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“What?”
“Nut whoop.”
“I made it up. Just now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. Why not?”
I turned to stare out the window, smiling to myself. I must be getting giddy, I thought.
From the outskirts, the town of Wisconsin Dells doesn’t look much like nature’s wonderland. The road we were on was banked by restaurants, stores, gas stations, and motels. Cars were backed up at the first big intersection, and we had to snake in a long line past a traffic cop who kept blowing his whistle, as if someone could do something about the whole mess. It was probably one of the busiest weekends of the year. “They’ll never find us here with all these people,” said Elro.
“I don’t know. We look like the only ones without kids.”
“Don’t worry.”
Elro followed the signs for the ducks, and eventually we came to a parking lot filled with cars. A man in a brown uniform told us a duck had just left—the next one would go in half an hour. Elro bought two tickets, at two dollars apiece, and parked the truck. With time to kill, we wandered over to a hot dog stand and sat at a table outside under a parasol. Elro bought two hot dogs, some fries, and a Coke for himself, and fries and a Coke for me. Before starting to eat, he tucked a paper napkin in the neck of his shirt to catch any drops of mustard. Again, I smiled to myself and turned away, sipping my Coke through a straw and looking out over the parking lot.
The sun burning down on the roofs of the cars created a shimmery glare, a glittery silver lake. Here and there, a human boat cut through the dancing water. A man wearing a baseball cap and trailing a wife and three kids tacked back and forth, apparently in search of the family car. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but I could see. The father was getting frustrated and blaming the mother, whose job it probably was to mark down the location whenever the car was left in a lot. The mother was squawking at the kids, who risked getting lost as the father hurried in his search. The smallest child, a girl, was crying. At one point, she stopped in a clear area, put her hands together, threw her head back, and let out what must have been a frightening wail. By the time it rolled over the cars and wound through the shimmering, rising heat, however, it came to me as a sweet, short gust of soprano. It could have been a glorious snatch of opera, heard from afar. While she was still crying, they found the car. The mother fanned the doors to cool the inside, and the father came back for the little girl. He lifted her high off the ground, and she put her arms around his neck, holding her little head close to his. Watching them, I remembered a moment from when I was very young. I was in a huge, noisy building, perhaps a bus station, and like the little girl, I was crying uncontrollably. Suddenly, a strange man, a friend of Bunny’s, lifted me above his head and put me on his shoulders. In the terror and the strangeness of it, I stopped crying. I gripped the man’s head, my nose in his rough hair. There was a musty, leathery smell to his hair, so strong that I thought it must be a bad smell, though I rather liked it. Bunny smiled up at me. “See? That’s better,” she said. “Now you’re happy.” It occurred to me there at the hot dog stand that all I ever knew was Bunny, then and now.
Beside me, Elro had dozed off. His legs were stretched out in front, and his chin had dropped to his chest. After a while, the duck drove up, moving clumsily along on black tires that poked out of the hull. A bright garden of tourists sprouted from under a canopy on top. After parking, the duck unloaded several dozen passengers, who fanned out slowly through the cars in the lot. To the side, a line of riders for our trip was forming.
I shook Elro’s shoulder. He dragged his eyes open painfully.
“The duck,” I said.
He sat up abruptly and fumbled in his shirt pocket for the tickets. “Let’s go,” he said.
We filed past the ticket-taker, walked up a ramp and took two seats on the side. Families milled around, scrambling to find places together. A young man and woman fussed over various seats, testing the views, before sitting down in front of us. Finally, we were ready to go. The driver, a broad-backed man in a red shirt, spoke to us through a microphone. “Welcome to the Wisconsin Dells and to a ride on a duck—an original Wisconsin duck.” The motor started up, and the vehicle rumbled forward. “The Dells is a scenic treasure created by Mother Nature, the greatest architect of them all,” the driver went on. “It’s a wonderland of cliffs and caves and sculpted rocks, carved over centuries by glacial waters eating through the area’s soft sandstone. Using these unique Wisconsin ducks, we’re able to show you the most magnificent sights on both land and water.”
We turned past a sign marked “Duck Trail” and headed off through a pine woods. The driver put down the microphone and stepped on the gas. The duck bolted forward, and everyone gasped. Our seats were only ten feet or so off the ground, but speeding along in the open made them seem much higher.
“This thing really moves,” said Elro.
The young man sitting in front of us suddenly turned. “Some ride, huh?” he said.
“Yeah,” said Elro.
We drove on through the woods. The pine trees were tall and full and densely packed, and they streaked by in a long, even curtain of green. The trail was bumpy
, but the duck was heavy and moved in looping bounces that sometimes left your stomach up around your chest. I held my head out to the side, letting the wind with its clean pine fragrance billow through my hair. There was something wild and amazing about the ride after all, and I was glad we’d come on it.
After a few minutes, the man in front again turned to Elro. “You ever do this before?” he asked.
“No, first time.”
“Some fun, huh?”
“Yeah.”
The man was perhaps in his early twenties, with frizzy brown hair and beaverish teeth. He shifted in his seat to get a better look at Elro, virtually turning his back on the woods. “You two just up for the day?” he asked.
Elro wiped his palms on his jeans and stared into the pines.
I nodded.
The man persisted. “Where ya from?”
