Johnny America

 

Twen­ty One Duck Salute

by

Illustration of several ducks, with a shoelace around their feet.

“There is no such thing.”

It’s the first thing I say to the woman on the stool next to me at the bar but not the first thing I think. You’re out of my league, that’s what I’m think­ing and not say­ing. Be­cause she so clear­ly is.

On the tall side, in a pantsuit of green silk that cov­ers pneu­mat­ic flesh with rosy over­tones. White spiky heels. Hoop ear­rings you could heave a blue­bird through. Rus­set hair in cas­cades like a glo­ri­ous dark Ni­a­gara. A long face on which wound­ed dig­ni­ty sits like it be­longs there.

She’s been go­ing on about how much she wants to see a twen­ty one duck salute be­fore she gets too old to en­joy it. She’s ad­dress­ing her­self to the bar­tender. How can I not eavesdrop?

This is at the Amethyst. The own­er-op­er­a­tor is named Ru­by. Or is it the oth­er way around? I lose track.

Sep­a­rate­ly, the woman and I are drink­ing more or less the same amount, at more or less the same pace. For me it’s too much. For her it ap­pears not to be enough.

It’s ear­ly. Not much of a crowd yet. Smoky jazz on the sound sys­tem; ir­rev­er­ent horns and brushy per­cus­sion. Ru­by has her eye on us. It’s a spec­tac­u­lar dark eye in an ur­ban face with flat­tened an­gles, by which I guess I mean to say that she has seen it all. The par­rot in a cage be­hind the bar has for­got­ten all the words it used to know.

The Amethyst is down­town on Cayu­ga Av­enue in a city you know on­ly too well. It’s spring, com­ing up on May. Nine­ty-four per­cent of the lo­cal res­i­dents polled the oth­er day have had it with winter.

“Lis­ten, Ben­i­to,” says the woman, “just be­cause you per­son­al­ly don’t know about a thing doesn’t mean it can’t ex­ist. Your hori­zons are nar­row, that was the first thing I no­ticed about you.”

My name is Jer­ry. If she wants to call me Ben­i­to, I’m all for it.

I’m about to look up twen­ty one duck salute on my phone, but she leans over and puts a hand on my arm.

“Don’t take the coward’s way out.”

She’s right, of course. I put the phone away. I ask Ru­by to serve her an­oth­er shot. Bour­bon, that’s her drink. She looks at me as if I’ve just put my hand down her blouse. In a good way.

If case you’ve for­got­ten, the Amethyst makes you, the pa­tron, feel as though you’re in an aquar­i­um. It’s done with mir­rors, and clever light­ing, and strate­gi­cal­ly placed plant clus­ters that sug­gest the qui­es­cent mys­tery of un­der­wa­ter flo­ra. Kind of cool ex­cept you can’t es­cape the sen­sa­tion that you are be­ing gaw­ped at by tourists be­yond the glass.

“Okay,” I say, “how do they work?”

“How does who work?”

“Twen­ty one duck salutes.”

“I’m not go­ing to waste my time on a skeptic.”

“I’m not a skep­tic, I’m just cu­ri­ous about the mechanics.”

“Done right, it’s a feat of or­ga­ni­za­tion­al genius.”

“I bet.”

So now we’re drink­ing to­geth­er, to Ruby’s re­lief. I slow down be­cause it would be easy to over­drink the situation.

Pene­lope. Her name.

“Let’s get one thing straight.”

“Okay.”

“Nev­er call me Penny.”

Words are cheap. I promise I won’t. There’s some­thing else on her mind.

“Gloom and doom,” she says, prac­ti­cal­ly spit­ting the words.

“What about them?”

“I’m fed up to here with all of it. Pes­simism, de­pres­sion, apoc­a­lyp­tic dread. What­ev­er hap­pened to plain old hav­ing a good time?”

“Take a blow­torch to all the neg­a­tiv­i­ty, that’s what I say.”

