The Celebration of Johnny's Yellow Rubber Ducky

by Jeremy Bursey

strongly about attaching a series of postcards or notes to its neck to keep the recordings spontaneous yet brief. But then I realised how quickly paper or cardstock could be damaged by elements, or worse, how quickly one page could fill up, shortchanging the climax of each person’s experience. So, I bought a cheap flash drive and attached that instead. I hope this won’t prove to be a waste of money. Crossing my fingers that this is a good idea. But then, when I think of my good fortune, I have no reason to believe it to be an awful idea.

  I suppose I cannot commission this duck on this grand journey without first explaining how I came to find it. The day after my father vanished, I walked down a beach near Calais to gather my senses. The previous night had been wrought with horrible thoughts of foul play and I lost sleep. The morning after, I was so groggy that I couldn’t think straight. I sauntered down the avenues to see if I could find him, to see if maybe he was just resting in some alley with a wine-stained shirt on his back. But the search turned up void. With the police on the trail, I decided I had to get out of town for a while. So I headed up for the coast. When I got there, I found this duck washing ashore.

  I was surprised at first to discover such an odd trinket rolling up from the Channel. I figured initially that some kid had dropped it and the water had pulled it out of reach. I scanned the coastline for any child that might’ve been missing it. But it wasn’t to be. All I saw were random vagrants lying in the sand. No one seemed to be missing anything more than simple dignity. So I thought harder. I wondered if anyone would miss it.

  I considered the possibility that it had a long journey getting here, maybe years given the dulled state of its rubber texture, so I decided to rescue it from taking another trip through the straits. It’s possible that it had washed ashore elsewhere and found its way out with the next tide. For all I know it could’ve come in from the Atlantic, all the way from America, or perhaps the Mediterranean. When it comes to tides, anything could come from anywhere and the stories it might have told could be forever lost. As I thought about that, a feeling came over me that I shouldn’t subject it to that fate again. People should know the story it has to tell. But to tell it, it needs the help of anyone willing to observe its progress through the world, kind of like the gnome from Amelie. The duck was worn from the salt water, though it still squeaked, so I figured it was in sufficient condition to keep for a while. The markings on the underside were faded to the point of near invisibility, but I was able to make out the letters “J” and “G,” just barely. I brushed off a couple loose tangles of seaweed and put the duck in my pocket. I wanted to keep the markings from fading further, as the person who marked it should still have recognition in this tale, so I took great care not to drop it back into the sea again.

  At first, I thought about giving it away to some kid in the street, concluding later, however, that finding this duck was a special event. Therefore, I decided that to get rid of it, I had to experience another special event. So I held on, for four years, carrying it wherever I went until something wonderful happened in my life.

  A little while ago, I finally found my special event. As I was walking through the park trying to figure out why my tenth girlfriend in as many months dumped me—she claimed it had something to do with me squeaking all the time—I spotted a bloke sleeping on one of the benches. Even though his beard was gray and his clothes were wine-stained, I recognised him immediately. And I’m sure whoever reads this will already guess the outcome, but I will write it anyway, because it’s part of my glorious story.

  The man on the bench was…I’m all choked up here…my dad’s former business associate, and he knew exactly what had happened to him all those years ago. It turned out there was no foul play involved, but rather, my father had found a loophole in his business and was able to exploit it for millions of Eurodollars. It involved screwing over his business partner, a side effect of business, but it made him rich. When he disappeared and never came back, it wasn’t because he was in trouble, but because he moved to Tahiti without telling anyone. The knowledge that he was okay lifted a burden off my shoulders, and thus I decided the time was finally right to enact my plan for the duck. So I bought the cheap flash drive and an even cheaper necklace chain to attach it to, wrote the note and the story on my laptop—which I’m doing now—and in just a moment I will leave the duck on this park bench for the next bloke to share his happy moment.

