Beaky (Or Julie?) the Greedy Duck

 

5x5 inch square; outline free motion quilting; colour added with Inktense Pencils

Part of The Tunnel Journey

 

When I was about eight years old my mother gave me a copy of Beaky the Greedy Duck.  I no longer have that book so I can’t consult it for a refresher of the plot.  However, I recall that Beaky was a white duck who wore a blue and white checkered pinafore, and lived with a bunch of other non-pinafore wearing ducks in a farm yard.  If there was an explanation for the pinafore it escapes me, as does what exactly a pinafore is.  What I do remember about the book was that Beaky, unlike all the other nameless ducks in the barnyard, was guilty of greediness.  A bad thing. 

 

This was the first time I ever stuck my head out of my childish self-centeredness long enough to examine my own character. Was I too weighed down by greediness? Had my mother given me this book as a lesson and a warning to mend my greedy ways?  Was I so far along on the Scale of Ultimate Greed that she could not face telling me, and had to let me discover my ultimate evil nature in a book?

 

This seemed odd. She was pretty skilled at telling me when I was too loud (my Dad’s Prime Rule being “no hollerin’ in the house”), or when I needed to be nudged back into unblemished obedience by remembering to take that clean hankie for health inspection at school.  A Kleenex wouldn’t do for that all important weekly event. It might get tattered in my pocket and was likely to come out with at least one gumball stuck to it. She was the picture of persistence on the topic of picking up the clothes that I’d artfully flung about my room.  But here it was in all its ugliness.  Greediness. I had a character flaw so monumental that it needed to be pointed out in a textual parable.  And this flaw was of such magnitude that I dared not address it by asking my mother about it.  It was up to me to mend my ways by avoiding the pitfalls of greed into which the motherless Beaky had unwittingly fallen. 

 

At age eight I was a little hazy on what did and did not constitute greediness.  Beaky wasn’t really helping me, seducing me into wanting a blue and white checkered pinafore just like hers.  Lacking the word for “coveting” I labelled that pinafore lust as “greed”.  Not only was Beaky not helping me, she was throwing gasoline on the fire of my greediness.  Why would Beaky do this to me?  Maybe greed wasn’t her only flaw. I began to suspect that all ducks were an unsavory breed, purposed with teaching naughty children painful lessons and subverting childish self-satisfaction.  Did adults know this about ducks?

 

Greed began to sneak up on me from everywhere.  It gnawed at me when I went for that second piece of pie…but not enough to stop me from eating it.  It glowered at me when I divided up the chocolates even though I gave away more than I kept.  What was the magic number needed to dispel greediness?

 

Possibly, “want” was greediness in disguise and I denied that my too-small gym shoes were in need of replacement, despite the appearance of my big toes through the canvas. When Christmas came, I circled an austere ten items in the Sears catalogue, not the usual twenty-five.  I clenched my jaw and left the picture of the Lincoln Logs un-circled.

 

But was it enough? Had Mother noticed how rarely the monster of greed squeezed me in its claws? If she did, she was adept at keeping it to herself. 

 

Like a dying leper clutching a Bible, I continued to read Beaky almost daily, searching for clues that would heal me.  When dust cover fell into a shambles my mother at last commented.  “You really like that book, don’t you?”  She failed to recognize that the stains she thought were Allen’s Apple Juice (the best kind, from the giant can), were actually tears of despair. 

 

I needed to up my game by giving something significant away.  Certainly not my hand-crafted Barbie clothes or the collection of scarves I’d knit for my stuffed animals. And not my Superman comics, which still had plenty of entertainment and enlightenment left in them, having been read a mere seventeen times each.  My eyes fell on my bag of marbles.  If I gave half of them away, I would still have plenty left to play with, especially since, being a girl, we did not play for keepsies.  That was for those crazed risk-taking bad boys with no respect for their own personal property.  I sorted out my least favourite ones with satisfaction - some of them being scratched, or chipped, or both.  I distributed them among various friends, and tried not to bite my lip too hard when I saw how emaciated that left the Crown Royal bag.  Battling greed required sacrifice.

 

No one seemed to notice my new found philanthropy, and how I always insisted that my second piece of pie be “not too big”.  How could I have extinguished a major, possibly fatal, character flaw and not one single person came forward on bended knee offering gratitude?  I was discovering how cruel the world could be.

 

One day when I came home from school, there was a brown envelope on the table.  For me. Oh joy, an unexpected gift, such a rare and precious thing.  My smiling mother directed me to open it.  It was…another book.  “Look! It’s the next one in the series. I subscribed for you - I know how much you loved Beaky”. 

Mick the Disobedient Puppy stared up at me with perceptive eyes.  I was pretty sure that Mick was about to make that duck look like a saint.