Chapter Text
On and long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha…
...you can listen to the engine moaning...
Oops, topic missed! After all, the story I'm telling you takes place near a motorway, but not directly next to it either, rather in the middle of the forest.
Yes, right, we don't start in Duckburg. Why not? Because it starts in a really huge forest, in northwestern Missouri. It is called the Black Forest, but has nothing to do with the German Schwarzwald. The forest’s north is near the tripoint with Iowa and Nebraska while the south is near tripoint with Nebraska and Kansas. The 38-year-old lumberjack Abner Duck lives there; many also know him as "Whitewater". Abner likes to be pretty grumpy, but he works hard and despite being 5′ 3.8″ like all Ducks, he's very strong.
Today Abner’s sitting in his “office” (in a wooden cottage) and talking on his cell phone. (Yes, he's a little bit modern too!)
"Duck here! Who’s it?"
"Greetings Whitewater," says the voice. "It's me, Lance."
At the other end of the line, the timber truck haulier, Lance Loadupham, is speaking.
"Ah Lance," Abner says. "Howdy, what's up?"
"Whitewater, sadly we have two tree trunks that are so long that there is no way that they could fit on Jack’s GMC."
"Oh great," Abner growls. "My boys once again forgot to cut the trees properly. But with them I will no longer talk to each other. Lance, I am afraid, you have to unload the trees again, there’s no way around it…"
"I’m afraid so too”, Lance sighs. "Well, that’s my part of my job."
"I’m coming," Abner promises, slightly angrily.
Since the forest is really big, the black-haired drake climbs into his jeep after having put on his hat. Even his father Eider who is now 59, Grandma Elvira Duck's eldest (and only living) son, had been staying away more or less away from the big bad city and took over the farm after Grandpa Humperdink Duck's death. In the meantime, however, he is doing rather badly for his age after a stroke (the death of his wife Lulubelle, Abner and Fethry’s mother, also is something that took him years to overcome). His younger brother Quackmore, Donald's father, also widowed, albeit only two years before his death, also died a year ago of a heart attack. Although the brothers had their difficulties all their lives, the sudden death of the little brother was terrying for Eider. And he visited his funeral, already in a wheelchair. When his wife died, him and Abner simply drank a bottle of whiskey. Irish, because a paternal ancestor came from Ireland and had been shipped as a slave at the beginning of the 19th century. In order to integrate and show that the Irish are no different from the English and Scots, he changed his name from "O'Duck" to "Duck" – luckily the family stopped being religious over a century ago, even Cornelius Coot had regarded the church, both Catholic and Protestant, as „cancer“ and „mental illness“.
The sister of the two, Daphne, who was younger than Teddy, but older than Quackmore, who died when their only son Gladstone was still a child, already being widowed at that, which made Gladstone, who was only ten years old, an orphan who grew up with his grandmother Elvira, Eider, Daphne and Quackmore‘s mother. However, Donald had mostly grown up with Grandma too, although when he grew up both his parents Quackmore and Hortense were still alive, because according to some statements they had "too little time", even if Donald still describes them as "not rich, but nevertheless fun loving people". Their eventual and sudden deaths had hurt him and Huey, Dewey and Louie, but Grandma Duck even more, I mean, is there anything worse than burying your own child?
When Abner gts to the crane, he immediately sees the disaster, and unfortunately it it is worse than he thought it was: the trunks are scattered on the ground. "I'm sorry, boss!“, one of the workers who operates the timber trailer or crane says. "But Jack said I should ..."
"God damn it, you are a comple distaster as a worker!!" Abner rumbles, being livid. "Didn't you tell me to listen to Jack, Mr. Duck?" the crane operator asks.
"Yeah, yeah, that's fine", Abner sighs resigned. "I can understand that you see that as a reason. I used to be a trucker myself."
Yes, Abner used to be a truck driver himself and had been America's youngest truck driver for a while. Especially after his mother's death and the fact that there was no way that he could reconcile with his nearly twelve year younger brother Fethry, he had to go out into the wide world. He quickly moved away from Calisota, further northeast, since further west would have been, due to there only being the Pacific. At age 28, however, he had had enough and wanted to settle down to become a lumberjack and maybe even start a family, even though he had been driving reliably for several years. He ran freight out of Wheeling, West Virginia and US Steel from Bethlehem. He rode tobacco out of the Carolinas and California wines into Birmingham. However, he had also gotten into some trouble with officials, for example once when he was driving in the wrong direction on a one-way street in Massachusetts near Boston. In Jackson, Wyoming, in the Rocky Mountains, he even had a fight with a law enforcement officer. He had been a very rebellious and natural person before. Nothing has changed to this day. Which is why he's now a lumberjack and raftsman. His only real competitor is Pete. However, Pete is extremely clumsy, which is why Abner can confidently continue to see himself as number one in his almost extinct profession. Finally, the men manage to solve the wood problem when another wood truck arrives. Nevertheless, Abner decides to stay in place to avoid further mishaps.