The Naked Duckling

by

Roger Smalling



Roberto Espinoza scrutinized me with mouth agape, head tilted. He wore that quizzical expression from time to time when he pretended he thought I was crazy. I ignored it as usual, though he held this pose longer than customary, possibly on account of my unusual request. I had just asked him to strip down and jump into a freezing lake.

"Do you realize", he said, "that we are at 12,000 feet altitude and this water is nearly ice!?" I put on my most reasonable ministerial tone with a slight inflection of pleading and replied, "But Roberto! It's my first duck! I wouldn't have shot it if I meant to leave it out there!"

He muttered a half-audible comment about bird dogs, and started to turn away. "Look Roberto," I pleaded, "why not swim out a few feet and if you can't make it, just come back. I'd sure appreciate it if you would give it a try."

Roberto removed his clothes, mumbling incoherencies the entire time and entered the water. But two strokes out, his nerve failed. He emerged soaked and shivering. We exchanged disgusted expressions for a brief moment while I considered my options.

It had been a good day of hunting. We four men had gone after game birds in the highlands of the Andes outside the provincial town of Cuenca, Ecuador, where my wife and I served as missionaries. The only hitch in the day so far, was that I had pulled a hamstring muscle in my right leg because of uneven ground and was limping severely.

These three Ecuadorians knew the territory, and decided to stop by lake San Francisco on the way back to see if any ducks had come in.

Roberto and I had gone around the east side of the lake to check out a patch of reeds where ducks might be hiding. The sun was descending, crimson rays touching the sparse grass that waved in the cold evening breeze on the surrounding hilltops.

That's when I saw the duck paddling across the lake about thirty yards off, heading for the reeds where we had taken cover. It was hard to see due to the sun directly behind it. But it cast a fine shadow as it approached. Too far for a shot. We waited until it was about ten yards away, and I let him have it. My first duck! First ever!

I was ecstatic...at least until Roberto started his irrelevant remarks. Roberto is a nice guy, but he's capable of a veritable killjoy attitude. "How do you plan on retrieving that duck?" he asked.

It annoys me to explain the obvious. Since my right leg was injured, clearly the retrieval of the duck was his responsibility. We were partners in hunting and I had done my share in stalking and shooting it. He would have to swim out and get it.

Roberto is usually reasonable. But he has his days. He can become stubborn at the most inconvenient moments. That may explain why he made it only a couple of yards into the lake before turning back.

The options were clear. Either I give up the duck, or go and get it myself. I'm a pretty good swimmer, I reasoned, and rely more on my arms than my legs anyway. Maybe I could make it. It was my first duck and a profound loathing to abandon it gripped me. I decided to give it a try. I recalled reading somewhere that a person can survive freezing water for about 90 seconds before hypothermia sets in. I could do 10 yards and back in half that time. So I stripped down to my underwear and stepped in.

Roberto was right. Water gets a bit chilly at 12000 feet. But resolve and greed inspired my forward plunge. My swimming style felt right, and I was confident. What did not feel right was my underwear, now waterlogged, and slipping down. I reached back with my left hand to pull it up and promptly sank. I was swimming with only two limbs at that moment. The dilemma? I could not continue after the duck and hold up my underwear at the same time. Something had to go.

Logic prevailed. I have plenty of underwear at home, I reasoned, but no ducks. So the underwear slid to a new home at the bottom of the lake as I pursued my query, teeth clenched. Four more strokes and I was there.

To my horror, the glorious prize, which I envisioned broiling in the oven and feeding all the hunters, was no more than four inches long....a mere duckling. Somehow the light had amplified its size, with the sun shining behind it. I decided to abandon it, ashamed of my error in killing it. But on second thought, I had risked my health for it, and decided to retrieve it anyway.

Not only was my heart sinking with disappointment, but my whole body was sinking as well. The instant I grabbed the duckling, I faced the same dilemma as before...only two limbs for swimming, my right arm and left leg. I thrashed around for a second or two trying to figure a way to save both myself and the trophy. So I stuck its foot in my mouth and headed for shore.

This novel solution was short-lived. My teeth began to chatter, and quickly the foot was bitten clear through. This introduced a new dynamic. Not only was the duckling again floating around me, but I had its severed foot in my mouth and could not extract it because of my chattering teeth. As though drowning and hypothermia were not enough, I was now in danger of being chocked to death by a duckling foot.

Desperate measures for desperate times! I grabbed the duckling, forced my teeth apart and jammed the whole thing into my mouth. Only the head dangled out, as I set for shore.

