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

Many bloggers have said, “The best thing about that TToT bloghop is the variety of viewpoints and the succinct and engaging writing.” Some have said, “There is such an accessible vibe among the writers, especially with the theme being ‘gratitude’, which in lesser hands can be somewhat… distancing.” It is even rumored, some have wondered, aloud… “That being said, there’s that Doctrine blog that throws photos and music around like a piñata at Tasmanian birthday party. How ever does that nice host manage such of chaos?”

Speaking of ‘that nice host’, Kristi is there, backstage/behind the scenes keeping the show going every week so the rest of us can come and relate the people, places and things that have made us feel grateful. Thanks, Kristi!

On with the grats!

1) Phyllis

‘Her master’s image’ redux
Gotta look close. Phyllis reflected in the TV*
*if they still call ’em that

2) Una  discovered a frog in the grass one night this week. (She did that ‘dog hop’ thing, springing straight up in the air, never taking their eyes off whatever it was that startled them). The next day I found another one on the side lawn, (not eating the lettuce, of course). Took me a picture:

Eastern Spadefoot Toad (Scaphiopus holbrookii)

Went online with the photo to get the species. (Read all about the frog: here) I trust you caught the line about ‘smelling like peanut butter?’ lol serially!

Ain’t this internet somethin? Totally got to assign it a Grat (Number 5)

3) work (thousand words, coming at ‘cha)

4) The weather (or climate (or whatever the necessary hybrid term. Weathmate, maybe?))

5) Internet and the humongous virtual used bookstore that it manifests as for clarks everywhere

6) Getting very close to having Almira in a state I am willing to send out to those who would be beta readers** (hey! that’s a total standalone Grat Item… I’ll take it!)

7) (Where was I? oh yeah, the Almira excerpt. Well this weekend I thought, let’s try something a little different. How about an excerpt that isn’t in the book? You remember when we wrote a story about how Hunk Dietrich was caught, as a boy, in the Great Tri-State Tornado? Ever wonder what the real story of Dorothy and Toto and Mrs. Gulch was?

“I’m ever so worried, I don’t know where Toto has run off to. His bowl in the yard hasn’t been touched.”

Dorothy spoke to the five adults sitting in the dining room. In perhaps unconscious mimicry of her missing terrier, she found and held eye contact with each person, just to be certain her lament was appreciated.

Hunk was frowning, as if trying to remember something, but failed with a shy smile. Hickory, the farm hand with the most potential to feel her angst, simply looked sad. Next to last was Zeke, except he avoided Dorothy’s stare by glancing at her mother. With a few more years of life experience, the teenage girl might have recognized the spoiled-food look of guilt, in the overweight man’s eyes. She finished her appeal with Uncle Henry, who had his list on the table next to his half-eaten breakfast and might have well been in Paraguay. Her adoptive mother pressed thin lips into a thinner smile, for a brief second, Dorothy witnessed a look of assessment of threat too far away to pose a threat. Or so she hoped.

Emily Gale got up from the table, which signaled the end of breakfast and the start of the workday.

“If…” the older woman’s face briefly twisted, like a bittersweet tendril finding flesh, “your dog doesn’t show up by lunch, we’ll take the truck and go looking for it.  Now go help Margherita in the kitchen.”

***

“What the….?!!”

Emily Gale managed to load more surprise, disdain, hate and fear into two words and a starving ellipsis than seemed possible. She sat with her elbow resting on the sill of the open passenger-side window as the farm truck drove slowly along County Rd #2.

The afternoon was overcast with clouds that, like aggressive high school boys at the start of a cafeteria lunch lime, elbowed and pushed each other to dominate that near limitless Kansas sky. Fields, baked by the relentless late-summer sun, held dust close, a prairie fog that distracted from the clouds overhead.

The cause of Emily’s consternation was a bicycle traveling towards the truck. In fairness to Emily and Dorothy and Henry Gale, crowed into the front of the truck, it wasn’t simply a bicycle moving at an impressive speed back towards the Gale farm, it was the woman pedaling it.

Wearing a coat that was long enough to be at risk of being caught the bike’s chain, the speed she was traveling left the coattails to flap behind her. There was a subtle dilemma confronting any observer, compounded by the movement along the road, and that was: was this a very short woman on a normal sized bicycle or a normal woman on and gargantuan vehicle? Or both.

What was not a mystery, at least to a local resident, was the identity of the woman.

