Gertrude

by John William Smith

My son Lincoln and I had been to the town of Frankenmuth, Michigan, to fish. He was about eleven at the time. The town is nearly world famous for its breweries and for Zenders, a national monument to fried chicken and sauerbraten. It is much less well known for salmon fishing, but that’s why we were there. The Clinton River is dammed there, and the Lake Huron salmon collect below the dam.

The town is only about fifty miles from Flint, where we lived. We had left right after school, hoping to fish a couple of hours before dark. It was late fall. When we headed home after a very successful trip, it was very cold and very dark. We were speeding along a narrow, twisting country road when, suddenly, my headlights revealed a white piscovey duck (I couldn’t find piscovey in the dictionary, so I spelled it by ear) in the road. I can’t imagine what it was doing in the road at that time of night. I thought ducks were like chickens and went to sleep as soon as it got dark—and this one should have. I was going much too fast to swerve, and there was no time to stop. I heard the sickening whack and crunch of the duck hitting the underside of the car repeatedly.

It isn’t easy to explain my next action—in fact, it’s a little embarrassing—but I have to try, or I can’t tell the rest of the story. You need to know me personally, and you need to understand the way I was brought up. In my family—nothing was ever wasted—it was a sin to waste.

I turned around and went back to pick up the duck so we could take it home and eat it. It was lying in a heap, sprawled out in obvious death in the middle of ten thousand feathers. I pulled up alongside, reached out my door, picked the duck up, laid it on the floor behind my seat, and we headed home once again. I was driving a compact car. It was a Buick Opel with bucket seats.

Lincoln was very quiet as we drove, but completely alert. Normally, he would have been sound asleep in ten minutes, but the incident with the duck had totally captured his imagination. I noticed that he kept looking behind my seat. A few minutes later, he said,

“Dad, do ducks have souls?”

“No son, ducks don’t have souls.”

“What happens to a duck when it dies?”

“We eat it.”

“I mean, where does it go?”

“It doesn’t go anywhere. It just isn’t anymore.”

“Oh.” He thought for a few minutes and then he said, “Dad, is it okay to pray for a duck?”

“I guess so, but why would you want to?”

“I feel sorry for it.”

He lapsed into a thoughtful silence, and I assumed that he was praying. He kept his eyes on the duck, and a few minutes later he spoke again.

“Dad?”

“What son?”

“God just answered my prayer; that duck’s alive.”

“God doesn’t do things like that anymore. The duck is dead.”

A few minutes passed.

“Dad? Why doesn’t God do things like that anymore?”

“Because the age of miracles ceased when the apostle John died.”

“Dad, are you sure of that? The duck is alive. I just saw it move.”

“No, son, the duck may have moved from the motion of the car. I know that you feel sorry for the duck, and I do, too, and I know you prayed for the duck, but we have to learn to accept bad things in life. The duck is dead. You heard it hit the car, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but, Dad, the duck just moved again, and it’s not the motion of the car. It’s looking right at me.”

“Son, this has gone far enough. You mustn’t allow your imagination to run away with you. I’ve told you that the duck is dead. It is dead! No amount of wishful thinking can bring it back. Trust me. I’m your father, and when I tell you that the duck is dead, you can believe me.

The—duck—is—dead!

Now, I don’t want to hear any more about that duck; do you understand?”

“Yes Sir.”

“Quack.”

“What was that noise?”

“I think it was the dead duck, Dad.”

I turned around, and sure enough, there was the duck, standing up and looking rather puzzled by its new surroundings.

“Son,” I said, “the age of miracles just started again, because that duck was dead!”

We took it home, fed it, found a marvelous place for it to stay —in our swimming pool, which was closed for the winter anyway—and we named her (I guess it was a her) Gertrude. About a month later we went back to Frankenmuth. We took Gertrude and released her as near to the spot where we had found her as possible and went on our way.

I offer this comment on our fetish for being right and how foolish we appear when we state that rightness in unequivocal terms. The problem is that when the facts prove us wrong, our pride forces us to continue to defend our position. In no area of our lives are we more prone to making unequivocal and uncompromising statements about rightness

than in religion.

And in no area is there more inclination for our pride to cause us to continue to defend our position long after both experience and the facts have proved us wrong

than in religion.

We need to make very sure that we are standing squarely on what God has said, not simply exonerating our egos.