A Simple Duck Tale

You’re lookin’ at me funny.  Like maybe you know me right?  But you don’t.  Not yet anyhow, sweetheart.  What you’ve noticed is that I happen to be a duck.  A duck who happens also to be a writer.  Well, ghost writer technically, though that may all be changing soon.  I know my shit, right?  Hey, you having another?  Nah, nah, don’t think about it.  It’s on me, really.  Barkeep?  Barkeep?  A little attention at this end, huh?  We need a couple more - what’re you drinking, sweetheart? - jack and gingers. And heavy on the jack, huh?  I’m telling you - I can peck it out with the best of the ghosties.  You seek credentials there’s this: Michener!  Need I say more?  Alright then: Chesapeake!  James had me fly down for a week, splash about in the bay, get to know the locals and whatnot.  I wrote four hundred flippin’ pages of that bitch - what’s that 25 percent maybe - not that James would ever let on, you know, nature of the profession.  Been at the game a long time.  Started with a mock bio of Scrooge McDuck for Disney, cheap sons-a-bitches.  Hardly paid for your drink there.  Promised me dibs on a Donald coffee table piece - big deal for his seventy-fifth - but never another peep from them.  I got your Scrooge McDuck right here, you know?  Shit!

Anyhow, I get this call about a duck book.  A duck book!  Hello?  I mean who better, right?  Am I right?  Say, the cut on that blouse you are wearing is something else!  When you lean in for your drink, you know, it sways out just right, not revealing anything, but hinting like, you know?  What?  Was that out of line?  I was just saying is all.  Anyhow, the call had come from the rep of some pop-star-turned-mother.  You know of whom I speak?  Do you?  Just ’cause she built a multi-billion dollar empire by swinging her hips when she was in her twenties, the big houses think she’d make a hell of a children’s book writer.  Like anyone can do this shit, right?  Like I don’t struggle into the wee hours of the morning half my life searching for the right…flippin'…adjective, you know?  The rep explains that the diva fell a little behind schedule, what with her recent stint as a Buddhist monk and the filming of the music video for her latest song - some dance beat number with her longing to dry-hump the neighbor kid on the event of his eighteenth birthday - she asks can I help.  A simple duck story.  A duck tale, I suggested.  A duck tail, get it?  She wants to know can I help?  Damn straight I can help!

You need a refill?  I sure as shit do.  This pop-star-as-writer thing depresses the hell out of me.  (Loud whistle) Barkeep?  You, vixen of the vodkas, can me and my friend here - what is your name, anyhow? - can Karen and I each obtain another jack and ginger?  Thank you.  Thank you, really.  Mind if I smoke?  You want one, too?  No.  Okay.  Anyhow, the pop-momma and erstwhile children’s book writer squeaks into the phone her ideas.  Runs them by me!  Does she not know who she has hired?  And get this - this is the slappin’est-in-the-face part of the whole encounter - she says to me, “I was thinking something cute like Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings.”  You are familiar with that book, right?  Are you flippin' kidding me?!!  You don’t know that book?  It was a Caldecott winner.  What, did you grow up in a cave?  Nah, I’m kidding, I’m kidding!  It’s just that most people have read that one.  But, like, I need a lip syncing-Buddhist monk to tell me that Make Way for Ducklings is a cute duck book.

Ah, shit, I just had the funniest flashback about that book.  Can you slide those beer nuts over this way?  Thanks, Sweetheart.  Karen.  Sweetheart Karen, nice ring to that.  I was visiting my cousin in Boston, right?  That’s where Make Way for Ducklings is set, in the public garden.  Anyhow, we went to the place where they filmed Cheers - remember Cheers? Funniest goddamn show ever put on TV - the bar happens to be right across from the public garden.  Screwed up part is they never really filmed the show there, they only filmed the entrance and the steps you know - going down.  Aw hell, I forgot to tell you that there are these bronze statues in the public garden of the momma duck walking all of her ducklings - right out of the story, Make Way for Ducklings.  Anyhow, my cousin and I - heh, heh, heh, I just remembered he pulled off the oldest joke in the book with a straight face when we ordered our first drink that night.  You know the one, the joke?  Come on, you must know it.  Just try!  No?  Not even a guess?  He says, not even the hint of a smirk, he says, “Put it on my bill.”  Get it?  My bill?  Christ, he’s one funny duck!  My cousin and I are snookered, I mean barely able to waddle up the steps after they finally cut us off.  And we stumble across the street - no friendly officer to aid our crossing at that hour, I’ll tell you that much - into the public garden.  My cousin sees the statues and thinks it’s a procession of chicks, real chicks - no shit! - and he approaches the last in the row, you know, trying to sweet talk her - Damn, you get fries with that waddle!; Wanna find out why they call me Mallard Fillmore?, the like.  As you might guess, she doesn’t answer, so he just cusses her out and moves up to the next in line, and continues one after the next, growing increasingly angry at the cold shoulder each is bestowing upon him.  Finally he reaches momma duck - without so much a word from any of the ducklings he’d tried to bag.  He says - I can still hear it - he says, “That’s one rude brood, lard ass!”  And when she maintains her silence, he just loses it!  Starts a pecking war with a bronze statue.  And - though he’ll deny it - got his ass kicked pretty thoroughly.  I swear to God!  Told everyone the next day that he got jumped by nine ducks and I that just stood there watching.                                   

