“I eh-j-just don’t think this is—e-eh, as easy as you, eh, think it’s g-going to be.” Porky tilted his head at Daffy, who had just outlined his plans for the Archives—getting the shelves organized, coming up with a proper labeling system, and recording audio files of all the statements they had received, not to mention doing supplementary research to files Research had abandoned as unfinished or unanswerable, or in many cases not worth their attention because they didn’t relate to a specific project. Wile E had given him a thorough, perhaps unnecessarily detailed, rundown of the way the Institute worked that had honestly bored all of them, but had at least answered a few questions.
“Thure it ith!” Daffy said dismissively. “Look, I’ll thhow you. We’ll thart with thith one.” As he spoke, he strode over to the nearest shelf, studied it for no more than a split second, and grabbed a folder that was sticking out further than the others, on the grounds that it would almost certainly be the easiest one to claim.
It wasn’t. As soon as he pulled the paper loose, there was a rumble, followed by a noise somewhere between a crash and a WHUMPH, and Daffy found himself borne to the floor under a truly ludicrous pile of paper that never would have fit on a single shelf in normal circumstances. Pages flew everywhere, dust rose in a cloud, and Daffy only just managed to hold onto the folder.
He forced his head out through the top of the pile and found himself staring directly at Porky’s feet. Looking up at him with a glare, he said, distinctly, “Not. One. Word.”
“Eh-n-n-not at all, eh-Si-Sir,” Porky said sweetly.
Eventually, with his assistants’ help, Daffy was able to crawl out of the pile of documents and get to his feet. Tweety sighed despondently as he stared at the papers. “We’ww have to make suwe aww of dese awe in the wight owdew.”
“Well, then, time’th a-wathting,” Daffy said briskly.
Porky swallowed down on his annoyance. He knew how this was going to work. Daffy would tell the three of them to “get to it,” then disappear into his office, and when Bugs came down here next—and he definitely would, probably before the end of day to see how Daffy was getting on—he would take all the credit for it.
To his surprise, however, Daffy set the folder on a nearby desk and bent down to gather some of the folders. “Come on. Let’th thee if there’th anything on the documentht themthelvethe that identifieth them ath part of the thame thatement, and if not, we can go from there.” He flipped a piece of paper over and snapped his fingers. “Bingo! They’ve got a name and date printed in the top right corner of each page, tho we can match thothe up. Shouldn’t take uth all day to get thith pile thorted.”
It was…surprisingly competent for Daffy, and he was putting in a surprising amount of work. Even when they’d done Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters, when the script had called for them to ostensibly be colleagues in the same office, he’d mostly answered the phone and ordered the rest of them about. Porky hadn’t expected him to actually be helpful, but then, he rarely interacted with Daffy outside of acting jobs. They’d lived on opposite ends of Toon Town and run in different social circles, Daffy being more the outgoing type and Porky preferring solitary activities like fishing or walks through the hills. This was a new side of Daffy, one he’d never seen in script or person.
He was cautious about accepting it as the real Daffy, but he’d take it for now.
As Daffy had—surprisingly—correctly predicted, they were able to get the whole pile sorted out by lunchtime. Daffy seemed frustrated by the fact that the folders were so out of order, but he told everyone to go get some lunch and be back in an hour.
Despite everything, Porky still found himself looking for a punch clock.
He went up to the company cafeteria and bought a sandwich, a bowl of soup, and a cup of tea, then sat down to eat. Once he was done, he felt loads better. He deposited his dishes in the receptacle for that purpose, then went back down to the Archives. Tweety arrived at about the same time he did, and they walked in together. He assumed they had beat Daffy back, but to his surprise, Daffy came out of the Archivist’s office—his office—with a pair of wire glasses on the end of his beak. Porky recognized them as the ones he had worn as the reporter Cluck Trent in “Stupor Duck”, albeit without the hat or collar and tie.
“All right, I know I thould have worn the deerthalker and Invernethth cape,” he said, catching Porky’s eye and adjusting the glasses. “Thethe jutht felt…right.”
Porky had to remember what Daffy was talking about. “Oh, the eh—eh, ‘D-Deduce You Say’?”
