Fup

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.'

'Well how do you figure it then you old geezer?' Lonnie shot back.

'I didn't get to be 99 years old by fool speculation,' Granddaddy replied. 'It's hard enough separating the good stuff from the bullshit without adding to the whole mess by wanting to know what you ain't gonna know.'

'But you haven't told us what you know,' Lub Knowland offered. 'Which as near as I can make out on the subject of ducks ain't diddleyshit.'

Granddaddy picked up the pile of money in front of him and showered it out onto the center of the table: 'I'll bet that much that you don't even know what kind of duck that is'- he pointed a gnarled and shaking finger at Fup, asleep in a cardboard box under the woodstove.

'I suppose you do,' Lub said dubiously, 'though I'd say it's a mite early to tell.'

'That's true,' Ed Bollpeen added softly. 'They all look pretty much alike till they feather out.'

That started it. It ended with everybody except Tiny and Happy putting $100 and their prediction in a general pool: whoever named Fup's species and sex correctly took it all, with any dispute to be settled by John Coombes, the local vet.

There was no dispute. In two months' time it was plain that Fup was a hen mallard. Granddaddy Jake took the money with a crass, gleeful laugh of satisfaction.

3 Fup

It was apparent in her first few weeks of recovery that Fup was an unusual duck. She refused to eat or shit in the house. She would wobble to the door, peeping frantically, and pound on it with her bill like a deformed woodpecker until one of them let her out.

Her appetite was omnivorous and immense. Pancakes, cheese, cracked corn, deer meat, onion peels, whatever: it got devoured. And as she ate, she grew. In four months she weighed nearly 20 pounds. Granddaddy Jake, partial to excess in any form, was so impressed he invited neighbors over to watch.

'Goddamn,' Willis Hornsby muttered as Fup gobbled a pound of link sausage and started on a coffee can of cracked barley.