The face of the woman on the bike was either frightening or startling. Like the prow of an ancient Viking longship, the woman’s nose took the lead, carving the air and, in a sense, determining her path. It was large, sharp, hooked downwards and… mostly it was large. If that were the only remarkable quality to the woman’s face, then the first characterization, no matter how un-Christian, would have been sufficient.

Life, despite the best efforts of some people, is not always that simple. While the nose of the woman on the bicycle passing in the opposite direction was hard to ignore, the eyes that formed the true center of her face were impossible to miss.

While the Bard is famous for noting eyes being the window to the soul, one immediately regrets such a limiting metaphor. The eyes of the woman on the bicycle were beautiful the way that nature’s most dynamic creatures are beautiful, the eyes of the tiger, the gaze of the soaring eagle, the depths of love as a mother watches her child sleep in her arms.

Except there is a darkness within them that, given the speed of the bicycle passing in the opposite direction, our observer is fortunate to be spared from experiencing.

“Turn back! Turn back, In the basket on the back! It was Toto!”

Henry Gale slowed enough to leave the asphalt road and cut a dusty arc in the newly mown alfalfa field and drove in the opposite direction.

Dorothy, wedged between her adoptive parents could barely contain her excitement. One hand rested lightly on the steering wheel as they approached the woman and the bicycle, now stationary to the side of the road. Thinking her aunt was trying to help steer, having the advantage of being on the passenger side, she felt the wheel being pulled hard to the right. Without thought, Dorothy countered the unexpected rotation, and the truck came to a stop. The right side rearview mirror three inches from the small woman standing next to the large bike.

No one spoke.

“Miss Gulch.” Emily Gale’s words defied the climate, an ice-brittle greeting stuck in the dusty gravel between the truck and the woman at the side of the road.

“Emily. Henry. Zeke” The woman’s accent was odd enough to notice but, to a sixteen-year-old girl, not distinctive enough to wonder about.

“Dorothy.” There was a pause, like a composers trick, inserting a rest at the beginning of a melody.

No one moved.

The wicker basket, attached to the back of the seat, made a sound.

Looking only at Emily Gale, the woman turned, un-latched the top and after accepting a pink-tongue lick as greeting, lifted the small dog up and towards the cab of the truck.

“Toto!” Dorothy tried to pull herself over her aunt and through the window.

Emily Gale raised her left hand from where it still rested on the steering wheel and said,

“That will be enough, Dorothy. Zeke! Take the dog from Miss Gulch so she can be on her way.”

The farm hand, a shadow of guilt veiling his eyes, jumped from the truck, accepted the small black dog and turned away. Holding the dog’s leg he waved it past his boss and Dorothy smiled from her place in the cab, between the two Gales. A smile of relief flared and then suspicion began to kindle as she looked past her aunt at the woman outside.

“Alright Henry, get this truck back to the farm. This ain’t no summer holiday.”

Zeke sat in the open truck bed, the dog cradled in his hands, watching as the short woman remained standing, alone at the edge of the limitless prairie.

8) THIS SPACE AVAILABLE To any Reader or ‘almost-participant’. If you’re feeling the butterflies and would really rather have a gradual transition on stage, then this is what you’ve been waiting/hoping for/dreading/wondering why none of the other bloggers gather the villagers and hand out torches… just send your Grat Item in with attributions and before you can say ‘Wait! I wasn’t serious…” your words will circle the globe.

9) Sunday Supplement

10) Secret Rule 1.3  […because life always seems to be ready (pretty much at times we are not) to spring a new set of rules on us; why shouldn’t we get our hands on that bad boy and make sure that all of the rules are not for them, that some of the rules can be written for us? huh? why the heck not?!]    … uh, ibid   op. cit. Lorem ipsum y’all

* and, of course, any other Friend of the Doctrine. Not so clear (or comfortable) with this whole beta read thing. I get the idea: an objective, critical read of the story with the goal of identifying (any) weaknesses or strengths that might be further developed. Seems like a lot of work. If you’ve found the excerpts from the book intriguing but are not comfortable with the critical thing, do not despair. I’ll, like, totally send you a copy to read…just because.

Lyric Advisory: This week’s music vid is the Foo Fighters cover of Prince’s ‘Little Nikki’  For some reason it lodged itself in my consciousness this morning. Excellent version, perhaps a bit on the racy side, if you’ve waited for Sunday morning to listen.