Jim Dodge - Fup

So Granddaddy Jake let it drop. There was no point. His notion wasn't as strong as Tiny's need. He'd said his piece, and in doing so satisfied what he felt was his responsibility both to his grandson and his old Indian friend. Johnny Seven Moons, in whatever form his spirit had taken, would have to look out for his own ass. And so would Tiny, wherever his spirit was taking him.

A few nights later, out for his nightly stroll, Granddaddy Jake met Lockjaw on the old saddletrail that ran out to the Claybourne place. They met blindly at the top of a rise; both recoiled for an instant, then charged. Granddaddy was knocked high in the air, did a splaying one-and-a-half somersault, and smacked down on the rain-softened earth like guts on a slaughterhouse floor. Fortunately the only thing he broke was the jar of Death Whisper in his overcoat pocket, and though Lockjaw made a few jaw-popping lunges, slashing at Jake's ribs, the fumes from the spilled whiskey soon had the mammoth boar staggering, his jowls streaked with tears from his burning eyes, mucous bubbling in his ravaged snout. He lurched off into the brush, leaving Grand-daddy Jake to assess the damage to his person. He felt himself all over, methodically, expecting to find himself torn to shit and bleeding, but all he found were a couple of patches of slobber along his right side. And it came back to him then through the shock: the sight of Lockjaw looming above him, hooking with his head, huge in the dark, but old, he was old, the sag of skin, the ripple of ribs, both tusks missing, snapped off at the jaw line or else fallen out.

"Gawddamn," Granddaddy moaned, staggering to his feet, "good thing it was a fair fight-don't think I coulda held my own if he wasn't already worn down about as much as me." He scraped off the mud as best he could in the darkness then headed on out toward the Claybourne's. He was glad now he hadn't pursued it with Tiny, trying to make him see that Lockjaw might be Seven Moons, because now he wasn't so sure that such was the case. The Johnny Seven Moons he remembered would have stopped to lick up that spilled whiskey.

He didn't tell Tiny. After thinking on it for three afternoons, mulling it with that slow, voluptuous thoroughness that is a reward of the still life, Jake reaffirmed his neutrality. He wouldn't tell Tiny anything about Lockjaw, and he wouldn't tell Lockjaw anything about Tiny. That decided, he turned his attention to other pressing matters, like teaching Fup to fly.

He'd been sitting on the porch one afternoon letting his mind wander as usual, taking a sip now and then, pouring a little into Fup's saucer, when he'd suddenly realized he was already getting bored with immortality. He needed a task, a task that would not only challenge his wisdom, but enlarge it: he needed to teach something he didn't know. A pupil, fortunately, was near at hand. Reaching down and stroking her sleek neck, he said coaxingly, "Fup, I think you should learn to fly. It'd do wonders for your social life. Hell, maybe you could pick up a husband-or at least zoom off for a quickie in the cattails with some emeraldheaded stud. Tiny and I have talked some about getting you a mate, but the truth of it is I ain't got an ounce of pimp in me… and anyway it would be an insult to your good looks."

Fup looked at him without a sound and wearily tucked her head under her wing.

"Good Christ, sweetheart," Granddaddy persisted, "just think about it-you could fly from here to Mexico, just soar along looking down on it all and give it a great big quack!"

Fup removed her head from under her wing, and in a voice strong, deliberate, and not without a hint of mockery, responded "Quack… Quack… Quack." Then hissed a bit, and stomped around. Granddaddy Jake took it as a beleagured agreement.

But Fup did not agree at all to the diet. Tiny had agreed only with great reluctance, noting, correctly, "She's not going to like it."

"If you want to fly," Granddaddy argued, "you got to make sacrifices. How's she gonna get off the ground with all that weight?"

"She's just big for her age," Tiny defended. "It's all in proportion."

"Tiny, she's not just big for her age, son; she's enormous for maturity. I've seen millions of mallard ducks in my time, and Fup is not just a touch bigger, or a wee bit bigger, or half-again, or twice: she's about seven times the size of whatever's next. Now I don't think she's grotesquely fat or nothing like that-just a bit too heavy for flight is all. Hellfire, we'll still feed her, just not as much."

But Fup wanted as much, and when she didn't get it, she sulked. She examined the portions as if straining to see them, then, spotting food, gulped it in a frenzy of false gratitude, turned her back, and shit in the dish. She kept to her daily routine, somewhat sustained by the extra goodies Tiny slipped her at work, but she pouted and languished at every opportunity. She was seriously pissed, a disposition hardly improved by Granddaddy's teaching techniques.

At the most marginal of opportunities, Jake was fond of telling anyone within earshot the three great secrets of how to proceed when you don't have the vaguest idea what you're doing. The secrets, in the order he invariably listed them, were intuition, reason, and desperation. His intuition as a flight instructor persuaded him that it would be best to simply seize Fup, take her out in a nice open spot, and fling her up in the air. She would probably be startled at first, but instinct would no doubt make her open her wings, and from that point she would surely get the idea.

Fup, without the slightest flap of her wings, hit the earth like a sack of cement, flopped once or twice weakly, then lay still. Sweet Jesus, I killed her Granddaddy thought to himself as he ran to her, but at his approach she was instantly on her feet, her bill snapping open and shut with a sound like a speedfreak playing castanets; she took a dead bead on Granddaddy Jake, then charged. Granddaddy, cupping his gonads with both hands, took the sharpest angle to the porch, but he wasn't fast enough: Fup hit him like a pulling guard on a blindside trap, hard and low. As he woozed to his feet, reeling, cursing the lunatic soloist playing the gongs in his head and thinking that he was sure taking a beating from the animal kingdom lately, Fup wheeled and started back. Immediately, and wisely, Grand-daddy Jake surrendered.

Obviously, the intuitive approach wasn't working too well, if at all, so Jake effortlessly shifted to reason and the mechanical beauties of logic. He wasn't the least bit disturbed that his intuition had been wrong: intuition often missed, sometimes spectacularly, but when it connected it saved so much time that the spirit leaped forward… and, of course, there was no use denying the basic human delight in being right the first time. Reason was more reliable, but slow. But then patience is not a luxury for immortals. There is time to get it right.

But first, after reasoning that a happy duck would make a better pupil than a spiteful one, he abolished Fup's diet, and even gave her a little more than her normally opulent rations to make amends. He was quickly restored to her good graces, and Tiny was tremendously relieved.

With her respect and affection renewed, he worked out the premises and mechanics, then started from what reason told him was the beginning: if you wanted to fly, you had to flap your wings.

So every afternoon except Sundays, facing each other on the porch, Granddaddy Jake tried to teach Fup to flap her wings. It wasn't easy. She would stretch them out as if airing her underwings, and sometimes tried a desultory flurry, but she didn't seem interested in any sustained flapping. He persisted. Standing in his stockinged feet on the porch, flailing the air with his bony arms, he promised her, with each beat of his wings, the raptures of flight; promised her it was better than coming all night with a sixteen year old creamette from the Iowa farm country; better than sourdough bread and drippings; better than moonlight falling on the silver firs and vanilla leaf; better than an explosion of blossoms in the brain's core-that flight was all you could eat, all you could want-great freedom and grand fun. An hour a day till his arms ached and his face turned a cloudy purple, yet going on, sputtering the incoherent secrets of an ecstasy that, without knowing it himself, he had the faith or foolishness to promise.