by Jack Gantos
That night, once I was sure everyone had gone to sleep, I sneaked down the hall and out the side door. I walked over to King Quack. He was sleeping. I took the big rubber band out of my pajama pocket and quickly reached down and snapped it across his beak. “No quacking allowed,” I whispered, “or I’ll be living out here with you, and Dad will be thinking of how to pluck and grill me.”
I quickly carried him inside and opened the freezer door. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be right here.”
I set him in and closed the door and started counting the seconds. “One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three …”
Suddenly Betsy walked down the hall and saw me. “What are you doing?” she asked, heading for the bathroom.
“Just getting a drink of water,” I rasped with a fake parched voice. When she left I had no idea how much time had passed. I skipped a minute and started counting down two hundred and forty seconds. When I heard the toilet flush I squatted in the shadows. Betsy padded down the hall and went back to her room. I forgot how much time passed again so I skipped another minute. When I had counted down one hundred and eighty seconds I opened the freezer door. King Quack was in the same spot where I had left him. “Sorry,” I whispered. I pulled him out and held him in my arms. He was really cold, but I wanted him to know that I cared about him. I tucked him under my pajama top so that we would be cold together.
I kept this up for a whole week without getting caught. But one day Mom was waiting for me when I came home from school.
“I found this in the freezer,” she said, holding up a duck feather.
“Oh, I can explain,” I said, trying to think fast. “It must have been stuck on my shirtsleeve and fallen off when I reached in for a Popsicle.”
“What about the webbed footprints?” she asked, and opened the freezer door. “Well?” There were footprints all over the TV dinners.
I broke down and told her everything. “I know it sounds odd,” I said, “but it’s supposed to work. In fact I think it is working. I saw some new white feathers poking through the dirty ones.”
“It sounds sick,” she said.
“I’m just following directions from the vet,” I said. “She wouldn’t want me to do anything dangerous.”
Mom gave me a perplexed look. “Well,” she said, throwing her hands up into the air, “at least put some socks on him when you put him in the freezer.” Then she walked down the hall mumbling to herself. “I must be losing my mind,” she said over and over.
The next two weeks were strange. On the one hand, getting the duck ready for the parade was about the weirdest thing I ever did. But on the other hand, as a result of taking care of him, feeding him, petting him, cleaning him, giving him his top-secret five minutes of winter weather in the freezer with doll socks on in the middle of the night, I fell absolutely in love with him. While I talked to him in baby-duck talk and cared for him, my mind began to drift and I found myself thinking about my family and how much I loved them, too. Especially Pete. I was the older brother and here I was spending more time taking care of a duck than I was my own brother. I petted the duck. I never petted Pete. I hugged the duck. I never hugged Pete. I gave the duck good advice—don’t blow your nose under your wing—stay away from dogs that are foaming at the mouth—stand with your head up and shoulders back—keep your beak closed unless you are speaking—always walk in a straight line with purpose—sleep only while floating in the middle of a pond. The only advice I gave Pete was to stay on his side of the room, not to speak to me unless I spoke to him first, and not to run through the house with his toothbrush in his mouth because if he fell down he could drive it through the back of his head.
And to my surprise I began to think of Betsy, too. I hadn’t been very nice to her either. When she left the house I’d sneak into her room and move all her things around. I put dead bugs in the toes of her shoes. I glued pages of her diary together. I erased the phone numbers in her address book and made up phony ones. When her friends stopped by to visit, I began to fake cry and told them we were just on our way to the hospital to claim her body which had been identified only from dental records. It occurred to me that I no longer knew how all our meanness had started. Was I mean to her first, and was she mean as a result? Or was she mean first, and was I mean in retaliation? I didn’t know, but it was worth thinking about.
I knew Dad thought I was a bit of a loser. But if I listened to him and did what he wanted me to do once in a while, I thought he would lighten up on me. When I borrowed tools from him I never put them away properly and left them all over the house and yard. And when I washed the car I always managed to leave his window cracked open and soak his seat so the next time he sat down the bottom of his pants got all wet. He didn’t like that—especially when the guys at work teased him about peeing in his pants. And every time he asked me to get something for him I always said, “In a minute.” After a few times of saying that in a row, he would get steamed at me for not being respectful. He was right. I just wasn’t that helpful. He was trying to make ends meet and provide a good home and I was just letting everything unravel.
And with Mom I figured if I helped around the house more without always having to be told what to do ten times in a row, and stopped my whining and complaining while I did anything useful, then I bet she would be in a better mood and have more fun with me instead of looking at everything I needed as a big chore for her. She was counting the days until Dad finished his duty and we could move off this “sand dune,” and I was just making each day longer for her instead of shorter.
I looked at my little duck and thought he was very good medicine. The psychologist was a lot smarter than I thought. Taking care of a pet was making me feel very mature.
