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“Are we poor, Poppa?”
The question surprised Fulton, coming out of nowhere and from such a normally cheerful beak as his chick’s.
“Why would you think that?” he asked in a warm tone.
“I don’t know…”
Archimedes’ face and tone expressed the same amount of worry as he sat in his chair at the kitchen table, staring at his empty dinner plate after a simple meal of white bread, a boiled hot dog and some ketchup. Homework sat in a stack to the side, having been completed long before dinner, and a stack of bills twice as tall was placed adjacent to it. The chick’s eyes shifted between what lay on the table, then to his father’s face.
“We’ll be fine, Bulby. It’s not something to worry over.”
Fulton decided to give a reassuring smile and get back to his own dinner. After one bite however, he sensed Archimedes’ eyes still on him, and he leaned his elbow on the table, looking his boy in the eyes.
“Do you want to tell me why you’re worried about that?”
The little chick tugged slightly at the corners of his shorts, then mumbled, “Well, some kids at school said that this is the part of town that only poor people live in…”
“Lots of people live in this part of town,” Fulton assured, “and they’re all different. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Do they all get their shirts from the clothes drive?” Archimedes countered, almost ashamed.
Fulton felt his heart break slightly as he watched the other run his fingers on the hem of his imperfect shirt. In spite of his efforts to give his chick nothing but a happy and carefree childhood, he should have expected for the rest of the world to make it a little more difficult.
Before he could answer, Archimedes spoke again.
“How come all my toys are made? Everyone else buys them from the store.”
A small smile curled on Fulton’s beak, and he gave a soft chuckle. “Why, that’s not a troubling thing at all! Just think about it: all those kids have dime-a-dozen toys that get made in a factory and get broken too easily, but you have one-of-a-kind toys made by your Poppa’s own two hands, and they’ll never be broken for long because he can always fix them for you!”
The answer seemed to cheer up his little one, and while the smile was still there, he decided to add, “And you know, Bulby? Lots of people, rich and poor, go to clothes drives. I bet half those kids at school do. I know Scrooge McDuck does. Your grandfather did too as a boy.”
The surprised smile on the chick’s face was short-lived as he looked at his hands. “...Why does Grandpa have more money than us?”
That wasn’t a question Fulton was expecting at all, and it wasn’t something he was too keen on answering.
“He’s been around much longer than I have.” Fulton shrugged, hoping it was a good enough answer.
Archimedes looked down at his lap, not at all convinced by it.
Fulton sighed. He didn’t want to get into the details of why things were so complicated between him and his own father. He didn’t want to tell him about how Ratchet virtually deemed him a disgrace to the family for marrying a woman he disapproved of and refusing to financially or emotionally help his son out when said wife walked out on him weeks before their egg hatched. And he certainly didn’t want to get into how he resisted against the fact that his grandson was not his granddaughter anymore and kept “forgetting” that his name was Archimedes now.
His eyes lit with a wise spark, and he smiled as he placed a hand across the table, reaching for his randomly placed jar of buttons.
“Let me explain it like this,” he began, pouring a few buttons out onto the table, and stacked a few, “your grandfather and Scrooge McDuck both have lots of money that makes them rich. And that’s fine and dandy for them!”
He gestured to the stack of three buttons, but then began to stack a taller tower of the buttons. “But what they have in money, I have double in experiences...in happy memories...and in caring for you. Nothing that makes me rich in life has ever come from money.” Fulton held up a tiny black button and playfully pressed it against Archimedes’ beak.
While the chick gave a soft giggle, Fulton decided to clear the buttons away. “So no...I don’t think we’re poor. Not when we’re rich in happiness and family, yes?”
“...Yeah.”
Archimedes smiled softly and hopped from his seat to hug his father. Fulton kept the conversation in the distant back of his mind for the rest of the evening, only left to his thoughts when his son was in bed sound asleep after a nightly bedtime reading of Jules Verne.
Sadly, he wouldn’t be able to sleep much that night. He had to get going to work another shift at the lab again until 5 in the morning, where he would then come home in time to get his dear Bulby up in time for school, sleep for a few hours, then go back to the lab to work. Archimedes smiled as he waved goodbye to his father before heading to school, hardly noticing the bags under Fulton’s eyes. He decided he didn’t mind the secondhand clothes or the simple dinners. He still had the greatest Poppa in the world.