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The Cart
James held his breath and poked the shovel one more time into the pile of manure. He did not know how one horse could produce so much dung and he did not see why he had to clear it up when it was not even his horse.
“I can ride my bike faster than any horse,” he had said, when his father first proposed the idea, “and I don’t have to feed it or clean up after it.”
His father had thought he was smart, beating the oil shortage by buying a horse – nag more like. James had been the butt of jokes at school for weeks until the girls started coming round to pet the horse and the boys realised that the best way to impress the girls was to claim to be able to ride the horse. Riding had lasted one week until the fourth boy fell off and James’ father had stopped them from riding.
“The horse is for transport,” he said, “so we must train it to pull the cart.”
The cart. That was another object of ridicule: a converted trailer with a sports canopy on top.
“We have to work with the materials we have,” his father had explained, “and your mother can hardly go grocery shopping or take your sister to school on a bicycle.”
James was so embarrassed the first time his father took the cart out that he had spent the day at home rather than let anybody he knew see his father riding around on the contraption. But that had been two months ago and he did not worry so much about appearances any more because their lives had changed so much, and all because of the oil ban.
He had never really thought about how much gas the old car used, nor where it all came from, although he had been aware of the prices creeping steadily upwards and his parents’ worries. When they told him he would have to give up baseball because they could not longer afford to drive to the games he was furious and sulked for a week, arguing each time the car was taken out that the journey was not as important as his baseball game but gradually all his friends gave up their sports and activities too. The lucky people who had electric cars had been able to keep driving for a few more weeks but then the government banned the recharging of cars and overnight all means of transport other than public trams were banned, and even they were rationed by a very selective coupon system.
That was when James noticed how far it was to everywhere, even on his bike. Riding the half hour to the skate park had never seemed a chore before, but now it was half an hour on his bike to the library, to school, to almost anywhere he wanted to go, and of course he had to carry his stuff with him. The smart kids had bought bike panniers when the crisis started but by the time James thought of that the store had sold out and of course with no new goods coming into the country there was a shortage of everything.
His mother still taught at the elementary school, although the number of students was declining each week as more and more kids stayed at home to help with finding food and work. His father had given up his job in the city once he could no longer get there on a daily basis and was now stuck at home, trying out this crazy scheme of using a horse and wagon as a taxi service, and he, James had to clean up the taxi poop.
It was just not fair.
Colours
“What does the colour red make you think of?” asked the teacher, looking around the class.
Several short stubby hands shot up in the air.
“My Dad’s car,” said a little boy in the front row, “it goes really fast but I’m not allowed to sit in the front because it has a hair bag.”
“Air bag, silly!” said another little boy.
“Why?” asked a child at the far end of the group.
“Because it will chop off your head,” said the second little boy, making a chopping motion across his throat with his hand.
“Okay, that’s enough now,” said the teacher, “let’s hear from somebody else. She pointed to a girl on her left.
“Valentines,” the little girl giggled.
“Valentines, yes,” agreed the teacher, “any more?”
“Lisa’s boots!”
Suggestions and comments came from all over the room.
“Apples!”
“Apples are green!”
“Not red ones.”
“John’s sweater!”
“The table in the corner!”
“The box in my bedroom!”
“What about you Liam?” The teacher turned to a boy sitting on the edge of the group who had not said anything yet, “what does the colour red make you think of?”
“Thursday.”
The class giggled.
“I’m sorry Liam,” said the teacher, “what did you say?”
“Thursday,” Liam repeated, even more quietly. He hugged his knees and looked down at his shoe laces. They were brown and curly, special elastic ones that were easy to do up and hard to lose, but they did not match his shoes, which were a lighter brown, and that bothered him. He could hear the class laughing around him; rather, at him, but he did not care.
Liam closed his eyes and thought of red. The soft, gentle, almost rose like red that was Thursday. The harsh, brash red that was A, the deeper red that represented 4, or 40, or 400, and sometimes 4,000 except that because 4,000 had so many zeros it sometimes came out as whitish, like the zero itself.
White. That was January, the cold month. Mrs Hadman had put up a big yellow poster on the wall with January at the top. Liam could not bear to look at it. Yellow was wrong. Yellow was for June, and July, warm summer months, and for Wednesday, and for –
“Liam!”
