
Ducks & Epitaphs by Aimee Clemens
Hunter has been shutting himself in the home office lately, curling his body over the computer, losing himself in the steady rhythm of his work. His daughter, who seems equally set on self-isolating, won’t interrupt him here, and with each of them in their separate corners of the house, perhaps neither of them will have to admit anything out of order has happened.
Today, his wife tracks him down within an hour.
“Cogent Bank won’t choose your epitaph when you’re gone. You know that, right?” Jean towers over his desk, her breasts grazing the top of his computer screen.
Hunter pauses from firing off his latest investment recommendation to make eye contact with her. He digs his fingernails into his pants, scratching the fabric above his balls. Jean’s been all over him about “being more present with family,” ever since Savannah arrived home from boarding school and announced her new preference for women. But it’s Jean’s insinuation of death that strikes a nerve in Hunter.
Six weeks ago, he spent a critical weekend in the hospital for May-Thurner Syndrome.
“It’s just a swollen foot,” he had said on the way there. He was meant to board a four-hour flight for Cogent Bank’s annual offsite later that evening and didn’t want to miss it. “Probably all that walking you’ve had me doing around the neighborhood.”
But Jean had insisted he see a doctor. “Sweetie, your foot looks like Kenny Rogers’ face after all that plastic surgery—tight and bloated.” And thank God he listened. By the time they arrived, a large blood clot in his leg had apparently broken off and passed through his heart into his lungs. It would have been fatal if he’d gotten on that plane.
“Hunter? Hello?” Jean snaps her fingers in front of his face.
“Sorry,” he says. After another itch, he returns to the email on his screen, hitting “X” on the window. He smiles innocently.
“It’s Fourth of July weekend,” Jean says. “Really, who’s sending you emails?” She grabs his chin, cups it in her hand, and her touch has that softening effect on him. Jean’s been keeping him on track in life since they were friends in high school. Even then, her offers to study together served as a reminder for whichever test awaited him. “I saw Sav looking at the bike the other day. Why don’t you take her out for a ride?”
Hunter leans back against his chair, craning his neck to inspect the foggy sky through the window. Humidity so thick he can already feel it against his throat, pool topped with tree droppings, coarse Bermuda grass that needs mowing. The clock on the wall reads 12:09pm. If he and Sav leave for a motorcycle ride soon, they can be back before the afternoon rain. Inconvenient as Florida’s summer rain is, it’s a blessing, really, bringing the atmosphere its much-needed relief.
“Sure,” Hunter says, “Yeah, that’d be nice.”
He heads to the garage, pulls off the Harley’s yellowed cover, and dusts Savannah’s helmet first, then his. He swings a leg over the side, feeling the heavy instrument beneath him, the air of uncertainty it carries.
He and Savannah started their tradition of riding together when she was eleven or so. With his little girl plopped on the back, Hunter would make circles around the neighborhood and Savannah would shriek with glee. As she got older, the rides increased in length, speed, and complexity. It was their sacred place, a place Hunter assumed would keep her out of trouble—especially during those brutal teen years. Give the kid some calculated risk, he thought, watch her run the course. And for a time, his plan worked. By sixteen, Savannah had kept her place on the honor roll and delivered a chillingly beautiful violin solo at the winter concert that brought Hunter to tears. He even liked her boyfriend, didn’t feel the need to clean out his shotgun when Jimmy showed up for a date. Sure, Jimmy could be a bit of an ass with his popped polo collar and pompous mentions of his father’s plastic surgery practice. But he brought flowers to Savannah’s concerts and always got her home on time. Hunter never suspected a thing.
He revs up the engine, hoping the sound will quiet his anxiety. He and Savannah haven’t gone for a ride together since before she left for boarding school last fall, before he landed in the emergency room. Buzzing radiates through his foot. Damn pins and needles. He slams it against the ground, agitating the soreness of his leg. He feels, admittedly, fragile, like taking a motorcycle ride is the last thing he should be doing. But the Harley bellows its most powerful rumble, giving Hunter the nerve to pull it out front, make a grand display for his daughter. He pops out the kickstand, resting the two helmets on the motorcycle’s back then returning inside.
“Sav?” The cold air-conditioning, a sharp contrast from the unrelenting heat, rips goosebumps down Hunter’s arms.
“Yeah?” Savannah shouts. Their home is one story, simple. Savannah’s room sits just around the corner from the front door, a reminder that Hunter once made the mistake of trusting her with an easy entrance and exit. He might have stopped her from slipping out to see Jimmy if he’d just given her a different room.
He walks into Savannah’s space, finds her stretched out on the bed, her feet propped up like a wall against him. He takes a few steps closer, jolted by his own surprise at the purple hair framing her cheekbones. Though she’s had the style for a year now, he’s never quite gotten used to it. “I thought we could go for a ride,” he says. His voice nearly catches in his throat. “Just like old times. You up for that?”
