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Or the molting American bison, looking like the last buffalo? His legs as thin as some awkward wading bird's, his mottled coat falling off in hunks, like old furniture in need of reupholstering, a giant, tottering sofa with the stuffing hanging out.
Or the cold, wizened bear, in a brick pit with a swinging innertube he never played with, surrounded by his own awful reeking flaps.
'What's the tire for?' Colm asked.
'For him to play with.'
'How?'
'Oh, swing on it, bat it around ...'
But the tire, unbatted and unswung, hung over the ever-sleeping bear like a t
aunt. The animal himself probably lived in dread of what it was for. I had growing doubts about the fitness of this zoo habitat for Colm; perhaps the downtown streets would be better for the child, after all.
And then, that November, there was the disaster in the duckpond, where usually I felt most at ease with Colm. The soot-white domestic ducks scrounged the breaded pond; we awaited the striking visitations at this time of year from the bold, bright, wild ducks flying south. Iowa lay in a Midwest flyway, and the pond at the Iowa City zoo was perhaps the only place a duck could rest between Canada and the Gulf without being shot at. We used to watch them land there, a cautious flying wedge with a scout sent down first to test the landing; then he would quack the safe news up to the rest. Such color was a new thing in the zoo; the dull inhabitants were stirred up by the arrival of these real-world travelers: red-eyes, mallards, canvasbacks, blue-and green-winged teal, and the splendid wood ducks.
That November I held Colm's hand and watched the lowering V in the sky, imagining this tired and crippled gaggle coming to rest, blasted over the Great Lakes, shot down in the Dakotas, ambushed in Iowa! The scout landed like a skater on glass, gave a brazen quack at the old-maid ducks ashore, thanked God for the wonder of no artillery, then called his flock down.
In they came, breaking their flight patterns, splashing down in a great reckless dash, astonished at all the floating bread. But one duck hung back in the sky. His flying was ragged, his descent unsure. The others seemed to clear the pond for him, and he dropped down so suddenly that Colm grabbed my leg and clung to it as if he were afraid the duck was going to bomb us. It appeared that the bird's landing gear was fouled, his wing controls damaged, his vision blurred. He came in at too steep an angle, attempted to correct his position with a weak veer, lost all resemblance to a duck's grace and struck the pond like a stone.
Colm flinched against me as a choral quack of condolences came from the ducks ashore. In the pond, the downed duck's little ass protruded, a spatter of feathers floating around him. Two of his former flock paddled out to prod him, then left him to float there like a feathered bobber. His mates quickly turned their worried attention to the bread, anxious that at any moment a thrashing dog would swim out to retrieve their comrade. Were they shooting with silencers now? The irony of death descending on the Iowa City zoo.
All I said to Colm was, 'Silly duck.'
'Is he dead?' Colm asked.
'No, no,' I said. 'He's just fishing, feeding on the bottom.' Should I add: They can hold their breath a long time?
Colm was unconvinced. 'He's dead.'
'No,' I said. 'He was just showing off. You know, you show off sometimes.'
Colm was reluctant to leave. Clutching the maimed breadloaf, he looked over his shoulder at the crash-landed duck - former stunt pilot, bizarre bottom-feeding bird. Why this suicide? I wondered. Or had he been wounded, bravely carrying gunshot for many troubled landings, at last losing control here? Or was it just some midair seizure of natural causes? Or drunk, having last fed in a fermenting soybean bog?
'I wish, Bogus,' Biggie said, 'that when you know you'll be going to the zoo, you'd buy two loaves of bread so there'd be one left for us.'
'We had a wonderful walk,' I said. 'The bear was asleep, the raccoons were fighting, the buffalo was trying to grow a new coat. And the ducks,' I said, nudging the ominously silent Colm, 'we saw this silly duck land in the pond ...'
'A dead duck, Mommy,' Colm said solemnly. 'He crashed up.'
'Colm,' I said, bending down to him. 'You don't know he was dead.' But he knew, all right.
'Some ducks just die,' he said, being irritably patient with me. 'They just get old and die, is all. Animals and birds and people,' he said. 'They just get old and die.' And he looked at me with worldly sympathy, obviously feeling sad to be stunning his father with such a hard truth.
Then the phone rang and visions of my own terrible father blotted all else from my brain: Daddy with a five-minute speech prepared, an analysis of the emotional imbalance in Biggie's letters, puffing his pipe at his end of the phone. I believe there was supreme rationality in his tobacco. Suppertime in Iowa, after-dinner coffee in New Hampshire; a phone call timed on his terms, like him. But also like Ralph Packer, inviting himself for supper.
'Well, answer it,' Biggie said.
'You answer it,' I said. 'You wrote the letters.'
'I'm not picking that thing up, Bogus, not after what I called him, the prick.'
As we faced the ringing, unanswered phone, Colm slid a kitchen chair over and climbed up to reach it.
'I'll get it,' he said, but both Biggie and I lunged for him before he picked it up.
'Let it ring,' Biggie said, looking frightened for the first time. 'Why not just let it ring, Bogus?'
