Sketching:

This semester I am taking ENAM 0170 -- Writing: Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, the introductory creative writing workshop, which affords me the opportunity to write creatively, something I haven't officially done (although perhaps some of the entries on this blog could qualify) since 9th grade. After two weeks, it is both a pleasure and a challenge, and I look forward to cranking out some good material in the coming months. Our first assignment was to write a brief character sketch. Being swamped with work only a week into the semester, I wrote mine in the hour and a half before class on the day it was due. While I wish that I had taken the chance to further develop things before handing it in, I was actually quite pleased with the final product:

A kid spotted him on the way to school. He was leaned up against the side of a tree, everything all around him, and he held up traffic all morning. I was late getting there because of an issue with my transportation – the chain had come off again, and I discovered one tire was flat once I got out on the road – so he was gone by the time I arrived. They’d left everything else for me to sort through, to identify, catalog, and interpret, and as I caught by breath, swearing at the traffic that still clogged the main road and that had almost killed me as I tried to cross the street, that is exactly what I did.

There was still tape around the scene, and after nodding to one of the other officers, I ducked under. It marked off a blast radius. Things were strewn everywhere. His pack, leaned up against the tree where he had been. His bike, off to one side, dropped in the grass like he had jumped off in motion. The remnants of a fire, and in the ashes, the remnants of a book.

I set to work tagging, bagging, and cataloging each item, which would take a while given the circumstances. I hoped that I could be finished before the afternoon, as recent tree work had obliterated what little shade there had been, and as soon as the sun got high enough, I’d be cooked. Why do they make us wear these stupid jackets?

First item: the bag, tattered, sun-bleached, and empty, like a poolside retiree, at the end of its line. The bike, better than mine, chain in good condition, bright blue, with some spots of rust, and two full tires but the back brake out of commission. I couldn’t bag the bike, but I had to report on it anyway. The contents of the bag had been emptied and strewn about the ground, arranged nearly, given the circumstances, like they had been on sale. Two t-shirts, one red, faded, and smelling of sweat, the other, a pale gray, reading, Charlie’s Chicken ‘n’ Things. I wondered where he got that, and then saw that the address was printed on the other side. Georgia. The shirt was worn, but you could tell that it was still pretty new. He had just worn it a lot. Three pairs of socks, one with holes, two without, one of which was surprisingly clean. A camp stove, plus matches – one book, one box, eight matches in all – and little bits of charred paper, on which one could make out a few words, in jagged handwriting. It was worse than mine. I always wondered how the lab even dealt with my reports.

Three books, one I’d read, one I hadn’t, and one I couldn’t remember. I’d have checked the plot on the last one, but he had been slowly cannibalizing the pages for the fire, and my search for a logical conclusion revealed nothing more than scraps of words and incomplete sentences. If I had gotten there sooner, I could have at least known how it ended.

Another shirt, thrown in the bushes, that I had missed before. Striped, with holes, like old wallpaper. An apple, half eaten, a sack of rice, three pieces of white bread, crumbs, a few crackers, and an empty jar of peanut butter. I was pretty hungry. In my rush to fix the chain, pump up the tire, and avoid getting hit by traffic, I’d completely forgotten to eat. Two plastic containers of pudding, a few carrots, and unpopped microwave popcorn. I bagged all the food individually, just to see what they said. Three slices of bread, three bags. The rice, split among at least seven, the crumbs in another, and the pudding, poured out into one bag that I knew would explode everywhere if I jumped on it. Evidence. I thought about making lunch, and passing the bags off as my own, but I knew that would never hold up. I hate peanut butter.

An Allen wrench, an extra tube, duct tape, and a Swiss army knife. I opened each of its parts. I counted them, thought about writing the number down in my book, and realized it wasn’t important. Who cared how many things it could do? It’s a Swiss army knife, after all – the rest of the things are insignificant. I wondered about how many people had actually found occasion to use the fish scaler or the compass, and then I dropped it in the bag. The knife, as well as two of the three screwdrivers, hit the side of the bag, tearing a hole, and the whole thing fell out on the ground in front of me.

I looked around, embarrassed, but the mid-morning traffic was clearing up, and no one had noticed. Even if they did, what would they care? One guy, two bikes, a couple bits of food, some dog eared books, and a Swiss army knife, scaler, screwdriver, compass, toothpick, wine opener, scissors, tweezers, and at least three other things I couldn’t begin to know what to do with. I put it in my pocket.

I puttered around a bit more, kicking a few more odd items off to the side. I climbed the tree, just high enough to reach the bare spot where they had cut out all the branches, and sat in the sun for a while. It was 11:00. From this spot, all of his possessions looked just as random, and my meticulous bagging of everything had only enhanced the perception of a yard sale. As the cars passed by on the main road, I thought about the people in all of them, and what things they might have, and if they’d be willing to let me bag, tag, and catalogue them. They probably wouldn’t.

At the intersection, one car ran a red light, and another had to swerve not to hit it. At least three people honked. I climbed out onto one of the branches, balancing precariously as it shifted under my weight, and jumped down, two feet onto the bag of pudding. It splattered everywhere.

Investigators later in the day would discover a pudding blast radius of nearly twenty feet. It stuck to the tree, bits of it landed in the grass, and the rest completely coated everything I had put in bags. It was a good marker of my presence. He had tried, well enough, leaving his things strewn about the ground and a headfull of blood on the lower branches of the tree, but they took care of that when they took him and the gun away. They took the gun, bagged, tagged, and catalogued it, and then did the same to him. Evidence.

The sun was high enough in the sky that the entire scene was bathed in light, and squinting in the bright sunshine, I checked my bearings on the Swiss army compass, we traded bikes, and peddled into traffic.

I'll keep updating as my work progresses. Perhaps I'll parlay this into a longer story at some point -- stay tuned.