Mrs. Hadman’s voice brought him back to earth. She was standing next to him with some paper in her hand.
“Liam, please pay attention. We’re starting the colour journal and I would like you to draw some pictures of things you know are red. Real things, things you can touch and see.”
Liam sighed. Thursday was real, wasn’t it? He had to come to school on Thursdays so it must be real. He picked up his red pencil and looked at it. Yup, it was real. Carefully he drew a big line on his paper, then another, and another and another. Underneath, he wrote a big, red “4”.
Poor Mrs. Hadman, he thought, she just can’t see properly.
The Greatest Poverty is the Poverty of the Mind
“The Greatest Poverty is the Poverty of the Mind,” read Jonas from the board.
“What sort of a title is that?”
“It’s a reflection, something to think about, and to write on,” replied his teacher, “I’d like an essay from each of you on the subject by Monday.”
The class grumbled as usual and packed up their books, eager to be out of the hot school, and off to weekend pursuits.
“That’s dumb,” said Jonas to his friend Matt, as they strolled down the dusty road, “How can you have a poor mind?”
Matt chuckled.
“Well, I’d say you have a pretty poor mind when it comes to math! Ouch!” Max dodged out of the way of Jonas’ fist, and ran off up the road towards his house, yelling taunting comments all the way.
Jonas made a face at his departing friend, then sighed and trudged home, wishing he could have something easy for homework, like building a model of Mars or something.
Dropping his backpack inside the door Jonas went in search of something to eat.
“Hey, Mum,” he asked, slathering jam on a piece of bread, “what’s the greatest poverty?”
“Hm?” asked Jonas’ mother, who was paying bills at the computer, “what’s that?”
“The greatest poverty?” repeated Jonas.
“Why, not having enough money to cover your expenses, like food, and heating, and the mortgage, and all your clothes and shoes and hockey gear,” answered his mother.
Jonas nodded. That is what he had thought too, but he did not think his teacher was after that sort of a reply. Leaving the kife stuck in the jam he wiped his sticky fingers on his jeans and wandered into the next room. His father had just finished an early shift and was relaxing in front of the TV, drink in one hand, remote in the other.
“Hi, Dad,” said Jonas.
“Hello son,” said his father.
“Dad, what do you think is the worst kind of poverty?”
“Poverty? Is that what you’re asking about?” Jonas’ father was only half listening, his eyes glued to a TV game.
“Poverty is where you don’t have as much as the guy next door, or the rich crooks that run everything. The government is always talking about poverty, and people being below the poverty line. If they carry on wasting our tax money like this we’ll all be below the poverty line.”
He flicked the channel, muttering, “nothing good on TV anymore.”
Jonas gave his father a high five and wandered out of the room. His sister was in the office, giggling on the phone while she typed furiously on the computer, keeping up two conversations at once. Jonas mouthed at her that he wanted some help.
“What?” she took the phone away from her ear and covered the mouthpiece with her hand.
“Poverty,” said Jonas, “what-”
“Oh no, you don’t,” answered his sister loudly, “you borrowed ten bucks from me last week and you haven’t paid it back yet, so nothing doing.”
“I meant–,” Jonas began, but it was no use, she wasn’t listening.
Jonas gave up and went to his room. He picked up his Game Boy and played a few rounds of his latest game. It was too easy: he had already beaten the level several times. He wondered what it would be like not to have all the things they had, like a house and a TV and a car. Different, he supposed. Like some of those people they saw on TV sometimes, the ones who only lived in houses made of sticks. He remembered seeing some people who had had to leave their home, or lost it for some reason, he could not remember. They must be really poor. Surely that must be the worst thing. Maybe their school got washed away too; Jonas wished his school could be washed away.
After a while Jonas got up and wandered downstairs again. His grandmother had turned up, and was sitting at the table with a cup of tea, talking to his mother, who was rushing around, only half listening. His father was asleep in front of the TV.
“Jonas, there you are,” said his mother, “I have to go and take these papers to the office. Will you sit with Nana?”
“Don’t mind me,” said his grandmother, “off you go, I’ll be here when you get back,” and she smiled at Jonas as the kitchen door banged behind his mother.
