A Visual Scene 2

     This is another scene from the same movie. This scene occurs right after the first one. Again, I tried to show feeling through action and visuals rather than the interior thoughts of the characters. Let me know what you think in the comments.

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     Black and deep, the only light that makes it down shimmers off the oil bubbling up from the bottom of the pit. The Man stands knee deep in oil at the bottom, digging deeper. He picks his head up from the work and pulls at the air that makes it down to the bottom. The light coming down from the mouth of the hole shines off the man's oil covered face.

     The Man's shift in the hole finished, he studies a picture of a machine. He pulls meaning from it and breaks it down to basic forms. The other man not in the hole tends to a baby, his son. The son is silent while they both watch the Man working to replicate this machine.

     The man measures the length of the large metal pike against the designs he has drawn up from the book. It takes two men to pull it up to the surface from the bottom of the pit, one man on the crank designed to raise it, and another pulling the rope itself.

     The Man has the rope wrapped around his arm and pulls with all of the energy he has remaining after the days work. The sand shifts under his feel as he tries to pull the rope along. The Man stumbles and the rope slips out of his hands. The crank spins wildly as the metal pike plummets to the bottom of the pit.

     With a thunk, the pike is driven into the flesh of the earth. Bubbles begin rising from the fresh wound as the pit slowly fills with oil. The father lowers himself into the pit as the other two men bring the pike back up a bit. At the bottom, the father runs his hand against the pike as it rises up. It is slick with hot oil. He laughs and raises his oil soaked palm to the mouth of the pit.

     The men work quickly now, with the proof of their labor. They make a small pool not far from the hole to store the oil in as they bring it up. The wooden beams used to raise and lower the large metal pike are now used to raise and lower buckets for extracting the oil.

     The father holds his son as he dumps one of the buckets into the collecting pool. He kneels down. Father and son are reflected in the smooth, black surface of the oil. The father dips his hand into the pool and marks to son's forehead with the oil. The son whimpers and struggles for comfort in his father's arms.

     The men bring bucket after bucket to the surface. The man and the father work in the hole to fill the buckets with oil, while the third pulls each load to the surface and adds it to the pool. The scaffolding used to    support the buckets is silhouetted against what light makes it into the pit.

     The snap is sudden. There are only a few second before the bucket come down to crush the father's skull. His blood splashes over the Man's face, covering some of the oil with deep red. There's no sound, no scream, just the wet smack of a man becoming a corpse in a pit of oil.

     The man look at the child laying in its basket and sips from a flask. The child weeps. The Man pours a bit of his flask on the nipple of the child's bottle, but the child rejects it.

     The job done, the Man rides across the state in a locomotive, the child next to him. He looks down to the baby looking up at him. The son reaches up from the basket and the Man leans down.