Jim Dodge - Fup

The weather had held clear for almost three days, but he was still caught in the checkers marathon with his ailing Granddaddy, who, although claiming he felt just horrible, hadn't coughed or sneezed in four days, consumed his daily jar of whiskey with his customary relish, and generally looked as pert as ever- almost becoming hearty as he closed the gap in the checkers match, cackling with delight as he hit Tiny with moves he'd never seen nor heard of, much less imagined-moves like the Biloxi Blitz, the Double King Kong Dick Twister, and, most dependably, the Ol' Switcheroo-moves so incomprehensibly foolhardy that Tiny had to stretch his talent to succumb to them.

On the first day of April, the score knotted at 499-all the night before, they held the playoff at high noon. Tiny brilliantly maneuvered himself into a position where he could be triple jumped for a king, and though it had taken Granddaddy Jake two moves to see it, he finally seized the opening and eventually won.

"Gotcha with the Triple Dip Overland Sledge-Hammer Nut Crusher," Granddaddy crowed as Tiny ruefully shook his head. "Last time I used it was against Pud Clemens up in Newport 'round' '46, '47. But don't feel bad Tiny; you played real good early on when I was weakened with the pneumonia, but I just eventually wore you down with experience."

"You made a great comeback" Tiny agreed. "Wish you could whip that cold as easy."

"Oh, I'm better today-not prime, but passable… might even get out of bed."

"What do you want for dinner?"

"Hell, long as I'm getting up anyway, I might as well rustle up the grub. Should get another batch cooking, too; supply is falling behind demand. And besides, if you don't get back to work on the North Fork fence pretty soon, Lockjaw's gonna be wallowing under the front porch."

Tiny was out the door and gone. But when he topped the ridge fifteen minutes later, eager to finish digging the last 100 holes, he saw a sight that enraged him: he'd left the dirt from each previously dug posthole tidily rounded to the left of each hole, and now not a pile remained-they had been trampled, scattered, and generally ravaged. Even before he saw the distinctively huge tracks etched in the damp remains of the first few mounds, Tiny knew it was Lockjaw. This wasn't merely a case of wrecking something in your way or defending yourself against some berserk macho beagle snapping at your face; this was maliciously deliberate.

Tiny allowed himself one ringing curse worthy of his Granddaddy, then started cleaning the mess up as best he could. He soon discovered that most of the mounded dirt had been pushed back into the postholes, and was diligently scooping them out, working down the line, when he noticed that one of the holes near the end was particularly devastated: it looked like it had been rooted, chewed, and rolled on. Flicking the sodden muck from his fingers, Tiny went to investigate.

The earth around the hole had been torn down to the clay layer, the slash and gouge of tusks visible around the rim. The focused destruction puzzled Tiny until he started scooping out the hole. Near the bottom, half buried and three-quarters drowned, he found a newly-hatched duckling, its feathers matted into a ball of muddy goo.

Tiny was perplexed. There were no ducks on their ranch or on any of their neighbors' that he knew about, and he'd never heard of any ducks nesting on bare ridgetops. Holding it in the hammock of his left hand, Tiny took it back up to the house to see what his Grand-daddy thought.

"What the fuck is that!" Granddaddy screeched when Tiny laid the mud-encrusted duckling out on the kitchen table where Jake was finishing his fourth cup of coffee and reading an old copy of Argosy.

"A baby duck, I think," Tiny said, and went on to explain how and where he'd found the bird while his Granddaddy examined it, peering down close and occasionally prodding it with a gnarled finger, muttering to himself, "Hardly alive except for a heartbeat, and even that's ragged." He looked up at Tiny: "You sure it was Lockjaw?"

"Yep," Tiny nodded, "tracks were in clay… unless you know of something else that would leave a pig track six inches long and sunk in about finger-deep from the weight it was packing."

"And you say the posthole you found him in was all chomped up?"

"Torn to hell."

"Well goddamn," Granddaddy wagged his head, "I 'spect ol' Lockjaw spent the night trying to eat this poor fucking bird." He chortled with delight. "Must've drove him total crazy, a tender little morsel just outa reach."

Tiny grinned. "I can just see him with his snout rammed down that posthole, slavering and chomping."

"Probably wasn't so funny to this sad little bastard though," Granddaddy gestured toward the mud-smeared duckling stretched out on the red and white oil cloth covering the table. "Must've been like looking up the business end of a double-barrel.12 gauge." The duckling stirred weakly, as if recalling the sight.

Granddaddy quickly bent over it and pressed an ear to its chest. He listened intently. "Sweet-leaping-jesus," he barked, jerking upright, "its heart is commencing to quit. Tiny, fetch a jar of Death Whisper from the cabinet-this calls for some emergency first-aid."

While Tiny got a jar of Granddaddy's best, the old man was taking the dropper off a bottle of Vick's nosedrops. When Tiny unscrewed the lid and set the jar on the table, recoiling slightly from the fumes, Granddaddy squeezed up a dropper-full and, prying the duckling's bill open, administered it with a decisive pinch of the bulb.

The effects were instantaneous: the duckling, eyes bulging, began to flop around on the table, cheeping wildly.

"Well, we got its heart pumping good," Granddaddy beamed. "Now we best get him washed off and see how he looks."

An hour later the duckling, dried to a fluff, was running around on the tabletop waving its stubby wings and peeping happily.

"How do you think it got in that posthole anyway?" Tiny asked as he and Jake watched it frolic.

"Damned if I know… I don't even have an interesting theory."

"Don't make any sense at all."

"Sure wouldn't be the first time/' Grand-daddy grumbled. Then, more sharply, to Tiny: "We gonna keep him? Or her, as the case may be."

"At least till he's healed up, sure."

"Shitfire, he looks healed up fine right now-look at him romping on that table."

"I mean till he's grown up enough to take care of himself."

"Well then, we better give this critter a name so he knows who we're talking about."

"Tiny smiled. "I thought up a good one already." He paused for effect: "Posthole."

"That is pretty good," Granddaddy agreed, "but I got a real good one: Fup."

"Fup." Tiny repeated blankly.

Granddaddy gave him his full, five-toothed grin: "Fup Duck. Ya get it? Fup… Duck."

"That's a terrible name," Tiny groaned.

Terrible or not, and despite Tiny's resistance, Fup became the duckling's name, a decision rendered by common usage at the next Saturday night poker game. The players-Ed Bollpeen and his boy Ike; Lub Knowland; the Stranton brothers, Happy and PeeWee; and Lonnie Howard-laughed at Jake's addled wit, but also appreciated its strange accuracy, for something was indeed fucked up. They assumed that the duck's ultimate origin was an egg and believed that Tiny had found it in his diggings up on the North Fork ridge, but nobody could figure how it got from the egg to the posthole.

"Maybe its mama dropped it when she was flying through the storms," Lonnie Howard suggested as he peeled back his hole card for a look.

"You ignorant dunghead," Granddaddy barked scornfully, "ducks don't fly around with their young'uns tucked under their wings-that'd be like trying to piss and whack off at the same time."