“What’s up? Hard day at school?” Jonas’ grandmother could always tell when somebody was bothered.
“I have to write about poverty,” Jonas said, pulling out a chair and sitting at the table.
“Ah, not easy, is it?”
“No.”
“What kind of poverty?”
Jonas looked up. “What do you mean?”
“What exactly do you have to write?”
“The greatest poverty is the poverty of the mind,” recited Jonas.
His grandmother closed her eyes and thought for a bit.
“Hope,” she said.
“Hope what?” Jonas asked, “hope I don’t have to do it? Hope I’ll get an A?”
“Hope,” repeated his grandmother. “What happens when you don’t have hope?”
“Um, then I guess everything looks pretty bad.”
“Exactly. That’s the greatest poverty. If you don’t have hope, you can’t imagine that things will get better; you have nothing left to live for. No matter what you’re missing, or what you’ve lost, if you have hope, then you’re not poor.”
“Oh,” said Jonas, “what about the people who have no food, or no house?”
“They can still hope, they can still dream,” said his grandmother, “so long as they can imagine a future, they can work to make it a better one. But once you give up hope, you have nothing.”
Jonas nodded. He thought he understood.
“Thanks, Nana,” he patted her hand, “you’ve been a great help.”
First Poem
The first poem I wrote from randomly selected words
Song
Rivers
Divine
Storm
Winter
Curtain
Constellations
Rain, rain, rain,
Trickling, dropping, gushing.
Rain is like a song,
Nature’s divine song.
Little droplets flying to earth
Create a heavenly curtain,
Then join the rippling rivers
And seep back into the ground.
But look up in the midst of the storm
In the cold and wet of winter:
See the lights glinting off each tiny drop,
As new constellations are born.
The Waiting Room
Anna pushed open the door and stepped into the waiting room. The buzz and chatter died down while those assembled inside turned their heads towards her, the newcomer. Their curiosity satisfied, they resumed their mumblings and moaning, and Anna was able to creep to an empty seat, where she shrunk down, hugging her knees to her body, trying to become invisible.
She hadn’t wanted to come. Somehow it was like admitting defeat to come here, to wait in this room, hoping. She looked around her and wondered if she looked like the other people: they had a sort of desperate air about them, as if they had nothing to lose.
In the corner an old lady sat, mumbling to herself. Her head was nodding, like one of those plastic dogs people used to put in the back of their cars. Anna watched, fascinated, while the old lady’s head nodded around all the way to the right, until she was staring at the wall. The head paused, then began the journey back again, nod, nod, nod, all the way. Anna caught the lady’s eye on the return journey, and smiled, in what she hoped was a reassuring way but the woman just stared right through her with barely a pause in the nodding.
The chair next to Anna was unoccupied, but there was a newspaper lying across it. Anna reached out a hand to move the newspaper and a man in a chair on the other side of it frowned at her.
“Do you mind?” he said, in a voice that showed he minded very much, “I am reading that.” Anna pulled her hand back.
At the far end of the room a door opened and a woman in a white coat came through, carrying a clipboard. She looked around the waiting room and called loudly, “Mrs Pierce?”
Opposite Anna a lady stood up. Anna could tell from her clothes that she was quite wealthy, and she moved with an air of disdain, as though everyone else in the room were beneath her. Anna wondered what she was doing there: she did not look as if she belonged.
The designer clothes were swallowed up by the door and the room sunk into torpor again. A small baby mewled and its mother tried to hush it but the baby cried even louder and the mother looked around the room, apologizing silently for the disturbance. An older girl took some toys from a chest and banged them noisily on the floor. A couple of women deep in conversation looked over at the toddler and frowned, then resumed their discussion.
Anna wanted to jump up and scream, she was so nervous, but she knew she should not. Maybe, if she were lucky…. She wondered how the lady with the fancy clothes was getting on behind the closed door. People with money always got what they wanted, but maybe money did not count here. Anna watched a young boy of about her own age sitting with his mother who was fussing about his appearance. She fixed his collar, wiped some flecks off his jacket, then produced a comb and tried to comb his hair; the boy pushed her away irritably.
