Story

Feeding the Ducks

Every day I go to feed the ducks at the pond during my dinner hour. You know how it is when you work in a Call Centre, you just need to get away from the bullying hum of the computers and the fluorescent lights. It’s nice to be able to know that you can have one hour a day without being part of the team-leader politics, or hear that ‘Joe got off with Claire at the Waggon last weekend’. Is anybody really interested in that sort of thing, I think they do it because they think everybody else is interested, thus everyone is working on other peoples insecurities.

Anyway, as I was saying I like to go to the duck pond. It’s about half a mile from the office. I take a bit of extra bread. I suppose in a small way you get that feeling of power when the little mallards come rushing over for the floating food. You get the feeling, just for a second, that the duck really registers with you has being some sort of great provider.

Well, over the last week things have got that little bit stranger. Ever since last Monday, as I’ve sat down maybe a minute or two later an elderly gentleman has come and sat next to me. For the first three occasions he just sat there, he was a tall thin man with a faun trilby, glasses and a white neatly trimmed beard. He carried a cane with him and would just smile with a nod as he sat down or I got up.

Then on Friday, I always like Fridays, who doesn’t? And I’ll remember this to my dieing day. I sat there, the sun was shining happily, just a few cotton wool clouds to stop the sky from just being a boring blue, he came and sat next to me. This time he’d brought a bag of bread for the birds himself.

He nodded and started to feed them, smiling has he sprinkled a handful of wispy bread on the surface of the water. He leant back and turned to me.

“Hello.”

“Hello.” I said with just a little surprise, he’d never spoken to me before, but he probably had us down as friends from the weeklong ornithological camaraderie.

“What do you think they think of us?” he said slightly waving his cane towards the ducks as they homed in on the bread.

“I wouldn’t have thought they really see us as any less than a sadistic friend”

“Oh, why so?”

“I don’t believe they can tell the difference between me and any other human. They will all have some in-built instinct that humans are hunters – bad news. They probably just humour me whilst I have bread.”

“So they can’t tell one human from another. Doesn’t sound like a very good survival instinct to me.” Said the man smiling. “Here lets give it a test. You throw some bread over there and I’ll throw some over here.”

We throw the bread at the same time and all but two of the ducks swam towards the bread I had thrown.

“You see. The ducks see you as provider; they know you throw food everyday. I’m just some sort of bonus, “he laughs slightly, “you see they know not to upset you or their bread gets cut off”

“But not all of them went for my bread, look.”

“Ah, some like to buck the trend. They see all that food from me going free whilst the majority go for the dependable option. Perhaps they think that the dependable food will always be there and mine is a sweet bonus. Maybe they’re the adventurous ones, if someone doesn’t try something new, well…” he starts is quiet chuckle again.

“We live in trees.” I say, I saw the analogy of the birds to people whilst he was talking, it seemed oddly accurate in a humorous sort of way.

“Quite true, but everyone can’t jump out of the tree at the same time because if the ground hasn’t been walked on before, it could kill us. Better to kill the adventurous than the species.”

“Must be a bit of a pain for the poor adventurer, though.”

“Well, maybe, but the adventurer gets to feel the sweet grass first, to the adventurer that is reward enough, the novelty.”

I wasn’t sure I like the direction this conversation was going, but he was obviously quite a thoughtful old man, definitely better than those in the office.

“So,” he carried on, “as far as the ducks are concerned you could be the god and I the devil.”

This was a surprising turn.

“How do you work that out?”

“Well, you are the dependable one, the benefactor who can be relied upon to feed the birds. I am the one who tempts them away. If they go for my bread, do they not tempt your wrath?”

“You think the ducks think as deeply as that.”

“I hope so? Do you think your god knows if you believe in him.”

“Well, if there’s a God, he should know everything, so yes, he knows if I believe in him.”

“What do you think of the idea that god is like you, a provider of sustenance. You know the ducks exist, and you provide for them, but you don’t, for instance, know that ducks name.” The man points at a particularly erect drake with that greeny blue plumage that drew me to feeding the creatures in the first place.

