from the neck down, but if they wanted to send somebody out to make sure he really was my father and that he really was sitting in his wheelchair paralyzed they
could go right ahead, but it would be easier if they just
looked at their records or talked to someone who knew
what he was talking about there at the school. The school
said, No, we’re sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Matson,
to him and he had me hang up. I kissed him and went
back out to the yard.
The duck was still out in the middle of the yard
sunbathing. I wanted to push it into the shade from the
house and see if it would attack me even if I was bigger
than a swan and wasn’t a bird at all. It wouldn’t be very
dangerous because as long as I stayed in the sunlight the
duck would stop attacking as soon as it got back out into
the sun with me. But I didn’t want to be too close to it
when it came at me in case it came at me a lot faster than
it moved when it was trying to paddle around- as if it was
still in the water. So I took one of the pieces of the
bamboo fishing rod and tied it to the handle of the hoe to
make it long enough so I’d be further away from the duck
when I herded it into the shade.
I pushed the duck as far away from me into the shade
as I could with the metal end of the hoe, so it was maybe
almost ten feet out of the direct sunlight before I
stopped. That took almost ten minutes. Then I started to
back away from it.
As soon as I took the hoe away it moved its head like it
was looking for something then started coming at me,
paddling as fast as it could and ripping up the lawn a
little but even with the way it was kicking it was still just
inching and sliding its way across the grass slower than I
could have moved on my hands and knees. It wasn’t
trying to use its wings like I’d been pretty sure it
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wouldn’t, it only used its wings when it made its other
kind of attack, the one it did with the scissors that came
out of its mouth when the sun was going down. I stayed
just on the bright side of the shadow’s edge but I moved
away up towards the side fence so that I could watch the
duck chase me some more. It was so slow and stupidlooking and I was in the sun, so I wasn’t very worried.
Besides, I wanted to see what it would try to do to me
when it came time for it to try to dive under to grab me.
What it did was when I let it get about two or three feet
away from me it stuck its head down under its body,
pushing it in under its puffed-up chest which made it
look even sillier because of the way its chest was already
resting on the grass so that with its two legs sticking out
behind it looked like some sort of crazy toy wheelbarrow. Then it kicked off with its legs like it was trying to dive straight down to the bottom of the lake but all that
happened was that it fell back into the same sort of
wheelbarrow position again. But it didn’t even seem to
notice it wasn’t underwater, because then it pulled its
head out from under its chest and stuck it straight at me
and paddled as fast as it could at me until it was just
almost to the edge of the shadow, then it suddenly
arched its head and neck and body backwards and did
something with its wings real fast so it fell over on its
back. I moved away a little further down the shadow line
so it could come after me without getting in the sun. Now
that it was over on its back it was using its wings to try to
swim at me like they were the oars of a rowboat and that
was working a little better than the paddling had because
the grass was very smooth there but even so the wings
could sort of catch in it and slide the duck along. I stood
where I was this time and when it got closer to me— it
was about two feet away from me now, just before where
the shadow ended— its legs moved away from each other
and turned around sideways so its feet were facing each
other like it wanted to clap them together. Big steel claws
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like meat hooks that must have been hidden somewhere
in its hollow legs came out of its feet very fast and its
belly opened up and something like a long rotary file and
a drill and a buzzsaw all at the same time came out and
started whirling so fast it was just a blur even though it
didn’t make any noise like a drill or a buzzsaw usually
would.
The duck had finally gotten to just at the edge of the
dividing line between the shadow and the sunlight and I
knew that if it came any further it would be out in the
sun and just go back to being a fake duck, so I used the
bamboo stick that I’d tied to the hoe to turn it around
facing the other way so I could see what it would do. But
it just used one wing and not the other to turn itself
around in a circle so it was coming at me again and this
time I let it get itself out into the sunlight so it would turn
itself off.
As soon as its head was out in the sun the claws went
back into its feet and the drill-thing stopped turning and
started to go back into its stomach. I got a better look at
it this time, and it was all covered with little barbs like
fish hooks and other little knives of all sorts that looked
like they turned around on their own, not always in the
same direction as the whole thing, but before I could get
a better look at what it was like its stomach closed up
again to where they should be so it was just a fake duck
lying on its back again.