“I wish I could be­lieve you mean that.”

“Me too.”

She sizes me up for the first time. “You’re okay, Benito.”

“Eu­pho­ria,” I say. “That’s what we need more of.”

“Don’t for­get about exuberance.”

Ruby’s eye dark­ens a lit­tle, lis­ten­ing to our ban­ter. Don’t let any­body tell you bar­tenders are not judg­men­tal. They gen­er­al­ly keep it to them­selves, but they are burst­ing with so­cial criticism.

I lose track of pret­ty much every­thing, time in­clud­ed, try­ing to keep up with Pene­lope. Not so much the drink­ing as the wave she’s rid­ing. It’s re­al. It is ab­solute­ly re­al. By force of will she has oblit­er­at­ed pes­simism, de­featism, all the down­ers we have made our dai­ly bread. She is a burst of hap­py, a riv­er of de­light, a star puls­ing in the sky of pos­si­bil­i­ty. As best I can tell, in my con­di­tion, the bar seems to be fill­ing up with peo­ple who bur­ble and gush, gush and bur­ble. Ru­by gets busy. The par­rot stut­ters a cou­ple of syl­la­bles, then gives up and sulks with its head down. If there is any sort of des­per­a­tion un­der­neath Penelope’s joy­ful dri­ve, I can’t see where she has hid­den it.

The next thing I lose track of is how we come to be in Penelope’s car. It’s a sil­ver bul­let of an elec­tric sedan with leather seats. I know, I know, nei­ther one of us has any busi­ness be­ing be­hind the wheel. Sti­fle, if you will, your urge to crit­i­cize. Here we are; stay with us.

“Bet­ter go slow,” I say.

“My thought exactly.”

This seems to be part of a con­ver­sa­tion we are hav­ing, or pos­si­bly it’s the en­tire con­ver­sa­tion. It might al­so just be what I’m think­ing we ought to be say­ing. She looks over at me. Zoom, she says, Let’s zoom.

It feels like hours, and quite pos­si­bly it is, that we dri­ve around the city man­ag­ing not to be pulled over by a late-shift cop. Maybe Pene­lope is dri­ving with more care than I am in a po­si­tion to ap­pre­ci­ate. I want to say that our tra­jec­to­ry is aim­less, but it’s not.

For one thing, I pick up a few ba­sic bi­o­graph­i­cal facts about the woman sit­ting next to me. She works in some kind of on­line mar­ket­ing busi­ness. She has been mar­ried twice. She knows what it’s like to be spurned.

For two, at some point we turn in­to the park­ing lot of Northang­er Park. Northang­er is a pop­u­lar hang­out, but the city fa­thers and moth­ers close it af­ter dusk. Which ex­plains why Pene­lope switch­es off her head­lights, go­ing in. The park sits on the west edge of the city and boasts the usu­al ac­cou­trements: a play­ground and pic­nic ta­bles, an acre of tame woods, an ex­er­cise trail geared to the seden­tary. Al­so, a lake of man­age­able proportions.

“Now I get it. This is where they keep the ducks.”

“Have you not been tak­ing me se­ri­ous­ly, Benito?”

We open our doors. Then close them again. In the over­head light’s mo­men­tary glow she ap­prais­es me.

“You puz­zle me. I don’t know what to make of you.”

I shrug. There’s not much to make. Like her, I have been mar­ried. And I too know what it feels like to be spurned. 

“That’s okay,” she tells me, “it’s not the kind of night for com­pli­cat­ed re­la­tion­ship stuff. What we’re af­ter is simple.”

We kiss. Once. It’s long. It’s per­fect. In­side that sin­gle kiss is every­thing from Hel­lo to You left toast crumbs in the bed to Good­bye.

“How did we get here?” I want to know.

“You don’t remember?”

“No.”

“Me nei­ther. It might be di­vine intervention.”