Anna hugged her knees again and stared at the clock on the wall. The jerky movements of the thinnest hand marked out the passage of seconds that stretched into minutes. Anna was able to shut out the murmurings of the waiting room as she focused on the moving pointer. Tick, tick, tick. It seemed an eternity. Nod, nod, nod; in the corner the old lady’s head moved in time to the clock.
The door at the far end of the room opened again, and this time it was the young boy’s turn. His mother followed him to the door, straightening his clothes all the way.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t come in,” said the woman in the white coat. The boy’s mother looked as if she would have a fit on the spot.
“But I’m his mother,” she spluttered, “I have to be there!”
“I’m sorry,” clipboard lady repeated, “but it’s not allowed.” She turned, propelling the boy before her and shut the door, leaving the boy’s mother gaping.
Rejected, the mother shut her mouth and looked around the waiting room, as if looking for somebody to blame. Her eyes settled on the young mother, who had just succeeded in getting her baby to sleep.
“Don’t think you’ll be allowed in, just because your children are babies,” hissed the boy’s mother. The little girl, who had been playing with the pots from the toy chest looked up indignantly.
“I’m not a baby,” she said loudly. The real baby woke up and began to cry. Its mother hushed it and looked daggers at the other woman.
Anna wondered if it would be better to have somebody with you. At least they would be a comforting presence. Still, the boy can’t have had too many problems as the clipboard lady was back again, this time taking one of the talking ladies with her. The hubbub that had started up when the baby cried died down now that the remaining gossiper had nobody left to talk to. The clock ticked, the old woman nodded and Mr Newspaper Man folded and unfolded his paper, hitting it occasionally to keep it straight, all the time making sure that some pages were left on the chairs at each side of him, warding off strangers.
A young lady entered the waiting room and once again the noise died down, while the occupants appraised the new arrival. She looked nervous and avoided looking anybody in the eye. This meant she did not get a seat, as Mr Newspaper Man did not offer to remove his papers and there were no other seats left. Anna wondered whether she should give up her seat, then decided everybody would look at her if she did and she would die of shame, so she wrapped her hands even more tightly around her knees and tried again to become invisible.
Anna must have dozed off, for she jumped when she heard her name being called.
“Annabella,” the lady with the clipboard repeated it, louder.
Anna uncoiled herself and stood up. Mr Newspaper Man was gone, and Timid Lady was sitting in one of the vacated chairs. The only other person still in the room was the nodding crone, still keeping time with the clock.
Anna followed the lady with the clipboard down a long dark passageway until they came to a large well lit room with a long table down the centre. On one side of the table were four people, three men and a lady, all wearing identical white coats while on the other side was a single chair. Anna was directed to this chair and told to sit down. “Why are you here?” asked one of the men in the white coats.
Anna took a deep breath to study her nerves then spoke.
“I want to be an angel,” she said. “I drowned in my Dad’s swimming pool and the person who brought me here said I could have one wish before I move into the eternity room.” She looked down at her feet and spoke very quietly. “I want to become a guardian angel and look after my little brother so that my mother doesn’t lose him too: she thinks it’s her fault that I am here, because she let me go to my Dad’s house, but it’s really my fault. I didn’t listen when Dad told me not to dive in the shallow end, then I hit my head and everything went black.”
The three men scribbled on paper in front of them. The lady just stared at Anna, without any emotion on her face. Anna waited to hear the verdict, but could not take her eyes off the lady’s face. She stared and stared, as if trying to bore a hole through Anna’s eyes. Anna squirmed and tried to hug her legs again but could not move her arms. She felt as if a great weight were bearing down on her, crushing her mind.
“I’m sorry!” shouted Anna, “I didn’t mean to!”
She hugged her knees, rolled into a ball and rocked herself, trying to avoid the penetrating stare. Her head hurt, and she could hardly breathe. The three men finished writing and tapped their pencils on the table. Tap, tap, tap, louder and louder, until it became a pounding that reverberated through her chest. Anna wished desperately that one of them would say something, anything.
She felt herself slide off the chair, and the room swam before her eyes. Now the three men were staring at her and the lady was holding the pencil, only it was not a pencil, it was a light, and she was shining it in Anna’s eyes.
