Grit
03-17-2010, 02:50 AM
When I first met the Digger, he had dirt all over his hands and face and yet he seemed so full of life. The pale white skin of his face stretched when he smiled and his thin eyes twinkled. He spoke passionately of dirt and digging.
“See dirt?” he asked me as I walked by him on the school’s grounds. He stamped hard on some dark, rich soil. “Good digging dirt. Damp and soft.” Then he knelt down and to my amazement picked up a large handful of soil with a gloved hand. “Beautiful.”
I was in Dr. Kwan’s science class when the Digger walked in. He was quite short, about 5’6 and he had taken to wearing one-piece jumpsuits like a janitor might. They were always smeared with dirt and mud, as were his gloves, which he always wore. The unique thing about this day, however, was that he was wearing a pair of elastic tight-fitting goggles.
“Take those off those goggles Francis,” asked Dr. Kwan politely. The Digger stared at him through mud stained goggles without comment. “Did you hear me?”
The Digger stood up after a moment. “I prefer goggles” He said, “they keep dirt out of eyes.” The class broke into scattered laughter. The Digger sat again and the matter was decided.
I was fascinated with the Digger. He was so strange. He ate almonds and walnuts with a nutcracker every day for lunch. He never spoke about anything but digging and, as far as I was aware, he had no friends. Maybe he was the descendant of some sort of mole people. Anyways, I was decided. I had to follow the Digger and discover all I could about him.
That day after school I followed the Digger from our Science class together to his locker. He had a small plastic pail full of dirt with him as well as a small metal shovel. He opened his locker very carefully. It was full of dirt. He added the pail to his collection and then closed it. With a smile, he went into the guy’s bathroom carrying his shovel with him. I decided to wait for him outside. Minutes passed and the locker room was emptying rapidly. After waiting for about twenty minutes, I entered the bathroom to see what was going on. He had ripped the tile off of the floor and dug a very large hole, about 4x4 feet, and only the Digger’s dirty black hair was visible.
“What are you doing?” I asked dumbfounded. The Digger stood up in his hole, startled.
“Digging. I am Digging,” the Digger told me. He chuckled nervously. “I had a feeling there might be dirt under this floor and there was. I found it.”
I backed slowly out of the bathroom, this guy was nuts, I had to tell someone. I went to my counselor and related my encounter.
“Oh dear,” lamented Mr. Law “Francis was doing so well for a while there. I thought he had stopped his digging.” He sighed deeply. “Can I trust you with a secret?” he asked me.
“Sure” I replied.”
“Francis is part of our reach for the stars program. He’s deeply disturbed and we took him on as kind of a project. He believes that there is a society of people who live underground and he’s trying to find them.” Mr. Law explained. “I told you because I trust that you can be mature about this and not tell everybody. Please prove me right.”
As I walked out of Mr. Law’s office, I couldn’t help but shake my head in amazement. The Digger was so weird! I returned to the bathroom in hope of talking to the Digger about the underground people but he was gone. So was all trace of him. The hole was refilled and the tiles were put neatly back into place.
I walked out of the school into the cold windy air and I saw him. He was walking through the front grounds and was easily recognizable by the dark earth all over his jumpsuit. I took off after him.
At an intersection the Digger ignored all traffic lights and walked boldly through speeding vehicles. They honked but he simply ignored them. He stopped at a hardware store. I caught him admiring and handling shovels through the front glass. After following him halfway across town he arrived at home.
The house was small with an unkept lawn and peeling white walls. I saw the Digger go in the front door so I composed myself. Then I walked up to the front door and knocked.
A leathery-skinned woman with emphysema answered the door smoking a cigarette. “What do you want?” she snarled at me.
“I just want to talk with Francis,” I told her. Her eyes widened.
“Now you listen to me,” she started, the hand holding the cigarette shaking, “I don’t want any more people knowin’ about Francis. He’s sick and it’s best you leave him alone.” She then tried to shut the door in my face.
“Wait,” I cried, “please let me talk to your son!”
She laughed, “I ain’t his mother. Francis doesn’t have no parents. Got left on my doorstep when he was just a lil’ one. His real mother didn’t even care enough to leave him clean clothes either.”
“What?” I ask intrigued.
“When I found him, the blankets she had him in were all dirty,” she explained. “Now that’s enough. Get outta’ here,” She said loudly as she slammed the door shut.
