I Was a Punk Before You Were a Punk by Chris Walter

Author:Chris Walter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2012-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Darrell Damage was in town again the next week, and this time he brought more than a paper. He dropped a garbage bag on the table and opened it up to show us his gift. Inside, all smelly and dead, was the carcass of a freshly killed bird.

“What the hell is that?” asked Matt, pinching his nose.

“That’s a duck!” Darrell said proudly. “I killed it just a while ago—it was loose in the farmyard next to ours!”

I took a closer look at the bird. Most of the feathers were gone and the guts had been removed, but at the end of the long neck, where the head should have been, there was a jagged stump. The duck’s feet were muddy, making me all too aware that not long ago it had lost a footrace for its life.

“How’d ya kill it?” I asked, not certain I wanted to know.

“It was easy,” Darrell said, smiling crookedly. “Snuck up and clubbed it with an empty whisky bottle. Let’s cook this thing and eat it. I’m starved!”

Even Mike Beep, who worked at a meat packing plant, was doubtful. “I’d rather eat hotdogs than eat that thing,” he said, squinting distrustfully at the dead duck through his glasses. I was still thinking about the bird: one minute the poor thing had been minding its own business, and the next a madman had popped out of nowhere and clubbed him with a whisky bottle. Punks 1 - Ducks 0

Darrell made a sour face. “But there’s nothing to worry about! This bird is fresh, with no artificial preservatives or anything else! Don’t be such sissies!”

Punk rockers don’t like to be called sissies, so we got up the gumption to finish plucking the duck, and cleaned it a bit more as well. Then we poured beer on it and threw it in the oven. I figured if those guys could eat the duck then so could I. Besides, it wasn’t as if we wasted much beer money on frivolities such as food.

We put our feet up on the kitchen table and pretended we were waiting for a regular chicken to cook. We were all bluffing, except Darrell, who was actually looking forward to the meal and thought it would be tasty. I slugged back more beer. The cooking duck smelled like roadkill and was killing any appetite that I might have had earlier. The clock ticked and we looked back and forth at each other, like we weren’t afraid.

Then the beer was all gone and Darrell went to the oven. “It’s gotta be ready by now,” he said, throwing open the door to haul out the duck. He removed the lid and released a toxic cloud of oily smoke. “Let’s eat!” he said, rubbing his stomach.

I gulped. We lined up with our plates like men awaiting flu vaccinations. Darrell carved, the dark meat falling from the bones in greasy clumps. A pungent aroma filled the air. Then it was my turn, and I couldn’t help but notice the webbed feet protruding from the corpse like twigs from a soot-blackened snowman.

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