Anna blinked and the men began to speak excitedly. She could not understand what they were saying, but she could recognise one of the voices. It was her father’s.
“It’s a miracle,” he said, “she’s alive!”
A Shimmering Image
It was the smell that did it. Just a faint hint of grass and heathers, but it was enough to trigger the memories; memories she did not even know she had. She had felt restless for the past few days. Something was urging her to go, to leave this place and travel north. Now she knew she must find that smell once more; it was important.
She turned her head northwards and began the journey. Others around her were moving too. Perhaps they had remembered a smell of a grass or a rock or maybe they were imagining the days of their youth. Gentle, carefree days spent splashing in ponds and streams, with no worries of the future. She wondered idly how far she would have to travel. It would not matter; she was strong and had stored up plenty of food. Winter was coming and it would be good to be away before the temperature dropped.
Day after day she ploughed on. She fell into a rhythm and no longer thought about the effort. Her companions changed over the weeks but a few stayed constant. She had memories of one or two of them from games long ago when they were young and carefree, but she was shy and did not catch their eyes, although from time to time she was conscious of a large shape following her like a shadow. He did not come too close and after a while she began to think of him as her protector.
And they did need protection. They were attacked more than once and had to scurry for cover and hurry to get away from their assailants. After a while she realized that it was safer to travel with company so she kept close to her one time playmates and accepted the attention of her shadow.
It was tiring. Day after day, night after night, moving ever northwards. She felt herself grow weary and more than once caught herself thinking how easy it would be to sink into a gentle sleep; to just slip away and drift into oblivion. But then she remembered the smell and thought if she could just smell that heather and play in that rock pool one more time she would be content.
The journey became tougher. At first the way had been flat but after a while she found herself struggling uphill, making her way round obstacles, leaping over rocks and even backtracking on occasion. All the time her companion kept pace with her, encouraging her silently. It became harder to breathe; it felt different somehow. She slowed down, to adjust, and as she slowly breathed in the smell came back to her again. Even the light was familiar. She could remember the sunlight flickering through the heathers, the glinting of the water rippling over the stones. She was nearly home.
Would it have changed after so much time, she wondered, would she recognize it? She herself had changed. She was bigger now and different somehow. She looked across at her companion, struggling to keep up; he was different too, and the strain of the journey was showing. She must not give up, not now that she was so close.
At last she saw it. The pool she remembered from so long ago. And the smell; it was just as she had imagined. She stopped, taking time to savour the scene. The old tree was still there, its branches drooping down to the ground. She remembered hiding among the roots during a game of chase. The stepping stones had moved, but then they moved often. They seemed smaller, in fact the whole pool seemed smaller, or maybe it was she that was bigger. It was all so confusing and she was so tired.
Slowly she sank down onto the stones. With the last of her energy she dug a small hole and deposited her precious burden that she had carried all the way, back to her home. She was vaguely aware of her companion moving back and forth over her treasure. He must be helping to keep it safe.
And there was that smell again. Now she knew she was truly home, back where she belonged. She felt weak. She knew she did not have long to live, but at least she had made it home to her family, to the place she had been born. She did not move much more. She was content to watch the sunlight rippling upon the water and smell the heathers and the rocks. It was so very beautiful. One day her children would learn to love this place too and they would know the smell of home, as had her mother in her time.
The salmon gave one last flutter and was still. Her journey was over.
100 word sentence
An assignment from a lecture series I watched a while ago was to create a 100 word sentence, to demonstrate that long sentences can build tension and be interesting. So here are my first three attempts.
With a cigarette clamped firmly between his teeth, a red scarf tied around his neck and his blue and white striped shirt, the gondolier, an image from the classic Italian tourist postcard, poled effortlessly along the winding waterways of the Grand Canal, pausing between each stroke to shout some historical, or, more often, anecdotal fact about the houses or glass factories slipping past on either side, all the time deftly maneuvering the gondola past barges laden with industrial goods and over the wake of faster craft buzzing about their business, slipping silently under the endless succession of bridges or pontes, which link the many piazzas and churches of Venice.