I walked and hid around the corner of their house in a bush. I could see mounds of dirt around their backyard. The front door opened again, the old women poked her head out and looked around. Muttering, she closed the door once again. Then, I heard sound of violence from inside. A heavy bumping, sharp slapping noises, crying and yelling. I felt so bad. I should have just left the Digger alone. The walk home was a long and tiring one. I felt emotionally and physically drained. When I collapsed into bed, sleep came easy; it had been quite a day.
The next day I woke up feeling rejuvenated. I had a plan to make it up to the Digger. I showered, dressed and ate in a hurry. I was out the door and rushed to school. I waited by the Digger’s locker but he never showed up and I had to go to first class.
I kept looking for the Digger’s dirty jumpsuit, which stood out like a sore thumb, but I never saw it. I couldn’t focus on classes, I just kept wondering about the weird kid with a dirty beginning. The final bell went and I went to the Digger’s locker. He wasn’t there. I went home, disappointed. He didn’t show up for several weeks and I had begun to lose interest from lack of interaction. Then he returned to school.
I came into Dr. Kwan’s science classroom and the Digger was there like he had never been missing at all.
“Digger, where have you been?” I asked him.
“Digging. Digging a tunnel. Then that ***** found out I wasn’t coming here and” He had to take a break because he was tearing up, “now I’m not digging.”
“I’ll help you dig.” I told him. I owed him after all I put him through with that horrible woman. The digger looked up at me from his desk with wide sparkling eyes and a large smile.
“You want to help dig?” he asked in disbelief. I nodded in agreement and then took my seat at the back of the class.
The final bell rang and I met the Digger at his locker. He had two very large shovels. I followed him out of the school. It was sunny out, even hot and we walked for close to half an hour. He led me to a park near his house. It had a small, disintegrating playground and a large tarp. The Digger moved the tarp.
Beneath was a hole; wide enough for a full-grown man to fit in and so deep you could not see the bottom. The Digger then pulled out a battery-powered lantern from his backpack and turned it on. He lowered it into the hole and illuminated a ladder, which was embedded in the wall of the hole. The Digger handed me the lantern and climbed right down.
The ladder went down and connected to another ladder, which was also embedded in the wall. The second ladder became yet another ladder which became yet another ladder. This hole was extremely deep. Suddenly, my feet hit ground. I looked up and the mouth of the tunnel was as small as a quarter. The Digger took a torch from its place on the wall and lit it with a match. We had reached the end of the hole and were surrounded by dirt. Then I saw a large circular marking on the north wall of the tunnel.
“Now,” the Digger said proudly “we dig a tunnel.”
He drove his shovel into the wall of dirt, breaking loose earth and rock. He worked on the left half of the tunnel and I worked on the right. The Digger was truly in his element. He dug with incredible speed and efficiency. His deceivingly small arms could power through thick clay and rock like it was the softest dirt. I got blisters after about half an hour. Now I truly understood why the Digger wore gloves. When we climbed out of the hole my arms ached and I wanted to sleep. We, or rather, mostly the Digger, had made incredible progress as the tunnel now extended 10 feet outward from the base of the ladder. We agreed to do the same tomorrow.
The next day I brought gloves. We climbed back into the tunnel and began digging. The Digger put up wood reinforcements along the roof of the tunnel so that “loose dirt becomes tight dirt.” The Digger wasn’t great at carrying out a conversation, in fact, it seemed as if he had only the most basic language skills. However, I still liked to talk with him.
“Why are we digging this tunnel?” I asked him one time while trying to break up thick clay with my shovel.
The Digger smashed the clay breaking it to pieces with his shovel. “Looking for other people who dig.” He told me. “No one up there is like me. I am lonely.” He stopped shoveling, eyes downcast.
“Well don’t be upset about it. We’re going to find them. Let’s keep digging,” I reassured him. I highly doubted we’d find anyone. I mean, we were digging in a park. What are the odds that we are the first to find a secret underground society of diggers?
“I know,” He said in response.
I stopped digging now. “How do you know?” I ask him curiously.
“I know two things,” he said in between shovelfuls of dirt and rock “digging and there are diggers down here.”
I stared at him for a moment. Then I continued digging. We dug in silence for quite some time. Was I doing the wrong thing? Leading him to believe in something? Was I helping or hurting him? I really wasn’t sure but for now I would just dig and think.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I really cared about the Digger. He had become a good friend by now and I didn’t want to see him hurt. I made my mind up. I would try to convince him, tomorrow, that there were no other diggers underground. The tunnel was getting very deep and long. It could even become dangerous. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him…or me.
