From: el27166@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (This Space for Rent)
Subject: STORY: The Digger
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 20:34:30 GMT

This is a story I wrote for a creative writing class.  We didn't have
enough time to discuss it.  Please reply with any suggestions or comments
by email to: el27166@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu.  This is also my first post to
this newsgroup, so please notify me of any special technicalities or
standards I should be aware of.

Thank you.  I hope you enjoy the story.
Eu-Ming Lee
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				 The Digger

     Carl's glasses were flecked with drops of rain.  The dirt looked glassy

and oily to Carl.  He crouched down carefully and grabbed a handful of the

loose black dirt.  It was cool and moist to the touch.  He clenched his fist

tighter and could feel the sandy grains rubbing against his palm.  He looked

down into the hole.  Glassy beads of rain dotted the smooth mahogony.  A

large droplet plopped inside of his glasses and his vision blurred.


     Carl was digging.  The sand was cool and gritty.  He kept thrusting his

fingers deeper and deeper into the hole.  As the hole got deeper, the sides

of the hole got taller, and the sand kept falling in.  But Carl just dug

faster to keep up with the loose grains.

     "What're you doing?" she asked.  Carl stopped his digging for moment

and looked up at her.  She wore a puckered pout on her face.  Her large

head was tilted to the left, as if one of her pigtails was too heavy.

She wrinkled her freckled nose, and Carl noticed that its skin was red

and peeling.  He shoved both hands deep into the coolness of the sandy

hole.

     "I'm digging," he said.

     "Can I play here?" she dropped her bucket next to Carl's mounds

of sand.  The small plastic shovel rattled inside the bucket when it

hit the sand.  It rolled to one side, and the shovel spilled out of the

bucket.

     Carl was pushing the sand up the sides of the hole.  Without looking

up, he could see the pink bucket lying on its side.  There was a faded

purple unicorn painted on it.  It was a girl's bucket.

     "No," said Carl sternly.  He continued shoving the sand up the slopes

of the hole, only to have it slide down moments later.

     "Please?" she pleaded.  Carl didn't have to look at her, but he knew

she was pouting in the way that little girls always did.

     "I said NO," Carl said loudly.  With his palms open and his fingers

fanned outward, Carl leaned heavily into a large mound of sand, bulldozing

it toward the pink bucket.  The sand rolled and buried the purple unicorn up to

its neck.  He got up from his knees and cocked his sandy hands into his hips.

     She was pouting, just as he had thought.  Her eyes were shiny with

wetness.  They were a rich hazel-brown, rosy chocolate peppered with specks

of coal dust.  Those eyes said something to him---  something more than her

little girl's pouty mouth.  He thought she might start to cry.  It surprised

him when suddenly the girly pout was replaced by a gummy smile.

     "I'll let you use my shovel?" she said in a soothing sing-songy

voice.  Carl pushed the bottom of his glasses with the back of his hand.

A few grains of sand dotted the lenses.  Carl wrinkled his nose.  He

took the little plastic shovel from the sand, knelt down in his hole, 

and continued digging.

     Suddenly she dropped her bottom onto the sand.  She wrenched the

half-buried pink bucket from the sand and promptly began filling it with

the sand from Carl's mounds.

     "I'm Missy.  Who're you?" she asked.

     "Mmm... Carl," he responded, a bit reluctantly.

     "Can I help, Carl?"

     "I guess."  Carl was digging deeper with the little plastic shovel.

He scooped the sand with the shovel and carefully emptied the scoops

outside of his hole.  The sand wasn't falling in anymore.

     The sand was very cool and slightly moist at that depth.  He saw

Missy filling the pink bucket with sand from the mounds.  She dumped the

loads a few feet away, forming a small mountain.  Without the sand from

the sides of the hole pouring in, Carl was able to make better progress.

Pretty soon, Carl had a hole deeper than he had ever dug before.

     "Look Missy," said Carl.  He was still kneeling, with his hands

resting on his knees.  Between his knees was a small dark patch.

     "What?"  Missy stood over the hole, trying to see what Carl had

found.  "Is it a fossil?"

     "No.  Just look."  Carl spread his knees a little wider.  Missy

stepped closer to the hole and caused a minor avalanche to slide down

the slope and bury the dark patch and Carl's knees.

     "Hey!  Watch out!"  Carl shouted.

     "I'm sorry!" she snapped back.

     Carl started digging with his hands again.  He groped for the little

shovel under the sand.  He pulled it from the sand and continued scooping

up the sand and emptying it outside of the hole.

     "What was it?" she asked.  She carefully seated herself beside the

mounds.

     "I think it was the bottom," replied Carl.

     "The bottom?"

     "Yeah.  The bottom of the sandbox."  Carl had unburied his knees and

was slowly revealing the dark patch again.

     "I've never seen the bottom of a sandbox before," said Missy.

     "Me neither," said Carl.  He was removing the last few scoops of sand

to reveal a shiny dark patch about the size of his hands.

     "Well, here it is!"  Carl rested his hands on his knees again.  Missy

leaned over without getting up and peeked into the hole.

     "Wow.  So that's the bottom," she said, genuinely impressed.

     "Yep.  That's the bottom," Carl repeated.  He touched it with his

fingers.  It was cool and moist, like the sand, but it had a greasy

texture to it.  

     "It's hard.  It's not packed sand."  Carl dug his fingernails

into it.  It was fleshy, not solid like rock.

     "I think it's clay," said Carl.

     "I've never seen black clay before," Missy commented.

     "It's like really hard clay.  It's not dirt."

     "Looks like dirt from here.  Looks wet."

     "It's not wet.  It's cool though."  Carl stood up.  Missy was sitting

near the edge of the hole.  Her knees were about level with Carl's shoulders.

     "How are you going to get out?" Missy asked.

     Suddenly, Carl scrambled up the sandy slope, causing major avalanches

to tumble onto the small shiny black spot at the bottom of the hole.  When

he finally reached the top, the hole was only half as deep as it had been.

Carl felt a coolness on his knees and butt.  He looked over his shoulder

and saw the sand clinging to the back of his damp jeans.  He patted the sand

from the seat of his pants.  Missy giggled and wrinkled her freckles.


     Carl sighed and tossed his fistful of dirt over the mahogony.  The

wind caught the dirt and scattered it as it fell.  The bouquet of roses

and irises were freckled with dark spots of dirt.  Some of the dirt sucked

up the glassy beads of rain from the smooth mahogony.  Carl clapped the

dirt from his hands.  With the back of his index finger, he pressed his

glasses up onto his nose and wiped the moistness away from his cheek.
-- 
Eu-Ming Lee (aka CyberGeek)                      el27166@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
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