Authors: Robert T. Jeschonek
6 Fantasy Stories (13 page)
*****
Months later, Chub Man-Head sits at the bar in our favorite joint, one frond wrapped around a freshly-refilled beer, and waves me over. For a moment, it’s like old times again, my partner and I bellied up to shoot the shit after a long day of shooting lawbreakers.
But I can’t fool myself for long. The old times are ancient history.
“Hey, waiter!” Chub says to me. “How about a mist for my partner here?”
These days, I’m not the one on the receiving end of the mister spray.
A man with a lily for a head turns from beside Chub at the bar and extends his glossy white petals to receive the refreshing spritz. I lift the mister bottle from the silver tray I carry and let him have it--not with bullets like I want to, but with the sweet spray of droplets from the mister’s nozzle. His petals ruffle smoothly with delight.
The full-head azalea mask Miss Carionette made me is so good, the lily-head doesn’t know I’m a rose underneath. Chub has my number, but that’s okay; he’ll never rat me out. To keep his job with the Department, he badmouthed me, blamed me for every screw-up in history, and signed oaths of loyalty to the new, non-rose government, but I gave him the go-ahead for all that and I know it was just for show. He did so well at it, in fact, that he got promoted to
my
old job as
inspector
, which is something that
never
would have happened in the old days of rose dominance.
Not that success has gone to his man-head. Not that it ever will.
This is the one thing that has not changed in my inside-out life: Chub Man-Head, who I now realize is my best friend and not just my partner, will never let me down. Looking back, I am glad that when I was on top, I bothered to treat this one non-rose with respect, and that he was worthy of it.
Not that Chub’s new partner seems as willing as I was to befriend the little people.
“Don’t be so stingy with the mist next time,” the lily-head says in flower-speak, dropping a lousy tip on my silver tray. Even on my hardest-up days money-wise, I was a better tipper than this cheapskate.
Inspector Chub, at least, adds another bill to my tray. “Take care,” he says with a wink on his mashed potato puss.
I linger for an instant, more grateful than ever for the good and faithful man-head. Now that the other flowers have killed every rose they could get their hands on, and I can never show my true rose-head face in public, Chub is my only connection to the life I once knew. Without his support, even from afar, I know I would have gone insane long ago.
I smile to myself as my former partner drains his beer in one gulp, and then I move along to serve other customers. To say the least, I hate doing it, spending my days misting the petals of the inferiors who troop through the door like they own the place, like they own the whole world.
But it keeps me alive. I make enough money that I don’t have to live in a wildflower camp or peddle my ass as a street pollinator. I blend in and watch for other flower-heads who might be roses under masks, just in case there are some Red Night survivors around...though I haven’t found any yet.
Also in the plus column, my job isn’t my life anymore like it was back when I was an elite lawman. I have time for a life away from work these days.
Some nights, I go on hunting expeditions, ambushing wealth-flaunting nightlifers fattened on the kill-gotten gains of the Red Night massacre. I call myself the New Pruner and aim to beat the record for hacking up non-rose flower-heads...but only after I’ve interrogated them for information about the murders of my wife and kids.
That’s the one secret I never discovered while investigating the original Pruner killings. I’m still no closer to figuring it out, but I’m nowhere near giving up, either.
Neither is my friend in high places, Inspector Chub. Though he hasn’t found a single lead in the case, he says he’s all over it in his spare time. His man-head’s intuition keeps him believing that the Pruner who struck down my family has not flown far. Recently, in fact, Chub said he had a feeling that the killer was so close that he could reach out and touch him.
It makes me feel good that Chub’s taking this case as personally as I do. It gives me hope that someday, in spite of my reduced circumstances, I’ll track down and punish the animal who snuffed out Zwilla and the girls.
Some people might say it’s unimportant now, given all that’s happened...but to me, it has never been
more
important. Sometimes, it’s the only thing that keeps me going.
And sometimes, there is one other thing.