She opens her purse and takes out a bag­gie of co­caine. It’s been quite some time now since we stopped drink­ing. The wave of hi­lar­i­ous in­tox­i­ca­tion has crested.

I put my hand on her arm and tell her, “Don’t take the coward’s way out.”

I’m not sure whether she re­mem­bers hav­ing said those words to me back at the bar. Re­gard­less, she rec­og­nizes the wis­dom of her own ad­vice and puts away the coke.

So now it’s time to get out of the car and con­front the chal­lenge— I won’t call it a prob­lem — of col­lect­ing twen­ty one ducks.

“I read up on this,” Pene­lope in­forms me. “There are reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing how many ducks can be in a lake. On a lake? A body of wa­ter this size, we shouldn’t have any difficulty.”

Well, yes and no.

We wan­der in the dark down to the edge of the sleep­ing lake guid­ed by the flash­light in Penelope’s phone. And lo and be­hold, we do in­deed come up­on some ducks: a moth­er and four duck­lings rest­ing in a tiny sliv­er of an in­let. Pene­lope does not hes­i­tate. Be­fore the moth­er can or­ga­nize her de­fense she has snatched her out of the wa­ter, which in­duces the duck­lings to clam­ber out af­ter her. There is con­fused squawk­ing, and the moth­er duck re­sists be­ing held. It pecks Penelope’s arms and wrig­gles like crazy. The ba­bies are dis­tressed. Pene­lope holds on.

“Ouch,” she hollers, and again, “It hurts, god­damn it.”

“Wait.”

I run to a spot I no­ticed com­ing down where the parks de­part­ment is do­ing some kind of wa­ter-line re­pair. They’ve dug a hole in the ground down to pipe lev­el. To pro­tect park-go­ers they have sur­round­ed the hole with that or­ange tem­po­rary fenc­ing ma­te­r­i­al with holes in it. You know what I’m talk­ing about, you’ve seen it. I grab the fenc­ing and the poles to which it’s at­tached and race back to water’s edge where Pene­lope and the duck con­tin­ue to fail to reach an understanding.

I jab the poles in­to the earth, no easy feat be­cause the ground is hard­er than I wish it was. Then I weave the or­ange stuff around the poles and make a fence. Pene­lope de­posits the moth­er duck in­side. I go af­ter the duck­lings and place them in­side with their moth­er. Talk about be­ing puz­zled. But af­ter a minute or two they de­cide the duck­verse has changed, this is what ex­is­tence looks like now. The moth­er set­tles on the ground, and the duck­lings crowd against her for warmth and comfort.

“Bril­liant,” says Penelope.

It’s not. Not re­al­ly, but I have to ad­mit I feel pret­ty good, hav­ing im­pro­vised a rudi­men­ta­ry duck pen un­der pres­sure of time and lim­it­ed resources.

We split up, go­ing in op­po­site di­rec­tions along the bank look­ing for more ducks. And we find them. More than I, for one, would have ex­pect­ed. Of course I nev­er did the re­search on the lake-to-ducks ra­tio that Pene­lope has. Any­way it takes a fair amount of time to amass the nec­es­sary num­ber of quackers.

And we don’t quite get there.

Eigh­teen. Af­ter much pa­tient search­ing, we have cap­tured and re­lo­cat­ed eigh­teen ducks, all of them fe­males with duck­lings. I did find a few males as I went. But un­en­cum­bered by fam­i­ly re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, they flew off as I grabbed for them, dis­ap­pear­ing in the dark­ness in flap­ping noisy alarm.

We meet at the pen. For the first time since I’ve met her, Pene­lope is cast down.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly if you’re go­ing to do a twen­ty one duck salute, you need twen­ty one of the damn things,” she says, un­able to keep the lament out of her voice.

“We can keep looking.”

“It’s get­ting late,” she said. “I mean early.”

