We passed a lonely man sitting on his front porch. He was listening to Journey on his radio. He looked oddly similar to Rooster, my neighbor, only with short hair. He didn't wave back.
Out on the main street, 2 girls were standing on the sidewalk talking and trying to see what sort of boy-reaction they could get without being obvious. 4 boys in a convertible Mustang passed them. They revved the engine and shouted "Woooo!"
The girls smiled in obvious satisfaction.
We biked all the way down to Wolf River, about 6 miles away, and stopped for a rest. There were other people there already, sitting on the benches and looking out at the water. Slowly, I became aware that everyone else there was a couple, like us, and about our same age. Two of the couples had kids. One couple had a little dog. We had nothing. The couples with kids looked healthy, happy, and fullfilled. The couple with the little dog looked old, defeated, tired and out of place. And we, we looked as we do, whatever that means.
We biked back towards home again. At Wolf River Park we took time to bike around the lake. We passed a fat woman who had 3 kids with her. I couldn't help but notice them because the 2 girls were screaming in terror.
I quickly looked around to see what was going on. They were screaming in terror at the ducks, who were running from the woman. The woman was ranting about rape and misogyny and all sorts of feminist bumpersticker bullshit. She was urging the girls to kill the male duck. The girls were trying to kill him as she had instructed, in between screaming and running from him whenever he turned around. The poor girls believed the ugly woman's madness to be reality. They had no way of knowing that this adult woman was a lunatic. They were terrorized by her 'gender lens' as it was being applied to the ducks, who were simply attempting to mate as God intended. One girl nearly ran straight into me on my bike as I rode through their screaming crime scene.
The woman, now seeing me, grew instantly silent, shushing her girls and standing stone still as I passed. Apparently, despite her feminist madness, she was at least aware enough of reality to be ashamed of what she was doing when other adults were around. Her girls, being no older than 6 or so, could not so easily turn off the terror she had filled them with. They kept screaming. I could see in their eyes that their terror was very real and very intense. They were crying.
I rode through slowly, as it was difficult to navigate through the chaos that this truly ugly woman was causing. I got a good look at her. She had a redish-brown ponytail, no makeup, glasses, crazed blue eyes of hate, and she was fat. She was ugly from the inside out. The 3 children with her all had beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes. If these were her kids, they bore only a vague resemblance to her.
I looked back at them as I passed. They immediately returned to trying to kill the duck, with the fat bitch now yelling "leave her alone" at the male duck. Apparently it never occurred to her to ask the female duck how she felt about all of this. The female duck was running from the woman and the girls, too. In fact, all the female ducks were running from these terrorists. The male duck trying to mate with one of them seemed to be the very least of their concerns.
I came to a bridge. A black couple was walking away from it. The woman said to me, "there's a snake on the bridge. We just turned around."
I had a feminist lunatic behind me and a snake in front of me. I had to choose.
I rode for the snake.
I pedalled faster, crossing the bridge in record time, rolling over the snake without even looking at it. It paid me little attention as my knobby tires pounded harmlessly over its' back. I continued on. So did the snake.
I rounded the lake and rode to the opposite side. I could see the feminist and her brood still standing in the midst of the ducks, still terrorizing them. I stopped and watched.
The woman was now looking around to make sure no one saw what she was doing. Up to this point she had only made brief attempts to kick and stomp the male duck, trying to be discrete about her cruelty to animals, if not her hatred for males. She had been mostly using the children to do her dirty work. But now, looking up and down the path and seeing no one watching her, she pushed the girls aside and began chasing her feathered male victim entirely by herself. She ran as a madwoman around the path, into the grass, and finally deep into the woods, where all the ducks, male and female alike, had fled in an attempt to escape this crazed, man-hating, homocidal maniac. She was screaming, "LEAVE HER ALONE" as if the ducks' perfectly natural act of reproduction was some sort of horrific crime, a horrible spectacle of the mythical epidemic of violence against women, or women ducks as it were.
