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'It's his feet!' Ralph shouts, and the crowd stands under the clotheslines, troubled and murmuring.
'Easy, Ralph,' I tell him, tottering to his bike.
'This is a very light bicycle,' he tells me. 'Be careful you don't bend the crossbar.'
I don't see exactly how I can avoid bending it, should it decide to bend, but I perch as weightlessly as possible under the sloped-back handlebars and wedged between Ralph's knees.
'What do you mean, your feet?' he says, wobbling us down Clinton Street. Some of the married students wave.
'I stepped on lots of stuff,' I say vaguely.
Ralph warns me not to dangle my duck so far over the handlebars. 'That bird could snag in my spokes. Thump-Thump ...'
'Don't take me home,' I say, thinking that I should clean myself up a bit.
'Benny's?' says Ralph. 'I'll buy you a beer.'
'I can't wash my feet at Benny's, Ralph.'
'Well, that's true.'
Unsteadily, we arrive downtown. It is still light but growing darker; Saturday night begins early here because it's over so soon.
Shifting my weight on the crossbar, I feel my forgotten condom crinkle. Attempting to adjust myself, I neatly insert my toe between the chain guard and the rear wheel; the pain makes the sky pitch. Lying toppled on the pavement in front of Grafton's Barber Shop, Ralph makes a loud vowel sound. Several sheeted men raise their shaved skulls above the backs of their barber chairs, watching me writhe on the sidewalk as if they were owls - and me, a club-footed mouse.
Ralph releases unspeakable pressure by removing my boots, then whistles at the multitude of flaklike wounds, boil-sized swellings and punctures caked with mud. He takes charge. Back on the bicycle, he holds my boots, laced together, in his teeth, while I balance myself and the duck on the crossbar, fearful of my bare feet in the terrifying spokes.
'I can't go home like this Ralph,' I plead.
'What if that duck has friends?' he asks, my laces slipping through his teeth, causing him to lunge with his mouth as if he meant to eat the boots. 'What if that duck's friends are looking for you?' he grunts, turning up Iowa Avenue.
'Please, Ralph.'
But he says, 'I have never imagined feet like yours before. I'm taking you home, baby.' Our timing is perfect. My rotten car is smoking by the curb; Biggie is just back from shopping, and the car is trying to breathe again, throbbing and overheated from its mile-long journey at twenty miles an hour.
'Slip me into the basement, Ralph,' I whisper. 'There's an old sink in
there. At least I can wash my face ...' I am remembering the scent which the hunters found so gloriously a part of me. And the feathers in my mustache? There's no need for Biggie to think that I plucked this duck with my mouth.
We totter over the side lawn past my retired neighbor, Mr Fitch, still raking so that the snow will have clean, dead grass to fall on. I wave the duck at him unthinkingly, and the old codger says brightly, 'Ho! I used to do some hunting myself, but I don't get around like I used to ...' He stands like some brittle ice carving, propped on his rake, not at all puzzled by the absence of a gun. In his day they probably used spears.
Ralph scoops me off by the cellar-door, and though it's quite clear to Mr Fitch that I'm in no condition to walk on my own, he doesn't seem troubled; in his day, no doubt, casualties were to be expected on a rugged duck hunt.
I am carried into the cellar like a bag of coal, wearing my boots like a yoke on my shoulders, and finding the cool slime of the cellar floor most soothing to my feet. Ralph's ursine head looms through the opening. 'All right, Thump-Thump?' he asks, and I nod. As he closes the flaps quietly, he slips in some last words. 'Thump-Thump, I trust some day you'll tell me about this ...'
'Sure, Ralph.'
Then I hear Biggie's voice from the kitchen window. She says, 'Ralph?' and I creep deeper into the cellar.
'Hi, Big!' says Ralph cheerfully.
'What are you doing?' There is cold suspicion in her voice. That's my good Biggie, never fraternizing with the likes of lecherous Ralph Packer. Though it's a foolish moment for it, I feel proud of her.
'Um,' says Ralph.
'What are you doing in our cellar?' Biggie asks.
'Well, I wasn't exactly in your cellar, Biggie.'