Savannah’s eyes flicker from her phone to his face, her own expression unreadable.
“Really,” she says, more statement than question. She inspects him from head to toe, flips her phone face-down on her chest.
“Yeah, I wanna take you out.”
She pops up and walks towards her dresser, and Hunter lingers awkwardly in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot.
“Dad? Can you go? I need to change.”
“Oh, sure.” He rushes out, nearly colliding with Jean in the hallway. He can’t believe that was a yes.
“Are you going?” Jean rubs her hands together, anticipating his answer.
“Looks like it.”
“Why not stop for lunch somewhere, have a nice conversation?”
He would, but the day is young. There are no shared activities for them to recap, no cataloguing of the mundane beyond breakfast eaten, texts exchanged. He’s supposed to ask Savannah questions about her recovery, her new life as a junior at the all-girls school, but he’s not sure he can handle her answers. He still feels at fault for the shift in her life’s trajectory.
“I think we’ll just do a loop—no sense getting stuck in the rain.”
“You have to talk to her about what happened, Hunter.”
“It’s enough just to ride,” he says, so emphatically he almost believes himself.
Just then, Savannah appears in the hallway behind them.
“Ready?”
Hunter forces himself to grin, hoping she didn’t overhear their conversation. “Lead the way.” He follows Savannah out the front door, expecting the screen to slam behind him.
Jean nips at his heels.
“What are you doing?” Hunter asks his wife under his breath. He’s got this.
Jean says, “Just one picture.”
Savannah hops onto the motorcycle, bounces back and forth like a child. Hunter misses when she was a little girl—it was so much easier then.
“I wanna play my music,” Savannah says.
“Sure,” Hunter says. “Anything you want.” Then to Jean, “Can you wait?” He feels like a pitcher winding up before the game, already expected to perform. He hops onto the motorcycle, carefully going through the motions to connect Savannah’s phone to the Bluetooth. It takes several tries for the technology to cooperate, and Hunter does his best to compose himself. What a great start they’re off to.
“Smile!” Jean shouts. Her arms are stretched in front of her, the phone horizontal.
Hunter stiffens—this outing with his daughter is so unusual, it warrants a photograph. “Let’s get this over with.”
The phone emits an artificial shutter click, and then they are off.
As Hunter drives, he does his best to relax into the route of the road, speed away from their bumpy brick neighborhood. Spanish moss dangles from trees on either side of the street, framing them like a halo, and the soundtrack on the bike plays so seamlessly, Hunter almost forgets his daughter has selected the tunes. “Father & Son” then “Tin Man,” each one could have been pulled from his personal collection. A sadness creeps through him; he doesn’t know any of his daughter’s favorite songs. He wouldn’t even know where to begin.
The sky darkens as clouds spread overhead, and the deepening heat builds pressure against Hunter’s fingers. He feels swollen, worries his foot might return to the size it had been before surgery, reminds himself the stent had taken care of all that. Humidity, water weight, storm coming soon.
A public school comes into view, blocks of concrete bisected by outdoor hallways, bits of a raspberry-toned bougainvillea wrapping around the columns. Hunter can almost hear a young Jean in his ear, pregnant and whispering, “Beautiful place to raise a family, don’t you think?” What could go wrong at a school plopped in the middle of a residential neighborhood, where a large swath of upper-middle class homes proudly displayed Trump signs on their lawns? They never would have thought Savannah would need to transfer, would be forced to quit the violin because her new school wouldn’t have an orchestra.
The landmarks continue to unfold like some kind of twisted memory—the bronze bull statue outside the police station where Sav first reported the incident, several cop cars neatly parked out back, useless.
Jimmy’s parents had called Hunter, begged him not to let her go through with pressing charges. Didn’t Hunter remember what it was like to be a teenage boy? Certainly he could see how this was all a misunderstanding; certainly he wouldn’t want Jimmy—or Savannah—to have a reputation forever tarnished by the outcome.
Hunter understood a threat when he heard one. And though he wanted to say that they could kindly fuck off, he never said the words. Instead, he angrily hung up the phone and called Comcast to have the number blocked.
When the verdict floated to the surface—not guilty—when Jimmy was exonerated because Savannah had been intoxicated, because the two of them had been dating long before it happened, something inside Hunter broke. Savannah never told Hunter what happened herself, and he’d never asked, not directly. Why should he, when his daughter had confided in Jean, who only shared the news with Hunter in hushed tones before bed?
He still wears the shame of his distance, hides it beneath stock analysis and portfolio rebalancing like that’ll make it better. He avoids his daughter, the reality of her violation and his failure to protect her too painful to bear. Maybe that’s why she likes girls now. Even he, Hunter—her father—had never proven men could be safe.
