a  d    j a m e s o n

Caracas

In Maine there is a type of brownish-orange duck known as the caracas. If one sees you it will waddle over to incessantly peck at your ankles. When threatened it defends itself by transforming into a cookie tin. The only way to make a caracas leave is by pretending to sit on the tin, which will scoot over the horizon. But once gone, it will transform back into a duck and soon return. Caracas torment the otherwise fine Maine suburbs, as do another type of duck, the compote, which is yellow and does not transform into anything; as well as a legless, wingless duck that looks like a stubby snake with a duck’s head, known as the sausage duck. (Old folk call it a dauchsduck.)

I met a woman who shared my affection for pretending that wooden ladles were lightsabers and that we were dueling Jedi Knights. We honeymooned at her parents’ cabin in Maine but while there a caracas pecked her instep, turning her into a little girl. She also lost her memory, and though she still enjoyed playing Jedi lightsaber duels, she could, of course, no longer be my wife. I adopted her as my daughter and during the winter we figured out that a lid pried from a cookie tin makes a decent sled and an even better snowboard.

I don’t know what specifically I wish I had done differently about any of this—have murdered the caracas, have never have gone to Maine—but, obviously, somewhere along the line, I failed.

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A D JAMESON's stories have appeared in The Mississippi Review Online, elimae, THE2NDHAND, Lamination Colony, The Angler, and The Denver Quarterly (forthcoming 2007). He has also directed music videos for the Kill Rock Stars bands Xiu Xiu and Mecca Normal. Born in Northeastern PA, he now lives in Chicago, where he's completing a prose collection and collaborating on a short opera entitled "Lear Runner in the Post-Future."