I thought I saw ….
The ducks rose off the water with a flapping and loud quacking that could be heard far across the early morning silence. Their wings flapped up and down showing the white patches underneath like a swarm of flashing lights. They were like scythes cutting the air that then lifted them high with the power of vortexes. Three shots rang out, crack, crack, crack. The ducks circled with a steep turn and landed a distance away with a sequence of feet skidding across the water on their little water skis that quickly sank into the water. Calm settled across the cold morning again as the fog dampened the thick air.
“Jim, did you get him?” Andy asked in a loud hushed voice and with a quizzical and uncomfortable smile that comes from doing something that, although not illegal, was at the edges of social acceptability. Jim said: “dunno”. Then with that sharpness that comes with much experience, said in a loud whisper: “Shut up, you’ll frighten the bloody ducks.” For Andy, much Jim’s junior, the excitement of the moment was squashed out of existence. It was like a football coach at half time telling you how poorly you played and then sends you back to the bench.
The tee-tree was thick and tall and Jim pressed through the prickly wood holding the shotgun vertically against his shoulder and separating the thin trees with his other hand. Andy tried to follow as quietly as he could knowing that if he had to get a duck then it was his job to get wet. It was cold and he hated the idea of walking home with wet trouser legs. Jim whispered back through the trees: “Andy, go quietly, I want to get another shot.”
They were soon near the waters edge and glimpsed the hundred or so ducks quietly, yet nervously, swimming amongst the steam rising off the surface of the lake. Again, the sounds of shots shattered the silence as the flock rose off the water and circled overhead. One bird fell out of the sky into the waters edge near where Andy was standing. “Jim, yer got one”, exclaimed Andy. “I know, at bloody last”, said Jim. Quickly Andy ran out into the shallow water and rapidly sank to waist deep in muddy, slushy, oozing water. “Gez its cold Jim”, Andy said. As Andy rushed toward the quickly sinking duck, lying on the waters surface, he tripped over a log in the water and fell face first with a large splash. “Gez be carefull” Jim shouted at the top of his voice, which was nearly drowned out by the noise of the squawking and fleeing ducks over head. The seconds seemed like minutes while Jim watched his mate try to half walk and half swim in clothes and boots to reach toward the dead duck. “Jim, I’ve got him”, yelled Andy grabbing the limp and feathered wet body.
Andy stood in the ooze and turned slowly and looked very briefly down into the dark, yet slightly stirred, muddy shallow water. To Andy’s horror he saw what looked like the shape of a human arm stuck in the mud just a few feet away from him. It appeared to shiver in the reflected water. As he struggled through the ooze and mud to leave the lake, and holding the duck by its legs, he yelled to Jim. “Hey, Jim, I thought I saw a dead body in the lake”. “Andy, get yourself out of there, you’re just imagining things”, Jim said, recalling a past far more terrible than the death of a duck.
Other titles
A Dead Duck
Muddy Past
The Shooter
Gordon MacAulay
22 June 2009
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3 comments:
Kerry says:
Gordon, you have given us a richly detailed story of the duck hunt experience. Your finale reminded me of the grisly scene in Deliverance.
I think if you went back to the story again you could pare down some of the description and still give the reader a wonderful word picture.
I was amused by your ethical judgement of the duck hunting activity. Probably not necessary for the development of the story.
The discovery of the 'human body' at the end left me with a sense of 'when's the next instalment?' We'd had plenty of action already and the hunter got his duck so this discovery seemed superfluous.
Good fun. I got a real sense of the discomfort of hunting ducks at dawn.
Heather says:
Good one, Gordon! Love the macabre twist at the end, which validates and deepens the opinion we've been forming of Jim.
Much of your story is told from Andy's point of view, and I think that works best. He is the innocent and having the story develop in his eyes is...well, unnerving. It means Andy should show up in your first paragraph, or at least that it should be clear that the description is from his point of view. This also begins to paint him as the more sensitive of the two, as well as the only one with any concern for ethics.
That would also mean your last line has to change. Maybe you leave us wondering if this is poor guileless Andy's last day on the planet as well.
The title "Dead Duck" really makes me laugh, altho perhaps it's a bit like being hit on the head with a 2x4. I like it because it fits the wonderfully melodramatic tone of the story.
Very chilling Gordon. I was innocently going along with Andy and Jim on their duck hunting, feeling the chill of the water (don't Aussie duck hunters use hip waders?) and the thrill of the hunt. Then I'm suddenly in a much darker place, something that Jim obviously knows something about. Maybe?
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