Danny's Day
Created | Updated Apr 1, 2018
Reprinted from the h2g2 Underguide, 2007: 
Danny stirs because a sunbeam has sneaked in the window and is shining in his face. He blinks himself awake, and turns pale blue eyes in the direction of a redbird that is pertly flicking its tail on the windowsill.
'Hello, friend. Come to play with me?' Danny grins in delight, throws back the covers, and kneels on the bed to see better.
The brightly-coloured bird cocks its head and chirps at Danny, then flicks its tail a couple of times. But it obviously has important bird business on its mind, and flies off with a jerk.
Danny laughs to himself. 'Birds are always busy,' he thinks. 'Now, who will I get to share this sunny day with me?'
Danny gets up - remembering to make up his bed, something he often used to forget - and makes his way into the bathroom to shower and dress. He decides to wear his favourite shirt today - the red t-shirt that says 'Beam Me Up, Scotty, There's No Life on This Planet' - just because he feels like it, and it's clean, and, anyway, it's a warm day and he isn't going anywhere fancy.
At the last minute, he remembers to run a brush through his unruly curly hair. Danny looks at himself in the mirror with comical criticism. He remembers his mom's saying, 'Don't scare the old ladies,' and chuckles to himself. He reckons he'll 'pass with a push' - also a Mom-saying.
Tiptoeing downstairs in his bare feet, Danny is quiet - it's early yet, and he doesn't want to wake anybody else up on this Saturday. So he gets his own breakfast - cold cereal and milk, and a glass of orange juice - and goes out onto the porch to eat it there, first pulling on his sneakers, since there's still dew on everything.
Danny sits on the porch steps, munching on Cap'n Crunch - his favourite, even if it does have too much sugar - and looking around eagerly at the early morning, his favourite part of the day. The part all the old sleepyheads upstairs are missing. His contemplation of the six new roses on the rosebush is joined by two robins, a chipmunk, and two squirrels, who, however, are busy chasing each other up and down the sycamore tree.
Danny smiles to himself. 'I wonder if Mr Lumpkin would mind those squirrels? He said he had too many, and started catching 'em and movin' 'em to the State Park...'relocatin' 'em', he called it. But he swore they kept comin' back...I offered to paint their tails red, so he'd know if they were the same ones, but he said no thanks...I'll have to ask him when I see him.'
Breakfast over - and a few stray pieces of cereal surreptitiously tossed to the squirrels and chipmunk - Danny takes his bowl, spoon, and glass back into the kitchen and sets them in the sink. Then he leaves out the front way, closing the door with exaggerated caution, lest he wake the sleepers upstairs.
The door closed, Danny looks around him happily: which way to go? The day is his. A whole Saturday to 'waste' doing silly things.
Closing his eyes, Danny points first one way and then another.
'Eeny, meeny, miney mo...' All right First right, down to the beach. There might be time for the five-and-dime later, or pinball...nobody's open yet, anyway.
Once down the redwood steps to the beach, Danny pulls off his sneakers, tying the laces together and hanging them around his neck. Then he sets off down the edge of the surf, his jeans rolled up, bare toes wriggling in the damp sand, whistling.
He whistles: 'The morning sun is shining like a red rubber ball.' He wishes he'd thought to bring his own rubber ball. Instead, he picks up a shell tossed up by the surf, and - checking carefully to see that it's unoccupied - tosses it in the air as he goes along.
Danny meets a few other early risers on his beach walk: an elderly couple, walking arm in arm, who seem so wrapped up in each other they hardly notice as he steps aside to let them pass. He'd have tipped his hat - older people like that - but he never wears one. A younger woman comes by with a tiny Pomeranian, which strains on its leash. Danny asks politely if he might pet the dog, and, permission granted, kneels down and holds out his hand for proper sniffing, then offers his face to be licked. The woman laughs. Danny moves on, glad to have made a friend.
He thinks about how he misses his dog Buddy, the big golden retriever, and how he cried when Buddy died. 'Big boys don't cry,' his mom said. Well, sometimes they do, was his thought. Sometimes they do.
But the day is too bright, and the ocean too loudly cheerful, for such sad thoughts, and Danny is soon preoccupied with collecting shells, and wading in the water, and watching the ships on the horizon. Before he notices it, Danny has walked a long way, and it's lunchtime already.
'Oops!' he thinks. 'Forgot to write a note. Oh, well. At least I've got some money with me.'
So Danny buys a hot dog and a coke from a vendor up by the beach, and takes his lunch back down to the shore to eat.
Hot dog with mustard, the best, he thinks, and laughs as the fizzy coke gets up his nose. He doesn't like the bun as much, and feeds the last of it to the seagulls, who always appear out of nowhere when there's food. He wonders how they do that. Must have sharp eyes, or sharp noses, he thinks. Or do birds have smellers? He doesn't know.
Danny starts back towards his house, thinking about going to the arcade and playing pinball. There are more people on the beach now - Danny stops for a while to toss a beach ball with some boys, and once catches a stray frisbee, but mostly he heads sort of in the direction of home.
Suddenly it seems like a long way to go, though. Danny's legs are getting tired, and the sun is hot. He looks around for another coke vendor, but doesn't see one. He does see a bench, however, so he sits down to rest for a bit.
He thinks that Marjory will be mad at him for being so late. But he couldn't help it, really, it was too nice a day to stay inside and watch TV.
Danny feels sleepy, though. His eyelids are heavy, and he almost dozes off on the bench.
But, just as his eyes are closing, he catches a hint of movement in the corner of his vision. He turns to look.
It's a big blue butterfly with two black spots, one on each wing. Danny smiles as he watches it fly around the bench, and then turn up into the sky. Such a big one... He follows it with his eyes as it flies up, into the sun...gets between Danny and the sun...blots out the sun...
Danny thinks, 'How did it get to be so dark? Oh, no, I must've fallen asleep. Oh, cripes, I'm late, then...'
But it's okay. Danny hears his mother's voice: 'Son, where were you? We've been looking everywhere. And look at your hair, it's all mussed. You'll scare the old ladies, Danny boy...Come on home, supper's ready.'
Danny jumps up from the bench, and runs to hug his mother, glad to be found, glad to be so mildly scolded, glad to be going home...
Especially when his best friend, Buddy the golden retriever, comes bounding up to lick his hand, and walk him the rest of the way.
It was the Beach Patrol who came upon the old man sitting still on the bench.
He looked as if he were sleeping, his face turned toward the sun, a half-smile on his weathered face.
While they waited for the ambulance (although he was obviously dead), and the formalities, and hoped they wouldn't be the ones to call his family, one said to the other, 'Well, it looks like he had a good innings, old geezer like that. Must've been eighty, if he was a day.'
The other nodded. 'Yeah, good when they go quietly like that. But man oh man, I hope I never live to be that old. Must be hell.
The other agreed. 'Live fast, die young, that's my motto.'
In the late-afternoon sun, a big blue butterfly floated past, with barely a flutter of its wings.
