A Makeshift Burial (A Draft)

Two children, one boy and one girl, are on the verge of being late for school. What hijinks will ensue?

He turned around, in the way he usually did, to make sure that she, Rosemary Crane, was still following him. And as usual she had trailed off behind him, trapped in her own head. She had a personality quirk that forced her to, wherever she went and no matter how often she had been there, let every miniscule and unimportant detail filter through her eyes in wonderment. He found it impossible for him to get into her head space. They had been friends all of their lives, grown up next door neighbors, but there was still a sense of foreignness about her, some mental wall that no matter what did not allow him to relate. Honestly he had a hard time inserting and inhabiting anybody else’s world " whether they wanted him to or not.

            “Could you maybe hurry up a little bit?”

            “Could you maybe not walk so fast?” she said back to him.

            “I like to be prepared and in my seat well before class begins.”

            “As long as I’m in class before they collect the homework I don’t care.”

            “You don’t really care do you?”

            “Not at all.”

            He paused. “Whatever. Lets just keep walking.”

            It was autumn and the trees had turned. When the wind would some of leaves would fall, creating an almost cliche shower of red and yellows faintly falling. He turned around to look to make sure she was following him still. She wasn’t. She was squatted down staring at the grass a few sidewalk squares behind. He walked over to her and saw her arched over a motionless baby bird.

            “Poor little guy,” she said.

            “Yeah, yeah. Poor little guy. C’mon we need to get going?”

“He was probably pushed out to fly before he was ready.”

“Seriously.”

“Calm down. We’ll get there. We’ve never been late before and we won’t be today either.”

“No we’re not. Not if you keep stopping to look at every dead puff-ball that you find on the street.”

She ignored him and went to go pick up a small rock that was lying by her feet and shifting a bare patch of dirt. She was right though. In all the times that they had walked to school together they had never been officially late, but there had been some close calls.

“What are you doing?” the boy asked.

“I’m going to give him a proper burial.”

“Do you really have to do that?”

“Why not?”

“Probably because he’s a bird. Birds die all of the time and you never see anyone else burying them. Do you bury every dead thing you see?”

“No,” she said “but I want to this time.”

He couldn’t believe her. Here they were a few minutes away from being late and she wanted to stop and bury some stupid bird that was too stupid to know how to fly when Mama Bird pushed him out of the nest. If he couldn’t do what all birds were supposed to do, and if its mom didn’t care enough about it, then why should they, why should he, care about it?

“So are you just going to stand there, or would you like to come help me?”

He just stood there. He could feel himself dissolving into a puddle of nerves, stomach twisting and curling, heart on the verge of ripping through his chest. He could imagine the look in the teacher’s eyes, the stabbing disappointment, the complete disappointment that would be solely directed at him.

She had finished digging out the burial plot for the bird. She gently placed the rock off to the side. She looked and found two yellow leaves that had fallen from their trees earlier that all the rest. Reverently she scooped up the baby bird, cradling him between the two leaves. Slowly and assured her hands glided to the makeshift crypt that she had for him, and gently placed him within. She shifted the dirt that she had removed and placed it back to its original spot, patting it down to make it even with the area around it. To someone who had not know what had happened nothing would have looked out of place.

When she got up he was gone. She hadn’t noticed him slip away. Hopefully he had made it there in time. She wouldn’t. She would walk into class, the teacher would reprimand her, maybe she would make up some worthwhile excuse of why she was late, maybe she wouldn’t. If the teacher was having a bad day they would give her detention. Maybe they would request that the principal call her parents. They would be mad at her for a time, perhaps they would issue the typical punishment of grounding her. Then in a couple days in the typical way they would think she learned her lesson, or maybe they would just feel bad, and they would spring her from her cage. And when she got out things would be the same. She would go one just like before, nothing would change.

Author's Note

This is the first draft for a fiction assignment. I'm only posting it here in its unfinished form because I wonder if I could get some critique from the Writer's Cafe Community on how to make it better? Also longer. The page requirement is 6 pages. I only have 3.

Personally, I wanted this story to be understated and subtle and simple. I wanted to avoid any backstory, as so to let the reader draw their own conclusions, opinions, or thoughts about the characters/situation. I only wanted to give you enough to infer some things. This mission to create something sparse has caused me to have less pages then normal. I could always write something else, but I would really to expand upon this idea. And thats why I turn to ya'll. Thanks in advance to all of you who comment or even read this. I really appreciate it.


P.S - If someone could copy edit that would be really cool on their part and I would for sure return the favor many times over :)

P.P.S - I will not count this as one of the 52 works I intend to post because its unfinished and I only wish to get critiques on it. When I finish it I'll for sure repost it.

Reviews

[Bill Schultz]

This is what someone else had to say:

"You don't really care, do you?" "Not at all" is just confusing, why would he ask her that after what she said? And later you say they always do this every day when they walk to school, but the two line conversation they have at the beginnign suggests they are having this difficulty of hurrying her along for the first time. After she says she has to bury the bird, you mention that they are about to be late again, and I think that's too repetitive. Start that sentence with something else, like "He checked his watch...3 minutes till 9," or some simple phrase like that. You say "The scene lookedl iek nothign had changed since they arrived on it." I hate to pick on this, but it doesn't make sense to me; did it look different when the dead bird was there? Are you telling us the ground looked as if it had never been dug? The last paragraph is also out of place because you seem to get into the girl's mind and how she thinks it'll be eventually OK, but she has a really disporportionate idea baout how they'll punish her. I thoguht you might take this last paragraph that slips into her midn to show us how she sees the world around her and why she is daydreaming all teh time? It seems odd because the girl's perception of how she'll be punished for being her never comes up before. Perhaps you can even add a happy remark at the end to see how optimistic she is, and how she doesn't care about punishment, because she seems so disappointed in herself thta she is late they way you have it written. I'd like to add, though, that this is really good. Ever since you mentioned the yellow leaves I could just picture this story in a beautiful setting, and slipping into the boy's mind and then the girl's seems to work well, too, letting us know why the boy left even before he does.