At some point, we decided to let the ducks go for a (calm and quiet) swim in the pond down the slope. But to do it, we’d have to tie up inquisitive King — otherwise, Robert explained, he’d kill them.
Between us, we decided to hold the dog, let out the ducks, then put King in the duck pen and leave him there while the ducks enjoyed the water. I held onto King’s collar, while Robert opened the lower half of the door — King nearly yanked me over.
Ducks flapped, fled, and quacked.
“They’re not supposed to do that!” Robert cried. But once they’d scurried off a few feet, the birds turned placidly toward the pond and started over the grass, while Robert and I got King into the pen and closed the bottom half of the door.
The ducks seemed to know exactly where the pond was, and went ambling, amiably and loudly, toward it.
Robert had locked the bottom half of the Dutch door; but he’d only pulled the top half closed. It must have swung in a crack. King nosed it open — at a bark I turned to see brown and gold rise up, arch over, and out! With another bark, there were dog and ducks all over the grass.
Robert cried, “Oh, Jesus Christ — !”
We ran after them. I wasn’t too sure how you were supposed to pick up a terrified duck, and didn’t want to learn by trial and error. I hadn’t had much experience with barefoot running, and did it gingerly in the cool grass. Friendly enough before, King was practically as big as we were and didn’t want to be stopped!
Nearly in hysterics, skidding after one of his frightened charges, Robert slipped in the grass, then clambered to his feet, yelling, “No…! No…!” He tried to chase the dog away from the honking ducks, grabbing one of the earthbound birds. “No…! They’re not supposed to run…! They’ll be all ruined…! No…!”
I ran around as much as I could, wishing that Robert wasn’t so upset and that we could treat it more like a game. Once, when he finally got hold of one, I ran over to see. The yellow web raked repeatedly at Robert’s belly (duck’s feet have claws, too), where his blue t-shirt had ridden up from his pants. Once, behind its beak, a dark red eye turned to sweep mine, not seeing me or Robert (my sudden panic insight) as any less menacing than King — who leapt and leapt, trying to bite the bird, while Robert turned away to protect it with his body from King’s eager jaws. Near them, for one moment I saw, among the snowy feathers, cushioned around Robert’s scratched-up hands, a single and, in the midst of the hysteria, scary smear of duck blood.
“Get him away…! Get him away! Bad King! Bad dog! Get him away…!”
So I chased King back —
— who careered off, down to the pond, where two ducks had already reached the water. King went splashing right in, throwing up a steel-bright sheet that angled above the grass and fell as spray.
Running down, I stopped at the lake’s edge. Robert went splatting in, fell, coughing and crying, got to his feet, and leapt on King, while pushing a flapping white bird away over the water.
Once I saw it wasn’t deep, I waded in after them and helped Robert haul King back to the grass.
The ducks clustered, honking, at the pond’s far side.
Holding onto the wet dog collar with Robert, while sopping King pulled against us, I realized — as I tugged, shoulder to shoulder with him — how upset Robert was. “Bad King…!” He hiccuped and cried, even as we got the dog up on the bank. We had to haul King back to the barn. “You damned dog — !” Once Robert kicked at the beast with his naked foot. King tried to dash away again.
“Come on, Robert — ”
Then King decided to shake himself.
Robert let go and started crying again.
Under the splatter I pursed my lips, turned away my face, tightened my hold and, knuckles deep in wet fur, with the smell of dripping dog all around me, pulled King forward.
As he clipped the dog onto the leash that he’d tied to one of the barn posts, Robert started crying once more. (We were still barefoot and were in the barn against orders, but there hadn’t been anything else to do.) “They’re all ruined and tough, now! Nobody’ll eat them…!”
“I think we better get them back into the pen anyway, huh?”
King barked a few times as we walked away. We stepped off the straw- and pebble-strewn planks and onto soil, patterned with tire tracks and packed down, now, with our footprints, then onto the grass.
With King out of the way, we herded the ducks out of the pond, up the slope, and back to their pen. The duck that had been bleeding seemed to have gotten washed off by her swim and was okay now. None of them looked too much the worse. I thought that would be the end of it.
But Robert was desolate.
“Look — ” I tried to be practical — “nobody was around and saw us. You don’t have to tell anybody it happened, do you?” We were standing under a tree. The sky was overcast, and I thought we should go inside. “You could always pretend that it didn’t — ”
“That isn’t the point!” Robert’s face was dirty. His hair was wet. Tears still streaked his cheeks. “They were my responsibility! And now nobody’ll be able to eat them!”
“Well, maybe,” I said, “since they were only running around five or six minutes — ” It had seemed to take hours while it had been happening; but it hadn’t, I realized now, been all that long — “it won’t make them that tough.”
This seemed to be an argument that he could partially accept. He wiped his nose.
Then he turned and shouted: “That god-damned dog!” The profanity fit in Robert’s mouth as awkwardly as it would have in mine.
I said: “Let’s go inside until your mom gets back.”
As we walked across the grass toward the farmhouse’s white steps that went up to the kitchen porch, occasionally Robert would sort of quiver — and now and then sniffle as though he were going to start crying again. Through the whole thing, I hadn’t really been upset. But, once more, lost between compassion for my friend and a selfish worry that his state would ruin the rest of my visit, I decided I had to say something that would change things.
“Robert,” I said. “Your father’s dead.”
He turned to me and blinked — either because what I’d said was true, or because I’d voiced the fact that, certainly, no one else among our classmates had yet dared speak to him of.
“You probably feel like you’re responsible for everything.”
He stopped.
We looked at each other.
We were both wet. Our shirts were out of our pants. Buttons were missing. Our clothes and faces and arms were stuck all over with grass blades, duck down, and leaf bits. Robert had more cuts and scratches than I did. But I had a bruised knee, and there was a tear in my shirtsleeve where King’s tooth had torn it, raking down my forearm to leave the smallest trickle of blood — which I’d decided not to mention to anyone, since back at school Hugo had told us about rabies injections directly into the stomach wall and how much they hurt. It just didn’t seem necessary.
“You didn’t do it on purpose, Robert,” I went on. “It wasn’t your fault. And it’s probably not going to be as bad as you think, anyway.”
Robert blinked, sniffed, then shook his head, with small quick motions, as if to say I just didn’t understand at all.