DON'T FEED THE ANIMALS

Don’t Feed the Animals

by Ryan Arey

Prologue: Where Wings Take Dream

Hundreds of balloons bobbed around the playground, waiting to touch the sky. An army of schoolchildren held their strings; laminated messages to future pen pals dangled beneath their fists.

The children pulled close together against the violent March winds. Most of them wore identical American Paradise brand coats and mittens, purchased at the old All-Mart just outside town. A first grader asked the teacher: “Why are we outside when it’s too cold to have recess outside and can’t we please go back inside please?”

“Because,” teacher said, “We’re having fun.”

Ten year-old Adam Duty stood to the side, enveloped by a hand-me-down corduroy coat that, from far away, looked like a potato sack. He had a sad face that other kids didn’t want to look at. After six years in school, no one ever talked to him on the playground.

However: in his greasy hand he gripped a message to the first friend he would ever have.

He wrote the letter on the school bus that morning. Erratic pencil scratches recorded every pothole on his lonely country road. Though the letter was pressed neatly inside his Spelling book, it sported crinkled edges and a mysterious brown stain at its center.

It read like this:

Deer Sumone,

I am Adam Duty and Im in fif grad. Im gong to put this noat ona buloon and let it go two day. I think you shuld cum stae at my hows if you reed this noat. I will sleep on the floor and you can haf my bed.

Your Friend,

aDam Duty

Though he couldn’t know it, this was the first time in his life that Adam spelled “friend” correctly.

There was an adult taking pictures and moving across the playground.

He was the kind of man you can’t help spotting around town. He looked like a Sears catalog Santa Claus, with a wide white beard sprouting above his temples and branching outwards to meet his shoulders. His mouth only emerged from the beard to shout, smile, or sing hymns. Though, after going bald in his mid twenties, he hadn’t had much use for God or His songs.

His name was Tilden Dellow. T. Dellow in print, T to his friends, Bubby to his dead mother. For thirty years he’d ridden the white-knuckled life of a small town newspaper editor. He had the same thought at least once a day: Don’t die from Alzheimer’s like Mom and Dad. In his dreams he met death with clenched fists, socking the reaper in the jaw before surrendering artfully to the mat like a prizefighter on the take.

His life’s work was chronicling spelling bees, police dogs’ new bulletproof vests, and balloon pen pal sendoffs. He needed a quote from one of the kids and a shot of balloons flying through the air. If he didn’t get that photo it was no big deal. They had stock photos of balloon sendoffs from years past.

He dreaded weaving through the tangle of youngsters. He ached for a real story, intelligent interview subjects. If only the terrorists would attack the school, create some carnage, spill some blood...he wanted to write a novel.

He spotted Adam Duty, standing without friends, alone inside his overcoat. “Hey there young man, can I talk to you?” he asked the boy.

Adam said nothing. He wondered if he were in trouble.

“What’s your name?”

“Adam Duty,” the boy cast down his eyes, ready for the man to chuckle at his last name.

“Well Adam, what did you write in your balloon letter?”

The boy was silent. T. Dellow couldn’t decide if he was rude, shy, or considering. His fingernails cut into his palm, staining the plastic balloon string with blood.

“Reckon this balloon will find my friend.”

Tilden’s inner journalist compelled him to ask the young man about his hopes and dreams. There was something big happening with this boy. He could feel it—but when the teacher called everyone together the strange boy was forgotten.

Adam had a plan for the sendoff. He was not bright, so ideas—let alone plans—seldom came to him. Last night he pictured his balloon getting lost in the jumble, one letter among hundreds. The poor balloon would feel lost and scared. Then his letter wouldn’t find anyone. His clever scheme was to release his balloon string seconds before everyone else. If his letter had a head start, it was sure to find his friend.

Adam didn’t have the imagination for his balloon’s failure.

The other kids began counting down with the teachers. Adam didn’t join in because he had trouble counting forward, much less in reverse. When the chorus rang out “5” he released his bloodstained balloon string.

It shot into the stratosphere like a happy tadpole, and Adam Duty smiled.

