Fowl Weather (24 page)

“Which boys?” I knew of no little boys on my mom's street at all.

“Those brats that live next door with what's-their-names. They came over again last night and kept moving my things around. I even caught one of them going through my purse, and I had to hide it.”

This account troubled me deeply. Two different friends of mine had parents who had started complaining about nonexistent children shortly before suffering a serious decline. As soon as I got back home, I phoned Joan and told her what had happened.

“I'll schedule her for another mental evaluation,” Joan sighed. “But, Bob, we have to be grateful for how well she's doing overall despite whatever is wrong with her.”

Bett gave me similar advice. “She still gets her own meals, looks
neat and clean, keeps up the house, and she seems happier lately than she has in a long time. The best we can do is let the doctor know what's going on and watch for any signs that she's a danger to herself. I'm coming in next weekend,” she added, “so I'll keep an eye on her to see if she's acting any different.”

I felt better after these conversations and realized that visits from imaginary boys weren't significantly worse than neighbors purportedly making off with grass seeders or sons allegedly absconding with electric trimmers. And if seeing little people who weren't there indicated a mental breakdown, then I had slipped a serious cog two decades earlier.

A few years before meeting Linda, I had briefly dated a woman, Jolene, who claimed to be a witch. One summer afternoon, we sat at a card table in her living room working on her résumé for a job as a substitute teacher that didn't explicitly require spell casting. While struggling to fill a yawning chasm between her periods of paid employment, I glanced around the room in search of inspiration only to notice a small person staring at me from the foot of the stairs. For an instant, I assumed it was her Vietnamese roommate. But when I blinked, the figure vanished.

My face must have worn the classic pop-eyed, just-seen-a-ghost expression, because Jolene stopped riffling through her sheaf of papers and asked, “What's the matter? Are you feeling okay?”

“Over there,” I managed to squeak as I gestured with my thumb. I decided it wouldn't be a problem admitting a strange apparition to a witch. “By the railing. There was a little person, about three feet tall, with slanted eyes and a bowl haircut.”

I might as well have reported a ladybug on the windowsill. Jolene turned her attention back to the résumé and in a blasé manner said, “I left the back door wide open, and it probably wandered in from the garden.”

“What wandered in?”

“A fairy,” she explained, as if speaking to a child. “They help me grow my flowers and vegetables.” I resisted asking her if they might possibly assist with résumé writing.

Certainly they couldn't have topped my mom in the note-writing department. I knew that Mom's mental powers had begun to deteriorate, but I hadn't expected them to take a nosedive so quickly. I felt as if my sisters and I were standing in water up to our chins, and the level would rise before it came down. That was the most profound metaphor that came to mind as I stood in our dining room staring out at the Grand River, which had just flooded its banks. A pond was forming down the hill, and while this meant the arrival of wood ducks before long, it also promised hordes of mosquitoes and a population of vicious alligators hell-bent on tearing me into pieces. Well, maybe they weren't exactly alligators. Someone had recently told me that spring peepers were frogs, but I wasn't taking any chances.

T
HROUGHOUT THE WINTER MONTHS,
there had been two constants: wretched weather and relentless phone calls from Eileen Kucek. She had taken a proprietary interest in Lulu, and the haze of an accusatory tone hung over every conversation about the previously pampered white duck, who had become a contented member of our flock. “Are you feeding her enough fresh greens? I can bring over a few bags of kale if you're not giving her any,” she had told me more than once, despite my protests that we treated our waterfowl and poultry to fresh produce every day. On another occasion she had said, “I want to make sure you're keeping her pool water clean. The last time I saw Lulu, the water looked dirty.”

“That's because she brought a beakful of mud into the clean pool with her,” I explained. “That's the nature of a duck. We
empty and refill each of the four pools at least twice a day. But if you like, I'll try to divert the Grand River into Lulu's pen.” I didn't bother telling her how easy that would be if the flooding followed its usual course.

Mostly, I let the answering machine weary its silicon heart with Eileen's droning voice. But I immediately returned her call the morning she left a message about bringing us two new geese. “The woman who owns them has to give them away, because she's moving. I've got a friend who can take ducks,” she added, in a development we would soon hear more about, “but the geese have nowhere else to go. And they're really sweet.”

