“Hear me out,” Walter pleaded.
“Fuck hearing shit out, motherfucker!”
The little girl sobbed, her face caked in foul, acrid smelling ashes. The tears and soot plastered a little fragment of bone, maybe a shard of knuckle or femur to her cheek.
Walter held his hands up, palms open: a simian display of contrition and submission. The weight and efficacy of the nonverbal gesture was undermined, somewhat, by the fact that he was clad head-to-toe in a Donald Duck costume.
… there’s so much that we share, it’s time we’re all aware, it’s a small world after all …” continued the ensemble cast of animatronic woodland critters and multicultural stock characters, beneath the watchful eye of a smiling crescent moon.
“… my father,” Walter stammered, “he always wanted his ashes scattered here …”
“Are you okay, baby girl? Daddy’s here. Ssshh. You’re alright. Listen, here’s what we’re gonna do: Daddy’s gonna put naughty Mr Donald Duck over here in a full Nelson; I’m gonna hold him down while you beat the tar out of him until you feel all better, alright? Good girl.”
“My dad always wanted to be scattered here. You know, so many people try and scatter their relatives’ ashes here, there’s really strict security, you know? So they check everyone for urns and stuff. I’m an engineer … I just took this job so I’d be able to sneak him in … we have to wear communal jockstraps under these things, man, come on …”
“Motherfucker, I don’t care if you’re the real-ass Donald Duck! My little girl just got a face full of your dead dad!”
“ … I’m so sorry …”
Walter’s apology was cut short as the little girl’s father attempted to move behind him, and slip his arms underneath his own. The rotundity, however, of the cartoon duck suit’s midsection got in the way: Walter (as Donald) was simply too thick around the middle for the man to wrap his arms around. As her father struggled, still trying unsuccessfully to grab him, Walter turned to the little girl, getting down on one knee to face her at eye level (though, truthfully, he only really had his peripheral vision on account of his costume).
“Sweetie, I’m so sorry,” he squawked in Donald Duck’s voice (the little girl simply wailed more). Walter was turned to the little girl, perpendicular to the water where they’d all stepped off the side of the ride in the kerfuffle (Walter’s visibility was impeded by the duck mask; he hadn’t seen the boat full of people as he’d tried, as swiftly and stealthily as possible, to cast his father’s ashes into the blessed waters of performative liberal multiculturalism).
Perpendicular to Walter, and to the watery tracks, having given up on his plan to punitively restrain him while the little girl beat her tears dry, the little girl’s father took a step back, and with a sharp, flat-footed kick to his duck mask, knocked Walter into the filthy, ash-strewn water.
Donald Duck’s skull took the brunt of the blow, but Walter did not know which way was up. The mask floated away from his head. He could just make out, by the tracks, an assortment of full urns that had been tossed hither and thither, and found their final resting place there. His buoyant body soon followed suite, and he floated downstream, drifting through his father’s ashes like a whale in an oil slick. He remained immobile, breath held, face down, watching the hundreds upon thousands of urns beneath the surface. One urn was kilned in tartan. Another bore golden characters in Mandarin. There was one in the shape of a maple leaf, and another emblazoned with the Southern Cross. Some had paw prints, or little bones. There was an urn with a gilded hammer and sickle. A crucifix. A Start of David. One had a Swastika and an SS Insignia (he ignored that one). A Manchester United logo. Mickey Mouse ears. He looked on in wonder. Perhaps there was a point to this exercise?
Above the surface, the little girl shrieked, “Daddy! You killed Donald duck!”
Walter rounded the corner, where security and medics fished him out. He gasped, and in his present state of saturation, nobody could see his tears. The little girl’s screams, though loud and unceasing, could not drown out the Disney Children’s Chorus:
“… There is just one moon and one golden sun
And a smile means friendship to everyone
Though the mountains divide
And the oceans are wide
It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small, small world …”