Five seconds later the other balloons were flying into the air, a rubber rainbow smeared across the sky. For one sweet moment, one hundred and ninety-seven children watched in silence as the wind carried their secret messages to the heavens.

The teacher explained that most of the letters would be lost and that, of those found, only a small number would actually receive returns. Less than a week later, they had their first reply. Tatum Tibbs brought in a letter sent to her from Brighton, two towns over. The person writing back to her was a librarian, from the city.

Mrs. Garry hung up three maps: one of the county, one of the state, and of the entire United States. A pushpin was placed in Brighton. As time went by and school bells rang, the maps filled up with pushpins. There were more replies than they expected. As winter vanished and summer vacation neared, two-thirds of the kids had return letters.

Adam stayed inside during every recess to glide his fingers along the map, wondering where his pushpin would be. Maybe in another country, he dreamed. It must have found a friend someplace far away, because his letter was taking such a long time.

One day, the last bell rang and Mrs. Garry told everyone to have a good summer. No more school. The last thing Adam saw before he left the classroom was Ms. Sweeney removing the pushpins and folding up the map. No one seemed to care. They had forgotten.

That’s when it occurred to Adam that his balloon wasn’t found. The wind worked against him. Stupid letter. He worked so hard to keep his handwriting neat, but now he would never get a pushpin.

On the bus ride home he kept his face in his book bag and wept, quiet as he could.

That June was one of the hottest on record. Fields of crops wilted in the heat and wild animals were scarce. Adam’s days were spent doing farm chores, and during clear nights he slept in a sleeping bag under the sky. Maybe the balloon is still rising. Could have gone to the stars, or the moon. I bet it rises high enough to touch heaven, and an angel is gonna read it. These ideas comforted Adam as the crickets chirped him to sleep, and the cool grass tickled his ears.

It stormed on the Fourth of July.

Every year the Duty family invited friends and relatives to celebrate Independence Day with food, fireworks, and firewater (the latter two brought over from Tennessee). Rick Duty, Adam’s dad, amassed enough fireworks to destroy his farm and half the neighbor’s too.

Tragically, thunderheads filled the sky instead of explosions. The elder Duty squeezed his face against a window, staring between the raindrops. There was an arsenal leaning against his wall. Bottle rockets and Roman Candles, Cairo Blasters and 36 shot aerial repeaters, 500-gram pyrotechnic delights lovingly packed by small Chinese hands into tight cardboard missile casings, the power of a sun, able to set the sky on fire like Judgment Day a-coming early: all wrapped in their original plastic, dead. Bored.

The guests tried to put a good face on things. Some played horseshoes in the barn, others pounded coozies of Bud Light around card tables. There was also fried Lake Erie cod, which was rated to be excellent. Adam was the youngest of his cousins by five years. While they played video games and grown up card games, he stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring at his shoes.

There was a knock at the door. No grownups around, so Adam answered it. There stood a dripping wet man in a tattered black suit, with a duck at his feet. Adam asked, “You wanna come in?” He assumed this was a relative, because relatives had been showing up all day and he didn’t know any of them.

The man produced a badge, “My name is Roman Lawhorn, Environmental Protection Agency.”

Adam thought the man had an awful long name. “Are you my uncle, Mr. Agency?”

“No.” He nodded to the duck. “And this is Pryma, of the Pribble Flock.”

“Howdy-do,” said the boy.

“We’re looking for the person who wrote this,” the man pulled a Ziploc bag from his breast pocket. Adam nearly jumped out of his britches when he saw his balloon letter inside.

“Well sir, that’s my letter!” the boy said happily. Finally his Friend had come (a little older than he expected) and he brought his pet duck, too.

The man held out a white envelope, and Adam took it. “Young man, this is a subpoena. You’ll need to show it to your parents.”

The duck spoke to Adam: “Lord Farmer King, I am finally here. I beg you, please: may I have my feathers back?”

Part One

“We give thanks to all the Animal life in the world. They have many things to teach us people. We are glad they are still here and hope it will always be so.”

-Excerpt from Thanksgiving Address, Mohawk version