There were four of them in all. There was the woman, consumed with her hatred of men and sex and reproduction and, apparently, male ducks. There was the oldest girl, who appeared to be 6 or older, with beautiful blue eyes and blonde hair, a future heartbreaker to be sure. There was the younger girl, who also had beautiful blue eyes and blonde hair. The two girls had been running around and screaming. I had seen only the terror and tears in their eyes as I passed. And then there was the last one, the boy. He was tiny. He was sitting on a little 4 wheeled toy that he pushed along with his feet. He was no older than 2 or 3. He, too, had blue eyes and blonde hair. He had not been screaming. He had been sitting quietly, with his fingers in his mouth and a look in his eyes of both sadness and fear. He hadn't moved the entire time. He was forgotten. He was completely ignored by the madwoman whom I can only assume to be his mother. He wasn't watching the ducks or his sisters. He had been watching the madwoman. He was looking at her and making an expression of a child on the verge of tears. But he did not cry. He never made a sound or shed a tear. He simply sat alone and chewed his fingers in silence, watching the woman run away from him, off into the woods on her quest to kill the male duck.
The snake had crossed the bridge. I could see people jumping off the path as it came towards them and slithered past, heading in the direction of the madwoman and her ducks. In fact, it appeared to be heading straight for the boy.
No one did anything. I watched them as they leaped aside, watched the snake go past, then looked back at the boy and made expressions of horror. But then they did nothing. They just let it go and waited to see what would happen.
The woman was still ranting and running through the woods. I checked my pockets for a cell phone. I wanted to call the police and have her arrested and perhaps have the children taken from her. I had no phone. And there was no one nearby to ask for one. I turned back to watching the boy.
The snake was virtually on top of him now. He was uniquely vulernable, being so small and sitting so close to the ground on his little toy. He was an easy target. He sat in complete silence, still eating his fingers, still looking as if he wanted to cry but knew it to be useless. He had his back to the snake.
The woman was barely visible now. She and the girls were so deep into the woods that they were now only silhouettes, shrinking off into the distance. They had abandoned the boy completely.
The snake was right behind him. I wanted to shout, but there was no one to shout to. No one was nearby.
And then, suddenly, the boy leaped up from his little toy. He ran in a panic with arms outstretched after his mother, the same woman who had left him all alone in a public park, sitting on a path next to a large lake, with complete strangers and terrorized ducks.
And a snake.
I rode on, wishing for a cell phone and cursing my luck at not having one.
It was an odd ride home. Again, friendly people waved at us. No one ever waves in Redneckville. Never. This is one of the reasons we have always wanted to leave. It has always been so unfriendly. Shit, if it had been friendly before we'd have simply moved to a larger home right here instead of heading out into the Boondocks.
After 5 of 6 miles, we were back in our own neighborhood. 2 attractive girls and their boyfriends/husands were sitting in their driveway looking at their motorcycles and talking. I waved. They waved back.
This is so weird.
Then I passed the lonely guy, the guy who reminded me oddly of Rooster, the guy who had been listening to an old song by Journey when we had passed by an hour or so before. He was drunk now. He screamed something about "JD." I waved. He thrust his finger in my direction and screamed again, "mumble mumble JD!" Yeah, whatever, dude.
I turned onto my street. I looked to my right and saw the entire gang that had been partying over at Roosters on Friday. They were partying in the driveway of another house. I saw all the usual guys, and I saw the 2 girls. The girl with the long blonde hair I don't know. The other girl, the beautiful girl with long dark hair, I know very well. She's my neighbor. Her mother has beautiful red hair and is very nice. They're good people. I'll miss them when we move. She's a cheerleader, probably a senior by now, perhaps just graduated. The blonde girl is probably a friend of hers. Between the two of them, they keep the guys jumping. I have a feeling that the 2 girls run the show. There used to be a third girl, also very pretty, but she's gone to live with her dad. So it's just the 2 girls and a whole army of guys. It's summer and they're just hanging out, some getting ready to head off to college soon. Others having to go back to school here in Redneckville in the fall.
As I write this they're slowly gathering again over at Rooster's, just across the street. The guys usually show up first. The girls show up later. But it's Sunday night and many of them have to work tomorrow. This party may not be as big as Friday's.
I'm going to bed. But before I do, I'll probably pray for that little boy. Unless a miracle occurs and he is taken from that woman, he hasn't got a prayer in this world.
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