Allie Hazelwood

My professor gave me a picture and a character trait, and asked me to write a one page characterization for this pictured person. This is the picture I got, and the characterization I wrote.

            

Allie Hazelwood looked like -- well, he didn’t really look like much. No more than a glance’s worth, at most. He was a plain boy from a plain family, if you could call it a family. The good Lord had taken his daddy and all his addictions and beatings away some years ago, and his mother worked her fingers down to the bone to put what little food there was on the table. It’s only to be expected that Allie, though just nine years old himself, was basically raising his little baby brother.

            Allie took little Brody Hazelwood by the hand. “C’mon Bobo, we gotta go feed Shelly”, he mumbled as he grabbed a bucket of dry food and a bucket of water and they headed out the back door. Shelly was a boxer-y mix of pit-bull and poverty. Her chain hung loosely from her scrawny neck as she stood in her favorite spot on top of her rickety doghouse. For some reason or another, she fancied eating and sleeping up there rather than on the dead dry dirt pit she was confined to.

            Water spilled out of the bucket a bit as Allie sat it down. He looked up at the sun, high in the sky, and held his breath for a minute. Momma would be home soon enough, and he hadn’t even gotten half his chores done yet. “Bobo, make sure Shelly’s water gets in that there dish for me”, he almost begged his little brother. Brody went about trying to fulfill his duties as best as he could manage, and Allie went back inside the house.

            His dirty, bare feet treaded hard on the aching and wheezing boards of their little wooden abode. There were few rooms in the house; he and his little brother slept in the room farthest back down the hall, by the woodstove, so they could stay warm through the night. He sat down at his little rickety desk and opened the lowest drawer. He grinned shyly has he pulled out a small bowl full of nearly lifeless dandelion weeds. He had spent all morning picking the flowers in the highest hopes that it might make his Momma smile when she got home.

            Allie took the bowl into the kitchenette area of the dusty little house, sat it gently on the table where she was sure to notice it, and walked back outside to finish the day’s chores.      

Author's Note

What do you think of this, in general? It's for a grade, and I'd like to know how I could improve. BTW, click on the picture at the top left to see it.