(109 words)
With his cutlass clamped tightly between his teeth and two primed pistols tucked into his waist the pirate vaulted from the forecastle, avoiding the sword fight that was engaging most of the crew and scaled the rigging like a monkey, hand over hand, pulling himself up to the topmost spar and heaving the terrified lookout from the crow’s nest, barely pausing before launching himself on a rope across the deck, swinging like a pendulum over the heads of the struggling soldiers, from where he was able to pick off the ringleaders, one by one, with a few carefully aimed shots.
(100 words)
The sun rose slowly, majestically, almost unnoticed, sending out fingers of light, tentative at first, soft pink hues as if testing the terrain and then longer, more definite rays, broken only by puffs of clouds, which reached to the farthest corner of the meadow, turning each blade of grass and each leaf a brilliant green, where once they had appeared black and sombre, and dispatching the morning dew into a gentle mist that rose to the heavens in the endless cycle of water and cloud.
(85 words)
The Coach
Julie parked the car and walked slowly over to the field where a dozen little girls were practicing swings and pitches. At the side of the field a group of parents were chatting, while a dog sniffed enthusiastically at their feet.
“Mum, watch!”
A young white clad figure threw a ball across the field then turned and beamed at Julie.
“Great work, Megan!” The coach’s deep voice carried on the warm evening air. Julie unfolded her chair and sat in a patch of sunlight, grateful to relax after a busy day. She did not feel like making conversation with the other parents, and in any case, she knew nothing about baseball. She closed her eyes and listened to the evening sounds.
The thwack of the bat as it hit the ball. The shouts of the girls, exhorting their team mates to run. The hum of the traffic in the distance. The murmuring of the other parents. And above it all the instructions from the coach: seemingly meaningless phrases, which lulled her off to sleep.
“Here’s a list of the game times.”
“Huh?” Julie sat up with a start and opened her eyes. The coach was standing in front of her, holding out a piece of paper.
“Sorry I woke you; you looked comfortable there,” he smiled and handed her the paper.
Julie’s heart did a flip and an unexpected tingle of excitement pulsed inside her.
“Oh, yes, sorry, ah, thank you!” she stammered all at once. What had happened? She felt breathless, and she had not even moved. She glanced at the coach, who was distributing the schedule to the other parents, and felt her chest tense.
Not again. Not another crush. And surely not her daughter’s coach!
Julie sighed and looked away. This was the third time in as many years that she had developed a sudden infatuation for a person she barely knew. She must be craving attention, or a relationship, or something.
She had had several crushes before Megan was born: flighty imaginings, but then parenthood had struck, and she found herself thrown into the world of small children, play groups and other parents. At first she had missed her job, and tried to imagine she was not really part of the group, but after a few years and another child, she had accepted the situation and settled to a routine life of her children’s school and activities.
Then, three years ago, the flutterings had started again, taking her completely by surprise.
The first time, it had been the assistant at the liquor store. He had not even said anything, merely smiled as Julie paid for her purchase, and she was hooked. She had begun browsing the wine shelves, taking up to half an hour at times to select a single bottle, watching the man out of the corner of her eye, sometimes summoning the courage to ask for a recommendation. Once she had collected a dozen empties to return, as another excuse for a visit, but then she decided this gave the wrong impression.
That craze had lasted almost four months. Then one day, she noticed her idol had pierced his ears and was wearing large metal rings in his lobes. Julie didn’t have anything against earrings, but her image had been shattered. In a peevish way she felt she should have been consulted, even though she had never spoken to the man, other than to discuss the merits of one red wine versus another. In the end, she had been relieved to get that craze over with, although she still had nineteen unopened bottles of various wines at home.
Then she had met Jenny.
Jenny was a volunteer at the Thrift store. She was highly efficient and perpetually cheerful. Julie began volunteering at the Thrift store too. She had not minded the work; in fact, she had actually rather enjoyed sorting through the clothes and other bric-a-brac. She had followed Jenny around for five weeks, hanging on her every word, admiring her efficiency, basking in her smile. Julie had worn similar skirts, hummed the same tunes, emulating her hero in every action.
It was not a sexual attraction; Julie was not that sort of person. She and Mike had been married now for almost twelve years and there had never been anybody else; and certainly not a woman. No, it was more an aspiration, to be a perfect person, as she believed Jenny to be.
