Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
(saw this in a couple of sites, but I think the source is: www.tn4me.org)
Friend of the Doctrine zoe hosts this here bloghop here and every Thursday she challenges us to come up with a story that is Six (and only six) Sentences in length.
If I might beg the readership’s indulgence, this week’s Six Sentence Story is a snippet (a scenette, if you will) from Chapter 35 of ‘Almira‘. I’ve been trying to write this Chapter since last week and keep stumbling, like an overly eager 5 year tying shoelaces to the opposite shoe, yet so determined he just gets up and runs anyway, so I write and type.
(The set up: Sterling and Almira Gulch have just spent Sunday afternoon at Emily and Henry Gale’s house. Almira’s exceptionally gravid condition and Emily’s enthusiastically insipid efforts at being a host make driving back to the Baumeister’s a pleasure. Even if it is a dark and starlit December night.)
Home
“Remember that night last spring, at your father’s house, when we spent the night in the farthest corner of the back yard, and you read Gulliver’s Travels to me as we sat, together alone?”
Almira’s voice rose from the dark side of the front seat of our car, the small orange glow on the end of my cigarette a tiny fire, lighting the woolen hills of blankets she had gathered around her for our drive home through the cold Kansas night. The other side of the front seat was extra dark because Almira had taken the three blankets (that she made the sales manager give us when we bought the car right off the showroom floor), and built herself a …. not a nest.
While great intelligence is an asset in any man or woman, what set Almira apart was her passion, her will to love, to bring together, to fight when necessary and to protect those in need of a champion; despite the fact she was as near to bringing a child into the world as possible and still be able to run to the car after an excruciatingly tedious social occasion, what she had on her side of the Packard’s front seat was not a nest.
As a mother-to-be, my wife was not a member of the gentle and kind and complacent families of God’s creatures, building warm and dry nests, from pieces of branches and threads of straw meant for comfort as they brought new life into the world, trusting in nature and good fortune that she might be over-looked by the larger (and hungrier) varieties of God’s creatures at her moment of weakness.
Almira had taken the new, very expensive brown woolen car blankets and built a den.
*
About clarkscottroger
Ah, love that …”den”.
2nd sentence. Excellent descriptifying :)
Oooh! I love the contrast in spirit between merely creating a nest with the blankets and building a den. Just in that sentence I learned so much about her character. Well done!!
thank you
She’s a serious mommy-to-be!
yeah, Almira is something
After a night out, making not a nest, on the way home sounds perfect, especially in her condition 😊Now I am quite curious about the rest of their story . . .
(this is, of course, ‘the Almira Gulch’ the one that we all thought we knew and are now coming to realize, ‘there’s always more to the story’)
This is excellent! You’ve really got my attention.
ah ha! (what does anyone of us who write words for the world ever hope for?)
thank you
Knowing the characters intimately at this point, I certainly can imagine the dinner conversation that went before. I’d be huddled in a den of blankets after an evening with Emily Gale. Well, the grown up Emily anyway. Can’t wait for Chapter 35.
hopefully by Sunday evening
There is a distinct difference between a nest and a den and that distinction speaks worlds about the character and the situation.
true dat
I like the sentence about the den also, it speaks to Almira’s tenacity – I can identify.
Have I thanked you for my Christmas Axe?
A Christmas axe….how perfect! You are the protector, Phyllis
I think of all the Readers of the Doctrine, you are in the very small group of people who will get the following joke:
(“kah…kah…kah…kah chih …chh…chih…chh”)
lol
A woman protecting herself and child-to-be, from the harsh elements of the night. Comfort, Protection and Love!
yeah pretty damn impressive force, no?