“That’th the one. Bugth told me that apartment ith thtill in my name, tho I ran there on lunch to drop off my thuitcathe.”
Wile E came skidding in a minute or two later, full of apologies and chagrin. Daffy glared at him, but didn’t say anything, which was something of a surprise to Porky. Instead, Daffy reached into a pocket and pulled out a small electronic device.
“I found thith in my apartment,” he explained. “It’th a voithe recorder. If we’re going to thtart recording thethe thatementth, we better get thartethd thooner rather than later, don’t you think?”
“You’we da boss,” Tweety said, muttered really.
“Right.” Daffy picked up one of the statements at random. “Let’th thee, let’th thee…ahem.” He clicked on the recorder. “Thtatement of…Nathan Wattth, regarding an…encounter on Old Fithmarket Clothe, Edinburgh. Original thtatement given…April twenty-thecond, two thouthand and twelve. Thtatement beginth.”
Daffy took a deep breath, dropped his eyes to the next line, and opened his mouth. What came out was a rapid string of gunfire that made both Wile E and Tweety flinch back and throw up their arms. He snapped his mouth shut, looking surprised, then opened it and tried again. This time it was a series of gibbon hoots that went on until he once again closed his mouth. A third time he opened his mouth, and this time what came out was a hollow cuckoo, cuckoo with a metallic chiming behind it before he closed it once again.
Porky expected rage, frustration, any number of extreme reactions. Instead, Daffy carefully laid the statement and the voice recorder down and pressed the OFF button.
“Hm,” he said calmly. “That wath…odd.”
“Odd,” Porky agreed. “Eh-su-su-sure.”
Daffy picked up the statement and recorder and tried again. This time he only got out a single shrill peep before he gave in. His brows met in frustration. “I didn’t know Chuck Joneth wath animating thith one,” he muttered.
Porky glanced down at himself. “I d—I d—I d—I-I don’t eh-luh luh luh—l-look like this when, eh, wh-when Chuck’s in charge.”
Tweety frowned. “I tawt Chuck onwy did one of my cawtoons.”
Wile E glanced down at himself, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to; they all knew it had been hard to tell who else had animated him, since Chuck Jones had done it first and for so long. Still, the rest of them…
Daffy sighed. “Well. Let me try…thith one.” He grabbed another statement at random and held it up. “Thtatement of Peter Allan, regarding a thet of unuthual chethth pietheth…”
This one went through without a hitch, which was surprising. The only real annoyance, as far as Porky was concerned, was that it was a particularly sibilant statement, with a lot of S’s for Daffy to lisp his way through. He’d almost have preferred the animal noises.
About a minute in, Wile E silently passed him an umbrella.
When the statement came to an end, Daffy took a deep breath and clicked off the recorder. “Well, that one workth, anyway. Let’th try that firtht one again.” He picked up the first statement once more and began. “Thtatement of Nathan Wattth, regarding an encounter on Old Fithhmarket Clothe, Edinburgh. Original thtatement given April twenty-thecond, two thouthand and twelve. Thtatement beginth.”
This time what came out of his mouth was akin to an air raid siren, the loud, keening wail Porky hadn’t heard in almost seventy years. He clapped his hands over his ears, for all the good it did. To Daffy’s credit, he shut his mouth immediately and turned off the recorder.
“I don’t tink dat’s going to wowk,” Tweety said, staring at the recorder.
“It works for some of them, but not for others.” Wile E picked up the one that had recorded correctly. “Curious. I wonder what the distinction is between the two?”
Daffy sighed in evident frustration. “I don’t know, but whatever it ith, we’d better figure out how to fixth it. I told Bugth we were going to make recordingth of all thethe thtatementh, and if we can’t get thome of them onto the recorderth, we’d better have an alternative.”
Tweety frowned, but didn’t say anything. Porky glanced at him, then decided to be the one to speak up. “I-I noticed a, uh, a t-tape recorder in one of the d-drawers earlier. Eh-m-m-maybe we can, uh, record on, on th-that.”
Daffy snapped his fingers, brightening as he turned to look into the Archives. “Thay, I’ve got a brilliant idea! Why don’t we try to record the oneth that won’t work on the voithe recorder on a tape recorder inthtead? There mutht be one in the Archiveth thomewhere.”