So I’m cheesed about the diva telling me she wants me, a duck, to ape a Caldecott winner, you know.  Hire me or don’t, but don’t tell me how to do my flippin' job, right?  I stayed cool though - you don’t last a month as a ghost writer if you don’t stay cool while being insulted - and I ask her when her deadline is.  Rookie-mistake-of-rookie-mistakes on her part - she confides.  Do these drinks seem short to you?  See if you can’t get Vixie’s attention, huh?  I’m pretty sure she’s still miffed about my whistling last go round.  Just order yourself another now, too.  One of us’ll imbibe it.  See, she should be asking me how long I need, not telling me how long she has.  Next Tuesday, she says in a blasé tone, like if I can’t get to it she will.  Yeah, right!  Even though it is only 800 words.  Cut me a flippin' break, huh?  She couldn’t write her way out of a wet paper sack, yet alone under deadline.  So I say, “I’ll have something for you on Monday.”  Hang up. 

So now I’m still cheesed but I also hold all the chips, right?  Whatever I deliver she is stuck with, affords me a little license.  Oh, thank you, sweetheart.  Mmm, that’s good.  I could see working this particular concoction into my rotation.  And I think: screw it!  That’s right - screw it!  I’d rather put the diva in her place than make another Scrooge McBuck.  Write what I wanna write, what I’m feeling at that particular time, damn the cute little duckling possibilities.  So I sit at the ol’ laptop, pour myself a tall Jameson’s - my poison of choice - and commence my peck-pecking.  And I’m not kidding, Karen - pushed out a goddamn masterpiece!  Best thing I’ve ever written.  A simple duck tale - as instructed - though it is possible I quadrupled the word count.  Small price to pay for a masterpiece, but try explaining that to the publishers, sweetheart.  You’d think they’d empty the ashtrays in this place once in a while, huh?  Can you reach that one?  Thanks.  You ever do this?  No?  I know what the research says, but nothing beats the cool menthol blanket draped over the lungs when you inhale one of these bad boys.  I’m not trying to sell you on it or anything, stay away is my advice, but once you start, I’m telling you, sweetheart.  Anyhow, the concept was simple: flip-flop the norm.  Most duck books are written from the perspective of a person or people, right?  Why not pen one from the perspective of the duck?  But here is the kicker - it is about the people!  Get it?  A duck’s eye view of humanity!  And who better, right?  Why don’t we switch out here until Vixie lends us her attention?  Thanks, sweetheart.

