Duck

I served as Tony Two Shoe Junior’s driver for over 25 years, and I drove his father before him. I saw a lotta things in my time driving for those two but nothin I couldn’t handle. The odd night trip or two, court dates, Hell I even drove senior’s hearse to the burial, and then junior back home after. More than anything else though I served as a hunting partner. See both Junior and Senior loved to hunt birds and went every Saturday morning. 

You want to know what he asked me my first week driving for him? He asked why I thought that Mallards seemed to be doing so well in North America. I thought he was fuckin with me there because I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but he explained most birds’ populations aren’t growing ‘only 6% are’. He was asking me why I thought our way of life was working for the Mallards, I told him I wasn’t quite sure and that I’d have to get back to him. 

When Friday came and the test week was over he offered me the job, but on the condition that I read up on bird hunting. Naturally I started learning the local birds’ names, the way they looked landing and in flight, even their migration patterns. But Senior never saw state lines as any obstacle and weekend trips became weeklong trips and I drove them all. Before too long I was naming every species of Anatidae that touched down in North America, a few other types of waterfowl too, like a loon or an eider. 

What was that? Yea… I remember that hunt in late-March. That Friday night I was cleaning the guns, like I always did Fridays, when Junior stepped into the gun room to ask me if I had seen anything about the early migration around Vermont. ‘A friend of a friend with an eye to the sky’ told him that a few flocks had flown in a little early for the season. He usually ran these things by me, his trusted source.

 When he was still a kid, he would come and hide in the closet that Senior had given me to track the birds. I’m an old school kind of guy, I like to use a map with pins and thread to help me keep track of the flocks. I think Junior used to like looking at the colorful lines intersecting and pinned in place with bright shiny ball point pins, a green one for Greater Scaups here, or red for a Bufflehead there. When Junior became my boss he gave me Senior’s cigar room and took my HQ out of the cramped custodians closet. Senior had to be rolling in his grave when his son threw out the Ivory box he kept the cigars in, even if they are what got him in the end.

 I told him that I had my eye on a few flocks that had flown in and just like that he told me to make sure we had everything prepared for a full day trip for three, then he handed me a set of coordinates and left for a night on the town.  

That morning was one of those cold and damp spring mornings, right as the snow was melting and everything was coming back to life. Something about that time of the year always gets my knee acting up worse than even the cold does, my doctor said it’s something to do with the air pressure of the weather.

 I used to play football back in high school till one day my leg snapped in a game. Roll your eyes all you want, you two, yea it is a cliché because it happens. But you didn’t bring me here to tell you about school sports. 

I stood outside the car chewing a muffin and waiting for Junior. On our way to the hunting blind we stopped to pick up Cory Columbo, our third. He was waiting by the curb when we got to his house and he hopped in, the guys knew better than to keep Junior waiting for a hunt. In the backseat, Junior asked Cory where he had been lately. He hadn’t been around town, getting drinks, or stopping by the racetracks. Cory apologized for his absence but explained that his wife and her sister had him chasing down rumors about his missing nephew. I spoke up about how terrible that was and how I hoped they’d find the kid. I never said a word on these kinds of trips when I wasn’t answering a question, it was a bit of an unspoken rule, but I felt bad for him. Cory’s nephew would come by poker night at my place sometimes, but you two already know that. He was a hell of a player, to the point that others would accuse him of cheating, but I never bought into that. I always had a soft spot for him, and I like to think he felt the same. To be honest, I’m not so sure about the cheating thing these days. 

I remember when the kid first went missing, I helped to look until junior told me I had to stop and get driving again. Columbo’s nephew never had a dad, and neither did I. I stepped in here and there where I could, I even convinced the kid to pick up baseball instead of football when his mother asked me to talk to him for her. It took some time, but he listened after I told him how I had to take this driver job before I could finish school on account of the broken leg. The hospital bills were just too much for my mother to handle on top of the house so I got to work, and since I couldn’t stand driving was all I could do. It was the right choice for him, that kid could swing. 

But either way, Junior stayed silent for a moment before looking between Cory and me before he told Cory that he ‘still had work that needs to be done.’ After that he rolled up the partition for the rest of the drive. 

When the tires hit the dirt road a few hours later junior rolled the partition back down to ask about how far we were. I was pretty familiar with this hunting blind. It was a favorite of Senior’s and it didn’t hurt that we kicked a little money the game warden’s way. 