In fact, back to­ward the city the sky is just be­gin­ning to light­en. It won’t be long be­fore the shapes of build­ings emerge, and peo­ple wake in­to an­oth­er dream of day. I feel a pang of an­tic­i­pa­to­ry loss. Much as I want it to, this — what­ev­er it is — is not go­ing to last for­ev­er. Say what you will, time is inexorable.

I have an idea. “Let’s do a prac­tice salute. We can prac­tice with the eighteen.”

But she in­stant­ly shoots down the idea. “We don’t have time for a re­hearsal, Ben­i­to.” She too is feel­ing the mov­ing in­tran­si­gence of time. “This is it, this is our one chance.”

She’s right, of course.

Part­ly to make her feel bet­ter, I come up with the idea of us­ing my shoelaces to tie the moth­er ducks together.

“That way,” I ex­plain, “when the time comes, they’ll act in concert.”

“It might work,” she says.

And, sur­pris­ing­ly, it does. With more pa­tience than I am ac­cus­tomed to demon­strat­ing in dai­ly af­fairs I care­ful­ly link the ducks with shoelace. With more pa­tience than I would have ex­pect­ed, they submit.

The sky is def­i­nite­ly lighter now than it was when I re­moved the laces from my shoes. I feel a sense of pan­ic build­ing. I want this, now, as much as Pene­lope does. But it’s the pre­cur­sor of light that al­lows me sud­den­ly to make out the sil­hou­ettes of a duck and four ba­bies stir­ring un­der­neath a pic­nic ta­ble in one of those roofed-over en­clo­sures of the type peo­ple re­serve for fam­i­ly get-togethers.

I race to­ward the en­clo­sure. With­out any laces, my shoes flop, and lop­ing on the cold ground I lose the left one. I keep go­ing. I bear down on the moth­er and make a com­mand de­ci­sion. I reach to scoop her. She squeals and scoots. I reach again. This time I snag her, but I on­ly take two of her duck­lings with me be­fore run­ning back to the pen where Pene­lope stands admiringly.

“I feel bad about the two I left be­hind,” I admit.

“They’ll get over it. Re­mem­ber, we’re do­ing this by the book.”

I won­der which book.

Once again here we are. In­side the tem­po­rary or­ange fence are twen­ty one ducks, the legs of the moth­ers tied to­geth­er with my shoelaces. The light caus­es them to stir. Like me, they are won­der­ing what hap­pens next. For some rea­son I have faith. 

Pene­lope stands fac­ing the ducks, se­cure and con­fi­dent, calm­ly in con­trol. Any minute now, the sun will stick the tip of its red fore­head up over the east­ern horizon.

And then, rather sud­den­ly, it does.

There’s no time to run back and get my left shoe. It’s happening.

Pene­lope rais­es her arms like a mae­stro with a ba­ton be­fore a well drilled or­ches­tra. Then in a sin­gle crisp mo­tion she low­ers the ba­ton, and with the ar­rival of the new day the ducks start quack­ing. Loud­ly, and all to­geth­er. All twen­ty one of them, best I can tell. There is more ex­ul­ta­tion than tri­umph in the look Pene­lope gives me. As ex­pe­ri­ences go, this one is pure. The mo­ment won’t last. It can’t. But while it does, it’s big enough to hold us, ducks and all. In­side its warm em­brace I will take what I am given.

Filed under Fiction on May 24th, 2024

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Reader Comments

Robin wrote:

Mark Ja­cobs is an Amer­i­can lit­er­ary trea­sure. I’ve read him for years in var­i­ous venues. Nev­er dis­ap­point­ed. Thank you for pub­lish­ing him. Thank you, Mark, for writing.

Jefe wrote:

I too, have been read­ing Mark’s sto­ries for years. He is con­stant­ly cre­at­ing tales of sor­row, love and won­der that take you to far away places, as well as to his home town of Buf­fa­lo, New York. Every sto­ry is unique, in­trigu­ing, and mag­i­cal to to read.

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