On certain nights, I go to Carotid’s club. I put on a rose mask over the azalea mask over my rose-head, and I pretend I’m dancing among rose-heads again, not lesser flowers masked as roses. Sometimes, I pretend my wife and seedlings are among them, swaying and waving and smiling in sunlight, telling me everything’s going to be all right.
And for a while, at least, I feel like I’m on top of the world again.
*****
By
Robert T. Jeschonek
I wish that the man who feeds us every day were a duck like I am.
Other men and women give off a reddish light like fire or a bluish light like ice, but the man who feeds us gives off a golden glow like the morning sun. Other men and women are hard as rock inside, but the man who feeds us is as tender as river mud.
We meet him every weekday morning in the grassy park beside the Crown American Building, the one with the giant pillars like stone tree trunks. We hear the ring of keys jangling on his belt loop, and we run to him from whatever puddle we are sipping or cigarette butt we are pecking at.
He is tall and skinny as a blade of marsh grass. The sandy-colored hair on his head is as thin and wispy as a water skimmer’s legs. Sunlight glints from his glasses, so I cannot always see his eyes, but when I do, they are huge and dewy as the caps of forest mushrooms at dawn.
He takes his time when he feeds us, sitting on a bench in the park, dropping crumbs of bread from a plastic bag. He feeds us carefully, making sure that the hens and the weak and the lame get as much food as the strong and pushy mallards among our flock.
He is the reason we spring and summer in Johnstown every year. He is a legend to us, though we tell no ducks outside our flock about him. Ducks are selfish, and we want to keep him to ourselves. I am more selfish yet, for I wish that I could keep him for myself alone.
I am his special duck. When he feeds the flock, he always holds back a special morsel for me...a pinch of corn meal, a bit of bread crust freckled with sesame seeds. He talks to me more than to the others, smiling down at me from the park bench long after the rest of the flock has waddled off.
In return, I sing him beautiful songs. I dance for him, hopping from webbed foot to webbed foot. I write poems with my droppings on the brick sidewalk. Love poems.
Because I love him. I would do anything for him.
This is why I’m not too upset when the woman who laughs stops showing up in the park with him one day.
*****
For years, the woman who laughs came to the park with the man who feeds us. She was tall and skinny like him, with wavy, brown hair and narrow eyes the color of a mallard’s emerald hood.
She sat beside him on the bench, hip to hip with him, and smoked cigarettes and talked as she watched him throw us bread.
And she laughed. A lot. A throaty, raspy laugh that always sounded like it was on the verge of becoming a cough.
Sometimes, when she laughed, she touched his arm. Or his knee.
And his mushroom cap eyes, when I could see them, grew wider. I could hear his heart beating faster. He never touched her back, but I knew how he felt.
The same way I feel about him.
I hated her for that, for being the one he wanted...and I hated her just as much for giving him false hope.
As much as she laughed and talked and touched, she always left him alone on the bench when she was done with her cigarette. He watched her every step as she walked away, and she never turned around.
I knew the type. She enjoyed the attention. She encouraged him, but she never had any intention of becoming his mate.
*****
“Well,” said the woman one morning, blowing out a combination of smoke and frosty breath in the late autumn chill. “This is it.”
All the ducks were quacking for their breakfast (except me, I was listening), but the man who feeds us didn’t drop any crumbs right away. He slumped forward on the bench with the plastic bag between his legs and mashed a lump of bread between the fingers of one hand.
“It isn’t fair,” said the man who feeds us.
“C’mon, be happy for me,” said the woman. “I start my new job next week. My husband and I are finally getting out of this town. This layoff is probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
The man kept kneading the wad of dough. “Best thing, huh?” he said quietly.
“I don’t think there are any ducks where I’ll be working, though,” said the woman. “I don’t know what I’ll do for my morning entertainment.”
The man turned away. “So there’s no chance you’ll stay in town then?” he said.
“There’s nothing keeping me here,” said the woman. When she settled her hand on his knee, I wanted to peck her eyes out. “Somebody gave me some good advice once about moving on and starting over.”
