The Ferrari stopped and the tinted window opened to reveal a duck. A duck in sunglasses.
"Oh damn." Murray walked faster down the sidewalk. He knew that duck. He knew those sunglasses.
Murray heard the car roll up slowly behind him.
"Quack, quack."
Murray stopped but didn't turn around.
"Is that you, Donny?"
"Quack."
Murray clenched his fist and glared out of the corner of his eye. "You weren't supposed to get out for another nickel."
"Quack... quack quack."
The glasses cast a reflection of Murray's suspicious stare back at him.
"So you didn't fly the coop." Murray crossed his arms. "You were a stool pigeon the whole time. You got Mack McQuack to confess, and now he's a jailbird."
Donny slowly nodded. "Quack."
Murray shook his head. "I'm not going back into the game, Donny. I promised I wouldn't. You want me to eat crow?"
The duck stared at Murray. Finally, he brushed his glasses off with his wing and looked him in the eyes. "Quack quack, quack. Quack quack."
Using his bill, Donny opened the glove compartment and pulled out a newspaper. He held it out, and Murray took it.
Murray's jaw dropped as he looked it over. "I'll be damned." The paper showed a mugshot of a Canadian goose. An old mugshot, from the old days in the gang. "Henry Hissinger. He's back. And he's got Delores."
Donny nodded. "Quack quack?"
“Damn right I’m in.” Murray crumpled the newspaper in his hands and tossed it aside. “Come on, Donny. His goose is cooked.”
The secret to happiness?
Suffering. Gotta suffer before you smile.
Me? It started with a cough. Mucus, then blood.
Next day, I barely breathed. Doctors said it grew up my windpipe in threads.
Week later, it swelled into white, hard buds on my neck.
Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. Wanted to die.
Then one morning, I felt threads growing, spinning webs under my skull. A flash. Then, the pain in my head disappeared.
Now? I feel good. Only my smile hurts. The whole world should feel this way.
So come on, nurse. Open up. Let’s spread a little happiness.
“Cut it out, Max!” one boy said. “It’s dead. Look at all the blood.”
“No it’s not!” the boy with the stick shouted back. “Look, it’s moving!”
“That’s because you’re poking it, retard.”
A group of boys crowded around a gutter behind the church, poking at something in the snow and punctuating their conversations with shouts and opinions.
Grandma disappeared into a crowd of her own. The dozens of white haired women, busy with their talk of hot dishes and funeral potatoes, didn’t notice Joseph wandering away. He walked closer to the circle of boys but kept his distance. There was something small, reddish brown, and furry in their midst on the ground, a pale pink splotch surrounding it.
“I bet the hawk got it and dropped it,” said Max, the boy with the stick. “He flies around the tower. He catches the pigeons sometimes. I’ve seen him do it, just whoom.” He waved his stick in the air like a diving hawk.
All eyes were on Max, so Joseph held his breath and walked closer, his boots crunching softly in the snow. Laying on the snow, curled up like an unhatched chick, lay a red squirrel with its brown eyes wide open. It was motionless and stared at the crowd of boys without really seeing them.
But maybe it really had moved on its own. Maybe… maybe he could find out.
“Dare me to touch it.”
The boys all turned as one and looked at Joseph. A couple scowled.
“Why?” one of them asked.
“Just…” He swallowed and walked closer to the squirrel. If they dared him, he could blame the boys for touching the squirrel if he got in trouble. “Dare me to touch it.”
Max wrinkled his nose in a sneer. “Why? We know you won’t.”
It was as good as a dare.
He walked past Max and knelt down. With a deep breath, he placed one hand under the squirrel and then the other.
“He’s doing it!” one of them whispered. “Gross!”
“It’s still warm,” he muttered. Placing the limp squirrel face down in his left hand, he felt along its body with his right. Its body fur was coarser than he expected, but its bushy tail was almost as soft as fog. He felt his way from the tail to the crown of its head -
Broken.
His sudden gasp broke the silence of the circle, and all the boys jumped.
He had seen it, just as he had seen the beetle’s broken shell. As if the squirrel’s skin and muscles had turned invisible, he had seen the thin fracture - a glowing, white pain in the squirrel’s skull. It was only the width of a hair, but it was surely enough to kill it.
Joseph was sitting now. He didn’t know how long he’d been doing it, but the boys were watching the squirrel and his every move.
Mend.
With his mind, he saw the fracture again. With his eyes, he saw the boys. Watching. Waiting. Judging.
He imagined the squirrel coming to life, still bleeding, scurrying into the circle. The boys would shriek and tell everyone. The white haired ladies, the church, the priest - all their eyes and questions and fear...
Reddening, he stood and dropped the squirrel to the snow. He ran back to Grandma and hugged her legs, returning to safety and sense.
She cut off her conversation with the other women and looked down at him.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” She returned his hug.
“I know, I know. Animals get hurt sometimes, Joseph. Sometimes we can’t do anything about it.”
Even wrapped in her warm embrace, his thoughts trailed back to the squirrel freezing in the snow, its broken skull widening.
Work in progress. I think Bonanza Bros. characters could lend themselves well to the styles of modern 50s cartoons such as Gerald McBoingBoing, so I’m giving it a shot.