As the bike comes to a halt at a redlight, thunder rumbles in the distance.
They can’t leave things on this note—the old school, the police station. Maybe they can drive by the Azalea Gardens, that old lake-front park shielded by majestic oaks, a big banyan tree. During Sav’s girlhood, they spent almost every Saturday fishing off the dock, holding picnics on the lawn as large pontoons and water-skiers passed by.
Hunter shouts over his shoulder, “I’m good to keep going if you are. I’ve got a little surprise in mind.”
“Sure, fuck the rain,” Savannah says, laughs, and oh how the laugh pleases him, tells him maybe he’s got some “good dad” qualities after all. He speeds up, a thrill shooting from base to tip of his spine, though Savannah doesn’t hold on any tighter. Even at eleven, twelve, Sav would only stick her hands at the corners of his jacket pockets, refusing to wrap her arms around him. Maybe they’ve never had that kind of intimacy.
She dyed her hair purple one week after the verdict. Asked for a set of pet ducks she could keep in the bathtub. Hunter couldn’t understand why she wanted them to shit all over the one place she kept clean, but after what she’d been through, who was he to get in the way of anything that’d make her happy? She doted on those ducks, fed them cornmeal out of little glass bowls she placed under the sink. They followed her around the house, perched on the window above her bed while she read. She wasn’t watching when they jumped, flew—fell? —out the window, moseyed along the front yard. How long was it before the neighbor’s pit bull broke off its leash and chomped into those ducks, one right after the other? No one was sure. And poor Savannah fell apart at the sight of their mangled bodies, their necks and heads bent beneath them, their feathers covered in slobber.
She insisted on holding a funeral, dressed in black as she delivered a eulogy heard only by Hunter and Jean.
“Dear Thing 1 and Thing 2, I’m sorry I left the window open. I should’ve checked on you. The good news is, no one will ever say you asked for it.” She paused as if waiting for a reaction.
Hunter couldn’t even muster a laugh. What was funny about any of it? His own daughter was a stranger, had become one long before the incident, and he’d never noticed. Who was this girl, who snuck out, got drunk, dyed her hair dumb colors? How was he supposed to know what to feel when she’d lied to him? Sometimes a twisted hope, too backwards to admit to anyone, brought him peace of mind at night. Maybe it wasn’t that Hunter’s instincts were off, that he’d gotten Jimmy wrong, had failed to catch Savannah in the throes of her rebellion as much as he’d failed to really know her.
Maybe, Savannah had never been raped.
On the road, rain pelts against their helmets; the tires slip more easily along the two-lane backroad. Hunter drives slowly now, loses trust in his ability to navigate. The precipitation intensifies, and a car honks behind them.
“Go around!” He shouts, not like they can hear him.
They approach the Azalea Gardens, the rain’s force escalating, pooling in puddles, slapping against his arms and ankles. At the sight of the familiar landmark, now barely visible through the dense tray of water, he feels no sense of relief. What was he thinking, not turning around sooner? He can’t outrun the weather any better than Savannah could outrun boys like Jimmy, than the ducks could outrun that dog.
It wasn’t her fault.
It wasn’t his.
He has to say something, before another clot, before another wrench thrown into the perennial chaos that is his life.
As the car behind them begins to pass, another approaches from the opposite direction. The cars must not see them, must not calculate the other bodies—their bodies—in the lane.
Hunter swerves, struggles against the handlebars, but the bike is too heavy, the pathway too slick. He’s losing control and all there’s left to do is, “Jump!”
His hands fumble off the handlebars; the motorcycle falls, scuttling across the road, and Hunter rolls against the garden grounds. His arm has hit first, his hip, the side of his helmet, but he rolls through the moss, grass, and sand into a soft and wet bush—safe, scared, and okay.
The arm that first made impact grows numb. He bites his cheek hard, yowling through a closed mouth as he gets his bearings.
Savannah.
He pushes himself up with his good arm, fumbles through the gardens as his chest heaves. His foot stumbles over a knobby cypress root, temporarily blackening his vision, jolting his fear of death all over again.
“Savannah?”
Work won’t write his epitaph. Neither will his daughter if she’s dead.
The sky is a blanket of rain, opaque beyond Hunter’s immediate line of sight. He can barely see a foot in front of him. A sob catches in his throat, “Savannah!”
“Dad?” she says, “Can you hear me?”
“I’m coming,” he runs towards her voice, panting. “Keep talking so I can find you.”
Aimee Clemens is a writer and MFA student in fiction at Columbia University. She earned her Creative Writing Certificate from UCLA Extension, and her work has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sirenland, and the Key West Literary Seminar.
24 January 2025
Leave a Reply