Oso Weeping

The visitor shifted uncomfortably as he took in the scene. The mother was 27; she looked 45. Her five children stared up at the stranger, unabashed curiosity gleaming in their wide brown eyes. They lived in a one-room house with a corrugated tin roof. Two beds for the six members of the family. A ray of sunlight streamed through a single, shattered window. He heard his companion saying something in Spanish to the mother.
The mother replied. He didn’t understand what she said. He didn’t care to understand.
“She welcomes you to her home, David,” said Elise.
“Oh… great,” he muttered, “Glad to meet her, too.”
He had places to be. Places that didn’t include dirt-floor shacks in Ecuador. Important places. The business meetings in Quito were over; he wanted to return to New York.
“She wishes that she could offer you something to eat, but they haven’t had food in the home for two days.”
Her and a billion other people. He couldn’t solve the world’s problems. The rest of the visit was a blur. Vaguely aware of the conversation, he made little effort to take part. He didn’t even know why Elise had dragged him there. When she finally said they could leave, he thanked the unknown deity that had freed him. Stepping across the broken threshold, he glanced at his watch, calculating the minutes until the office closed. Perhaps he still had time to schedule a phone meeting about the merger.
“Señor!” a small voice called from behind him.
Stifling a groan, he turned. One of the children, a tiny boy of about six, ran up to him. In his outstretched hands he held a teddy bear. He rattled an explanation off, holding the bear up. In that moment, David was struck by how much he looked like his nephew Chris had on the last day he was alive. He closed his eyes to shut out the flashback of the car crash.
“Roberto says,” said Elise, “That Oso is his only toy and that he wants you to have it so you won’t be lonely.”
He felt like someone had punched him the stomach, “I… I can’t take his bear.”
“You must. It would be rude not to, and you would hurt his feelings.”
He looked again at the decrepit house. He couldn’t really take the boy’s bear, could he?
“Um…” he reached down and awkwardly grasped the bear, “Gracias,” he managed.
A glowing smile spread out across Roberto’s face. He reached up and patted David’s cheek.
Thoughts of meetings and mergers and climbing the corporate ladder fled as tears filled his eyes.
“Gracias, gracias,” he whispered.
The plane ride back to New York City was agonizing. He tried to sleep, but was plagued by dreams of Chris and Roberto and teddy bears and car wrecks and abject poverty. And weeping. Always weeping.
“Are you alright?” Elise asked.
“I’m fine,” he grunted.
What had that street child done to him? He shook his head to get rid of the memories. “Focus, focus,” he whispered. He couldn’t lose focus. In two hours, he would arrive home in New York City and his life would begin again. The emotion from a single encounter in Quito could not last long in the face of the upcoming merger that was about to make him a very rich man. When he hit the ground in New York, he practically sprinted to catch a cab back to his Fifth Avenue condo. Forcing the images of Roberto and Chris from his mind, he stared at the raindrops pelting the taxi window. With an impatient sigh, he began rehearsing his introduction for the upcoming meeting. He paid the cab driver, still engrossed in his business plans. Stepping into the pouring rain, his eyes were drawn to the homeless man who panhandled by the steps to his building. He’d been there for about a year, he thought. What was his name? David had never thought to ask. The panhandler began to cough. David thought he saw a trace of blood appear on the man’s sleeve. He suppressed a flare of emotion at a thought of little Roberto. “Focus,” he whispered, as he turned to race up the stairs and into the dryness of his building. “Focus.” He stayed at his condo only long enough to shower and put on a fresh suit. Once he made it back to the office, he’d bury himself in work. That would be enough to drive the emotions away, he assured himself.
It was. A few hours later he found himself again in a taxi approaching his condo, his thoughts full of nothing but business transactions and accumulating wealth. Free of Chris and Roberto and the panhandler by his building, he started up the steps to his condo.
It was the crowd that caught his attention. They were murmuring, crowded around a bundle on the ground. He paused, fixated on the scene, unable to make sense of it, trying to quiet a nagging thought in the corner of his heart. His feet began to carry him towards the crowd, “What is it?” he asked.
“It’s Kevin,” said a woman he recognized. He thought she lived on his floor. “He’s dead.”
“Kevin?”
“The homeless guy who’s usually here,” she said, “He’s been pretty sick. It was probably pneumonia.”
He gripped the stair railing as the memories came flooding back with a vengeance. Chris. Roberto. Kevin. Kevin. No warm home, no healthy food, no money for a doctor. A victim of poverty. One who he’d never stopped to help. He’d never spared so much as a nickel for Kevin. Now Kevin was dead. Dazedly he made his way to his condo and, with shaking hands, unlocked the door. Stepping inside, he took in the lavishness and comfort of his home. He found his suitcase and dug out Roberto’s teddy bear. With tears in his eyes he sank onto his leather couch and stared at the rain.

This is a stunningly beautiful piece. It's eloquent and sweet and I started crying while I was reading it. (Not that that's unusual at all...)

Keep writing!

Absolutely Brilliant. Beautiful.

Very emotional. Captured each feeling. I felt as if I were the guy.

Great job,
-Brie

My one tip would be try to incorporate more "showing" rather than "telling" in your narrative. I felt like too much information was given to me to easily.

Hello, and thank you for entering my contest, "The Little Things."