It couldn’t seem to turn itself back over so I used the
bamboo end of the hoe to tip it back into the right
position.
I sat down in one of the lawn chairs and watched it
struggle back to the center of the yard.
It was too slow and clumsy in the daytime to be any
use if I just left it in the backyard, especially because it
wouldn’t come near metal and all but one of the lawn
chairs had metal frames. I was sorry we didn’t have a
swimming pool and tried to think of a way I could get to
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393
use Beth’s pool but I couldn’t think of one that would be
any good. But even though I couldn’t see any way to
make the duck work right except maybe just by throwing
it on somebody it was still good to know that the duck
would chase things and try to kill them even if they were
people and not other birds.
But then I thought that that was just what the duck did
in the daytime when it got cloudy and that it had a whole
different way of attacking things at sunset, when it used
its wings a bit and went a lot faster over the surface of the
water to cut off the other ducks’ heads. So maybe that
would work. Only if it did work I didn’t want to be there
in the backyard with the duck when it attacked.
For a while I thought about getting a dog or a cat or
/> something and putting it in the backyard with the duck
to see what happened but the idea made me sick and I
couldn’t do it. Then I thought about going back down to
El Estero Lake and catching another real duck but it
would probably make a lot of noise when I was catching
it unless I killed it, and if I got caught killing a duck what
with the way everybody knew how I liked to go down to
the lake and watch the ducks all the time everybody’d be
suspicious of me and wonder how many other ducks I’d
killed and maybe notice that there were a lot less ducks
there on the lake than there usually were and think that I
was crazy or evil, so that if someone got killed after that
they’d be sure I did it.
But then I thought, it didn’t have to be a real duck at
all, not a live one, I had more than enough money to go
down to the poultry shop in Monterey and buy myself
one that was ready to cook, and I could probably even get
one with the feathers and head and everything all on it.
So I rode my bike down to the poultry shop, but they
didn’t have any ducks that weren’t already plucked and
the chickens were all plucked too, so I had to buy a goose,
which cost a lot more than I wanted to spend. I got it
anyway and they put it in a plastic bag for me and gave
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me a little sheet of paper with instructions for how to
cook it even though I said it was for my mother.
I put it in the backyard, about five feet away from the
duck so it wouldn’t have to go too far to get it, then
changed my mind and put it halfway across the yard, so I
could see how fast the duck could go when it was after
something.
It was pretty late but the sun wasn’t down yet, so I
went back inside and took care of father, then put some
fresh clothes on him in case Mother was going to be
coming home tonight even though she’d said she
wouldn’t, and then fixed us TV dinners. There was a
movie on the cable channel, Casablanca with Humphrey
Bogart and right after it Shanghai Express with Marlene
Dietrich, and I would have liked to have seen both of
them even though I’d seen Casablanca before, but it
started right after dinner and I wasn’t sure I’d have time
to finish it before the sun went down. I tried to watch a
little of it anyway with Father but I couldn’t get interested in it at all so I went back into the kitchen where I could watch the backyard out the window just like I
could’ve from the living room if I hadn’t closed the
curtains there so I could be sure Father wouldn’t see
anything.
But when the sun went down and the light went away
until it was completely dark out, there wasn’t even any
moon, the duck didn’t even try to do anything to the
goose. It just turned back into a log and stuck its lily pads
a little ways out of the ends of its broken-off branches. I
went back into the living room in time to see the very
end of Casablanca and all of Shanghai Express. Shanghai Express was pretty good, but not as good as Casablanca had been the time before.
I’d been refilling Father’s drinking bottle with beer all
day and he was pretty drunk by the time the movie was
over but instead of getting sleepy the way he usually did
he was wide awake and something in the movies had
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395
made him all angry and sad at the same time. It was
really awful.