“So you think god isn’t interested in me personally.”

“I don’t think you occur to him, to be honest.”

“So you believe God is just some kind of overseer.”

“Not believe. I know what your god is.”

“What!”

“Well, I know many of them.” He smiles again in the smile you often see on an elderly gents face has he takes that first puff on his freshly lit pipe. “What you consider to be The God is a god”

“So are you some kind of Buddhist or something.”

“No. Dear me no. Although I like the Buddhist philosophy, there is only yourself you can rely on. No, I know what your god is because I’m his.

“Bollocks!”

“It’s true, well, indirectly. You see what people don’t understand about life and gods is. There isn’t just the one god like there isn’t just the one heaven.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, Karl…”

“How did you know my name?" I hadn’t introduced myself.

“Of course I know your name. Look, Karl, the way heavens, and gods for that matter, work is very simply.”

“Go on then.” This should be good. I hadn’t listened to a madman for a long while.

“Well, did you think that all the people who have ever died have gone to heaven or hell?”

“I’m not sure I believe in hell as such, but yes, I suppose so.”

“You’ve got to accept a hell if you accept a heaven. One way up, one way down. Depending on how you’ve acted in you life.”

“Well, okay.”

“Okay. Well do you think everyone who has lived or died goes to one of those two?”

“I suppose so.”

“Do you know how many people have died? I mean if you only take this planet how many people have died?”

“Well, a lot I suppose.” He seemed very knowledgeable on this subject. I like to here people foaming at the mouth when try to tell you about something that really matters to them.

“Right. Now, how can you get your just desserts on an individual basis if there are so many people who have there?”

“Well, they say heaven is infinite. They say that heaven is the definition of infinite.”

“No, heaven isn’t infinite, the heavens are infinite. You see what happens is people from here live and die and are judged and treated on how they passed their lives. Well, in heaven, the same thing occurs.”

“But don’t you go to heaven for all of eternity.”

“No. You go to your heaven, which is better in every way than what you have here, and live a life there. Depending on how you live that life, you go up to the next heaven, or down here, which would seem like a hell in comparison.”

“So what your saying is that heaven is ongoing.”

“Of course. As well as that you have the Karmic inertia. You know, someone who has done so well or badly in a previous life they seem in this life that the course to their fate is already set out. You must have seen those who, from birth were destined for hell.”

“So, someone who did something completely evil in heaven would live this life with that over their heads. They would be, sort of, destined to go to our hell.”

“Destiny,” he smiled and paused a slight beat too long, “no-one is destined to go anywhere what you do here will determine what happens in the next life. But what you do also shapes you character, and those who are supremely good or evil gain a good or evil persona.”

“But doesn’t that mean that many people are destined,” I said the word even though it appeared to upset him, “to continue in one direction?”

“Well, they would be but only a few of you actually have any memory at all of the place you where. I mean, if you knew what heaven and hell were actually like, well, you’d weigh up the pro’s and con’s and say to yourself ‘I’ll have a go at this crime because I think I can live with that hell.’”

“How do you know this anyway?”

“Oh. Sorry I didn’t mention, I’m one of the gods. I’m about, what, eight thousand heavens up from you here.”

“So what are you doing here then?”

“On sabbatical, each of the gods take it in turns to go on a sabbatical looking around the hells below him to see if there are any things that are good enough to take back to there own Earth.”

“So, you have an Earth, a heaven, and a hell.”

“Oh yes. Obviously I live in the heaven, I oversee the Earth below me, and the people in my earth go to their own hell. Which to you I suppose could be seen as a heaven, but I don’t think you’d understand it in comparison to your own view of heaven and earth. I think you probably need to go through the intermediate places to get a full understanding of the one above.”

“So. Have you found anything here that you may take to your own earth, then?”

“Ducks. I like the ducks, very peaceful, help with thought. Yes, they shall have ducks.”

And with that the old man stood up, passed the remainder of his bread to me and faded into nothing as though he had never been there at all.

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Copyright © 2004 Liam Wilson