Agent Duck II

            The lunch room was also an ‘activity center’, which meant that it would also serve as a gymnasium and meeting hall. The posters on the wall there were on the theme of clubs and school spirit. There were also nice, miminalist murals in the school colors. I stood on a bench along the lunch table, eating with my foot, wrapped up in the ambrosia which is a government peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich, and I realized that the children were asking me something. If I knew of a type of cleaner. And I didn’t. The kids told me about the warning that is written on the side of the can, and I was shocked that this wasn’t the first thing Ms. Clark told me. She was remiss in her duties- perhaps too busy. Either way, she didn’t tell me about the dangers of :

            “Comet. It makes your teeth turn green.

            Comet. It tastes like Vaseline.

            Comet. It makes you vomit.

            So, get your Comet, and vomit, today.”

            These things I did not know, and the children were schooling me on a fast track. Frankly, and ironically, I don’t discount the experience that is the primary school lunchroom in the least, but it felt like I was being rubbed raw. And the collective high-note! I would give you an example, but first I’d have to step on a tack. These dear children would stuff their mouths, then investigate the armor-feathers at my shoulder. Asking me if I’d had a ‘Cootie Shot’. So, I told them,

            “No. I don’t believe I’ve been inoculated against lice.”

            And, a boy pressed his finger to my wing and recited:

            “Circle, circle, dot, dot, now you have your cootie shot.”

            It seems I needed several. (Being such a species?) They all took turns as I finished what salad I had left, which was quite good, and, meanwhile, they had me memorize what for them is an important legend. The one of “Popeye the Sailor Man”.

            “…he lives in a garbage can.

            He eats all the worms and he spits out the germs.

            He’s Popeye the Sailor Man! (toot-toot!)”

            My primary mission was to find Barry and discover exactly why I was. But finding Popeye couldn’t hurt. He sounded like a mutant himself, and I could use all the allies I could get. I had milk for dessert, and was nearly pudding with the sensory overload; the jocularity. I was quite entertained.

            Especially when the little girl seated next to me turned and asked ‘Guess What?’ To which, I responded: ‘What.’ And, she said ‘Chicken Butt.’  Milk suddenly came out of my nose. And, the children rejoiced! They laughed and pointed and handed me paper towels. It’s a human custom, then. Some ‘milk coming out of the nose rite of passage’ that makes you, for example, truly part of Ms. Clark’s Second Grade Class. And, after that, I felt that I was. I was proud, purposed, and smelled like a bottle that needs washing.

            And, it turned out, as lunchtime wound down, that as a member of Ms. Clark’s Second Grade class, I was due a trip to see the school counselor. Ms. Tichnor took charge of me, and I nodded good bye to my new friends. We went to the ‘boys room’, which neither of us qualified for, but which we both had dispensation to enter, and I joined her in cleaning milk off my armor-feathers with damp paper towels. It was something that the lab assistants would never have dared to do. Then we went to her office. Although the children in my class were much older than me, I was older than them, in some ways. And, a talk with Ms. Tichnor would be a good transition back into the adult world.  

            To describe Ms. Tichnor is to describe her aura. Which, I think, she would like. She would save the world if she could. She sat on a large chair near, not behind, her desk, and I stood before her, in a spot that acknowledged that we both shared rank. The office itself was a school way-station. It was a very comfortable place, with soft, small settees, but the furniture echoed my feelings about the meeting itself. I would relax, reset, then go out in the world and achieve.

            “Frank,” she said, “Ms. Clark told me about you, and the situation you’re in, and I just want to know, do you have a place to go!”

            “I do.”

            “I’m skeptical.”

            “I really do.”

            “Where?”

            “Well, outside!”

            “Oh, outside is no place, armored feathers or no. Or, with those teeth of yours. Mind if I have a close look?”

            I opened my bill, and she admired the double-rows and fangs.

            “All those sharp things. What DNA are you made of?”

            “Well, duck. And armadillo. That much I know. Definitely others.”

            “Human?”

            I’d been thinking. And realized that the anger I had at the concept of rogues playing with human genes might indicate that I had some.

            “I can’t help but think so.”

            And it all came back. What motivated me to bust through that skylight in the first place. The confusion and anger. But I had to find Barry. I couldn’t sit around in a primary school counselor’s office forever. Meanwhile, Ms. Tichnor had her theories, and I just heard a bit through emotional fog. That human cells had been purposely mutated. That if they were donated directly, and the donor were exposed to the genes mutated through the process that was me, they could adopt the mutation, and then, ‘who knows what could happen’.

            She was right. But I had to get out.

            “And then, you don’t even know where to go!”

            She was right there, too. But I knew I had to find that bastard Barry.

            I shrugged.

            “I’m wild.”

            She stood quietly and opened the door.

            “That’s never been a good enough reason before. Good luck. But what about the ‘room full of ninjas’ scenario?”