First he got angry at Mother and started yelling and
telling me what a bitch she was, how she treated him like
shit the way she did and even brought her mess sergeant
home with her as if it didn’t make any difference what
Father thought and even told him that at least Don—
that was the mess sergeant’s name, but I didn’t like to use
it even though he asked me to because that would make it
too much like he was my friend or an uncle or something
— could help her with him when she had to get his
wheelchair into the car to take him to the beach or
somewhere else nice and that Don was a lot of help tdo
with getting him in and out of the bathtub and cleaning
him up, as if that wasn’t worse, having to let his wife’s
lover clean him up when he’d dirtied himself because he
couldn’t get out of his wheelchair to go to the bathroom
on his own and they were too busy in the bedroom to
waste the time to come and help him. Like he was a baby
and it was OK if they changed his diaper every day or
two.
He’d been yelling for most of this, but then he got real
sad again, and that was even worse, he started talking
about what a good wife Mother’d been back when he
could take care of her and when he’d been handsome and
strong and everything Don was now only a lot better and
how she would have been a perfect wife to him if only he
hadn’t had the accident and it wasn’t her fault that he
couldn’t be a husband to her and even if she got angry at
him a lot and had to find someone else to do all the
things that it’d been his duty to do for her as a husband
he couldn’t blame her, because at least she hadn’t
divorced him or put him in a home or anything like that.
It went on and on and after a while he was crying, and
then he was yelling again. His bottle was empty so I went
and got him another one, only I put half a Librium in it
like I’d sometimes seen Mother do when she wanted to
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make sure he got to sleep and after a little while he
calmed down and went to sleep.
I went out in the backyard and put the log in its sack
and put it in the shed. I didn’t even bother to use the
stick or anything this time, because I was sure it wouldn’t
do anything to me now that it was late enough at night so
the light had been gone for a long time. I put the sack
behind the TV set under the bench but I couldn’t really
think of what to do with the goose because it would
probably rot if I just left it in the shack but if I put it in
the freezer or the refrigerator Mother’d probably find it
if she came home tomorrow and I couldn’t think of any
reason to tell her why there was a goose in the freezer.
Then I thought, what I’ll tell her is I bought it with my
savings because since she’d been away working all that
time I wanted to cook it for her for a kind of celebration
when she got home and I’d gotten all the directions for
cooking it and everything, only they looked too hard.
And if she asked me why I’d gotten a goose instead of
something like a turkey I’d tell her it was because I’d
never had a goose and I’d heard that they were something special that people had for Christmas in England and that I wanted this to be very special. She’d have to
believe me even though it was a pretty silly story because
she wouldn’t be able to think of any other reason why I’d
have a g
oose to put in the freezer. Unless I’d stolen it,
and I had the receipt and the piece of paper with the
instructions on it to show her and she could always check
back with the man at the poultry store if she was really
suspicious.
Then I put fresh sheets on Father’s bed and got him
out of his wheelchair and into it. It really was like he was
a baby, only even though I was real strong for how big I
was he was twice as heavy as I was and I almost dropped
him like I’d done a few times before, but I didn’t.
And anyway I was growing fast so it was getting easier
all the time. I was taller than all but one or two of the
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397
other girls in my class, and I was real strong and
muscular just like Mother was and like Father’d been in
the pictures when he used to be on the Police Basketball
Team. I was good at sports, too, especially gymnastics
and swimming and soccer, but Mother said I’d have to
start being careful about what I ate and about doing real
exercises and not just playing around pretty soon if I
didn’t want to end up getting fat and flabby like Father,
though she said that right now everything was OK and I
was still just solid.
I still wasn’t sleepy, even though it was pretty late.
What with getting up early every morning and everything I’d gotten into the habit of not sleeping too much. I took a bath and washed my hair and tried to watch TV
but there wasn’t anything on worth watching, and I
didn’t feel like reading or anything like that, so I went
and got another TV dinner out of the freezer and put it in
the oven.
It was a fried chicken dinner and when I took the tin
foil off at the end and saw it I thought, maybe that’s how
the duck figures out whether something’s alive or not,
because if it’s alive it’s got a temperature just like I do,
98.6, though it probably wasn’t the same thing for birds.
But even if it wasn’t the same the duck had chased me
just like it had chased the ducks and swans so that
wouldn’t make that much difference.
Unless the reason it hadn’t tried to kill the goose was
because the goose had just been lying still there on the
grass and not moving at all. But some of the real ducks
I’d seen the robot duck attack hadn’t been moving, at
Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992) Page 49