The morning of the parade I got up early, before anyone else. I put on my clean jeans and a white T-shirt and sneakers. I went outside and got King Quack out of his cage. First, I fed him a couple slices of stale bread. As he ate I examined his feathers. They were fuller and clean. When he finished eating I sat him on my lap. I polished his beak and feet with car wax that I took from Dad’s trunk. I had to use only a little bit and he shone right up with the buffing cloth. The scratches on his beak seemed okay to me so I left them alone, and his red scars were fine. I thought they were decorative, kind of like red lightning-bolt tattoos. I figured if he looked clean and healthy and happy, then that was the best we could do. Even if he didn’t win a blue ribbon, he knew I loved him. I put his glitter collar on that I had bought at the pet store and snapped on his matching leash. He looked great to me.
The parade was down at the fishing pier. By the time we arrived about fifty kids with their pets were gathered in the middle of the street. There were mostly dogs, but I also saw two goats, a pig, a lot of cats, some parrots, snakes, a jumping frog, a pony, a ferret, and a skunk that had been descented. There were no other ducks. We all had to sign in and declare what category we were competing in. There was no listing for ducks, so I put my name down under “Waterfowl.” Finally, a man dressed up as Dr. Dolittle announced the beginning of the Pet Parade! He began to march down the street with a cockatoo perched on his outstretched finger. The streets were lined with cheering people. Some of them I knew from school. First, the dogs were called to march. They lined up. Some were dressed with bandannas around their necks and little party hats. One pulled a wagon with a toddler in the back. Then the cats were called. They went every which way. The goats were oblivious of everything except trash on the streets, which they tried to eat. The pig drew the most attention. His owner, a young girl, had dressed him up in a little sailor outfit, but he was still Wilbur to me.
Finally, it was our turn. I squatted down and gave King Quack a pat on his head. “This is your big moment,” I whispered. “Let’s show ’em what you’re made of.” And we walked with our heads held high down the center of the street. King Quack looked to the left and right and quacked to his audience as he waddled happily down the street. We were cheered every step of the w
ay. My chest was puffed out with pride and when we passed by Mom and Dad and Pete and Betsy and they hollered out “Hail, King Quack!” I thought my cheeks would burst. King Quack waddled and stretched his wings, and his beautiful new white feathers reflected the sun. People stepped out of the crowd and took photographs of us and I thought it was the greatest moment of my life.
After we got our blue ribbon, the vet came up to me. “You did it,” she said. “Just look at him. He looks so happy.”
“Yes,” I said, “and I think we are going to keep him.”
“You can’t,” she said. “He has to go find some other ducks and live with them. He’s grown up now and it’s time for him to move on.”
“How will he find them?” I asked.
“Just leave him outside, uncaged,” she said. “He’s feeling good now and before long he’ll join up with other ducks around town.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “I know he had a rough beginning to his life, and I just want to keep helping him.”
“You have to let him go,” she said. “You gave him all the help he needs to feel good about himself. Now he just has to do what ducks do.”
“Without me?”
“Without you,” she said.
We took him home and pampered him through the weekend but on Monday morning I took the chicken-wire cage down and left him alone. “Take your time and stick around here if you want,” I said. “But I’ll understand if you need to get on with your duck life.” I knelt down and placed his blue ribbon on the ground by the side of the water.
“Quack,” he said.
“Quack,” I said back, and went on to school.
Miss Noelle had moved my desk to the back of the class and was kind enough to face it toward the window so I didn’t have to look at a wall all day. For the three weeks while I took care of King Quack I didn’t get lovesick about her at all. I listened to what she was teaching us, and I did my work, but mostly I thought about King Quack.
It happened right after lunch. I had just sat down at my desk for ten minutes of quiet reading when I looked up from my book and out the window. I saw a white duck flying away in the distance and wondered if it was King Quack. Then the sun struck at just the right angle and I saw a bright reflection of light flash off its beak and feet. That must be him, I said to myself, he’s the most well-polished duck in town. I watched as he turned and then flapped his wings and became smaller and smaller, until I couldn’t see him anymore. And then that sad feeling came over me. He was gone. But at least he was doing what ducks do—going to find other ducks.
Suddenly I looked up into the sky. “Look out for hunters,” I said. “I forgot to tell you about them.”
When reading time was over I knew my big test was coming. King Quack was gone. And with his departure I was free to think my romantic thoughts about Miss Noelle again. I put one of King Quack’s feathers between the pages of my book to mark my place, then turned to listen to what she had to say about our science projects. As I listened, I rubbed the feather between my fingers. It was like rubbing a lucky charm. But it was a funny charm because it worked in reverse. Wishes came true before I even wished for them. I got over Miss Noelle and I never thought I wanted to. But now my crush had disappeared and my time was spent thinking about real things rather than some silly fantasy of me and her driving through the Alps. And I began to look forward to going home so I could be nicer to everyone, because it was suddenly obvious that the nicer I was to them, the nicer they were in return. And finally I realized that I was the one who could have used a little boost to my self-esteem, and as a result I was more mature. King Quack had helped me more than I had helped him.
I looked out the window again. King Quack was long gone. But what he left behind was still in me. I loved that duck.
