Thicker (783 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.41 on 28 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by ghola (View user info) at 2007-09-24 12:18:12 EDT
So this is a revamp of something I already posted. I'd really appreciate honest feedback/criticism. Particulary in regards to a title.
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Momma sets the front yard on fire. We watch from inside the house, perched on the back of the sofa, bending the blinds so we can see the cloudy orange flames sucking up the lawn. The grass and weeds burn away until the ground is scorched black and staggering swirls of smoke curl up from the soot-stained earth.
Momma tells us it'll make the grass grow better, but we can't walk on it until it all grows back.
"But it's summer," my brother tells her.
"What're we sposed to do?" I ask.
She tosses her yard gloves in the trash.
"Be children," she says. "Entertain yourselves."
The next day she buys us our first pair of roller skates. They're shiny white, lace all the way up, and take me about twenty minutes to get on or off. I struggle with the cuffs and laces and clips that hold everything in place. The wheels are cheap and leave long black scratches on the driveway that smell like burnt wood.
My palms stay the color of raw ground beef, because I continually catch myself falling face forward. A mound of gravel catches my wheel or my laces come undone. I figure skinning my hands bloody is better than busting my face open. My brother skates around me backwards, daring me to do the same. I do and it results in my first sprain.
Momma drives me to town with my roller skates still on. They hang heavy from my legs and don't quite reach the floorboard, but the wheels spin round when she turns too quickly. She doesn't talk the whole ride and instead fiddles with the radio, changing the station before a song finishes.
"Can we listen to a tape?" my brother asks.
"Almost there," she says.
In the parking lot, she holds onto my arm, holds it too tightly so that it feels like my veins will explode beneath my skin. She drags me and I slide and fall again. One of my skate wheels catches her across the shin, she curses and I cry while she tries to pull me up off the ground. The sharp gravel digs into my leg and I try to wipe the dirt and sweat away.
The doctor, or someone that works at the doctor's office, finally comes outside and picks me up.
"You'll be fine," he tells me, as though there is some doubt in my mind, as though I think falls and scrapes and cuts are fatal.
My legs swing over his arms and my head is bowed so I won't have to look at Momma, who is furious and embarrassed that this stranger is carrying me inside. He carries me up the concrete stairs and my skates hit the glass door as we walk in, but don't hurt the glass.
I don't have to stay in the waiting room, but instead go to in a little room in the back of the office. They make my brother sit by himself in the big open room with all the sickies and old people. I sit on a funny shaped stool, covered in crinkly white paper while Momma paces the room, stopping every few seconds to stick her head into the hallway.
The doctor comes in after a few minutes. I can't tell if it's the same man or a different man. He says my pinky and ring fingers are sprained. He wraps some gauze around them both and gives me a sucker. That's all there is to it. Before we leave, Momma makes me take off my roller skates and my brother carries them to the car while I walk barefoot.
She yells the whole way home, except when we're waiting at the railroad crossing and then she stops to tell us about the time her car stalled on the tracks when she was pregnant with me. My brother was sitting in the passenger seat and she kept trying to crank the car while train got closer. She told my brother to get out and run across the street without stopping, but as soon as he opened his door, the engine turned over.
We cross the tracks and she starts yelling again. My brother stares out the window. I try to argue with her, but she swerves half-off the road and slaps me in the face, partway across my lips.
I'm back on those skates in a week.
I'm wearing them the day my brother finds the bird. I trip over a crack in the driveway and hunch over, smoothing away trickles of blood surfacing on my skinned knee
I hear my brother yelling.
"It's my knee," I yell back at him.
He skates away, up the lurching hill that slopes to the road and across the street.
"What are you doing?" I call after him, pushing myself off the ground, forgetting about my knee.
He is kneeling in the grass across the road when I get there. Encircled in his hands is the tiniest bird I ever saw, squeaking and writhing around. He scoops it up and I follow him back to the house. Momma guesses it is about a week old and was either pushed out of its nest or fell out.
"Please, can we keep it?" I ask, standing on my toes, trying to see into my brother's hands.
She glances at the bird and says, "It's probably sick."
Bubbles start to rise around the top of the sink and she cuts the water off. She fishes around beneath plates and bowls, so she could drag up dirty silverware to scrub.
"At least let us try," my brother says.
The bird strains to see over the edge of his cupped hands.
"Please, let's just keep it," I say.
"Not in the kitchen," she says.
We take it to my brother's room and put it underneath the window in the sunlight. I shut the door while my brother digs through the bottom of his closet, tossing jackets and belts onto his bed. He finds an old shoebox and says it'll make a good home for the bird. I shred up leaves and Kleenex to make it a comfortable bed.
We leave the bird inside and sit on the front porch, waiting to catch stray roly-polies or centipedes that might crawl by.
"What about the ones in the spider webs?" I ask, standing up.
He laughs at me. "Those are already poisoned. From the spiders, you know?"
"Oh."
I sit back down and scour the porch to find some bug I might have overlooked.
