1008 PART 3 of 3 AINT PELL re: DUCKS

Please see Parts I and II below, for the beginnings of this story. 

 

 

 

 What the ceremony SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

What it WAS:

When they DID get Aint Pell out of the car and into the Peabody, she bludged right onto that red carpet, just like it had been laid out special for her square-set, fat-heeled little pumps, and stomped off toward the elevator, marching right up to the uniformed young man and standing imperiously in the door for him to let her on.  Never mind the crowds gathered around, never mind all the people sitting on the floor along the sides of that carpet like hedges on a path, and with her STEW button set so loud that she didn’t even hear the announcer’s voice OR the rousing Sousa march.   No matter that nobody back behind her could SEE the show they’d come to see---she marched right down that red carpet between all the waiting crowd.  

 

 

 

 

Unca Dorse, trying to follow her juggernaut through the room, finally took one careful lunge of his long legs and stepped over two little girls in pink fairy-wings sitting sweetly by the carpet, and stood scanning the crowd for Aint Pell, who hadn't budged out of the way of the elevator door. 

 

“She jes wadden lissenin’.  She gets a thing in her head and she don’t hear nobody fer nuthin’.   Folks were just a’callin’ at her, and tellin’ her to move, and she just stood there like a stump. An’ ‘nen she just stepped right in there amongst those ducks like wadin’ inta the chicken-yard with a bucket a layin’ mash.

 

 

 

 

“Th’ whole crowd parted ways when they came outa that elevator, with all the ducks a-squawkin’ and a-flappin’ and headin’ for that water-fountain, and her windmillin’ and steppin’ high and swingin’ her purse to get clear of ‘em.  She near-bout swatted that big ole drake right in his tailfeathers as he took off over the folks sittin’ on the floor.”

 

“When they saw there wadden no harm done, everbody commence’ta laughin’ and takin’ on, and clappin’ and cheerin’ up a storm when those ducks hit the water like skimmin’ a lake.    MAN!  That was a sight to see.  An’ Pell, she just turned right around in that elevator, straightened up her hat a little bit, and put her hands on her hips and waited on the rest of us to get on.   I swear and swannee---I wutten take nothin’ for that show, not if I live to be a hundred.  It even got a write-up in the Commercial Appeal.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

And they lived more happily ever after---those siblings and in-laws and nieces and nephews who'd been criticized and bullied and shamed at holidays all their lives.   At any family gathering, there’d be a roomful of talk, and it would start from somewhere in the next room or outside an open window---a gentle little “Quaaaanckk, Quaaaanck, Quanck,” soon joined by several others in a kind of duckish, jabbery harmony, growing in sound and number for just a few moments like a nasal, growly choir in the distance gaining ground and fading away.  And then all was quiet, except for the stifled snickers in the room and the muffled hee-haws from the culprits, who were nowhere to be seen as they stashed duck-calls in pockets and purses til next time.

 

 And if they ever find out which one it was that snuck out there during dinner that next Thanksgiving and velcroed a little rubber ducky on the dashboard of her big ole gold-colored Sedan de Ville, well, that one won’t ever have to help with cleanup and dishes after the Family Reunion, ever again.