I told him we were about thirty minutes out, but that we would have to park and walk pretty soon. Cory sat in the back digging into the muffins and asked how junior had known that banana nut was his favorite. Junior told him, ‘A little birdy whispered in my ear.’ I had to pass a water back to get Cory to quit coughing after that. A little while later we were deep enough in the conifer forest that we were going to have to do the rest on foot, so I grabbed the guns from the trunk and all three of us set down on the trail. The forest was silent now that the engine was cut.

 Cory asked what we were hunting so early in the season, Junior told him I would know best what was out here, and I told ‘em. ‘Depending on how quickly the ducks were flying we were likely to catch some Northern Shovelers, some pintails, maybe even a golden eye or two. That and mallards of course.’ Cory laughed and asked if we could do any better than a mallard. Junior asked him what was so wrong with the mallard, and Cory responded that they are so common it would be a shame if we brought any home. Junior seemed to think that was funny and couldn’t stop laughing for a while, it was so loud that some ring-necked ducks flew from the nearby lake overhead. 

When he finished laughing junior asked Cory why it is that he seems to have so little respect for the mallard. Cory said it wasn’t disrespect, but that there must be something far rarer and more valuable than the mallard out there. For a moment Junior seemed to like this idea, but he looked like he remembered something and turned the conversation back to the mallards. He told Cory that he should have more respect for the mallard, and that this duck was maybe the most valuable of all the waterfowl as far as Junior was concerned today. 

We hit the spot and I started working at setting up the hollow for the hunt, but Junior said we wouldn’t be staying that long. He invited Cory down into the blind, but Columbo looked like he had been drained of color and his feet had been cemented in place, so he stood above us while we crouched over in the blind. Junior told me to keep an eye out on the north side of the lake, near the tree line. I set up my shot, but it wasn’t too long before I spotted it: a nest sitting on ground at the edge of where the forest meets the shore. In the nest was a single sleeping mallard. His head was a deep shade of green that seemed to glow from within. Junior, sitting next to me, asked Cory “Why is it that you think mallards are doing so well here?” I’m not sure if Cory responded or not, I was keeping the gun trained on the duck, but it wasn’t like I could look away even if I wanted to, it was perfect. 

Junior responded telling Cory that his father had asked this same question so many times but never seemed to come to a satisfying answer. Junior said that he had finally solved Senior’s riddle, ‘they learned from us.’ He talked about how the ducks knew the first lesson Senior taught, that what you can get is what you can take. ‘That’s why they’re such an aggressive invasive species numbering in the millions, they know they have to take what they want. I just wonder how they learned. Don’t you Cory?’ But by now I wasn’t paying much attention to Cory, I only saw the mallard. He was stretching after waking up, he shook with effort as his wings spread open revealing the shining azure feathers, tinged with edges of purple. It was like seeing the clear sky on those days you only got as a kid, otherworldly.  

Junior went on talking, at first he thought that the ducks must have been watching us as we built our cities and thought it was a good idea, ‘just look at how they seem to fit right into our way of life, uncaring as hundreds of thousands of people walked right by them ever day. Name another animal that does that, not even some dogs can do that.’ He said that he wasn’t sure that they could have learned so much from us by just watching, ‘almost like they had a man on the inside. Someone who could have told all those mallards how we do things.’ 

The mallard had gotten out of his nest and began to hobble towards the lake on two bright orange legs, but something stopped him. I’m not really sure what it was, maybe it was Cory standing in the open plain for all to see, or something in the woods, maybe he even knew something was off. It doesn’t really matter anymore though, does it? 

Whatever it was that spooked him before must have passed because he waddled down to the water and jumped in. At first, I lost sight of him behind the fog coming off the lake, but I found him again bobbing down into the water letting it bead off his head and back. Another flock above us was honking loudly, and he turned up his gorgeous green head to see. The forest had slowly started to come back alive after our loud entrance. I saw water skeeters dancing on the lake’s surface tension, I could hear the woodpecker’s droning in the distance, and in the trees on the far side I swear I saw some cubs. 

That’s when Junior told me to take the shot when I had an opening. It was like the mallard could hear, his wings began to flap in an azure tornado lifting him out of the water and into the sky. It was beauty, a painting only God could have painted. Slowly, he gained altitude and speed rising from the lake, and I could feel Junior’s hand on my shoulder getting tighter. It was wet with something that soaked through my coat and shirt.

The shot silenced everything once again. My eyes were closed, but when I eventually opened them and turned around I saw an unconscious and beaten Cory. It was his blood that soaked into my jacket. Junior didn’t look happy, but he had me carry Cory back to the car.

You two do what you gotta do, but I only have one request. I don’t wanna be a mallard. I’ve seen this played out already and I don’t think it’ll change any time soon.