Henry finished building the radio and took it out on the porch to test its frequencies. The sun was high overhead. Henry noticed it was inching lower toward the horizon each day as autumn closed in. He looked across the water, set the radio circuit board on the deck, then shaded his eyes and looked out on sun sparkles on the water. The lake was mostly still, moving in small ripples every once in awhile from the breeze sweeping across the surface.
Past the sun patch he could see the outline of the bird that had managed to dump Jeremy into the lake. It was almost still, like a hunting decoy bobbing on the surface, entirely alone. He tried to focus on it, but the bird was past the sun sparkles and in the shadows thrown from the high trees on the far shore.
The Duckwaller is a quiet bird. A swan trumpets, a loon offers its eerie tremolo, a Goose honks, a Duck quacks and a Duckwaller does none of that noisemaking. It moves quietly, almost as if stealthily through the water, but people think creatures are trying to be stealth when in reality they just want to be still, peaceful. Many times on the lake swimmers or boaters or couples in a canoe found the bird right next to the boat all of the sudden, as if it has always been part of the party, and not an intruder gliding up silently to investigate what’s happening. Once Henry heard a kid call the bird “Ninja Chicken” to get laughs. Henry, a quiet kid himself, knew what it was like. People don’t do well with quiet. They assume illness or injury or some nefarious ideas brewing, when in reality, sometimes quiet is just that. He sympathized with what he thought the bird might be feeling as people often described what it was up to. Then Henry realized that bird might really not be ruffled in any way at all at what people thought. And he wished he was the bird.