This is a really good story. I love that Roberto gives David his teddy bear so he "won't be lonely."

Really the only comment I have in the negative is your paragraph structure. When you write a paragraph, many of your sentences are structured similarly, which grates on the reader's ear. Here's an example:

Her and a billion other people. He couldn’t solve the world’s problems. The rest of the visit was a blur. Vaguely aware of the conversation, he made little effort to take part. He didn’t even know why Elise had dragged him there. When she finally said they could leave, he thanked the unknown deity that had freed him. Stepping across the broken threshold, he glanced at his watch, calculating the minutes until the office closed. Perhaps he still had time to schedule a phone meeting about the merger.

See? The underlined parts are phonetically similar, too much so, which gets tedious during a reading. If you can just mix up your sentence structure a bit, you can get rid of that effect.

Other than that, good job. I really enjoyed reading this.

~Blue

That was beautiful in a very heartbreaking way. Thank you so much for sharing it. I will be sure to check out more of your works.

<3 Sasha

Agreed with brady x2. A lot of telling and saying, "He thought this" and "He believed that" but never letting the reader make up his own mind about the scene. And because of that, the piece comes across as preachy. The thing is that, for most of the piece, you are beating us over the head with how we should feel about the events happening.

You're not directly saying, "It was sad", so that's good. But you're only one step better because you're so heavy-handed about what emotion you want us to feel.

Important places. The business meetings in Quito were over; he wanted to return to New York.

He couldn’t solve the world’s problems.

calculating the minutes until the office closed. Perhaps he still had time to schedule a phone meeting about the merger.

What was his name? David had never thought to ask.

He’d never spared so much as a nickel for Kevin.

Thoughts of meetings and mergers and climbing the corporate ladder fled as tears filled his eyes.

Phrases like those above are just bleeding hearts. Like someone making comments trying to get you to notice her new haircut. You're not outright telling us to feel a certain way, but you're coming about as close as you possibly can and doing so just about every other paragraph. Instead, what you might want to consider, is toning it down a little bit. Let David's thoughts wander a little, but don't say every paragraph, "He thought about the important meeting. It was very important and business-like."

Also, all these "THE UPCOMING MERGER" and "THE BUSINESS MEETING" and so on are just so vague that they tip the reader off that you haven't put much thought into what this important thing might be. Just that it's AN IMPORTANT THING that you don't think should be important. For example, imagine someone trying to sell you a computer that knows nothing about computers. That person might say generic stuff like, "The processor is fast" and "The resolution is better than others" and "It has a big hard drive"...whereas someone that actually knows something about the topic (like your main character should know about his IMPORTANT MEETING), would use some more meaningful words and not speak in vague generalities. Just for starters, I don't ever call the meetings for my work "business meetings."

And work was so important to David, yet the only thing you gave us about how much he loved his work was "It was."

Also, mergers don't really make people rich. Merging is the rare event of two equal companies joining as one. It's in both of their interests because then they don't have to compete and they get to pool their resources...so this means that little money changes hands and stocks are of similar value, anyway. So what's there to gain besides strategic advantage in the near future? Perhaps years ahead, David might make money...or maybe he negotiated getting a pay raise or a better job...but no one is an overnight millionaire, like you make it sound here. Anyway, I know that's all technical mumbo jumbo...but it all adds to the believability of the story and the ability of the reader to care.

He didn’t even know why Elise had dragged him there.

Neither does the reader. Who is this lady? And why are they in her house for all of 5 minutes? People don't just go to foreign countries and get invited to every strangers' home. Because it comes out of nowhere with no explanation for the sole purpose of the 3 line interaction with Roberto, it comes across as contrived.

He closed his eyes to shut out the flashback of the car crash.

He felt like someone had punched him the stomach

He tried to sleep, but was plagued by dreams of Chris and Roberto and teddy bears and car wrecks and abject poverty.

And here, you're shoving an emotion down our throats without giving us a reason to actually feel sad. Give us a memory, give us a scrap of humanity, give us something for us to relate to. The reader cannot relate to "the flashback of the car crash" if we know nothing about it. We can't be sad for this character called "Chris" that we've never met, never heard of but once in passing, don't know his age, his personality, the circumstances surrounding his death, etc etc.

They were murmuring, crowded around a bundle on the ground.

Unless he had a pool of blood around him, this wouldn't ever happen. Homeless people sleep on the sidewalk, on park benches, in alcoves all the time and the proper procedure is to just walk right past them. Usually it's a cop or a doorman or a landlord that finds out they're dead when they try to shoo them away to find some place else to sleep...and when they don't wake up, they quietly call for someone to take the dead body away. There are no crowds, there is no spectacle.

Now if you are actually of the mindset that poverty is an injustice and so on and so forth, you may have read the above paragraph and felt outrage and sadness. But I never actually said anything heavy-handed. The deepest emotions, the deepest truths are divined, not told. The words in the above paragraph don't try to force you to feel one way or another...different people could read them and react differently. And that's where the strongest connection with the reader occurs. You let them make their own decisions--all you have to do is guide them one way or another with your words. But by no means should you box them in and pummel them into submission so that they can only come out of your story with the one feeling you want to wring out of them.

Just imagine that being a writer is like being a parent: you can guide them, you can counsel them, you can build a proper environment--but if you try to make them do anything, they might just get fed up.