Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

It’s Wednesday evening.

The sky is dark and the wind is warm, the air feels like a bathroom when, having turned on the shower, you return after a quick check of your email turns into twenty minutes online. In no way is it a bad thing.

Each week, on Wednesday evening, Denise opens the door of the Six Sentence Story bloghop. We have all had the week to consider the current prompt word and completed (or nearly completed) a story that contains six sentences and some relationship to said prompt word.

We have a treat this week. A multi-POV Six. (I sometimes liken these multi-POV to a musical duet…with improvisation.)

Valerie Newman has been a partner in a couple of Sixes based in the story world of ‘The Case of the Missing Starr’,  my ‘pulp detective’ story WIP. It’s a street light world of hard liquor, fast women and unfiltered cigarettes. Val definitely has an ear for this kind of story. Val’s ‘About Page’ clearly has not told us everything. (lol)

This week’s  multi-POV Six has, as backdrop, a world of a different WIP, ‘Home and Heart’ (A Sister Margaret Ryan Story). While still a mystery/suspense tale, it examines life questions such as ‘what is family’ and ‘can we ever, really, change’.

My ‘duet partner’ is Pat Brockett.

The prompt word this week is:

Resort

Stalking the Greyhound bus was a mountain, floating behind the thinning forest that raced past the widows; looking exactly as she knew a mountain should, Mt Shasta was tall, conical and covered with very white snow; other than the ocean, it was the biggest thing Sister Catherine had ever seen.

With a sigh, the double doors retracted, as the bus came to a stop next to a single story building proclaiming itself: ‘Nan’s Lunch, Sundries and Rx’; guarding the exit of the dirt and gravel parking lot, a sign: ‘Welcome to Dunsmuir’  (and underneath), ‘Home of the best water on Earth‘; the two-lane road continued down into the forested valley and honor guards of plywood and house paint desperately offered information about resorts and campgrounds, mountain climbing and canoe trips.

“Who’d you say you was looking for,” after a road-tired minute, Catherine realized her designer clothes and diamond-encrusted wrist watch were reason for the sullenness of the waitress’ scrutiny; St. Dominique’s sixth grade teacher felt a new appreciation for the power of symbols and uniforms, certain that, had she been dressed in the plain-cloth habit of her Order, the woman would be smiling and impossible to shut up.

“Aren’t you a little off the beaten track, ma’am?” a heavy-set man to her right, turned slowly on his stool, the better to display the gold badge and holstered gun; despite the white donut dust on his salt and pepper mustache, he radiated a polite hostility common among law enforcement in rural communities; “I certainly hope so,” Sister Catherine’s reply a failed attempt to avert a staring contest, however fortune smiled in the form of younger, almost friendly voice.

“Miz Duquette? Hell, ever body knows Miz Duquette, shes nothin but the best healer-woman south of Crate Lake,” a young man, his hand on the half-open door to the parking lot turned with a smile that was shared by no one.

“And your interest in Miz Duquette is…” the Sheriff, clearly annoyed at the interruption, stood from his seat, his stare rekindling the tension, even as Sister Catherine confronted the fact she’d not given any thought to what she would do when she met her birth mother; instead she smiled her best, ‘Your-son-works-very-hard, but-not-all-of-us-can-get-straight-A’s-smile’ and said, “She was my mother and I’ve come to talk to her.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFD2PPAqNbw