I met the Digger at his locker the next morning. “Hey, how are you?” I asked him as he clawed dirt from his locker into his pail with his gloved hand. He grunted in response, typical Digger. “We need to talk about something.” I told him. He continued transferring dirt. “I don’t think that there are any other digger people underground.” I said carefully. The Digger stopped.
He looked at me through those filthy goggles. After a moment, he said “I can prove it.” I didn’t expect this!
“What?!” I exclaimed. “How?” I asked very curious. Digger grinned.
“Tonight.” He told me and then walked off to class. I shook my head. Digger gets weirder every day.
I had another extremely unproductive day thanks to Digger. I was unable to think of anything but what he might do to prove to me that digger’s exist. After class I met him at his locker. He had only one shovel today. I followed him on our usual path to the park.
Anxious, I asked him “So what’s your proof?” Digger just smiled and kept walking. We arrived at the park and uncovered our hole. Then we climbed down and Digger lit the torch. He turned to face me.
“Hold,” he said as he thrusted the torch into my hands. “I’ll prove it to you.” He said and he slowly started taking his gloves off. He took one off and underneath was a claw. His fingers were half claw and half finger. He removed the other glove and revealed an identical mechanism. They looked like small, five-pronged shovels. “Watch,” he told me. He crouched down and started shoveling dirt extremely quickly through his legs with his disfigured hands. He dug much quicker this way. His shovels were extremely thick and seemed to be sharp. They broke through hard clay like it was butter. He stopped his demonstration and stood up.
“Still friends?” he asked. I could see the fear in his eyes. I backed away into the closest wall. I couldn’t get my head around his shovels, they made him inhuman. It made me feel sick to my stomach.
“I got to go,” I said, thinking of an excuse “I left the oven on.” I stopped before I turned to leave and looked at Digger. He stood in the torchlight; a tear flowed down his cheek through the dirt. I ran without looking back. I climbed all the way up the ladder without stopping and ran all the way home.
At home, I was freaking out. I couldn’t wrap my head around what had happened. Clearly, he is just disfigured and I overreacted. I felt bad thinking about it. It’d be hard to repair things with him after how I’d acted; “I left the oven on?” what was I thinking?
After that, Digger didn’t come to science class. Several weeks went by without any mention or sight of that dirty jumpsuit. Then, however, things began to get boring again. I started to miss the oddity of Digger and what he brought to the table. I missed his friendship. I wondered where he was and how his hole was coming. I made up my mind to visit him at home.
I knocked on the peeling white paint door of his home. His foster mother answered the door in a plume of smoke.
“You!” she snarled angrily, “do you know where Francis is?” She took a step towards me.
“No, I came hear looking for him. You haven’t seen him?” I asked.
She shook her head and grabbed my collar tightly.
“He came home one night real upset when you guys were hangin’ out a lot. Then he left and hasn’t come back since. He’s been gone weeks.” She yelled an inch away from my face.
“Why haven’t you called the cops?” I asked raising an eyebrow.
“What, you think I wanna get questioned?” she said blowing out a large cloud of smoke. “You sure you don’t got any idea where he is?” she asked again after letting go of my collar.
“No clue.” I said sheepishly. “Anyway, thanks again and good bye.” I said to her and walked away.
I got to the park half an hour later after stopping at home for a flashlight first. The hole was uncovered, the tarp lying dormant beside it. I climbed into the hole and made my way down the ladders. The torch was gone as I expected. I turned on the flashlight. I pointed it down the tunnel. I couldn’t see the end. I made my way down it.
The tunnel was ten times longer than it was when I left. I walked for more than an hour when the tunnel opened up into a cavern. The cavern had a system of massive tunnels. I looked on in disbelief. In the cavern were four mole people. They had pale skin and thin eyes as well as Digger’s claws. They were sitting in a circle. An older female (distinguished by her naked chest) scratched Digger’s head affectionately. I misplaced my step causing a racket. The mole people jumped up, looking at me and hissing. Digger held out a gloved claw to them. They made a series of deep bass sounds “bum boo ba rum dum dum” and scurried off. Digger stayed.
He peeled off his gloves and handed them to me. “I don’t need these anymore.” He said, smiling.
“Digger, I’m sorry how I acted before. You’re a good friend.” I said apologetically.
