Duck

Under the glow of the one working streetlight, the giant severed duck head looked like it was grinning at me. It was made of wood and plaster and it took both of us to heave it into the back of the truck.

I was trying to cover it up with a blanket when Emily said, “This is retarded. We should just leave it here.”

“No way,” I told her. “This is going in my living room.”

“Your mom would flip out if she saw that thing,” Emily said.

I groaned, “I know.”

She asked, “So, what are you going to do with it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just…want it.”

Emily said, “Well, whatever. We’d just better get out of here before somebody passes by and sees us.”

*

At one point, the giant duck head was attached to an equally giant duck body, which doubled as a gift store where inside you could buy Giant Duck-themed crap. T-shirts and coffee mugs with ducks on them, et cetera.

You know how some shitty town in the Midwest is famous for having the world’s biggest ball of twine? This was our ball of twine: the world’s biggest gift store shaped like a duck.

Its nickname was Quackers.

Emily and I got in the truck. The duck’s beak was blocking my view out the back window.

“Hey, maybe we should leave it on somebody’s lawn,” I said. “They’d go out tomorrow morning to get the newspaper and there’d be a giant decapitated duck head staring at them. That’d be pretty cool.”

Emily sighed. I thought harder.

“We could dump it in the middle of Main Street,” I offered. “It’s late enough that nobody’s driving around now. Imagine rush hour tomorrow morning, with that thing blocking traffic.”

She didn’t say anything.

I started the truck and put on my seat belt. Emily left hers off. I shifted into drive and immediately the wind blew the blanket off the duck’s head. I parked.

“I can’t drive around with the fucking thing uncovered like that,” I muttered before getting out to find the blanket.

“Just give it up,” Emily said. “Sometimes there’s just nothing you can do.”

*

Decapitating Quackers and stealing its head wasn’t the original plan that night. I had just wanted to have sex.

Emily had been worse than ever that week, barely talking to me, and I wanted to shake her out of it. So I took her out that night, condoms in the glove compartment and a bottle of wine I stole from my parents under the front seat.

“I can’t drink that,” she said when she saw the bottle. “The meds, remember?”

We had dinner, then I drove us the half-hour to Quackers. I announced we were going to have sex on top of it.

She said, “No fucking way,” but I figured I could convince her.

The duck sat on the side of an abandoned road. The closest house was fifteen minutes away. The only cars that passed by at that time of night were tractor trailers rolling from Point A to Point B.

“It’s probably really disgusting up there,” Emily said. “Leaves and bird crap.”

I was prepared for that. “That’s why I brought this blanket,” I told her.

“No,” she said.

I said, “Well, let’s just climb up on top of the duck, at least. No sex. We’ll just check out the view.”

Emily rolled her eyes.

From the ground to the top of its head, Quackers was probably fifteen or sixteen feet tall. Its back was just a little too high for me to boost Emily up.

That’s why we used the rope.

Along with the tire iron and jumper cables in my truck, I had some rope. A good thirty feet of it, provided by my dad “for emergencies.” You know, like this.

I swung the rope up and around the duck’s neck. It hung down the front of Quackers like a broken necklace.

We stood on either side of the duck, each holding an end of the rope. “I’ll hold on to this end,” I told Emily, “and you try to climb up the other side.”

She was about halfway up the rope, almost within reach of the duck’s back, when I heard the first crackle of wood.

“What the fuck was that?” she yelled, panicked.

I said, “Nothing, don’t worry about it.  Just keep climbing.”

She got about another foot up when it happened.

It could have been worse. Emily could’ve broken her leg or something when she fell. Quackers’ head could have landed on her. Or me. Or my truck. So really, we were pretty lucky.

But when it happened, when Quackers’ head splintered off from its body and came crashing down, Emily with it, all I could say was, “Oh, shit,” over and over. I ran to Emily and helped her up. She was bleeding from a small gash on her arm, and when she saw it she said, “Great, now my parents are gonna think I’m doing that again.”

I said to her, “We just killed Quackers.”

Emily looked at the giant duck head laying in front of her. One side of its face was smashed in from the fall. She said, “Yeah.”

I asked, “So what do we do now?”

She shrugged. “I’d suggest we get out of here,” she said.

I knew she was right, but I wanted that duck head. I didn’t know why, but I felt like if we just left it there it was a waste, a missed opportunity. I guess an opportunity to have a big frigging duck head made of wood doesn’t come around too often, and I wanted to take advantage of it. I thought we could do something with it.

*

Later, still parked at the scene of the decapitation, still staring at the duck head in the back of the truck, the blanket hanging useless in my hands, I said, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to get caught and forever be known as the guy who killed Quackers.” Emily didn’t answer and when I looked over at her I saw she had fallen asleep in the passenger seat.

A month before, her shrink had said that Emily needed to be medicated. They tried three or four different pills, and the one they settled on made her tired all the time, but she still didn’t seem any better.

Sometimes there’s just nothing you can do.

I covered her up with the blanket, then I dragged Quackers’ head out of the truck and dumped it on the side of the road next to the body. I took one last look at the duck’s grinning face and dead eyes, then drove away, Emily sleeping next to me.

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