So, I placed the duck in a local pond right?  The kind of place that a family might toss stale bread scraps.  Set it all up serenely, sunny day, distant laughter, swaying willows, blah, blah.  Mmmm!  Let’s hear it for Uncle Jack!  And this beat up car - an old Chevy Nova - crunches into the gravel lot, right?  The duck-slash-narrator recounts how the passenger door spills open and a woman and a vodka bottle spill onto the macadam to hoots of laughter from within the car.  The woman stands up - clearly unsteady on her feet - and giggles shit, oh shit as she brushes the dirt and pebbly stuff from her jeans.  Two kids race out of the same door and up to the edge of the pond, each holding a bag of bread.  Here is where the muse took over, Karen: the duck-arrator recounts in poetic detail the beauty of the blue-eyed littler of the two girls, he estimates at two years old.  For the record the older one, maybe five, is penned as a snotty, dirty, nose-picking, fat thing.  And the ducky narrator contrasts them beautifully, so much so that you the reader - and you are not entirely sure why - want to scoop up the little one and escape with her.  You, the reader, I swear to God, find yourself calculating the amount of time you’ll have before the drunken adults understand what the older one is screaming about, and how far you’d travel before they give chase.  Did I mention that the driver, presumably the father but maybe just the mother’s boyfriend, is sitting behind the wheel drinking out of a flask?  Anyhow, the mother has staggered over the a trash barrel to toss her empty bottle, then lays flat out on a picnic bench, her legs bent over the edge and dangling groundward, kinda like the aforementioned willow branches.  The duck explains how the little one sing-songily speaks with every duck as she gently tosses smallish portions of bread to them, careful to spread the wealth; how the older one is wadding up tight little bread balls and hurling them at unsuspecting ducks; how the driver passes out at the wheel, momentarily sounding the car horn before falling out of view; how the mother never moves, and both children merely glance back when the horn sounds.  Christ, I’ve gotten better service in the holding pen!  Hello?  Hello, can we get us a couple more down here?  Thank you!  Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  Well, no surprise, the older one exhausts her bread supply, you know?  She attempts to bully the little one into parting with her bread.  And the little one - you have every expectation that she would willingly share, the kind of kid who shares without complaint, not out of fear for her sister, but out of genuine love - well, she is so focused on her feathered friends that she never even hears her sister’s overture.  She is squatting at pond’s edge just at that very moment, telling the narrator duck how much she enjoys the sheen-y green of his head when the chubby sibling shoves the innocent child hard into the water.  The narrator jumps back, but does not fly off noisily, as do the other ducks.  What happens next?  What happens?  Nothing.  Not another thing.  The story ends right there.  The duck and the sister stare at the face-down innocent; the mother never stirs, the car and, presumably, the driver remain motionless.

Awful!  Awful you say?  No, no, you’re wrong!  It is genius!  It’s perfect!  It’s reality, baby!  Just the way a duck would lay it out in print given the opportunity.  I would know, right?  And while I grant you that it might not make a great children’s book, what with the illustrations and all, I’ll defend the artistry, the beauty of it until I’m hoarse.  A hoarse duck!  Better than an ape duck, I know that much.

Wait, don’t go!  Really, Karen, stay.  I gotta tell you how it ends.  I mean with the diva.  It’s funny as hell.  So, you see, I strung her on most of that Tuesday.  Almost done, darling; Just gotta nail the ending; One last read-thru; the like.  Sent it to her at 3:15ish.  And she, God love her, late for a bikini wax, never even opened it.  Just forwarded it to the publishing house.  I don’t have to tell you she was less than pleased when she called me back that night.  You’ll never ghost write another word, Mr. Duck!  Your name is Mudd in the publishing industry.  I’ll ensure it.  You are a sick, sick, little duck, she says.  Oh, I gave it back to her alright.  Like a need a Buddhist Salome to tell me how to write a duck tale, right?  Stick to writing  hip-swayers, you almost has-been, I told her. 

I’m shopping it now, you know.  I’ll find someone, too.  Plan to write a whole series of ’em.  Telling it like it really is, the way I think about it.  And it is about time, too.  The world needs a good duck voice.  It’s ready for a serious one.  No, wait.  You don’t really have to go, do you?  Aw, come on, sweetheart.  The night is young.  Stay with me, tell me about you, huh?  Christ, you’ve hardly said boo about yourself.  Let me buy you another.  Really?   Offensive?  Really?  You’ve got me all wrong.  I swear.  Let me make it up to you.  Maybe dinner next week some night.  No.  Oh, what was this all about then?  You sponging off of me?  Using me?  You sit here and drink on me all night, knowing damn well that you plan to traipse off the second your dipstick reads full?  I’m the dipstick?  Are you implying I’m the dipstick?  That hurts, Karen.  That really hurts.  All I’m trying to do is get to know you.  And you treat me like this.  Go then, go.  No, I don’t want to hear another word from you.  I open myself up to you only to be treated like this.  Go!  Just go!  Shit!  Shit.  Vixie,  Vixie can I get a goddamn Jameson’s down here?  What do you mean?  Coffee?  No, I don’t want coffee.  Damn, it’s like everyone decided - all at once - to hate on me.  Yeah, that’s a better idea.  How ’bout I settle out then.  Yeah, put it on my bill.  Get it?  Put it on my bill!  No, it’s a joke, a joke.  Here’s my Visa card.  Christ, it’s like the whole world is suddenly anti-duck.