Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
well, getting a way early start this week! In my defense, I think it’s Tuesday.
The word that zoe has given us is ‘range’. And, this being the Six Sentence Story, our (collective) jobs are to write a story incorporating, referencing or have something to do with ‘range’. Pretty simple, isn’t it? No, not so simple at all!
But fun in a ‘hey, that kinda worked!’ way.
Range
“I don’t understand why you have to do this, Sterling; maybe your college buddy Cyril Sauvage has something to prove, with his parents coming over from France and all, but you have a family… well, you have me,” Almira’s hand drifted over her mid-section as she stood washing the same dinner plate over and over, through the window at the sink, she watched the darkening of night steal the life from the day.
“It’s not just him, Almira, the whole world is at risk and if Germany defeats France then England is next and then where would our family be,” Sterling Gulch sat the kitchen table, back towards his wife, staring into the adjacent living room, its wide picture window that looked out over Narragansett Bay was slowly turning into a mirror, as night surrounded the house and the only illumination came from the kitchen as he and his wife fought the not-yet-felt ravages of war.
“You’re so close to having your degree, I’ll be teaching in a year, isn’t that enough?”
“It’s more than enough, it’s everything I could hope for but, I need to do this…” he fell silent as the words that connected him to his wife were stalked and eaten by the wolf of aggression and politics, friendship and fear of not-measuring-up, claiming it’s ransom.
Almira Gulch looked at the window before her, the light of the kitchen created fairytale-like reflections of herself and her husband sitting at the table in the center of the room when a subtle motion drew her eye to the living room picture window in which two people showed, seemingly withdrawing from one and other, farther and farther apart, beyond any true dimensions of the physical space.
A shudder ran through the young woman, a distant calling from somewhere within her fought to be turned into sound, “…Private Gulch, the very first thing you do is determine the range of the enemies weapons and try and stay outside of it, until, that is, your commanding officer tells you to crawl over the barbwire into the next trench, do I make myself clear?“
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Beautifully written. When night falls and the window glass turns into a mirror, the reflections are insightful.
thank you (this is, of course, a preview of where the story is going)… did you catch the reference to Emily Gale’s older brother? What are the odds of Almira’s husband going to the same college as a certain family in Circe/ lol
Cyril is Emily’s brother. I didn’t remember her maiden name. Glad for the teaser preview.
yeah, I know, crazy huh? There are interconnections where I least expected it!
Very clear!!
lol… I haven’t given up on the school of confusion style, but this Six is a big anchor point in the Almira story
Second last paragraph…stunning.
I agree Lisa. Beautiful.
thank you
Very well written.
Nice Clark….you ever gonna draw this book to a close so i can read it straight through? Do you know where its going? I always wondered that about writing something serialized.
not a clue….
lol
no serially, I know where/when it ends (Circe Kansas 1939) it’s how we get there that is the at times hair-ripping part.
thank you again for this Six (for a variety of reasons) it’s been part of different focus/ coalescing points as I come to see how the story unfolds. In this case (and in fact, the biggest challenge so far) how to bring Almira’s story up to the ‘present’ (1939). I mean I suppose I could fast forward… but that seems like cheating and at the same time if I followed Almira’s life at the pace I’ve been following, we’ll all be reading this in the nursing home.
interesting note (and Val is alluding to it) and one of the things most enjoyable about the process is the serendipity of elements… example: back when I first understood that Emily Gale (nee Sauvage) had a brother die senselessly in the First World War, I mentioned (then) that he went to Dartmouth. and the other day, it was ‘damn! he went to Dartmouth too!’ so, in theory, as Denise pointed out, it’s within the realm of possibility that Almira’s husband, Sterling Gulch might have met Emily Gale if she ever happened to visit her brother in the short time he was a student… can I get a ‘Damn!’
lol your little bloghop is totally a part of the process, thank you
This was a haunting vignette, most certainly a foreshadowing of things to come. Sometimes so much is said in the silent spaces between two people.
Chilling stuff Clark. I don’t often make it out to reading SSS but I felt I should check this out, if I were craving even more Almira. I have always been endlessly fascinated by the wars of the 20th century and the pressure the men felt, specifically WW I, to fight or be labeled a coward.
I went to a meeting of a writing group and the question (everyone apparently asks everyone else) was ‘what do you write?’ In terms of ‘Almira’ I decided to make up a new genre (or maybe it’s established) by calling it Historical Fantasy.
yeah, people are people and they idea of what price people are willing to pay (consciously and intentional or not) to not be outcast is incredible and awful