The Story of Quacker
By David Barth
"The Story of Quacker," was written for my sister, Naoma, in 1980. It is a modernized story like those I told to Naoma when she was four years old, and I was
eight. One day, when we were kids, as I told her a little made-up story about her favorite toy, a yellow, stuffed duck she had named "Ducky," I discovered that I
could make her cry if the story had a sad part. As the weeks went by, I began to play with her emotions by making up tear-jerker stories. For example, one story
was about her little duck getting lost in the deep, dark woods, where a mean old wolf lived. When searchers went into the woods to find the duck, all they found
were a few yellow feathers on the path. I wrote this story for her as the final chapter in the saga of an unfortunate duck.
Once upon a time there was a little yellow duck. The little duck's name was Quacker. Quacker was cute. His young feathers gave him a fuzzy feel. He was lovingly
cuddly, but, unfortunately, Quacker was not liked by the other ducks in the duck community in the woods. In fact, he was hated by them. That he was disliked was
not his fault at all. He was different from all the other ducks, and so they teased him and treated him awful. The other ducks wanted to make Quacker leave the duck
community. He had lived in it ever since he was born, and he loved it so much.
Quacker was not mad at the other ducks for not liking him. He was sad for them because they could not accept all ducks, regardless of how they looked or
acted.
Quacker had no friends in the duck community. He lived in the nest his mother and father had built before he was born.
But his parents were not around. No,
Quacker's parents would never be seen again. Two hunters had found the duck community. They had laughed loud, raucous laughs and pointed their guns at
the terrified ducks sitting in their cozy feather lined nests. Loud noises were followed by explosions of feathers and nests. It was horrible. Quacker's parents
were blown to bits. Scores of other ducks suffered the same fate. The mean hunters did not care. They did not want duck meat. They were deer hunters.
Their powerful guns, designed to kill the duck's forest neighbor, the deer, just scattered the poor ducks across the pine needle floor of the forest.
Quacker was injured, not only physically, but also in his heart: He had lost his mother and father. His physical injury was a hurt leg and a broken wing. His wing
was too painful to flap, so Quacker would never again be able to fly like the other ducks. Quacker's hurt leg never did heal properly. It just hung limp. Quacker
could not use his hurt leg. He couldn't walk like the others. Poor Quacker had to hop after the others, trying to keep up, but always falling behind. He had to
drag his hurt leg behind him. Hop, drag. Hop, drag. Hop, drag.
It was a pitiful sight to see poor little Quacker trying to get around. The other ducks made
fun of him. They teased him for leaving a trail of hop prints beside a drag mark on the ground. But Quacker couldn't help it. He took torments that the others
threw at him in silence. He always tried to smile weakly at them, but their taunts hurt him very deeply. Yet Quacker never said a bad word against any of them.
He just hoped that one day all the other ducks in the community would understand and accept him as one of their own.
While walking was bad enough, Quacker's crippled leg made swimming even more difficult. His one good leg would paddle, but he would tend to go in a circle
because his poor crippled leg just dragged in the water. It could not kick.
This situation was devastating for Quacker. He had trouble maneuvering to the feeding
beds where the water plants grew. Quacker was always late getting to the feeding beds. All the easily reached plants had already been eaten by the other ducks
when Quacker finally arrived. With only one good leg, Quacker had trouble diving deep enough to reach the food plants. He would tire quickly and frequently have
to stop to rest. Finally, he would just wait for a leaf to fall out of the mouth of another duck and hope that no one noticed. Then he would struggle to swim over to it.
The other ducks kept an eye on poor Quacker, and if they saw him trying to get a leaf one of them had dropped, they would dash over and beat Quacker's poor, frail
body with their strong wings and take the food away from him.
Quacker spent all of the daylight hours trying to find food. But he never got enough. He stopped growing. He was the smallest duck. But Quacker never gave up.
He kept trying as hard as his weak body would allow to find little scraps of food to stay alive.
One day the other ducks got mad at Quacker because he never fought back. As they beat him, the only emotion he showed was a thin, weak smile as he lamely
tried to avoid their blows. So they chased and pushed Quacker into the dark woods. He kept hopping away from the duck community because he didn't like to
have the other ducks mad at him. He hoped he could stay in the woods one night and then quietly go back to the pond to eat. Maybe the others would forget
about him and let him return, peacefully.
That night, Quacker shivered in the cold woods. He couldn't sleep. And he was scared. There were night noises all around.
The next morning finally came. He began
to hop back to the duck community. He hopped all day. Quacker knew he should have found his home by nightfall, but there was no sight of the duck community
or the pond. Quacker was hungry and thirsty. He was getting weaker. His stomach hurt for lack of food and water. Quacker spent another sleepless night in the
cold, dark woods.
The next day, he could not stand up on his one good leg. He could only push himself through the woods on his stomach. But this technique was terribly tiring, and
it was cutting up his breast and stomach. But Quacker knew that to survive he had to get back to the others. He kept struggling to push himself forward, frequently
stopping to rest and look for a familiar landmark.
Five days later, Quacker lay at the edge of the deep woods, near death. He lay starving and bleeding, but he was elated for he could hear the chatter of the other ducks.
They were passing near him, heading for the pond. He tried to call out to them, but he couldn't call out with his throat so parched, and he was unable to move his
battered body one inch. He was too weak from lack of nourishment and loss of blood to move forward.
The forest grew quiet again as the last duck passed by, not noticing the rumpled yellow body laying in the leaves. They hadn't seen him. But Quacker would not
give up. He lay still, trying to gather enough strength in hopes that when the other ducks returned from the pond, he could rustle the leaves around him enough
so they would hear him. He knew that if they noticed him, he would be saved. They would carry him back to his nest and care for him until he could help
himself.
It seemed that an eternity passed before he heard them returning from the pond. He listened carefully. If he expended what little strength he had left making noise
at the wrong time, they would not hear him. Quacker knew he could not survive another night lying in the woods. At last, he decided the moment was right. Quacker
marshaled his last ounce of strength and rustled the leaves around him. The other ducks stopped. They all turned to look at him.
Quacker was ebullient. He was saved, he thought. The ducks looked at each other, then lifted their heads and continued toward their nests in silence. Quacker
watched in horror. They were ignoring him! He couldn't believe that a duck could withhold help form one of its own kind in desperate need. His little eyes tried to
blink back the tears. His tears were for the sad state of mind the other ducks possessed. Quacker hoped that the future would bring about a better duck
society.
Dusk fell. That night Quacker quietly died. The forest was silent. High overhead, an eagle called. In the moonlight, a dark shape lifted its head from the spot
Quacker had died. As it rose up and spread its huge wings, the shape of an eagle was recognizable. It motionlessly rose, climbing up toward the other eagle in
the night sky. They were joined by others as they glided on silent wings into the heavens.
