What is the plot of the short story 'Clay'?

Answer 1

I think this is the story you are talking about.. It is called "And of Clay we are Created"

The story opens abruptly, with a startling line: "They discovered the girl's head protruding from the mudpit, eyes wide open, calling soundlessly." As soon becomes clear, the girl is thirteen-year-old Azucena, one of thousands of villagers who lived on the slopes of a mountain in Latin America. A volcanic eruption has created enough heat to melt the ice on the mountain slopes, leading in turn to tremendous mudslides that have buried entire towns and killed more than twenty thousand people. The narrator, who is never named, watches pictures of the devastation on the television news, described by her lover, Rolf Carle, the first television reporter on the scene.

Carlé and his assistant film the first attempts to rescue the girl, but when volunteers are unable to throw a rope to her, he wades up to his waist in the mud to tie the rope under her arms himself. He smiles a charming smile and assures her that she will soon be out. But when the volunteers begin to pull on the rope, Azucena screams in pain; the mud has created such a strong suction around her that she cannot be pulled free. She can feel some kind of debris holding her legs, and while others suggest that it must be the rubble from her crushed house, she insists that it is the bodies of her dead brothers and sisters.

The narrator has watched Carle countless times as he has covered important stories, and she has always admired his ability to be strong and detached in the face of terrible events. This time, however, she can tell by watching his eyes and hearing his voice that his objectivity is slipping, and that he is responding emotionally to Azucena. The catch in his voice is one she has never heard before. Abandoning his task as a reporter, Carlé tries everything he can think of to get the girl free, but with no success. He manages to get a tire slipped under her shoulders so that she will not slip down any further in the mud. Finally he radios for a pump, with which he could drain the water around the girl, but none will be available until the next day. He stays beside the girl all night, giving her sips of coffee to warm her and telling her entertaining stories of his adventures to keep her calm.

Back in the city, the narrator keeps her watch, moving to the television station so that she can see Carlé's satellite transmissions unedited. She phones all of the important government and business people she can think of to try to locate a pump and makes appeals on radio and television, but to no avail. Watching the screen, she feels Carle's pain and frustration, and weeps for the girl. She sees that Carle has reached a kind of tiredness he has never reached before, and that he has "completely forgotten the camera."

Meanwhile, the story has been picked up by other news agencies, and a crowd of reporters and cameras has surrounded Azucena and Carle, sending pictures of the girl to millions of people around the world. A doctor briefly examines the girl, and a priest blesses her, but no one in the crowd can do anything to help her. Although the area is littered with generators and lights and wires and other technical equipment for the television crews, no one can locate a pump.

As the second day closes, Azucena and Carlé are still together, talking quietly and praying. Carlé has run out of stories of his own, and turns first to the stories the narrator has told him, and then to Austrian folk songs he learned as a child. While he continues to talk to the girl, he remembers scenes from his youth that he has repressed for decades: burying bodies at a concentration camp, his father's abuse, his retarded sister's fear, his mother's humiliation. He does not share these memories with the girl, but turns them over in his mind and examines them as he has never done before. He realizes that like Azucena he is trapped, and that his brave adventures have been a way to escape his fear. His experience with the girl has exposed him to feelings he has pushed aside, and he is closer to her emotionally than he has ever been to anyone else.

On the morning of the third day, Azucena andCarlé are both cold, hungry, and exhausted. The president of the Republic comes to be filmed with the girl. He praises the girl for being "an example to the nation" and promises to personally send a pump. But it is too late. As she watches on the screen, the narrator can tell the precise moment when the girl and the reporter give up hoping for a rescue, the moment that they accept the inevitability of death. For both, it is a moment of peace; they stop struggling. The narrator has managed to locate a pump and arranged a way to ship it, but on the third night the girl dies. Carlé takes the tire away from under her arms, and she slips down under the mud.

The last scene of the story occurs afterCarlé has returned home. For some time he has not worked, but he has watched the film of himself and Azucena countless times, wondering what he might have done to help her. The narrator addresses him directly, assuring him that the wounds opened by his experience with the girl will heal in time.