We had the space in the backyard pens, we were crazy about geese—having recently added a new gander named Matthew—and I couldn't think of a belligerent primate I'd rather have drop by for a visit than Eileen. So after a quick consultation with Linda, I agreed. “As long as you're sure the geese would be happy living with us,” I said. “Lulu's been a little grumpy with us ever since we took away her bedroom slippers.”

“I'm bringing their owner-companion, Marcia, and I'll let her decide whether or not she wants to let you have them. But I'm glad you brought up Lulu. We'll talk about her when I see you.”

“I can't wait,” I muttered after I hung up.

While I bided my time until the promised goose-and-pest arrival, Linda buzzed into town for groceries and brought back news of our former master gardener, Henry Murphy. “I saw him walking down the street carrying his laundry, so I gave him a ride to the Ammo Shack. His bumblebee died over the winter.”

“Most of them do.” Stanley Sue was performing sentry duty, stalking the tops of the bunny cages. When I handed her a grape fresh from the store, she crushed it in her beak and let it fall onto Walter's back below.

“So without a car, he's not able to do his gardening consultation now.”

“That's a shame when so much soil needs testing.” On hands and knees I retrieved the pulped grape before Walter had a chance to eat it and foul his touchy digestive system. “Maybe he could test the water in our pond for phosphorus, nitrogen, and potash.”

Linda's crinkling of plastic grocery bags offended the delicate sensitivities of our parrot Ollie, who voiced his disapproval of the innocuous noise with a series of grating chirps. Barely missing a beat, Linda covered his cage with a light blue bedsheet from the hall closet, transforming his outburst into contrite squeals. “Nobody feels the least bit sorry for you,” she told him. “I wonder what kind of people would use Henry for financial services? That's what he said he's doing now. Anyway, he seemed kind of pathetic, and I said we might help him out.”

“With financial services? You've got to be kidding.”

“No, I offered to do his laundry once in a while.”

T
HE APPEARANCE OF
two women in our backyard interrupted our discussion of Henry's professional prospects. “This is my good friend Marcia,” said Eileen in a sickeningly sweet singsong when we greeted them outside. Then her voiced dropped an octave to convey the burden of her acquaintance with us as she hurriedly told Marcia, “This is Bob and Linda.”

“What a nice pen,” Marcia said as Eileen elbowed past us to throw open the door.

“Peewee!” Eileen called to an unimpressed Lulu, while pointedly failing to
peewee
the other flock members.

“It's goose paradise,” Marcia proclaimed. An energetic woman in her forties, she had tightly curled hair that gathered above her ears only to terminate abruptly below them in an awkward truncation
that suggested a mushroom cap. I wondered if she had made off with my mother's electric trimmer for the job. Her coif seemed subdued compared to Eileen's, though. Instead of the usual tightly wrapped bun, she had arranged her straw-colored hair into a wildly sprouting topknot reminiscent of a troll doll on a bad ‘do day. The styling incited muttering among the ducks whenever she inclined her head toward them. I imagined that they associated the tuft with a raised crest, signaling provocation.

Chatting excitedly about her geese, Marcia led Linda to her van while I counted to myself, waiting for Eileen to say something ridiculous. I managed to make it to eleven.

“Something's wrong with Lulu. She's very depressed. She won't come to me.”

“Of course she won't come to you. She doesn't know you from Don King,” I told her, diplomatically avoiding any mention of her hair.

“Well, I was talking to Kate this week, and she decided it would be best if Lulu went to live with Henrietta.”

“Or Henrietta could come here,” I suggested, uncertain who Henrietta might be.

Shunning Eileen, the ducks and geese retreated into their shed, quacked and honked among themselves in hasty conference, then filed out again. Leading the flock was our white Embden goose Matthew, whom our rehabber friend Marge Chedrick had taken in from an apartment-complex parking lot and given to us a month earlier. At first sight of the intruding Eileen, Matthew propelled himself at her with outraged hissing, outstretched neck, and serrated bill poised for biting. Ignorant of basic waterfowl body language, Eileen extended a welcoming hand. She pivoted her wrist at just the right moment for Matthew's jaws to clamp onto her jacket sleeve instead of latching onto flesh.

