Ash Stu - Outsider-Folk Singer-Songwriter

On a Tuesday morning in early May, I was walking to a park in Guthrie, Oklahoma, carrying a briefcase containing a book and a journal, as I have nearly everyday in 2026. The temperature was roughly 40° under a grey, clouded sky. I noticed a small bird waddling along the gravel road with me, and realized it was a young duckling. It seemed to be alone and struggling to climb the curb. Having no mature duck in sight, I thought it might need my help. “Out of the blue you came to me,” as John Lennon sang; or rather I came to it.

I saw three other ducklings further up the road, walking in a line under the bridge near Cottonwood Creek. Still no mature duck was found. I decided to carefully scoop the first duckling into my hands and reunite it with it’s assumed siblings.

Right after I set the prodigal duckling down, the group marched toward a sewer opening. I felt a horrible foresight but only watched in shock and dread, like seeing my family douse themselves in gasoline and reach for matches. In line one by one they stumbled obliviously into the black hole. Some walked straight off the edge, while others slipped through the ground-grate. I slacked my jaw and held my hands to my head, saying aloud, “What the actual fuck.”

Cars passed by, and I likely looked like an actor in a Shakespearean tragedy under that Guthrie bridge, but I never care how I’m perceived when I’m in a walking mood. I paced until I found the courage to approach what I felt was my crime scene, and to my relief, I saw all four still alive just a few feet below. I reached down the drain, retrieved them, and set them in the grass.

Fearing they would fall in again or meet an even worse fate, I refused to ignore my foresight this time. I called my mom, who was at a gas station but was soon headed my way. I emptied my briefcase to make a carrier, eventually securing all four. The last one was more energetic and took longer to find, but soon they were all bedded down beside each other with the lid cracked for air.

At home, I researched a plan while keeping them in an old box poked with air-holes and the bottom lined with cloths. When two managed to climb out, I laughed while chaotically chasing them down, eventually weighing the lid with a pillow and blanket. I read they could eat oats, worms, fine grass clippings, and eggs, though I refused the eggs because it’d make them bird cannibals. I mixed the wormy-oat-grass salad, while wishing I could afford actual waterfowl crumbs. I filled only a shallow condiment cup with water, to prevent drowning. I was not exactly stable or able to support myself at the time, but I believed they were better in this prison-sustenance-limbo than sleeping in the cold wild alone.

The next evening, I checked the box and wasn’t sure of, or couldn’t believe, what I saw. Were they sleeping? Three were lying on their backs, staring at the “sky” while slowly kicking their webs and opening their beaks. Like a child, I got my mom and said, “Come look at the ducks,” refusing to say more. I waited outside my bedroom door while she went in, but looked away.

We separated the sole survivor into a portable cat cage and left the other three in the box. Despite the approaching darkness, my mom insisted the survivor be released immediately. Feeling an untraceable guilt, I followed my leader. We circled Mineral Wells pond with the quiet duckling in the backseat, seeing only geese and hunting cats. When a goose honked, the duckling chirped back, but with no other ducks in sight, it didn’t seem safe to leave it.

We took the permanently prodigal duckling back home. Mom threw the dead three into the dumpster, unbeknownst to me. Back in my room, the survivor chirped incessantly at the mesh door. I provided fresh water and a blanket for insulation, staying up late to verify it was still well.

But I slept until 10a. When I woke, I found it curled in the corner on its back, mouth open and legs stiff. All four were now dead. After an hour, I wrapped the survivor in toilet paper and retrieved its siblings from the dumpster to do the same. I took them to the fire pit and laid them together in an iron nest, covering them with kindling and twigs.

I lit the pyre and built two more fires to ensure they were totally cremated. Finding no metal container, I scooped the ashes into a small cardboard box. Though the box wasn’t ideal, it held together as I started the walk toward Cottonwood Creek to scatter them.

With my headphones on, listening to Lennon, and my journal pinned under my arm, I passed city mowers and reached the bridge, but was short of where I planned to go. The box had held for the entire trip, but suddenly I felt it grow warmer and saw a flame emerge from a bottom corner. Reality forced me to drop the box right there on the gravel road, and I watched the flames engulf the cardboard and spill the ashes, in the same place where I had first found them.

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