“Eh-b-b—brilliant, sir,” Porky said with a forced smile, exchanging a look with Tweety.
Behind Daffy—even though he didn’t need to, since the Road Runner wasn’t anywhere nearby—Wile E held up a white wooden sign with black writing scrawled on its face: MAYBE THIS IS A CHUCK JONES CARTOON AFTER ALL.
It was a few days before Porky managed to find what he was looking for.
Daffy had decided, or at least decreed, that they would try to do some supplemental research before he tried recording anything again, so the first week of them all being in the Archives had been spent dividing up files, spreading out tasks, and making phone calls. Lots and lots of making phone calls. Porky didn’t mind making phone calls on a show, usually, but actually making them in real life? It was a lot harder to make the calls when his stutter was an actual disability and not a running joke.
Still, he persevered. He turned out to have a better gift for the computer research than the other two, anyway, so he let Wile E and Tweety make the phone calls and talk to people in person while he dug through files and hacked into records.
But they had a stack that were ready to record, so Daffy wanted the tape recorder in case he came across any more awkward ones. They weren’t even sure it was going to work, but they were going to try. Porky was the only one around, and after all he’d been the one to mention it, so here he was, digging through the filing cabinets. Tweety, only a few feet away, was dragging papers over to the stapler and jumping on it to staple them together.
“Eh-w-w—what are you d-doing?” Porky asked, pausing in his work.
“Stapwing.” Tweety slammed the stapler down for emphasis. “Daffy was getting annoyed wit aww the papews evewywhewe, so I’m cowwating and stapwing them. What are you doing?”
“Eh-l-l, eh-l-l, eh-l-looking for the tape recorder,” Porky replied. “I eh-kn-kn-know it’s around here eh-s-somewhere.”
“I tawt I taw it in dis dwawew.” Tweety yanked on a drawer with all his might and pulled it open, then dove in and came out triumphantly, clutching a reel-to-reel tape recorder of the kind they’d used in their oldest of cartoons. “I did! I did taw it in dis dwawew!”
Porky took it from Tweety before he hurt himself and poked it. It began spooling, so it obviously worked. “Eh-th-th-thanks, Tweety.”
“Weww, go on, den,” Tweety said dryly. “Daffy’s waiting fow it.”
“Eh…he can w-wait a little longer.” Porky stared at the recorder.
“Gweat!” Tweety dropped a stapler into his hands; startled, he caught it. “Thanks fow vowunteewing to hewp me.”
“I g-g-guess I owe you.” Porky shuffled a stack of papers and stapled it.
For a while, they worked in silence. At last, however, Porky asked, “Any w-w-word from , eh, G-Granny?”
Tweety paused for a moment, then said softly, “No. Nothing. It’s been months, she should have been in touch by now.”
“Do you, eh, d-do you think something, eh, h-happened to her?”
“I can’t imagine what couwd have happened to hew. You can’t huwt a Toon, and she’s Dwanny.” Tweety viciously stapled the latest pack and dragged it back to the folder. “She must have come up with some ovew way to quit.”
Porky was quiet for a moment before he said, “Are, eh, a-are you okay with this?”
Another vicious staple. “Why wouwdn’t I be?”
“Oh, c-c-come on, Tweety. We both eh-kn, eh-kn, eh-know you’d make a better Archivist than Daffy.”
“Bugs must not have tawt so,” Tweety said bitterly.
Porky snorted. “Eh-B, eh-B, eh-B—Bugs just wants eh-Di, eh-Di, eh—Daffy to be under his, eh, c-control.”
“You tink so?”
“I kn-know so. Bugs Bunny has n-never ceded the starring role in his eh-l, eh-l, eh-l-life,” Porky pointed out. “Not unless he, uh, g-gets to be the t—uh, tormentor. I should kn-know. He’s got some eh-p-p-plan to make his life eh-m, eh-m, eh-m, eh-m, eh—eh, hell.”
Tweety sighed. “Dis nevew wouwd have happened if Bob Cwampett was stiww in chawge.”