            “I don’t know,” I said, as I waddled largely out. “I’ll cross that bridge if I get to it.”

            “Try singing ‘Yesterday’.”

            I stopped and turned to her in the hallway.

            “You’re good.”

            She said to me, “It’s the best defense you’ll have.”

            Priorities change, and I was going by- and discovering- instinct. I had some self-pity, but was excited that my instinct was the only one of its type in the world. My urge to search for Barry faded, as did the search for peanuts, and to the fore came thoughts of bodies of water. I gave up my lanyard and badge at the door with sadness. The receptionist was glad to see me go. I took off for a pond, about a half-mile away. Don’t ask me how I knew where it was. The children on the playground waved and cheered as I flew overhead. Few ducks get that experience.

            I’d mentioned womb before, but, until I had finished circling the pond and splashed down, I didn’t know what it meant. I’d only give the splashdown a 5.7, though. It was my first. I could feel the depth of the pond beneath me, and vegetation and fish within. Everything- the algae and trees on the border of the pond, and the shore, had varieties of green that heralded their place in this small world. I dove and bobbed and shook and no longer smelled like a nursery.

            Then, I felt a gentle tapping, turned around, and there was a true drake!

            “Are you giving me a cootie shot?”

            Then, I saw that the drake was pissed. And not in the British sense. His eyes were red, and he was following me with all he had, bill open.

            “What’s this ‘cooties’. There, mine! And, there, mine!” he said. And, I understood. So, I’m duck-literate too.

            “Okay!” I told him. “Whatever it is, it’s yours. Just don’t hurt yourself.”

            He stopped and puffed.

            “The weeds. Over there. Mine and hers. She… don’t look at her!”

            “Okay,” I told him. “I can find weeds elsewhere, and I wouldn’t dream of wooing that hen.”

            The drake just bobbed there.

            “You’re easy.”

            We did what ducks do at that point. Bobbed and paddled. I let off a few “mrk-mrk’s” to set him at his ease. The drake was a big drake, but only as small as one of my wings. But he was beautiful, and had some green on the head that I’d wanted from the moment I saw my own reflection.

            “You’re not all duck,” he asked.

            “No, I said. I’m other animals, too.”

            We sat there and mrk’d awhile, it being too deep to grab stuff off the bottom.

            “But, mostly duck, I think.”

            “And something else,” he said. “That is hard on the outside. You ever want to be all duck?”

            I thought about it. We mrk’d.

            “I haven’t had much time to think about it. But, I don’t mind being what I am, except for the trouble. I might want to be all duck for awhile.”

            “I can see that,” he said. “I can’t imagine being anything else. Ducks rule.”

            We mrk’d a bit more, and dipped our beaks just for the hell of it.

            “Tell ya what,” I said, bringing a halt to all the mrking. “I intend to go to the shore.”

            “Okay,” the drake said.

            “I will swim quickly, then skitter, then take flight for awhile, then splashdown near it.”

            “Okay,” the drake said. “Why are you telling me this.”

            “Well,” I said, “if we pretend to have an argument, and you chase me…”

            “Dude! You would do that?”

            “Sure.”

            “For what. I have to do something for you.”

            “That’s fair enough. Find peanuts for me. We can arrange a pick-up later.”

            “Peanuts!” He laughed. The hen, and, in fact, all the waterfowl on the pond and environs looked over. Even some people on the shore were startled. There couldn’t be a better time. That was our argument. I turned and skittered. The drake chased, but had some trouble with the backwash. So, I went against plan and skittered without taking wing, thus running high on the water, all the way to the shore. The drake was eventually left behind, mostly because he was laughing.

            “Dude! I could see all the way up…mrk, mrk, mrk.”

            He paddled back to his side of the pond. And, during the negotiation, I had snuck a good look at the hen. She’s worth getting a sore beak over.

            A few people were on the shore, and they didn’t know what. But they caught it on camera. They backed away when I hopped on the shore, but only had eyes for me. I didn’t do the whole song and dance. I even kept my mouth closed, not exposing the teeth, and mrk’d a bit. I drew the line at close selfies, though. I would just act shy, and work toward the shore again. The crowd that developed, about fifteen people, self-administrated. It was bittersweet to hear the titles they used on Snapchat, though. “Monster Platypus”. “Duck From Hell.”  “Dodo Returns”. Then, someone was looking at their phone. They’d obviously done a quick bird check, and came up with: “Nothing.” So, I beat it to the shore, and, as I did, I heard another title: “Donald Duck’s Back, And He’s Angry.” That, I enjoyed, and I mrk’d loud, exposing my teeth, but only out toward the pond as I jumped into it.

            I worked around the pond half-way to the drake’s shore, and found a tree coming out of the bank. I sat in a low crook, and was asleep before the sun set.