Duck Hunt

Now that one of my universities is back in session, I’m dividing my time between

two jobs. Again. It will be a fine day when I can focus on one job. But I've never minded working, and have worked to earn my money for as long as I can remember.

My first *real job* came my way unexpectedly when I was ten. Opportunity literally knocked in the form of a house-dressed octogenarian, our neighbor, Mrs. Rose. She came over to ask if my parents knew any boys to do yard work for her.

I piped up, telling her that I could do it.

“Could you?” She hesitated. “I don’t know. I was looking for a boy.” 

This comment of course only strengthened my resolve, and I insisted I was the girl for the job.

My prepubescent moment of industry and gender upheaval must be tempered by an admission: it mostly stemmed from covetousness.  I had seen my destiny, and it was called Nintendo Entertainment System.  My parents did not understand my truest need for this item, and if I wanted it, I’d have to save $149.99 and buy it myself. 

So, on a hot Saturday morning, I showed up at Mrs. Rose's house. My duties were watering, pulling weeds, clearing brush, and tending her prize-winning orchids. I took to the work quickly and routinely admired my dirty, calloused hands and knees.

I never knew she had so many flowers in her yard: two houses of orchids in individual pots that required tender care. She had prize ribbons hanging around the houses and a framed newspaper clippings of her with the orchid society.

Why she didn’t want to tend to something so important herself, I didn’t fully understand, but I figured it had something to do with her husband, who would yell at me from his bedroom window each week, telling me to get the hell off his property.  She would shout at him once, firmly--“Henry!”--and he would go silent and observe me suspiciously from the window as I went about my duties.

I’d also been unaware that she had a variety of fowl on her property, including a flock (or, if you prefer, a badelynge, bunch, brace, paddling, raft or team) of ducks. 

To this day, I have never seen ducks like these. 

They were HUGE, bigger than our Sheltie, Dolly.  If I were to pick one up (a hellish thought), I would have to use both arms and lift with my knees. They were mottled brown with greenish-brown reptilian feet. Their bills--greenish, bony, and mossy, with little teeth-like ridges lining them like the lip on a box of aluminum foil--gave me the willies most of all.

Until then I’d had no opinion on ducks, and I was not afraid of them in theory. But lord in heaven, I was afraid of them in fact.

And I maintain that these ducks could smell fear: my fear. They did not bother Mrs. Rose. When she walked by them, she kicked her orthopedic shoe at them, and they waddled demurely out of her way.

Conversely, when I walked by they—especially one in particular that I named Chargey—would stick their necks straight out (to achieve some kind of aerodynamic advantage, I guess) and ran at my ankles at full speed with their ghastly beaks wide open.

Running away from them was not effective (they would chase me) and difficult (since the yard was peppered with slippery green plugs of duck shit). Hiding was also futile. Climbing onto high objects seemed to be my only escape, so I did it often.

I had a problem, but I did not want to admit that I had a problem. Though I figured any rational person—even a boy—would be afraid of these monster ducks, I knew that chickening out (pun intended) would cost me my status as a good worker of any gender.

One day, I stopped for a rest in one of the orchid houses. I silently perched on a stack of cinderblocks. Suddenly, emerging from behind the large platform of flowers was Chargey’s horrible head. He looked at me askance. His awful, beady eye narrowed, Jurassic Park T-Rex core.

I sidestepped around the other side of the platform, between orchids and more orchids. But coming that way was the rest of his posse. I was cornered; there was nowhere to go. Chargey assumed the position for which he was named. He darted his head out, and his hideous beak TOUCHED my bare ankle.

Panicked, I scrambled up onto the platform. It was basically carpenter’s horses and cinderblocks holding thin sheets of wood and could not support a kid. And so I—and it—promptly crashed to the floor. I fell on my chest, pots and their barky contents all around me, leaves and blooms from a dozen plus prize-winning plants squashed and severed. 

I was terrified first of the ducks closing in on me in a feeding frenzy. But when I saw that they’d left the house, quacking neurotically, the object of my fear became Mrs. Rose, a tough woman who kept her nice things nice, who would not be bothered with foolishness, and whose good-favor I'd come to value. 

It would only be a matter of time before she would come upon the pathetic scene. I peered out at the big house to see if she had stirred. But she hadn’t. Just her husband, who was having a fit and glowering at me with profound hate.

I realized a miracle had happened: she didn’t hear the crash.

Furiously, I began to clean up the mess, reassembling the platform as best I could, balancing blossoms on their stems. I arranged pots over the giant crack in the board and swept up the dirt, depositing it back in the pots.

It looked passable by the time I was done, but it was essentially a house of cards, waiting to come down at the slightest touch.

I finished my work and received my payment, conflicted at taking the crisp bills in my dirty hand.

By the next weekend, another miracle occurred: it began to rain. And it kept raining, so I did not have to work outside. Loyal to me, Mrs. Rose gave me indoor jobs. Then, after the third week of me polishing brass, re-papering shelves, and decorating the house for Christmas, she announced, “Well, girl, that’s all I have for you.  Let’s talk in the Spring.”

But we didn’t talk. Mrs. Rose's husband died after Christmas, and she moved to be nearer to her family. I never knew if she found out about the orchid house, and while I felt bad about the mess I'd made, I also was certain there was no avoiding it given the circumstances.

In any case, I had earned enough money for my NES, which I promptly bought, hooked up to our TV, and became unhealthily addicted to. 

I knew that money could not buy happiness, as the adage goes. But as I racked up a high score shooting ducks on screen with my plastic shotgun, I felt mighty satisfied.