The Decoy
The Decoy
I still remember the girl in Qingdao who painted me. She wanted to make me look as real as the geese who grazed in the paddies of the village she sent money back to. I came to consciousness in her hands, and might have stayed in them forever had a man not come up behind her to ask why she was taking so long. I was passed down the line. Boxed up. Shipped east in the belly of the mother goose of the barge. In a Cabela’s in Rapid City the pimply store clerk said, as he set me up on the shelf, “Look alive.” I tried, but I was on display long enough to be forgotten in fine gray dust. Then one day a man and his son walked in. The man pointed up at me and I was taken down and rung up. I knew, suddenly, my value — $149.99. The man whistled, then paid for me. The boy carried me outside, his hand around my neck. I wanted him to look at me like the girl who painted me had, but it’s hubris to think anyone will look at us like our god did. There were a few of my kind in the bed of the truck, older ones, the paint flaking off, and a dog who sniffed me disdainfully. We were set up in this corn field to look like we’re grazing, though I’ve never hungered for anything but to be alive. The pimply kid was right. The best I can do is look it. I know I’m being used to call the living down so the boy kneeling behind the blind can reach his long gun out and touch them, and for this I feel ashamed, like a prisoner pardoned for now by the guards because he volunteered to dig graves.