sucked in his gut as he sidled down the seats. He'd put off buying a new belt, unwilling to make that concession to his age, but he'd already punched two new holes in the leather, and his belly simply poured out over the top. "I really appreciate this, Mr. Spalding, and please tell Mr. Frisk I do, too. S'posed to be one hell of a game."

"It is." No such gut-sucking for Spalding, even though he looked a couple years older. He was one of those men that had managed to keep in shape, and Wilson noticed the adjacent lack of wedding ring.

The hot sun served to explain Wilson's conspicuous pit stains, even though their seats were well-shaded by the balcony above. A delicious breeze caressed the man's freckled bald spot, wafting over the smell of fresh-cut grass and tailgate barbecue. Which author was it that said a baseball game was the best way to appreciate a summer day? Wilson's mustache twitched as he said to Spalding, "You never get the atmosphere on television. Or the off chance to catch a fly ball. There's nothing like it."

"Nothing at all." Spalding had a bud in his ear. Plenty of people did; there were lots of spectators getting commentary from the radio while they watched the diamond live. Wilson always thought it was funny to see them get the news a second off from everybody else, triumph or despair slightly out of sync. It was like being there and not being there, Schrödinger's baseball fan.

At the bottom of the first, the Nats hit a double and got a man home. Wilson cheered with everybody else, even though he knew better than to trust this early victory. He'd seen that team toss a seven-point lead down the drain, but it was okay to hope. He took a sip of his soda and winced. "Ugh. I think the pop machine's off."

"Is it?" said Spalding. There was a Mona Lisa smile on his face.

Wilson cracked his knuckles, leaning his forearms on his aching knees. "Can I tell you something?"

Spalding nodded. "You can tell me anything, Wilson. I'm a very good listener."

"I thought you would be," Wilson said. "I hoped. You can tell me anything, too, you know."

The smile didn't change. "That's good to know."

Wilson swallowed. "Right."

It was the top of the third, at a neat two to two, when Wilson spoke again. "Do you believe in magic?"

Spalding kept his eyes on the game, looking cool and bemused in his light grey suit. "Never seen it. Not ruling it out."

"See, I didn't," Wilson said. "Then, it happened to me."

There was a metallic ting off the bat below, and a gorgeous homer pulled the stands to their feet. Neither Wilson nor Spalding stood with them, and Wilson took a nervous sip from his soda, his short memory surprised at the off taste.

"N-A-T-S! Nats! Nats! Nats!" Everybody had their hats off, faces joyful, part of a crowd that could forget all the failures of another disappointing season, and still hold out hope for a comeback. Wilson wished he could be one of them, still clinging to delusion this early in the game.

Spalding made a small mark in a notebook with a golf pencil. "You were saying about magic?"

Wilson swallowed. "I had these ducks."

"Ducks."

"Lucky ducks."

"Lucky ducks." Spalding rolled the golf pencil over his knuckles, like a tiny majorette baton, with the effortless skill of much practice. "I'm listening."

Wilson wondered who else was listening. "Not real live ducks. They were made out of jade, only this big. Mallards. My mom bought them for me in Chinatown because they were supposed to attract a wife."

The pencil kept twirling. "Magic mallards."

"Well, here's the thing," Wilson said. "That same night, I met my wife. I said goodbye to my mother, got on the wrong train platform by mistake, and had to turn around at the next stop. And there she was. She had the same book I was reading, and she only bought it thirty minutes before. We got engaged in five months."

The Nats were losing their lead, now, the Cardinals making hay on a double play. Wilson took a sip from his soda and growled at himself for forgetting how bad it was. "I didn't make the connection, at first. I put the ducks up on the mantle, and it was a cute symbol for me and my wife. We came up with this little in joke about them. If there was something we wanted, like a house or a car, we would wish for it on the ducks. I got my job in Washington that way. We got our daughter that way. The doctors said we couldn't get pregnant again, but we wished on the ducks for our son. Little twat doesn't appreciate it, either."

Spalding snorted, and it was the most emotion Wilson had gotten out of him so far. It was the bottom of the fifth, now, and they were running out of time. Wilson wished he had a cold beer to comfort him, but he was stuck with the off soda pop.

"So, I wanted to see what the ducks could do," Wilson said. "I tested them. I'd make a wish on the stock market, and it would go my way. I made a wish for a specific birthday present, and that's exactly what I unwrapped. I stopped having to deal with traffic. I started, you know...getting more attention. But for some reason, the magic didn't last as long. The wish would get granted, then the world would snap back."

Bottom of the sixth. The Nats were holding onto a tie, in a rare nail-biter for the season. Wilson licked his parched lips, wiping his sun-spotted brow. "I started taking the ducks out of the house, making wishes on the fly. I got parking spaces. I got promotions. I carried the ducks with me wherever I went, and life just got so...easy. That's how I got the idea about placing bets."

The players were leaving the field, the fans getting up for the seventh-inning stretch. Wilson's heart was pounding like a hammer in his chest, sweat dripping from his mustache as he went back to the awful soda for a brief respite. "It was so good," he said, and swallowed. Winced. "So good, I thought it could beat my income, and I quit my job. My wife didn't like that. She nagged at me for a while, how I turned our wishes into my demands, then she walked out. In the middle of the night. And she took the goddamn ducks!"

"The lucky ducks," Spalding supplied.

"Everything went wrong after that!" Wilson insisted. "I tried to get her back, but even the kids wouldn't talk to me! I tried to get my job back, my portfolio tanked, I was hemorrhaging money! I had to keep placing bets, or I could never get enough money to pay off the other bets! If I can just get my hands on those ducks again, or go back to Chinatown for another pair--"

Spalding stood up. There was nothing celebratory about his pose, feet apart, hands clasped behind his back, one finger still restraining the pencil. He was staring at the field, where the presidential mascots were lining up for their foot race. Wilson felt too faint to stand, but he could hear the starting pistol, which might as well have been aimed at his heart.

Teddy Roosevelt took an early lead, not too proud to elbow Lincoln, but Thomas Jefferson hustled up the middle, determined and dangerously over-balanced. While Roosevelt sought to make up the distance, he cleared the way for Abraham Lincoln to come tearing up the outside, thrusting his stovepipe hat across the finish line. George Washington, forever the crowd favorite, had taken two steps before landing face-down in the dirt, powdered wig ruined. A sure winner, Wilson had once believed, and his hopes went crashing down with the fallen founding father.

Spalding sat down again, and made a little mark with his pencil. "That's an interesting story."

With manic desperation, Wilson snapped, "Bet I could prove it!"

"I don't bet."

Wilson felt sick, his face ashen beneath his sunburn. "Do I have to stay for the whole game?"

Putting a finger to his ear piece, Spalding said, "No, I don't think so. I think we've seen enough."

Hot and cold all at once, Wilson stood up again, sucking in his gut for the shuffle toward the men's room, and perhaps one last phone call to his ex-wife. He didn't know when his debt was going to be collected, but he could never again join the surrounding baseball fans in the naive belief that everything would turn out alright.

"Wilson," Spalding said. "Finish your Pepsi."