The assignment: Write about a place you’ve worked without actually saying what/where it was.
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WINTER’S DAWN
My boots cracked the frozen straw with each step as the weathered mahogany door creaked shut behind me. Moonlight filtered through cracks in the warped beams, catching the spirals of warm breath as they floated upwards from each stall. The smell of earth and grain enveloped me in a dry, dusty embrace as I walked forward through the shafts of dim light, and reached up to the cobweb-covered radio, flipping the power button clumsily with the padded thumb of my work glove. Several indignant grunts rumbled from the shadows of the stalls as Sixteen Candles crooned softly from the mossy speaker.
Quick footsteps skirted across the loft above, alerted to my presence. I pulled a short chain and a lone light bulb snapped on, flooding the place just as Whiskey came bounding down the crooked steps, blinking in adjustment to the brightness and crying his welcome and demand for breakfast.
He snaked his way through my legs as I approached the first bucket – its black edges gnawed and coated in grime. Unhitching it from its handle on the stall door, the bucket tilted and cracked the thin layer of ice that had frozen over, sending water bubbling through. Something rolled and caught my eye as I carried the bucket to the door and I suppressed a rising sense of repulsion when I realized what it was.
I pushed open the heavy door and walked into the frigid morning air. With a great heave, I sent the dirty water soaring across the snow and along with it went the stiff body of a rat that had succumbed that night to a cold, watery grave.
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Instructor’s comments: Such good physical detail. You’re in a barn at dawn, a small barn, nothing industrial, a family enterprise. The padded thumb of the work gloves, the mossy radio, the spirals of warm breath (!!). The bubbles beneath the frozen water in the bucket were vivid and visceral. This was clean prose (good job) and extremely visual. There was only one place where I wondered if you could go further, “The smell of earth and grain enveloped me”- I’d like to smell them, too. Are they comparable in metaphor or simile?
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