My swimming style was not olympic quality but I emerged victorious, proud and quite naked.

Oddly, Roberto seemed to think the sight of a naked preacher with a duckling in his mouth was cause for amusement. I detected this attitude because he was rolling around on the ground, holding his stomach and howling with laughter. This seemed unkind, since I considered my recovery of the prey to be a brave accomplishment. So I spit the duckling into my hand, severed foot and all, and exclaimed, "Look, Roberto. I don't care how small it is. It's mine, all mine." At this he sat up, considered my comment and person and renewed his hysterics.

Back at the car, Roberto recounted the incident to the other hunters, between spasms of laughter. They later told it to their wives and friends in town.

Before coming to Ecuador, I had envisioned notoriety for worthier accomplishments. Nevertheless, a tone of respect still remained in their spreading of this episode, for which I was grateful. Even their comments about gringo bird dogs were tolerable. But I still feel a twinge of chagrin when I recall an insufferable moment during a church business meeting. One of the ladies owned a pet duck, and she sent it into the meeting, waddling uncomfortably, wearing a pair of men's underpants. "Brother Roger," she exclaimed, "we found your underwear!"


-----------------------------261151736024386 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="userfile"; filename="FirecrackerPrayer.html" Content-Type: text/html
Firecraker Prayer

By

Roger Smalling

The firecracker was solidly inserted into the peach. Tom prepared to light it.

"Hold still!", he barked. I gripped the peach more firmly, planted my feet a bit wider for balance and said, "Light it right on the tip. It might go off in my hand!"

It was a Big Red...an illegal firecracker brought back from Tiajuana by our Mexican friends down the street. They always had a few left over from Fourth of July. We usually managed to connive a few from our buddy Eduardo.

Tom lit the end of the firecracker. It hissed, and I paused a second to make sure it was well lit before heaving it in the air. This precaution was essential to avoid wasting a good peach.

Fruit was plentiful that year. Apricots from our yard, and peaches from Tom's made fine 'bombs'. With our Dads at work and Moms off shopping, we took advantage of the sunny summer afternoon for this 'experiment'.

Tom and I were good at inventing 'experiments'. He was a year younger than I, about 13, and we had already tested apricots with the little 'lady finger' firecrackers. These were small and made a sharp bang when they went off mid-air. But the teeny bits of scattering apricot were hard to see and we needed to improve our technique. If this was fun, reasoned Tom, then a peach with a Big Red would really be spectacular.

Our mental image of the big peach spewing pieces over two quarter acre lots was too delicious to resist. It was destined to be glorious.

I failed to convince Tom to throw the peach. He had long since learned to be wary of my 'suggestions'. "Hey man", he said indignantly, "it was YOUR idea".

"But it's YOUR firecracker", I countered.

Tom cocked his 13 year old head to the side as he usually did when making a strong point. "You are the one with the good throwin' arm".

That argument was clearly irrefutable, so it fell to me to launch the peach. The Big Red could do serious damage to a person's hand if it went off. But who considers insignificant details at fourteen?

Nor had we considered that the peach might not explode exactly at apogee as calculated...Nor had we thought where it might land if, in fact, it didn't go off at all. Occasional particulars get overlooked in even the greatest of experiments.

That explains why we didn't notice old man Jackson next door on his hands and knees digging in the garden. This was his therapy. His heart attack just two months before, left him down but not out. Were he not stone deaf, he might have overheard our plans.

It was a beautiful toss, a good 20 feet nearly vertical. The peach spun and the Big Red sputtered, tracing a tenuous smoke-spiral as it passed the apricot tree. And right at the pinnacle of its arch... it failed to explode.

That's when we noticed Mr. Jackson on his knees digging rhythmically with a trowel. The peach was headed straight for his back.

No time to pray. Not even to cry out. Merely a second to fling myself on my knees and project desperate thoughts. He'll die and they'll never believe we didn't kill him on purpose! Can God read minds? Oh Lord Jesus, DO SOMETHING! PLEASE!

The hissing peach continued its plunge until about three feet above Mr. Jackson's back. The blast spewed peach all over his yard. Indeed, it was spectacular.

But our concern was for Mr. Jackson. Was he still alive? Had the shock given him a heart attack?

Stone deaf and concentrating on his work, Mr. Jackson never missed a beat in his rhythmic digging. He noticed nothing.

Apparently the firecracker exploded in the split second when it was exactly underneath the peach. This threw bits of peach horizontally rather than downward on Mr. Jackson.