When we finally get a few roly-polies, the bird takes them right out of our hands and chirps at us. We feed it water with an eyedropper and it stretches its neck to almost twice its body length so it can gulp down the swaying drops. We try not to touch the bird, because it's so small, but I can't help wanting to hold it and stroke its feathers that are really more like soft downy fur.
"That'll kill it," my brother tells me.
"Momma says that's a myth," I say.
The next morning when we wake up, the little bird is dead. Croaked. Not moving, with white shit trailing out behind it. My brother doesn't tell me it is my fault.
We wait until Momma is taking a nap and then we carry the bird outside, in its shoebox. We walk down the driveway and along the edge of the road so we can get to the corner of the front yard without walking across it. It's mostly sandy-colored dirt. All the black crud has blown away or washed away.
My brother digs the hole and puts the shoebox in the ground. He shovels the dirt back in, packing it down hard with the head of the shovel.
"Damn it," he says. "We left the eyedropper inside."
"So?" I say.
"She'll know we were in the yard."
So he digs the box up and I get the eyedropper out.
"I think I want to keep the shoebox anyway," he says, tipping the box on its side so that he bird rolls out and plops into the hole.
"Just straight in the ground like that?" I ask.
"Straight in the ground," he says.
He refills the hole and gives the spot a few solid whacks with the shovel.
"Poor bird," I say.
"Bird's a bird," he answers.
We both go to bed early that night, because there isn't anything to do. We don't want to roller skate and Momma's watching a show on the television she says we are too young to watch.
The next morning my brother shakes me awake.
"Get dressed," he says. "And come outside."
I get up, change into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and brush my teeth, spitting swished-up toothpaste in the sink.
I go outside and find him sitting on the front porch, staring across the yard.
"What is it?"
"Look," he says, pointing to the corner of the yard, where we buried the bird.
It almost isn't noticeable. I probably wouldn't have seen it if he hadn't pointed it out, but there are a few tiny blades of grass pushing up through the dirt.
"So?" I say. "The grass was gonna grow back eventually."
"Only in that one spot?" he asks.
I look around the yard, squinting with my hand cupped over my brow to block the sun. He's right. The rest of the yard is bare.
We go inside and have breakfast, but I notice him going outside to check the spot periodically. Momma yells at him for going in and out so much.
"Either stay outside or quit opening the door," she says. "The power bill's high enough."
The next day the grass is taller. It's bright green and I can see it waving in the breeze. The day after that is worse. The stuff's starting to get thicker and I can see the splotchy green circle from my bedroom window.
"She's gonna see," my brother tells me, when we're both sitting in his bedroom.
"What difference does it make?" I ask, pulling myself underneath his desk and propping my feet on the edge of his chair.
He looks at the bedroom door like he expects it to open. Like he expects something to happen. Anything. Everything.
"She'll know we were in the yard," he says.
That night I hear his bedroom door creak open and a few seconds later I hear the front door close. I turn over to look out my window and there he is, walking toward that spot in the front yard with the shovel in his hand. He digs for a while and then kneels to prod the earth with his hands. He leans back and heaves something across the street. The bird. He heaved that dead bird across the road.
I pull the covers over my head and sleep that way until morning. My face is sweaty and my bangs are stuck to my forehead, all twisted and clumped together.
Over the next few days I notice the grass growing back in, lush and even, not patchy at all. Within weeks we're allowed to play in the yard. We still have to be careful. Momma says no football or soccer or anything where we'll dig our heels into the ground.
Our skates sit next to the carport, drenched by the rain and full of roaches, spiders and anything else that'll crawl out of the yard.
A few years later I get a pair of rollerblades for my birthday. My brother never gets a pair and I skate without him.
User Reviews
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2007-11-09 12:37:15 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-09-26 08:59:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Start being constructive to me. Please?
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2007-09-25 19:55:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I could only read about half of it for some reason, I'm assuming it's because I'm tired...because I enjoyed what I did read.
I don't know if you remember, but I hated the other version of this, I think I said it felt half-assed. I liked what I read of this one because it was simple, yet descriptive. I think someone said something about the character's pov changing from child to adult, I could why they would say that, but it didn't bother me much. I did like it more when you were telling the story more from a child's pov, though.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-09-25 11:06:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
HaHa... okay smartass...
I would use "Thicker" in conjuncture with another word that better sums up the piece in its essence. Maybe use some aliteration - I like aliteration.
"Tomorrow's Thicker"
"A Thicker Tale"
"Thicker Than That"
or
"A Thicker Summer"
"Scorched & Thicker"
"Thick With Family"
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-09-25 10:17:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
"He carries me up the concrete stairs and my skates hit the glass door as we walk in, but don't hurt the glass."
felt clumsy, maybe "..as we walk in. The glass isn't hurt, though." or something similar instead.
A bird that was one week old wouldn't have feathers or eat bugs for itself. A minor point, possibly something a child wouldn't know, but it's stated as fact not the child musing about how old the bird must be.