The Jenny phase ended one day after Julie had put in an extra long shift at the store, pricing kitchenware, and had been forgotten at the staff party held at the end of the day; abandoned amongst the boxes in the back room, whilst Jenny and the other volunteers drank punch and ate cookies in the front.
Julie sighed, stood up and looked over at the coach who had finished handing out the schedules and was talking to the last parent. What was his name? Brendan?
Me, me! Come and talk to me! Julie felt the irrational thought process grip her, as her eyes willed the coach to turn around and look at her again. She felt like a teenager, crazed with hormones, and took a deep breath.
“Come on, Mum, the practice is over!”
A little hand tugging at her arm brought her back to earth. Perhaps these crazes were a longing, for what might have been, or just an escape from her daily chores. With a last wistful look at the coach’s broad back, Julie folded her chair and walked with her daughter to the car.
It was going to be an interesting baseball season.
A Gift As Yet Unopened
Tracy helped her mother into the car and wrapped a blanket around her legs, placing the worn brown purse where her mother could see it.
“Where are we going?” asked the old lady, looking out the window.
“We’re going to visit Bob and his family.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Who’s Bob?”
“Bob is my brother,” Tracy said.
She could have added ‘and your son, whom you raised and looked after for twenty-three years; who was the favourite, blue-eyed boy,’ but she did not. She was beyond that stage now.
At first, Tracy and Bob had teased their mother about her memory. The car keys were always going missing and she could never find her glasses, but nor can most people over 50. But then it began to get worse. One day, her mother walked to the post box without shoes on and could not remember why she had gone out in the first place. Another day, Tracy came to visit to find her mother making tea; half the packet lay strewn all over the floor and the kettle was nearly boiled dry, but it was the sight of her mother counting out sugar lumps into the sink that made her realise that something was not right.
“Alzheimer’s disease,” they said. Nothing to be done.
“I’m not putting Mum into one of those homes,” Tracy said, “I’ll look after her myself.”
“Are you sure?” said Bob, “it would be so much easier, and if we sell her house she could afford to be looked after in a home. They know how to deal with this stuff.”
But Tracy was adamant. So her mother moved in with Tracy and her husband Matthew and their daughter.
“Grandma can read to us every day!” said Elizabeth.
But Grandma soon tired of reading, and forgot who Elizabeth was, so the little girl withdrew into her world of play.
“Grandma’s getting old, dear,” said Tracy, “and old people like to sleep a lot. They forget things because they have so many memories to look after. They have memories of when they were little children, just like you, running around with their friends, having tea parties, and all the things little girls did back in those days. Grandma has memories of getting married and having her own children and of course she has memories of you.”
But those memories were fading, disappearing from the old lady’s head until soon she was just a shell, a total stranger. It was hard for Tracy, having to show her mother how to button the same sweater over and over. Having to check her room to make sure she did not leave forgotten food lying around for the cats and the spiders to find. Having to start every morning with, “hello, I’m Tracy; I’m going to bring you breakfast.”
“I don’t know why you don’t just move her out,” said Bob, after lunch that afternoon, when their mother had fallen asleep on the porch, “she’d never know the difference; she doesn’t even recognise us anyway.”
But Tracy just shook her head.
“I can’t do that, not to Mum. She looked after us when we were sick, when we were grouchy and ungrateful. She came to nearly all my dance recitals and all of your soccer games. She went back to work so that we could have extra money for vacations after Dad died. She was there for me when Elizabeth was born. No, Bob, we owe her so much, I have to do this for her.”
“But she doesn’t even know what’s going on – you’re throwing your life away and she’ll never notice. Get on with the future, Tracy.”
A single tear rolled down Tracy’s cheek as she looked over at her mother’s shrunken form huddled under the blankets. Beyond, in the garden, Elizabeth and her cousins chased each other round the maple tree, whooping like savages. She sighed. Bob was right; she was putting all her energy into her mother, who was totally unresponsive, at the expense of her own family. What was it somebody had told her once?
“The debts we owe our parents we repay to our children.”
But in her case it was different. Her mother had become a child again. It did not matter that her mother would never know the love that Tracy was showing to her; the important thing was in the giving.