Digger smiled. “Friend.” He said as he touched my shoulder with his shovel hand. “If you’re ever in a hole, dig a tunnel.”
“See dirt?” he asked me as I walked by him on the school’s grounds. He stamped hard on some dark, rich soil. “Good digging dirt. Damp and soft.” Then he knelt down and to my amazement picked up a large handful of soil with a gloved hand. “Beautiful.”
I was in Dr. Kwan’s science class when the Digger walked in. He was quite short, about 5’6 and he had taken to wearing one-piece jumpsuits like a janitor might. They were always smeared with dirt and mud, as were his gloves, which he always wore. The unique thing about this day, however, was that he was wearing a pair of elastic tight-fitting goggles.
“Take those off those goggles Francis,” asked Dr. Kwan politely. The Digger stared at him through mud stained goggles without comment. “Did you hear me?”
The Digger stood up after a moment. “I prefer goggles” He said, “they keep dirt out of eyes.” The class broke into scattered laughter. The Digger sat again and the matter was decided.
I was fascinated with the Digger. He was so strange. He ate almonds and walnuts with a nutcracker every day for lunch. He never spoke about anything but digging and, as far as I was aware, he had no friends. Maybe he was the descendant of some sort of mole people. Anyways, I was decided. I had to follow the Digger and discover all I could about him.
That day after school I followed the Digger from our Science class together to his locker. He had a small plastic pail full of dirt with him as well as a small metal shovel. He opened his locker very carefully. It was full of dirt. He added the pail to his collection and then closed it. With a smile, he went into the guy’s bathroom carrying his shovel with him. I decided to wait for him outside. Minutes passed and the locker room was emptying rapidly. After waiting for about twenty minutes, I entered the bathroom to see what was going on. He had ripped the tile off of the floor and dug a very large hole, about 4x4 feet, and only the Digger’s dirty black hair was visible.
“What are you doing?” I asked dumbfounded. The Digger stood up in his hole, startled.
“Digging. I am Digging,” the Digger told me. He chuckled nervously. “I had a feeling there might be dirt under this floor and there was. I found it.”
I backed slowly out of the bathroom, this guy was nuts, I had to tell someone. I went to my counselor and related my encounter.
“Oh dear,” lamented Mr. Law “Francis was doing so well for a while there. I thought he had stopped his digging.” He sighed deeply. “Can I trust you with a secret?” he asked me.
“Sure” I replied.”
“Francis is part of our reach for the stars program. He’s deeply disturbed and we took him on as kind of a project. He believes that there is a society of people who live underground and he’s trying to find them.” Mr. Law explained. “I told you because I trust that you can be mature about this and not tell everybody. Please prove me right.”
As I walked out of Mr. Law’s office, I couldn’t help but shake my head in amazement. The Digger was so weird! I returned to the bathroom in hope of talking to the Digger about the underground people but he was gone. So was all trace of him. The hole was refilled and the tiles were put neatly back into place.
I walked out of the school into the cold windy air and I saw him. He was walking through the front grounds and was easily recognizable by the dark earth all over his jumpsuit. I took off after him.
At an intersection the Digger ignored all traffic lights and walked boldly through speeding vehicles. They honked but he simply ignored them. He stopped at a hardware store. I caught him admiring and handling shovels through the front glass. After following him halfway across town he arrived at home.
The house was small with an unkept lawn and peeling white walls. I saw the Digger go in the front door so I composed myself. Then I walked up to the front door and knocked.
A leathery-skinned woman with emphysema answered the door smoking a cigarette. “What do you want?” she snarled at me.
“I just want to talk with Francis,” I told her. Her eyes widened.
“Now you listen to me,” she started, the hand holding the cigarette shaking, “I don’t want any more people knowin’ about Francis. He’s sick and it’s best you leave him alone.” She then tried to shut the door in my face.
“Wait,” I cried, “please let me talk to your son!”
She laughed, “I ain’t his mother. Francis doesn’t have no parents. Got left on my doorstep when he was just a lil’ one. His real mother didn’t even care enough to leave him clean clothes either.”
“What?” I ask intrigued.
“When I found him, the blankets she had him in were all dirty,” she explained. “Now that’s enough. Get outta’ here,” She said loudly as she slammed the door shut.
