beaten by the sun

These kids, there are so many, and all of them look so different from each other. We have cameras fixed on them, and the bulbs of our mics capture what they say, though they talk without sound. Right now I'm interviewing this rod who has what resembles a chandelier of carrots sprouting from her scalp. Her eyes are squinted, so I can only guess that there's an intensity to her answers. A second later, she's sprinting back to the mound.

A neighbor, one who feeds rabbits to swell them for skinning, tipped us off to the kids and mound, but swore us to a secrecy we won't uphold. He told us that the kids came to the land on the coattails of dusk and started stabbing at the dull yellow drought weeds. He slept inadvertently through the night, in a chair on his porch, with a virulent, unloaded shotgun balancing in his lap.

He woke up, beaten by the sun, to see the kids impregnate the mound with a single frisbeeish landmine. They kept digging at the earth, the kids did, growing the mound with each shovelful. The man contacted us a little before noon. We came right out. He was the first one I went to see, but he refused offer up anything more than, "I already said all I know." Then he pointed to the other side of his property line to where the kids were, made tiny by the distance of two acres.

We trespassed only because we couldn't think of what else to do.

I'm serious about these kids. Not one of them looks like the other. They're moving though, really moving. They're bounding up and down the mound. Some spin like a maple's helicopter seeds, others are doing different types of jumping - rope, jacks, jumps that hadn't been invented yet when our news team was their age. So the opposite of alike, they are; damn so. One similarity though: all of their mouths are wide, un-volumed O's.

I knew immediately that we were the right choice to break this story. Finally we were getting what we deserved, even if we didn't understand what it was.

Something else I can say is that these kids are polite. They've really taken to the whole idea of being seen and not heard. From a ratings perspective, this troubles me a bit, but from a personal perspective, I'm immensely happy. I tap one on the shoulder, interview him for a bit, and when he starts to get antsy, he runs off, tags a friend and sends her to me; the friend moves her mouth in front of my mic, grins into the cameraman's shoulder-cam, and then darts away. I tap another on the shoulder, etc. Each time it's a verbal flat line.

Still, there is no shortage of volunteers. They are all so damn happy. Since they all look so different, they're easy to tell apart, even as the day teeters to its edges. I can follow each past interviewee as he or she moves around on the mount. Their gestures, though each unique, are all equally ecstatic.

A couple is grinding their heels into the mound as they twist in and out of each other, square dancing. An angelic blond takes up pantomime. A boy in a red cape does the Robot. An egg-shaped one genuflects, rolls down the mound, races back up it, genuflect, rolls down again, lands spread out at the bottom.

The cameras roll continuously.

My questioning lasts several more hours. I'm keeping each of my subjects straight, never posing the same question twice. The inquiries get more outlandish because, as I learned in broadcast school, the further you get from the crux of a story, the more likely you are to find it. I'm shouting into the vastness of this piece and, I think, I'll eventually hear an echo back.

We keep documenting, call in more tape.

Finally, some girl's kitten heel finds the land mine. It detonates and undoes the mound in a split of a split second. The kids are joyous, happier than ever. They ascend into the heavens, these kids do, mouths ringed beyond reason, and then just as quickly, they return in stumps to the flat of the earth.

When our piece aired, the station manager made us edit in their screams and the loud aftermath of gurgles as the valves of their throat opened up and fill with blood.

For dramatic effect, he said.