The Puppet Burial
Whidbey Island, Washington
November 2024
Maud Chen, 84, stands in her backyard with a shovel. Rain. Always rain in November.
Eight puppets lie on a tarp. Her husband Tom's puppets. He carved them over forty years. Died Tuesday.
Their daughter SARAH (52) watches from the porch.
SARAH: Mom, what are you doing?
MAUD: Burying them.
SARAH: Dad's puppets? We should donate them. The museum—
MAUD: He wanted them buried. With him.
SARAH: Dad's being cremated tomorrow.
MAUD: I know. These go in the ground. Here. Under the apple tree.
---
The Puppets
Maud lifts each one:
OLIVIER: Tom carved this from driftwood after Vietnam. 1973. His hands shook so bad it took six months.
PRIVAT: Made when we lost the house. 1987. Carved from the old kitchen table.
KEREN: When Sarah was born premature. Hospital waiting room, pocket knife, cedar branch.
PEDER: His doubt puppet. When the diagnosis came. Pancreatic cancer. Three months ago.
ALELA: Me. My face, thirty years ago. Before my stroke.
JUN: Also me. After the stroke. Half the face works.
LIZZ: Sarah at seven. Missing teeth. Absolute chaos.
The eighth puppet: Unnamed. Unfinished. Just a head, rough-carved.
SARAH: He never finished that one.
MAUD: That's him. He was carving himself when... when he couldn't anymore.
---
The Digging
Sarah comes out. Takes a shovel.
SARAH: This is insane.
MAUD: Your father was insane. Beautifully insane.
They dig. The hole grows. Rain increases.
SARAH: Remember his puppet shows?
MAUD: Every Saturday. Library basement. Free. Dozen kids if we were lucky.
SARAH: "The Inland Island Chronicles."
MAUD: Same story, different each time. Island that remembered everything. Underground roots that connected every tree. Puppets who knew they were puppets.
SARAH: Meta before meta was cool.
MAUD: He said puppets were honest. "See? Here are my strings. Here's the hand that moves me. No pretending."
---
The Burial
One by one, Maud places puppets in the hole.
MAUD: Olivier, who sailed through Tom's nightmares.
SARAH: Privat, who found treasure in foreclosure.
MAUD: Keren, who predicted Sarah would live. Right every time.
SARAH: Peder, who doubted everything except love.
MAUD: Alela, who was me when I could speak clearly.
SARAH: Jun, who was you learning to speak again.
MAUD: Lizz, chaos incarnate.
They hold the last puppet. The unfinished head.
SARAH: Dad.
MAUD: Tom.
They place it gently with the others.
---
The Questions
Before they fill the hole, Maud pulls out a piece of paper. Tom's handwriting.
MAUD: He wrote questions. For the puppets. For after.
She reads:
"Why do we remember pain that shouted, not joy that whispered?"
"What happens to laughter buried with guilt?"
"What color is silence when it's ready to speak?"
"When puppets sleep, whose dreams do they carry?"
SARAH: Dad and his questions.
MAUD: Never wanted answers. Said questions were seeds.
She drops the paper into the hole. It lands on the puppets.
---
The Filling
They shovel dirt. Mud. Apple tree roots visible in the hole's sides.
SARAH: The tree will grow through them.
MAUD: That's the point. Tom said consciousness doesn't end. It just changes medium. From wood to soil to apple to the people who eat the apples.
SARAH: You believe that?
MAUD: I believe Tom believed it. That's enough.
The hole is filled. A slight mound. They're soaked.
---
Spring
Six months later. The apple tree blooms differently. More blossoms on the side above the puppets.
Sarah visits. Brings her daughter EMMA (7).
EMMA: Why are there faces in the bark?
Sarah looks. In the apple tree's bark, shapes that could be faces. Could be nothing.
MAUD: Your grandfather's puppets are becoming tree.
EMMA: Trees can't be puppets.
MAUD: No. But they remember being carved. They remember the hands that held them. They remember the stories.
Emma touches the bark where Lizz might be.
EMMA: Tell me the story.
MAUD: Which one?
EMMA: The island that remembered everything.
Maud sits on Tom's old bench. Begins:
MAUD: Once there was an island that wasn't really an island. It was a feeling pretending to be a place...
The apple blossoms fall like snow. Like ashes. Like questions that don't need answers.
Underground, eight puppets decompose into root food. The tree translates them into apples. The apples carry trace elements of carved wood, of Tom's hands, of forty years of Saturday morning puppet shows.
Everyone who eats them dreams briefly of strings.
End