I walked and hid around the corner of their house in a bush. I could see mounds of dirt around their backyard. The front door opened again, the old women poked her head out and looked around. Muttering, she closed the door once again. Then, I heard sound of violence from inside. A heavy bumping, sharp slapping noises, crying and yelling. I felt so bad. I should have just left the Digger alone. The walk home was a long and tiring one. I felt emotionally and physically drained. When I collapsed into bed, sleep came easy; it had been quite a day.
The next day I woke up feeling rejuvenated. I had a plan to make it up to the Digger. I showered, dressed and ate in a hurry. I was out the door and rushed to school. I waited by the Digger’s locker but he never showed up and I had to go to first class.
I kept looking for the Digger’s dirty jumpsuit, which stood out like a sore thumb, but I never saw it. I couldn’t focus on classes, I just kept wondering about the weird kid with a dirty beginning. The final bell went and I went to the Digger’s locker. He wasn’t there. I went home, disappointed. He didn’t show up for several weeks and I had begun to lose interest from lack of interaction. Then he returned to school.
I came into Dr. Kwan’s science classroom and the Digger was there like he had never been missing at all.
“Digger, where have you been?” I asked him.
“Digging. Digging a tunnel. Then that ***** found out I wasn’t coming here and” He had to take a break because he was tearing up, “now I’m not digging.”
“I’ll help you dig.” I told him. I owed him after all I put him through with that horrible woman. The digger looked up at me from his desk with wide sparkling eyes and a large smile.
“You want to help dig?” he asked in disbelief. I nodded in agreement and then took my seat at the back of the class.
The final bell rang and I met the Digger at his locker. He had two very large shovels. I followed him out of the school. It was sunny out, even hot and we walked for close to half an hour. He led me to a park near his house. It had a small, disintegrating playground and a large tarp. The Digger moved the tarp.
Beneath was a hole; wide enough for a full-grown man to fit in and so deep you could not see the bottom. The Digger then pulled out a battery-powered lantern from his backpack and turned it on. He lowered it into the hole and illuminated a ladder, which was embedded in the wall of the hole. The Digger handed me the lantern and climbed right down.
The ladder went down and connected to another ladder, which was also embedded in the wall. The second ladder became yet another ladder which became yet another ladder. This hole was extremely deep. Suddenly, my feet hit ground. I looked up and the mouth of the tunnel was as small as a quarter. The Digger took a torch from its place on the wall and lit it with a match. We had reached the end of the hole and were surrounded by dirt. Then I saw a large circular marking on the north wall of the tunnel.
“Now,” the Digger said proudly “we dig a tunnel.”
He drove his shovel into the wall of dirt, breaking loose earth and rock. He worked on the left half of the tunnel and I worked on the right. The Digger was truly in his element. He dug with incredible speed and efficiency. His deceivingly small arms could power through thick clay and rock like it was the softest dirt. I got blisters after about half an hour. Now I truly understood why the Digger wore gloves. When we climbed out of the hole my arms ached and I wanted to sleep. We, or rather, mostly the Digger, had made incredible progress as the tunnel now extended 10 feet outward from the base of the ladder. We agreed to do the same tomorrow.
The next day I brought gloves. We climbed back into the tunnel and began digging. The Digger put up wood reinforcements along the roof of the tunnel so that “loose dirt becomes tight dirt.” The Digger wasn’t great at carrying out a conversation, in fact, it seemed as if he had only the most basic language skills. However, I still liked to talk with him.
“Why are we digging this tunnel?” I asked him one time while trying to break up thick clay with my shovel.
The Digger smashed the clay breaking it to pieces with his shovel. “Looking for other people who dig.” He told me. “No one up there is like me. I am lonely.” He stopped shoveling, eyes downcast.
“Well don’t be upset about it. We’re going to find them. Let’s keep digging,” I reassured him. I highly doubted we’d find anyone. I mean, we were digging in a park. What are the odds that we are the first to find a secret underground society of diggers?
“I know,” He said in response.
I stopped digging now. “How do you know?” I ask him curiously.
“I know two things,” he said in between shovelfuls of dirt and rock “digging and there are diggers down here.”
I stared at him for a moment. Then I continued digging. We dug in silence for quite some time. Was I doing the wrong thing? Leading him to believe in something? Was I helping or hurting him? I really wasn’t sure but for now I would just dig and think.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I really cared about the Digger. He had become a good friend by now and I didn’t want to see him hurt. I made my mind up. I would try to convince him, tomorrow, that there were no other diggers underground. The tunnel was getting very deep and long. It could even become dangerous. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him…or me.