I really like your alliteration/assonance in your opening lines, it gives it a hypnotic, story-telling type feel which is a little creepy (but in a good way), especially creepy considering that your momma's burning the yard.
Title suggestion; Scorcher.
(I suck at titles.)
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-09-25 09:42:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
hahahaa
Submitted by ChaosJester (user info) at 2007-09-25 09:35:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Thinner
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-09-25 09:33:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
you'd think that since asked for title suggestions, one might assume i thought thicker didn't cut it.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-09-24 22:58:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I really dug the way you reworked this. I understand what you were going for. I do, however, agree with Inion that sometimes the "voice" seemed to switch from child to adult. You may wanna work on that. As for the title... I dunno. "Thicker" kinda works, but it doesn't seem to truly wrap up the esence of the piece.
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-09-24 16:11:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by triangle_man (user info) at 2007-09-24 16:04:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-09-24 15:46:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
it's tomorrow.
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it's the rest of my life, I hope
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-09-24 15:46:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
it's tomorrow.
Submitted by TechnoRatty (user info) at 2007-09-24 15:43:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
A nice read, I enjoyed it!!
Submitted by triangle_man (user info) at 2007-09-24 15:35:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I wish I could remember my childhood..
Or was this yesterday?
Submitted by DirtyHarry (user info) at 2007-09-24 15:08:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2007-09-24 14:56:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
The next day she buys us our first pair of roller skates. They're shiny white, lace all the way up, and take me about twenty minutes to get on or off.
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that line stuck out to me as wrong. it reads as if she bought one pair and gave it to them both. maybe first pair of rollerskates each or something. or, buys us each. needs the each.
there's a couple issues with tense. everything's in present tense and then there's a couple lines that are all of a sudden past tense. like "he heaved the bird". the line about "white shit" trailing also doesn't seem to follow the voice of the narrator. the rest is written like it's a child speaking, but the part about the finding a dead bird suddenly has one line written in adult. and then you get to the end and it's the same, one line written like an adult.
i like how it's written, but at the same time it's also choppy and i couldn't connect to the characters. the narrator seems incredibly disconnected to this story as well, like it's recitation and not remembering.
i also unfortunately can't tell what the point of it is but i don't read into things very well so that could be all on me if there's a metaphor or something that i don't understand.
Submitted by Lib (user info) at 2007-09-24 13:32:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Zampano (user info) at 2007-09-24 13:19:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by ChaosJester (user info) at 2007-09-24 13:17:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You seem to enjoy writing stories that follow an unconventional structure. What I mean is that, on the surface, your stories don't seem to follow a singular plot or overall theme. The more I think upon them though, I realize that you are probably striving to capture the apparent randomness that follows real-life events and how a series of seemingly unrelated occurances can build to an emotional and (usually) chilling climax.
...
High-brow enough for ya? Anyway, as to this story, it is much improved from the original. In particular, I liked the phrase "The bird strains to see over the edge of his cupped hands". Giving the bird some semblance of personality really makes it's death far more important to the story than before.
However, I've got to say that the bit at the end sort of confused me. Were you trying to suggest that zombie birdie was making the grass grow or were you simply trying to demonstrate the brothers mounting fear and paranoia via random happenstance?
Also, Mommy's a total bitch.
Over all, well done. Not really my style, but I enjoyed this nonetheless.
Submitted by MudWhistle (user info) at 2007-09-24 13:09:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
while written well I must say that things like this are usually written as a part of therapy because if your idea was to grip or intrigue the reader...it failed.
just kind of a boring story
oh and you never had a pair of skates before but you knew they were cheap wheels? perhaps all skate wheels leave marks on the pavement.
title wise...works fine I suppose but it's hard to even get my mind into what would be a good title because frankly it was just kind of boring.
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2007-09-24 13:06:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I saw the title "Thicker" and immediately the phrase "HONEYPIE" came to mind. :p
Sexual innuendo aside, though, this was well written.
Submitted by jamowilly40 (user info) at 2007-09-24 13:05:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
I've read it now and I think this is complete trash.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-09-24 12:58:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i 've read it now and I think this is greatly improved.
Submitted by orphelia (user info) at 2007-09-24 12:44:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I thought it was written beautifully.
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2007-09-24 12:42:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Perhaps I just missed the point of it, or it was just over my head, but I couldn't really tell what the focus of the story was. Was it the bird and grass, or was it the skates?
Without knowing that, it's hard to determine a suitable title for it.
Are you trying to make things symbolize other things that I'm missing?
I guess this could translate to: Eh?
Not tryin to be a dick, just trying to give honest feedback.
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2007-09-24 12:29:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Title it "CANASTA!".
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-09-24 12:21:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-09-24 11:52:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-09-24 11:46:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'd love to learn to pole dance.
Happy Birthday.
need a pole?
Submitted by ShapeShifter (user info) at 2007-09-24 12:20:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Title should be "Jam My Clam With Tabasco and Habanero Peppers" ...just a thought.