Movie Stars

Duck Call Gang

YOU SHOULD TRY SITTING IN YOUR HOUSE IN THE DARK LISTENING TO some troubled youths blow on their duck calls outside your window. It happens to me sometimes when my wife has gone to bed and I am staying up late, accompanied by my insomnia and worries about the future. I turn off the TV and stand there trembling in the dark and work up my courage to part the curtains just enough to see the lanky toughs there dimly through the fog, standing in the road and blowing their duck calls for no discernable reason. What are they up to? They seem like the kind of churls who would pull a cat’s tail for their idea of fun. I worry about all the little cats out there in the world.

I am not yet what you would call an old man, but it is only a matter of time. For the present, I feel I could beat up one young person if need be, in the defense of my wife, my cats, my home. Were there two young people, however, I might have more trouble, as one of them held my arms behind my back while the other scoffed openly at me and struck me repeatedly in the solar plexus, for example. Maybe a third is forcing my wife to watch. Most horrible!

Lightning struck our house the other night. It woke us from our slumber. We woke up screaming. The lightning knocked a painting off the wall and broke its frame and messed up the computer, though not irreparably, and that seemed to be the extent of the damage. Afterward, we lay there in the dark and began to laugh. We laughed at ourselves and one another, at the quality of our screaming. I cannot recall ever having screamed in actual terror before. I was relieved not to have suffered a heart attack.

Now one of the cats, formerly the bravest of our crew, crawls under the covers next to me whenever there is a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Poor thing!

“Couple Killed in Metal Bed,” was one remark I tossed off lightly, pretending to quote a headline in the next morning’s paper. Our dark humor. Our bed is an old iron thing that belonged to an ancestor who was not a wealthy man. We see its like in movies about corrupt orphanages or old-time sanitariums. Our style of bed is associated with the misery rampant in the most venal institutions of yore.

After our laughter subsided, I lay there, still wide awake, long after my wife’s gentle breathing once again suggested untroubled sleep, and then I entertained my anxious thoughts, such as, “If we had been screaming tonight at the approach of a masked serial murderer, no one would have heard us scream.”

Yes, who will take care of us when we are old?

Our children? We have no children. Of course, having children is no guarantee of anything. Even the best parent may produce an ungrateful child. I myself have been an ungrateful child.

Our cats will not take care of us when we are old. That is not their job, although cats are handed out to patients in dank retirement homes for the warmth and affection they provide.

Should my wife and I perish in our home, crushed under old newspapers or merely by old age, our cats might be forced to feed on our corpses, which is perfectly acceptable. When someone kicks in the door because we haven’t been heard from for several days, the cats might be right there on top of us, turning their heads from our bodies and toward the sound. Our tardy rescuer will be startled by the glistening crimson in which their muzzles are drenched.

Will we take care of one another, my wife and I? Once I fell out of the shower and hit the back of my head on the toilet. Although my wife was nearby, sneaking a cigarette on the porch, she did not hear the crash, and I lay there for several moments alone.

Before it is too late we should find an apprentice, someone to whom we can introduce all the finer things in life, such as caviar — a disadvantaged teen who will beam with gratitude and drive us to the grocery store when we become too feeble to see. It dawns on me that I will pluck this individual from the ranks of the Duck Call Gang itself.

I know there is a fable about suckling a viper at your bosom, but I can’t recall whether it is pro or con. Night is coming, and the thing to do is hope for the best.