“You cannot keep running this place alone, Arthur,” I said, looking at the overgrown grass along the fence line. “It is too much acreage for one man.”
Arthur stopped, his hand resting on the dusty green side of his truck bed. He looked toward the empty barn, then back at me.
“We all have to find a way to keep moving, Robert,” he said.
He climbed into the cab and pulled the door shut with a heavy metallic clang.
I watched the green pickup roll down the driveway, the back filled with white feathers and the steady, rhythmic sound of forty ducks quacking into the hot afternoon air.
I pulled the cruiser across the double yellow line of Main Street at two in the afternoon, blocking the lane just enough to make the green pickup halt. The late August heat was cooking the street, making the asphalt soft under my boots as I stepped out.
Arthur sat behind the wheel, his faded canvas cap tipped low against the sun. In the truck bed behind him, dozens of white ducks were shifting, their feathers bright against a large, hand-carved wooden crate made of weathered oak.