I Am a Gravedigger
“I’m a gravedigger,” the man said, “not a murderer.”
He looked across the table at me with eyes blazing out of his rugged face and gripped the arms of his chair with such intensity that I thought his fingers would snap. I looked down at my notes.
“Um, Mr Wright; Mr Albert Wright, isn’t it?” I asked, “did you know that for the last few years the death rate has been on the increase in this town?”
“Well naturally,” replied Albert, “everybody’s getting older at the same rate, so it stands to reason that sooner or later people are going to start dropping off the other end of the lifeline, if you see what I mean.”
“Didn’t you think it was odd that the faster you dug graves, the faster people ‘dropped off’ as you put it?”
Albert scowled at me and leaned across the table.
“Look, if you’re saying that I killed anybody just to put them in a grave I’d dug you’re crazy. Why would I want to do that?”
The questioning had been going on for several hours now, and all that we had uncovered was circumstantial evidence. There was no doubt that more citizens had died over the last three years than in the previous ten. However, none of the deaths had appeared suspicious at the time. The strange thing was that many of them appeared to have little or no family left so it was difficult to get the full details of the cases.
I shuffled some papers in front of me and decided to try another line of questioning.
“How much do you get paid per grave, Mr Wright?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
“And do you know how much families are charged for each grave?
“Er, well, Charley handles the payments,” said Albert.
“Did you know that Charley asks five hundred dollars for each new grave?”
He shook his head.
“Rather a lot of money for a hole in the ground, don’t you think?”
“Hey mister,” Albert looked up and thumped his hand on the table, “have you any idea how hard it is to dig down six feet into the hard, packed earth? I earn every penny of that money.”
“Have you ever opened up an old grave?”
The man put his head on one side, as if considering this question.
“Well, it depends if they’re family or not. Sometimes family like to be buried next to each other so we make a hole side by side with the first grave.”
“And do you charge the same for opening up an old grave?”
“Like I said, Charley does the money.”
Albert shifted in his chair and looked around the room. The light from the window caught the top of his head and the dust and earth from his hair appeared magnified as if in a spotlight. His elbows poked through the holes in his sleeves and mud spatters dotted his trouser legs. He did not look like a rich man.
“Do you remember when the work started to be busier?” I asked.
“Yes, it was two years ago, about the time that the big discount store was bringing in their Christmas stock. I remember because Charley told me there might be extra work on the gravedigging and I told him that I had to work longer shifts moving the boxes in the store room and that maybe he should get another person to dig a few graves.”
“And what did Charley say to that?”
“He said no, that he’d wait for me.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“I suppose he meant that he’d wait until I’d finished my stacking shift before calling on me to dig.”
“I see. And when did you dig the graves?”
“Well we dug them during the day at first, but then Charley explained that it would be cooler to dig them at night so we started digging at night.”
“Didn’t you think it was odd to dig a grave at night?” I asked.
“Well no, you see I had just finished my shift stacking the shelves and Charley said it would be better to go straight to digging so that I could get all my work done in one go. I liked that because then I could go home and sleep.”
He looked as if he could do with some sleep right now.
“How many graves do you normally dig a night?”
“Three or four. It depends.”
“And didn’t you think it strange that so many people were dying in this small town?”
Albert slammed his fist down on the table again.
“Look, I already told you, I’m a gravedigger, not a murderer! I don’t get paid to think about people dying – that’s your job. I get paid to dig, and I ain’t done nothing wrong.”
He was right. He had not done anything wrong. He was just the poor old middle man, paid $200 a time to dig as many graves as he could during the night. Charley was the one who made the profits. Charley was the one who charged the grieving families for the graves, reselling the same one sometimes over and over. Charley was the one who sped up the flow of customers by poisoning the water in the hospital and the two nursing homes. Charley was the one who buried coffins full of drugs in the extra graves that he paid Albert to dig. Charley was the one who paid Albert to dig up those coffins so that a family member could be laid to rest next to the supply of cocaine – after it had been moved on, of course.
Oh, I knew all about Charley. I had been investigating him for almost three years now. There was nothing I did not know about Charley and his operations. There was only one problem.
Charley had been murdered the night before.
A Penguin Comes to Tea 