I met the Digger at his locker the next morning. “Hey, how are you?” I asked him as he clawed dirt from his locker into his pail with his gloved hand. He grunted in response, typical Digger. “We need to talk about something.” I told him. He continued transferring dirt. “I don’t think that there are any other digger people underground.” I said carefully. The Digger stopped.
He looked at me through those filthy goggles. After a moment, he said “I can prove it.” I didn’t expect this!
“What?!” I exclaimed. “How?” I asked very curious. Digger grinned.
“Tonight.” He told me and then walked off to class. I shook my head. Digger gets weirder every day.
I had another extremely unproductive day thanks to Digger. I was unable to think of anything but what he might do to prove to me that digger’s exist. After class I met him at his locker. He had only one shovel today. I followed him on our usual path to the park.
Anxious, I asked him “So what’s your proof?” Digger just smiled and kept walking. We arrived at the park and uncovered our hole. Then we climbed down and Digger lit the torch. He turned to face me.
“Hold,” he said as he thrusted the torch into my hands. “I’ll prove it to you.” He said and he slowly started taking his gloves off. He took one off and underneath was a claw. His fingers were half claw and half finger. He removed the other glove and revealed an identical mechanism. They looked like small, five-pronged shovels. “Watch,” he told me. He crouched down and started shoveling dirt extremely quickly through his legs with his disfigured hands. He dug much quicker this way. His shovels were extremely thick and seemed to be sharp. They broke through hard clay like it was butter. He stopped his demonstration and stood up.
“Still friends?” he asked. I could see the fear in his eyes. I backed away into the closest wall. I couldn’t get my head around his shovels, they made him inhuman. It made me feel sick to my stomach.
“I got to go,” I said, thinking of an excuse “I left the oven on.” I stopped before I turned to leave and looked at Digger. He stood in the torchlight; a tear flowed down his cheek through the dirt. I ran without looking back. I climbed all the way up the ladder without stopping and ran all the way home.
At home, I was freaking out. I couldn’t wrap my head around what had happened. Clearly, he is just disfigured and I overreacted. I felt bad thinking about it. It’d be hard to repair things with him after how I’d acted; “I left the oven on?” what was I thinking?
After that, Digger didn’t come to science class. Several weeks went by without any mention or sight of that dirty jumpsuit. Then, however, things began to get boring again. I started to miss the oddity of Digger and what he brought to the table. I missed his friendship. I wondered where he was and how his hole was coming. I made up my mind to visit him at home.
I knocked on the peeling white paint door of his home. His foster mother answered the door in a plume of smoke.
“You!” she snarled angrily, “do you know where Francis is?” She took a step towards me.
“No, I came hear looking for him. You haven’t seen him?” I asked.
She shook her head and grabbed my collar tightly.
“He came home one night real upset when you guys were hangin’ out a lot. Then he left and hasn’t come back since. He’s been gone weeks.” She yelled an inch away from my face.
“Why haven’t you called the cops?” I asked raising an eyebrow.
“What, you think I wanna get questioned?” she said blowing out a large cloud of smoke. “You sure you don’t got any idea where he is?” she asked again after letting go of my collar.
“No clue.” I said sheepishly. “Anyway, thanks again and good bye.” I said to her and walked away.
I got to the park half an hour later after stopping at home for a flashlight first. The hole was uncovered, the tarp lying dormant beside it. I climbed into the hole and made my way down the ladders. The torch was gone as I expected. I turned on the flashlight. I pointed it down the tunnel. I couldn’t see the end. I made my way down it.
The tunnel was ten times longer than it was when I left. I walked for more than an hour when the tunnel opened up into a cavern. The cavern had a system of massive tunnels. I looked on in disbelief. In the cavern were four mole people. They had pale skin and thin eyes as well as Digger’s claws. They were sitting in a circle. An older female (distinguished by her naked chest) scratched Digger’s head affectionately. I misplaced my step causing a racket. The mole people jumped up, looking at me and hissing. Digger held out a gloved claw to them. They made a series of deep bass sounds “bum boo ba rum dum dum” and scurried off. Digger stayed.
He peeled off his gloves and handed them to me. “I don’t need these anymore.” He said, smiling.
“Digger, I’m sorry how I acted before. You’re a good friend.” I said apologetically.
Digger smiled. “Friend.” He said as he touched my shoulder with his shovel hand. “If you’re ever in a hole, dig a tunnel.”