Visualization+and+Inferring

= Workshop: Visualization and Inferring = = =



=**THE SCAR** = = = =by Ralph Fletcher =

=I’m playing war = =With six of my friends, = =Using sticks for guns = =Arguing over who’s dead = =Who’s only wounded = =Who can die the best = =When the door opens = =And Grandpa walks out = =Wearing no shirt. = =We see the scar = =On his back. He got it = =In a real war. = =Nobody says anything = =But after he passes by = =<span style="color: #008000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We start a different game. = = =

=<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 160%; text-align: center;">The Custodian = = = =<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The job would get boring if you didn’t mix it up a little. Like this woman in 14-A, the nurses called her the mockingbird, start any song and this old lady would sing it through. Couldn’t speak, couldn’t eat a lick of solid food, but she sang like a house on fire. So for a kick, I would go in there with my mop and such, prop the door open with the bucket, and set her going. She was best at the songs you’d sing with a group—”Oh Susanna,” campfire stuff. Any kind of Christmas song worked good too, and it always cracked up the nurses if I could get her into “Let It Snow” during a heat spell. We’d try to make her to take up a song from the radio or some of the old songs with cursing in them, but she would never go for those. Although once I had her do “How Dry I Am” while Nurse Winchell fussed with the catheter. = = = =<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Yesterday, her daughter or maybe granddaughter comes in while 14-A and I were part ways into “Auld Lang Syne” and the daughter says “oh oh oh” like she had interrupted scintillating conversation and then she takes a long look at 14-A lying there in the gurney with her eyes shut and her curled-up hands, taking a cup of kindness yet. And the daughter looks at me the way a girl does at the end of an old movie and she says “my god,” says “you’re an angel,” and now I can’t do it anymore, can hardly step into her room. =

= = =<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;">Brian Hinshaw Best Short Story of 1996 =

= = =Student self-assessment:=