We gave Jesus the credit for saving Mr. Jackson...and us. We abandoned all firecracker experiments. Well, at least for that day. We still disagreed about what happens when a 'ladyfinger' is dropped in a coke bottle. Tom thought it would break the bottle. I thought it would just explode out the mouth, which gave me fresh ideas about projectiles. But that's another story. -----------------------------261151736024386 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="userfile"; filename="HitMan.html" Content-Type: text/html


859 Words




Hit Man

By
Roger Smalling


"Not with murder, Joe," I answered emphatically. "With cigarettes we let you taper off. But not with murder." I leaned back in my chair in a thoughtful pose, hiding amazement at the confessions I just heard.

I had met assassins before, but none who considered murder an annoying habit to break by tapering off gradually.

Joe did it for a living, and that was part of the problem.

His question had been: "What if I were to do one hit, say, this month? Then another the next three months, etc.?" The hopeless tone in his voice showed he suspected I might get stubborn about this.

He leaned forward with a pained expression. "Are you absolutely sure?," he asked. "Doesn't your religion make exceptions for special cases like mine?" I paused, not because of doubt, but from the shock of realizing he was deadly serious. "Absolutely, Joe," I responded, "no exceptions." He cleared his throat. "I thought you were going to say something like that. The problem is, they'll kill me if I stop."

The value of human life varies from culture to culture. In Joe's country, it was exceptionally low. But Joe had a conscience. And God was working in it, or he would'nt have shown up at my door.

Joe was a hit man for the leading political party in his country. "I never expected to get into this," he said forlornly. "I was hired as a courier to transport important documents," he explained. "Then one day the bosses said to several of the guys in the office, 'Let's go out to the field for some target practice. We're going to issue you pistols in case you need to defend yourself. We have enemies, you know.'"

Joe described how this 'target practice' continued once a week for about a month, until the bosses summoned the employees into the office one day with startling news. "There's going to be a big political rally next month in such-and-such a town. The key speaker is a danger to our regional plans. He's got to be eliminated. You, Joe, will drive the car. The others will do the hit."

Only one of the boys objected, and asserted that he would not participate under any circumstances. The bosses warned him it would be preferable if everyone participated. Beyond this, they said little. But the boy's body was found in a ditch the following week, full of holes. There were no more objections.

The hit went pretty well, Joe said. He didn't actually do the shooting, at least not that first time.

The few times Joe showed up at the church, he stood in the back with other men, leaning against the wall, afraid of being noticed by his peers outside. He had been seeing one of the girls of the church. When the service ended, he would leave with the young lady.

I tried to talk to him a couple of times about the Lord. He was always polite, but somewhat distant. So I was surprised when he showed up at my door that day.

As we discussed his dilemma, a plan evolved. Why not talk to the bosses in the language they understand? Instead of Joe telling them he wouldn't do hits anymore, he would ask them for an alternative. He would explain that he wanted to marry a girl that goes to an Evangelical church, and that 'hits' are forbidden by that religion. He could explain that he had no intentions of leaving the party (for the moment), and would rather be assigned to another branch of the party if that were all right with them.

The glitch in the plan was the possibility that they might pretend to go along with Joe, then knock him off later. But Joe said he could pretty much tell by now what they were really thinking. So we came up with an alternate plan to help him escape town if necessary.

Two weeks later, he showed up at my door again.

"Oh, how I thank God!," he exclaimed. "He answered our prayers! I did as you suggested. I talked honestly with them, and asked for another assignment. Now I don't have to do 'hits' any more!"

We rejoiced together over this victory, until it occurred to me to ask about his new functions. I assumed he was back at his old courier job. Indeed he was, ....sort of. He replied, "I'm running marijuana to the border for the bosses!"

We left Joe's country some weeks later. But just before, Joe and I agreed that if some day he freed himself completely from his bosses, he would write or call me and say a secretly agreed phrase. About 6 months later, I got the call. He spoke the phrase and a lot more. He and the girl were married, and owned a large tract of land. If we would return, he said, he would build us a house and let us live there free.

In Joe's culture, that meant "thanks".

-----------------------------261151736024386 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="userfile"; filename="MyEnemyTheDog.html" Content-Type: text/html

My Enemy The Dog

by


Roger L. Smalling

Nemesis is a brute of a German shepherd which lived about a block down the road from where my wife and I resided in Quito, Ecuador. Now, I love animals of all sorts...except for spiders and Nemesis. The Hound of the Baskervilles is an anemic poodle compared to this beast. A little broader head and he would pass for a lion...and not a friendly one either.