Will Rogers
I was sitting at the dining room table doing a book report on a famous American flier, but I wasn’t writing very much. I was thinking that getting a C on the report was good enough. In class, Miss Noelle had made up a list from the Wright brothers to Amelia Earhart to Charles Lindbergh—one flier for each kid. She gave me Will Rogers and said I reminded her of him because he was an “odd duck.” I looked at his picture and was disappointed because he was not very handsome. He had a wide, goofy-toothy smile and a piece of hay sticking out the corner of his lips. She didn’t tell me he had died in a plane crash either.
Reluctantly I began reading about him and before long I found he was so funny that, to anyone who would listen, I kept quoting things he had said. I wasn’t getting much writing done, but reading his quotes was great fun. “Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else,” he had said. That seemed true. At school I saw a kid puke on another kid and I laughed about it all day. But it wouldn’t have been funny if he had puked on me. And Will Rogers also had said, “Live your life so that you wouldn’t mind selling your pet parrot to the town gossip.” That struck me as something to write down and keep in mind.
Then, like a sudden gale blowing through, Betsy and I got into an argument over one of his quotes. Will Rogers had said he’d “rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it.” I agreed with him.
“Only an idiot could agree with that,” she argued. “How can you be so stupid? The guy who buys the Brooklyn Bridge—which can’t be bought—gets nothing. And the guy who sells it gets all the money.”
“That’s not the point,” I said. “It’s not about money. It’s about being a good person. He’s saying he’d rather be gullible than be a crook. He’d rather be nice than be a creep.”
“Well,” she said, “I’d rather be rich than be an idiot.”
Dad heard everything from where he was sitting in the living room. “I agree with your sister,” he called out. “Besides, Will Rogers is overrated. He said he never met a man he didn’t like. Who could believe that? I meet some yo-yo every day I could run down in the street and never see again.”
Mom was down the hall cleaning the bathroom, but she could hear every word we said. “Well, I agree with young Jack,” she called out. “I’d rather be a bit naive and buy the Brooklyn Bridge and always see the good in people than be a rich crook who spends his miserable life thinking the world is filled with people to take advantage of.”
“Look at it this way,” Dad reasoned. “Rich people have a choice. They can see the good in people or the bad because they have the time to sit around and pick the lint out of their belly buttons. Poor people have to work all day long.”
It was kind of interesting listening and watching Mom and Dad debate with each other, even though they weren’t in the same room. It really didn’t seem like an argument. It seemed more like theater. And I knew, sort of, what they were going to say as if I had seen the play before.
“There is nothing wrong with honest hard work,” Mom continued, while scrubbing the toilet.
“But after you work for the Navy day in and day out, you begin to wish you had a few extra bucks,” Dad said.
“I don’t have to work for the whole Navy to dream of a few extra bucks,” Mom said.
“Now don’t start again about me not making enough money,” Dad said, with his voice rising.
Mom must have grimaced. Money was an issue. “I wish you would just listen to yourself,” she said.
“I can’t listen to myself,” Dad snapped back. “I’m always busy listening to you.”
“And just what do you mean by that!” Mom said sharply, and stuck her head out of the bathroom to glare down the hallway.
Betsy gave me a weary look that said she was totally tired of me. “See what you started again,” she whispered.
“I mean,” Dad considered, calming down a bit, “that I’m always listening to your good advice. Why just last week I took a page out of your book.”
“How so?” Mom asked suspiciously.
“My commanding officer asked me how I felt about being in the service and I told the truth, and nothing but the truth. In so many words I t
old him this Navy job was for the birds. And guess what? He turned around and took a page out of my book. He told me exactly what I wanted to hear—that I was for the birds. Then he offered me an early release and I took it. Signed on the dotted line.”
Mom marched down the hall with the toilet brush held tightly in her yellow-gloved hand. She looked shocked. “We’ll stay on till the end of the school year, won’t we?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he replied. “It will take a while for the discharge paperwork to come through and by then school should be over and we can stop living in this sardine can and move on to greener pastures.”
“Well, I can’t argue with that,” she said. “But what kind of discharge are you getting?”
He sort of looked the other way, as if someone were calling him, but I knew he didn’t want to look Mom in the eye.
“An O-T-H,” he said quickly.
“I’ve never heard of that before,” she said. “What’s it mean?”
“Other Than Honorable,” he said casually. “It just means that we have agreed to go our separate ways. They neither love me nor hate me. It’s neutral.”
“Why aren’t you getting an honorable discharge?” she asked.
“Let’s just say,” Dad replied, “that every day I showed up for work I complained, until I finally wore them down and now they’ve decided to set me free to do what I want to do.”
“And now they think you are a lousy worker,” she said.
“What’s it matter? I’ll never see them again.”
“Maybe so, but what about your self-pride?”
“I never let pride stand in the way of what I want,” he said. “If some people think I’m a jerk, that’s fine with me as long as I can get what I want.”
“Well, I’d rather be able to hold my head up high in front of any kind of people.”
“Hey, I’d just rather head on out,” he said. “Out of sight, out of mind. That’s my rule.”
