—an excerpt—
Yet another thing she didn’t know. How to save a duck that was trapped, flapping and quacking, in a marshy part of the lake.
Frances let go of an oar to plunge her hand toward a dark shape in the water below the duck, where its leg must have snagged. Even in April, the water smacked her skin wintery cold. Stiff reeds pushed at her plaid wool sleeve. Before she could touch the mysterious underwater shape, the duck swung its beak around and grabbed for her, squawking frantically. One wing churned the water while the other splayed an arc of brilliant green underfeathers that caught in the slant of afternoon sun. It got only a nibble on her jacket. With one oar she manoeuvred the boat and tried again. Same result. “Blast.” She stared down the duck with the bluey-green bandit mask across its eyes. “Okay. Hang on.” She rowed twenty feet though the reeds to a spot where she could pull the boat up on shore.
From her house on the other side of the lake, she’d heard the noise of destruction on this side for the past few weeks, since the snow left. Now at the dug-out beginnings of a house site, she surveyed piled birch and pine logs, a stack of worn lumber from the demolished cottage, some old doors. When she followed the muddy gash where a heavy vehicle had been at work, her gumboots heavy in the raw, marshy soil, she saw debris pushed right into the water a little farther along the shore. Dirt, branches, the roots of a shrub – perhaps an elderberry – but nothing that could hurt a duck, surely. The duck was still out at the edge of this midden, thrashing and squawking. A squadron of other ducks was settled on the surface of the lake farther out, commenting in low nasal tones to each other, all turned to face Frances and this friend of theirs. She’d been hearing their steady racket on the lake lately. Their audible confirmation of spring made her frantic to get outside to join them, to get back into the old wooden rowboat left behind by her home’s previous owner. From here she could see the leafless birch and maple forest dotted with evergreens that edged most of the lake, but not around the Point to her own yard or her neighbours’, giving the illusion she wasn’t just an hour’s drive from the city, a few minutes from new suburban encroachments.
“Hey. Lady.” The tone was aggrieved. “Whaddaya doing here?” She spotted a man’s meaty face, hands the size of dinner plates raised toward her in a shooing motion as he walked down through the trees. She hadn’t expected to see anyone here this late in the day. When he came close enough for her to smell the sweat on him, she could also read the name Hewitt Construction sewn onto the pocket of his pale brown shirt. She’d seen the Hewitt trucks constantly on the road around the lake.
“Trying to save that duck.” She pointed.