This brute had a favorite game. If he could speak he would probably call it, "Ambush the Gringo." His master's house had a thick hedge with an iron fence tracing its interior length. There was a gap in the greenery at the corner and the iron bars were spaced so the monster could lunge his head through with a deafening roar. Yes, roar, not bark. I didn't know a dog could roar, but this one did.

Nemesis would hide behind the hedge and when I would stroll around the corner he would attack. (And don't tell me dogs cannot grin. Dogs that roar can also grin.) Why did I fail to anticipate these attacks? A female critic living in my house snidely calls it the 'absent-minded professor' syndrome. Neither she nor Nemesis have understood more sublime matters for contemplation exist than the bad manners of over-grown house pets.

So Nemesis slipped my mind most of the time...until the day I plotted revenge.

Nemesis was someone else's property. I couldn't harm him, but I had to devise an incident by which this dog would remember me with regret. Guilty musings skipped through my mind one evening as I strolled home, eating a bag of peanuts. Not 'guilty', because of the dog, mind you, but because of the peanuts. A certain female diet chairperson in my house has evolved the notion that peanuts are fattening, so I was trying to finish off the bag before arriving home.

Nemesis took me by completely surprise as I rounded the corner. Reflex caused me to fling an entire handful of peanuts right in his face. The effect was astounding. He stopped attacking and said, "Woof?" And began lapping up the peanuts.

This gave me an idea. The next day I armed myself with some bread, since bread is cheaper than peanuts. A few seconds before Nemesis' attack I tossed some bread his way. No lunge. Just a feeding frenzy.

The following day Nemesis was not lurking behind the hedge. His paws were up on the railing and his tail wagging as I approached. No roaring. No lunging. I fed him some stale croissant, pondering a new dilemma: Before I left the country, how could I give a parting shot to a creature that imagined I was his friend?

I was coming out on the short end of his deal. Nemesis had a grin and a half-dozen stale croissants. All I got was the peculiar sensation that maybe I had stumbled on a novel strategy for dealing with enemies. -----------------------------261151736024386 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="userfile"; filename="PainInTheNeck.html" Content-Type: text/html

Pain In The Neck

By

Roger Smalling

"Sergio, you have a pain in the neck, because you ARE a pain in the neck."

I didn't actually say this to Sergio, but the idea was tempting. This Ecuadorian gentleman was about 60 at the time. He had found Christ recently and was known in the church as a bit cantankerous. Considering his previous lifestyle, this could be described as a vast improvement.

I had just stepped behind the pulpit that Sunday morning when he approached, walking down the center aisle with a slight limp. Apparently he thought this was the appropriate moment to request prayer for his affliction. After all, we had an open invitation for people to ask for prayer, but I had forgotten to specify exactly when.

Sergio had been a bit feisty with his family that week, and a mature believer had counseled him about his temper. My attitude toward him was not improved by his approach at an inappropriate moment in the service.

But a thought struck me. This was a perfect moment for a little exemplary counselling, brief but effective, to implant a lesson indelibly on his mind. I could help him grasp a possible correlation between his problem and the need to repent.

But several new converts were present, and I feared intimidating them about requesting prayer. So I decided to go through the motions and forget the counseling for the present.

My faith was firm, though. Firmly negative. In view of what he had put his family through that week, it was perfectly clear that God was NOT going to heal him.

Perhaps that is why I felt annoyed when God healed him.

Clearly God is not accountable for anything He does, no matter how incongruous. But I felt that I deserved an explanation. So that afternoon, I spent time studying the Scriptures with the specific prayer, "For what good reason, Lord, did you heal Sergio?"

It took most of the afternoon, but I came up with two explanations. It seemed the Lord was saying, "First, you are not an adequate judge of who should be healed. Second, it is fortunate that I am not limited to YOUR faith as the means of healing."

"Well", I replied, "I was just asking."

Since then, I pray for everyone without question, and leave the motives and outcome to God. It saves a lot of time on situational analysis. Much more efficient.

I wondered if my own attitudes compared favorably with Sergio's that week. The question seemed purely academic however, and I dismissed it from my mind.

One thing puzzled me, though. Why had God not healed me of my hay fever? Another inscutible mystery to discuss with the Father some Sunday. Eventually such a Sunday came about, but the answers are rather embarrassing, and I prefer not to discuss them right now.