Lola half challenged me
to write the story using the remaining five words... and you know I love
a challenge.
Dolphin
Undertaker
Envelope
Chisel
Satellite
The title is from one
of my favourite Billy Bragg songs “New England” - ‘I saw two shooting stars
last night/ I wished on them, but they were only satellites/ is it wrong to
wish on space hardware?... I wish, I wish, I wish you’d care.
984 words
Is
it wrong to wish on space hardware?
The risk to human life or property
was very small, the TV said as twenty-six pieces of satellite broke into space
junk and entered the atmosphere. They had debris trackers but couldn’t warn
people until twenty-five minutes before it hit. So much for advanced
technology. They could put it up there but couldn’t get it back down.
It was a freak accident. Everyone
said that. As if by saying how rare it was would make his daughter less dead?
He was an undertaker. He dealt
with death every day but even his brilliant skills of facial reconstruction were
defeated. A useless lump of space flotsam that had fallen inexorably to earth
after its batteries had gone flat and it had served the fleetingly short term
of its unnatural life.
Space junk.
At least rubbish at sea washed
gently ashore, it didn’t fall on ten year old girls waiting at the bus stop.
Was it flotsam or jetsam? He could
never remember the difference. And he was annoyed that he was even thinking
about it. It was just junk.
She was what was important.
He wouldn’t allow interviews no
matter how long they hung outside his home shoving cameras and microphones in
his face. Someone had given them a shot of her in her school uniform but they
stopped showing it after a while; it was just too tragic to see her bright
smile and her pig tails held high and tight with the dolphin clips.
He insisted on preparing her body
himself. He was determined that not a single part of the foreign object would
go to her grave with her, even if he had to chisel the molten metal from her
bones. He was hammering away when he heard the news bulletin on the TV. He had
put on her favourite soap opera for her, the one set at the beach resort in
Australia but they interrupted with a breaking news report.
The news anchor breathlessly relayed
that there had been another victim of the satellite crash, a dolphin at the water
park. It had survived. This allowed them to be happy about the news. Some good
news at last. They had the human interest angle now.
He stared at the screen.
A dolphin?
How odd. She had been reading a
book on dolphins and had been listening to them ‘talk’ on her iPod. That was
why she hadn’t noticed the meteor shower. She was obsessed with them.
He wrote the trainer’s name on the
back of an envelope.
His wife had died years ago and he
stood alone at the funeral. For some reason he kept the chisel and the envelope
in his pocket. He kept touching them gently during the service.
Afterwards he found it hard to
continue his work. Touching other bodies felt wrong. Disloyal. He shut the funeral
home, packed a small bag and took a train to the coast.
They had been to the waterpark
before, of course they had. Every single school holiday if he could take the
time. He wished they had come more often, but death didn’t wait. He knew that. He
had always felt honoured to help others into the next world, now he wasn’t so
sure that it existed; not if freak accidents happened to innocent girls.
He asked at the office if he could
speak to the trainer. They explained that she was very busy today. He explained
who he was.
“Oh,” said the lady at the
counter. “I’ll call her for you.”
He waited nervously, clutching the
envelope and wondering what he was doing there.
She looked tired; more tired than
she had on the news. “He’s not well,” she said.
She took him to the pool.
He knew what a healthy dolphin looked
like and this one swam listlessly.
“What’s his name?” he asked.
“Cha-cha.” She shrugged. “It’s not
very dignified, but they have a naming competition and the park owners chose
that.”
“How old is he?”
“He’s ten. That’s quite old for a
captive dolphin. They live much longer in the wild.”
“Ten.” It was just too coincidental.
“My daughter was ten.”
“I noticed that.”
“That seems… significant.”
“Yes.”
He came back the next day. He brought
her lunch. He didn’t think she was looking after herself. They talked. She was
the first person he had talked to about himself in years. They felt joined by
the tragedy.
He couldn’t remember who suggested
it, that Cha-cha would probably be happier in the wild.
They exchanged a weighted look.
It took a couple of days to
organise. He rented a horse trailer. She had keys to the enclosure. “It’ll cost
me my job,” she said.
He just nodded.
The dolphins trusted her and they
seemed to know what they were doing. They were silent. The chisel propped the gate
open. The dolphin had lost weight but still weighed 150 kilograms. He threw
himself onto a rubber sheet when she asked him to. They dragged him onto a flat
trolley and then rolled it up ramps into the trailer. Buckets of water poured
over him kept his skin wet.
They reversed the procedure at the
beach. A couple of surfers helped. It had taken much longer than they planned
and the sun was rising by the time they got Cha-cha into the water. He ate some
fish out of their hands and then he swam away. He wasn’t listless now.
It made the news.
They stood in the press conference
and held hands and just said that it seemed like the right thing to do.
The park didn’t press charges, the
public loved them. Cha-cha probably would have died. They kept in touch with
the surfers. They said they saw him occasionally.
They sold the funeral home and
moved to another coastal town. If anyone ever asked how they met, they just
smiled and said it was in very unusual circumstances.
~~~~
© AM Gray 2013
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