“What a nasty duck,” she observed as she backed out of the
pen. Taking exception to the dual insult, the goose pursued her and would have chomped her once again if I hadn't whisked him off the ground and deposited him in the bunny enclosure. “Lulu,” she called frantically. “Lulu, are you okay?”

Linda and Marcia padded into the yard carrying a large goose apiece in their arms. Spotting the newcomers, Matthew honked a baritone saxophone solo and easily hopped over the rabbit fence to gallop toward Linda, wings flapping. Marcia's geese burst free of human embrace and with exuberant caroling joined Matthew on the grass.

“Watch out, he's dangerous,” warned Eileen.

Matthew, the new white female Embden, and the new white-and-grey male Embden briefly chased and pecked one another before settling down to probe the soft soil. The other ducks and geese poured out of the pens to join them in yard-destroying revelry.

“I guess they like it here,” said Marcia. But the new male concerned me. The primary feathers of his right wing stood out from his body at a right angle, as if he were signaling to make a turn, in a harmless condition known as angel wing—often caused by a vitamin deficiency in a waterfowl's innocent youth. Birds with any obvious peculiarity were often picked on by stronger members of the flock. While Angel, as we soon called him, outweighed Matthew, I doubted he'd succeed in dominating him.

“Kate would like Lulu to live somewhere else,” Eileen told us once the clamor had quieted down and our ears had stopped ringing.

“She's perfectly fine here,” I answered.

“What goose or duck wouldn't love it?” Marcia asked.

“I spoke to her yesterday, and she feels Lulu would be happier with Henrietta, who just spent twelve thousand dollars on a duck pen.”

“Twelve thousand dollars!” exclaimed Linda. “Are the fences made of gold?”

“No, but she had special chain-link fencing custom-made for the exercise pen so that a raccoon can't fit a paw through it. The roll of fencing was so heavy, it took seven men to carry it into her yard. Her ducks have also got a fully insulated Cape Cod – style cottage for their sleeping quarters that includes a fold-down bed for Henrietta. She can spend the night out with the ducks when she misses them. And there's a two-way closed-circuit TV system so that Henrietta can see them and talk to them from the house, and they can see her face on the video screen.”

“Is there room out there for me?” I asked. “It sounds like quite the life.”

I pulled Linda aside, and we conferred in quiet quacks. When Kate had first brought Lulu to us, she'd told us that she might be back for her one day, so we didn't really consider her to be our duck. Linda decided that she would have to check with Kate, and if it was okay with her, Eileen could come back for Lulu. After Linda explained this to Eileen, I caught myself on the verge of asking my former grade school classmate how she had hooked up with Henrietta—or, for that matter, Marcia—but realized that the convoluted answer would only depress me. I did put a question to Marcia, though. “After hearing about the golden duck palace, are you sure your geese will be happy here?”

“Are you kidding?” Marcia laughed. All five geese, including Africans Liza and Hailey, had worked their way to the garden alongside the house and begun pruning the hyacinths and daffodils.

“No, no, no,” said Linda. “You leave that alone.”

Eileen shaded her eyes with her fingers and gazed off into our swamp. “Where's that path of yours you've been bragging about?”

“Underwater.”

She snorted. “That didn't work out very well, did it? I could put in a good word with Henrietta's contractor, if you'd like to build a boardwalk.”

“Totally unnecessary,” I assured her. “Why walk to the river when the river can come to us?” That gave me an idea for Henry Murphy's laundry, and I made a mental note to mention it to Linda later. We could tie a few of his checkered shirts to a tree trunk and give them a thorough soaking.

W
E REALIZED THE
flooding would be much worse than usual the morning Roswitha nearly lost her footing as she slogged along her gravel road. “The water's well above her knees,” I told Linda at the breakfast table. Along with the rising river level came a wicked current that did its best to sweep our neighbor off the raised roadbed and topple her into the swamp. Dressed in hip waders and a nylon jacket, she used a broom handle as a walking stick to steady herself as she plodded forward.