The man looked at her, surprised. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “That was me.”
“Thanks for the advice,” said the woman. She flicked away her burning cigarette butt, and two ducks waddled after it. “You inspired me.”
The man who feeds us smiled and nodded gratefully, but I knew. I could tell from the look on his face and the way he mashed the wad of dough harder between his fingers.
His advice to her had had nothing to do with her leaving town.
*****
At first, I think it’s a good thing that the woman is gone. The man who feeds us is better off without her, I think.
But I am wrong.
When he comes out to the park in the morning, he slouches like a riverbank willow. His eyes are streaked with red, and his golden glow is streaked with black. When he sits on the bench and leans over us, his breath smells sharp and bittersweet as rotting fruit.
“It’s just me today, guys,” he says, reaching into his plastic bag. “Same as every day from now on.”
He scatters a handful of crumbs on the sidewalk, and the flock dives in...but not me. I can see that his heart isn’t in it.
I try to perk him up with a little song and dance, quacking and bobbing back and forth. I bounce up and down on my webbed feet and turn in a circle.
But nothing works. The man who feeds us stares at me but doesn’t seem to see me at all.
He turns the bag upside down and dumps all the bread on the grass at once. As the hungry flock pounces, he gets up from the bench.
“I’m glad someone loves me,” he says, “even if you only love me for the food.”
I call to him as he leaves, but he doesn’t turn back. If only I could make him understand.
“It isn’t true!” I would tell him. “I love you for who you are!”
But I can’t.
*****
The next morning, he comes to the park late. He is more stooped than the day before, and his breath smells much worse. He stumbles into the grass, and I am afraid that he will fall.
He doesn’t say a word to us. Instead of doling out the bread, he drops the bag on the ground and shuffles away.
While the flock attacks the bag, trying to get at the food inside, I run after him, singing. It’s no use. Even stumbling, he is too fast for me. He crosses the street, narrowly avoiding a speeding car, and staggers into an alley.
All I am left with is the sound of his jingling keys echoing down the alley, growing fainter.
*****
The next morning, like the woman who laughs, he is gone. He does not bring bread to the park.
The flock and I search all around the Crown American Building and the bank building and the church next door. We look in Central Park, but he is not there, either.
I begin to worry that he is gone forever.
The other ducks give up the search and go off to hunt for food, but I keep looking for the man who feeds us. I look until the sun goes down and I am too tired to go on.
As I go down to sleep along the bank of the Stonycreek River with the rest of the flock, I am sick at heart. I think that I might never see my love again, for the cold is settling in, and the flock is ready to leave for the winter.
It is then that he comes to us.
*****
In the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, he stumbles down the bank of the river. He is drinking something from a paper bag, and he has no shirt.
The flock scatters in alarm, squawking and flapping. Except for me. I go to him.
He stops in front of me. Raises the bag high for another drink.
And looks down at his special duck. I think he recognizes me.
“I loved her,” he says, slurring the words, and then he falls to his knees. His face is wet with rain and tears. “I loved her,” he says again.
The bag drops from his hand and rolls down into the river.
He crawls after it.
My heart pounds as he falls facedown in the water. I call to him, begging him to get up, but he doesn’t understand.
It is then that I know what I must do. What we must do.
I sing to the rest of the flock, and they rush to my side. I tell them of my plan, and to their credit, they do not hesitate. The man who feeds us is special. He deserves to be saved.
Every last duck leaps into the water.
We dive beneath him, pressing our bodies up under his own. We bear the weight of his arms and his trunk and his legs on our backs, our two dozen backs.
And we spread our wings and flap as one.
We lift him out of the water, raising him up, and we keep on going. We don’t drop him on the bank or leave him behind as we head for the sky.
We take him with us.
He does not belong here anymore. He belongs among the ducks, in secret places soft as down and warm as dreams of summer sunshine. Places where he will be known and loved for the hero he is.
Loved by all, and especially me.
I feel him breathe against my body as we rise above the clouds and point south.
*****