Page 6 - My FlipBook

The rest of the day and all through the night she could think of only one
thing: Why was the giant crying?

The next day, she got ready for school, her mind still on the crying giant,
when her Father reminded her to help him put the water bottles into the cart.
She had done this every day of her life for as long as she could remember, but
now it was different. The bottles didn’t contain water anymore; they
contained giant tears. Her family didn’t make their money selling lake water;
they made their money selling giant tears. The money they used to buy food
and toys and furniture didn’t come from a waterfall running down a mountain
into the lake; it came from a very, very sad man. A giant, yes, but also a man.
His sadness filled their bottles and earned them money.

This made Bonnie so unhappy her bones ached. She strained to keep her own
tears inside, lest her father see them and ask her why she was so sad. She
finished putting the bottles in the cart, helped her father roll the cart down
the mountain and, instead of running off to school, she ran up the mountain
to the crying giant.

Bonnie was scared, but she was too sad to let that get in her way. She climbed
onto the giant’s shoulders. She could feel the giant shaking from his sobs. She
yelled (since she figured she needed to be loud to be heard by a giant), “Why
are you so sad Mr. Giant?”

Nothing happened. The giant cried and the waterfalls poured as if she
weren’t there. She yelled again, “Why are you so sad Mr. Giant?!?”

Still nothing happened. This time, more softly and mostly to herself, she
asked, “What could be so terrible that you cry waterfalls?” Bonnie under-
stood crying, but not crying that lasted days, let alone many years.

Suddenly the tears stopped. A giant head looked over at Bonnie. The head
was far, far larger than Bonnie’s whole body. As big as her whole house. And
the voice was so rumbly it sounded more like thunder than words, but it was
not loud. As if he had all the time in the world, the giant slowly rolled out,
“You could never understand.” The giant then placed his head back in his
hands. The sobbing, and the waterfalls, continued.

Bonnie did not like being told she couldn’t understand, not even by a creature
that was so many times her size. She declared, “I may be young and I may be
small, but I understand lots.” The giant looked her way, but did not take his
head from his hands or stop crying. Bonnie added, “I came all the way up
here to help you. I am skipping school and will get in big trouble today. Just
to help you. The least you can do is tell me why you are so sad!”

The giant said, slowly and rumbly, “I am sad because I am the last of my
kind.”

“You are the last giant?” Bonnie asked.