  So to whomever finds this duck, please remember to write your story when your tenure ends, so that the body following you can keep the continuity in line. And for the seventh person to find the duck, once you have your happy moment, please publish the story for the world to see. And with that, I will now squeeze the yellow rubber ducky one last time to say my goodbye and good luck. And no, I will not go looking for my dad. He could’ve told us he was heading for the South Pacific. He didn’t have to fake his own death.

  The Present

  When Johnny finished reading Matthew’s account, he leaned back in his chair and exhaled in relief. The ending was not as shocking as he had thought. Yes, it had found a spot somewhere in the pit of his chest, specifically behind the clavicle, in which to rock, but his world wasn’t shattered over the final truth of where the rubber ducky’s journey had begun. If anything, he was surprised that he was the guy destined to close the duck’s story.

  Coming off a fresh graduation from Oxford had exhausted him enough for the moment, and discovering the connections he had with these complete strangers who at one time had carried the rubber duck was another drain on his soul. Perhaps his heart still ached for a repeat moment with Claire. But in all things considered, he was tired of fate, and just wanted to go home.

  But he knew it was now his turn to write a story for the duck. And, as he sat in that chair at the Internet café, now staring at the blinking cursor under Matthew’s name, and realizing that he needed to scroll the thing back to the top just to keep consistent with the backwards chronology, he started wondering what his story could actually be. The rule was that he had to write a story based on a time when he had the duck, which started now. Yet, there had been several moments where he had already crossed paths with the duck, and he wondered if those moments were to count. He was there when Grant had reacted to the gunshot—the more he thought about it, the more he was certain of that. And, of course, he saw Carla and her subsequent internal snubbing of him, which he had no idea until now was actually happening. But, perhaps, most importantly, the duck was just a few feet from him when he’d met Claire, and of all the stories to happen to him in the last few months, that was the best, even better than getting sent off into the real world through the Oxford hands that had set him free. He pressed his fingertips to his eyes and leaned forward. It was the best story he had so far, and it was not a happy ending. None of them were. It was potentially a terrible way to end the duck’s story. But he didn’t know what the future had in store. He could end up carrying the duck around for years, experiencing nothing worth writing about. Or, he could write about his sad ending when a happier one might’ve been around the corner.

  He was torn with indecision.

  But he considered the duck’s journey getting to him. He wasn’t sure what he thought about fate or the hand of God, but he couldn’t deny the unusual circumstances that had brought the duck to him, or the number of times that he had come so close to taking these other people’s places. There was something in that story worth telling.

  He stared at the duck. It was an inanimate object, so by itself it had nothing to tell him. Yet, it came with a collection of stories that had so much to share. What it couldn’t share were the stories that it had inspired in the years before Matthew had found it. It’s possible that his assumption that it had no story prior to washing ashore the Channel was the most accurate. But the duck didn’t get there on its own. It did have a story to tell.

  Johnny rolled the duck over to confirm the faded markings on its underside. Then he closed his eyes.

  He knew the story he really neede
d to tell. It was the reason why the duck had crossed his path so many times. It was the reason Johnny had to be the seventh person in the duck’s grand adventure story.

  A few minutes later, he removed the flash drive from the computer and reattached it to the duck. He left the Internet café shortly after.

  He found a restaurant close by and ordered a steak, a normal one without jelly. While he ate, he recharged his laptop battery. Originally, he was going to wait until he’d gotten home and unpacked before giving it back its juice, but he changed his mind. He decided it was more important that he started writing his story as soon as possible.

  Between bites, Johnny squeezed the worn duck to allow its unchanging squeak to fill his ears. Although it was soft, the pitch was pleasant to him. The toy reminded him of a duck that he had once kept as a child. The patrons sitting at the tables around him glared at him as he squeezed it. Whatever judgment they harbored for him, he decided it didn’t bother him. He just kept squeezing the duck.

  Once he finished dinner and unplugged the battery charger, he returned to the Tube. As he sat on the train, trying to