the Wakefield Doctrine

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

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise each and every week, it’s fun and simple: write a story using the week’s prompt word and do it in six (and only six) sentences.

Last week,  when last we saw Ian Devereaux, he’d just begun to be deviated from his return trip home…This week’s prompt word:

RANGE

“Wait, didn’t you have a puppy on your left arm when I stopped to pick you up?”

As much as I enjoyed watching the girl get settled in the passenger seat, I felt a growing urgency to rejoin the stream of southbound cars, forcing my way, if necessary, in my current pride-and-joy, a brand new A7; it’s price range was justified as she pulled her door closed and all traffic noise simply ceased to exist.

The way of sandalwood incense, (with a hint of patchouli), ushering her in, was immediately balanced, (against an arguably more powerful scent of ‘new car’), by the micro-filtered, controlled environment that the manufacturer, Audi, boasted of in its ads; with the hyper-vigilance common to owners of a new car from a favorite brand, I thought I saw a flicker in the dashboard and a barely discernible increased susurrus of the ac fan.

As soon as I got back in the high-speed lane, I returned my attention to my passenger, who, after folding her jacket and putting it on the backseat, faced forward with such ingrained casual confidence, that, had this been a convertible and it was a warm summer day, there was no doubt her feet wouldn’t already be on the dashboard.

“I’ll never tell.”

A flash of static raced along my scalp and the bottom of my stomach dropped as my brain and my mind got into a fight over whether the girl I spotted hitch-hiking had on flannels and grunge, (not to mention a small dog at her feet), or wearing the mini skirt and knee-high leather boots that were having their own separation issues as she leaned forward to run her left hand down the smooth dashboard display,

“What the fuck kind of new car you got here, buddy, you couldn’t afford a cassette player and,” her lip curled in a way more akin to a predator’s challenge than merit-based dismissal, “I hate to deflate that burgeoning pride you got going, but do you know they left out the cigarette lighter, right?”

 

 

 

 

 

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

This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Curated by Denise, the only requirement: make the sentence count come out as six and not, for example, twenty-three. cool?

This is ‘an Ian Devereaux’ story. For those who prefer their continuity as …continuous as possible, this Six is post-chronologically linked to last week’s Six. (yeah, c, I coulda said ‘sequel’ or used a ‘previously on…’ but it wouldn’t have been as much fun.) And, just to avoid any confusion… (lol, as if) this Six is from the world of the Ian Devereux stories, ‘the Case of the Missing Starr‘ and the (WIP) ‘the Case of the Missing Fig Leaf‘ but not necessarily a direct continuation of a current storyline.

This week’s prompt word:

METER

I’d just begun to get the rhythm of the traffic on the Southeast Expressway; driving, especially at near-three-digit speed, is like writing poetry in a two-dimension scrolling reality, the highway ahead a narrative poem of unmarked stanzas approaching at the speed of life and the meter is always personal.

Leanne Thunberg, 9.2 miles in my rearview mirror, appeared in my mind with an expression most frequently on display after either I’d discovered a new, secret place in our shared bed or posed, in all seriousness, a question such as, “ok, now if you had to pick one, which of the three primary POVs would you want as your sole way of relating to the world around you, 1st Person, 2nd or 3rd”?

She always laughed in a way that made me feel like I had something to be proud of, if only I could figure out what it was; the traffic began to thin out and Leanne’s voice was replaced by that of my grandparents telling me about how, when they were young, they’d hitchhike up to Boston for a concert and always mentioned the Ho Chi Minh gas tanks that caused such an uproar at the time.

Slowing down to eighty-five to see if the apocryphal silhouette was visible from the southbound lanes, a dull-flicker of bright blue flannel in the breakdown lane hauled me out of the nineteen-sixties.

A college-age girl, dressed like the sole survivor of an LL Bean truck crashing through a Salvation Army storefront was standing in the breakdown lane about eight car lengths ahead; the first indication that I’d decided to slow down to investigate was the sound of car horns, dopplering at high volume as I crossed three lanes at a rather aggressive rate of deceleration, I smiled at the ‘dopplering’ but it cold-water shrank as the girl ran towards my car.

Two things happened that felt simultaneous but took at least four minutes: bending from the knees, the fringe of her antique suede swayed into a curtain which, a split-second later, parted to reveal a very small dog under one arm and, under the other, an army green knapsack; after running in a manner that we’d all like to believe we were ever capable of, and side-hip bending into the front passenger seat of my car, said with a smile, “Thanks, man, I’d given up all hope of getting a ride!”

 

 

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

This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise, frequented by Readers and writers of no mean skills and prodigious imaginations.

[Full Disclosure: there are three other Sixes languishing in the draft folder, casualties of the part of us that insists on trying too hard. (Not that we’ll won’t publish them…(lol)]

The prompt word:

METER.

“Jeez guys, I appreciate it an all, but I was thinking, maybe I should do this myself”.

The Sophomore walked into his best friend’s third-floor apartment, the intake of breath for ‘Jeez’ being as close as either of the college students came to a formal knock on the door.

His friend, Scott, was standing in the middle of the single bedroom, throwing one wrinkled shirt on the bed, even as he put on another, (the second being more formal by virtue of having a collar, not percentage wrinkle); the sound of a shower being shut off, followed immediately by a tinny-vinyl sweep of a curtain reminded him that his friend did not live alone.

The Sophomore recently accepted the suggestion that he join them at the supper club where both were employed on alternate weekends; he thought it wouldn’t hurt to make a little extra money, they knew their friend needed to get out more, away from the igloo of text books he’d built since starting grad school.

“You’re my friend, but I gotta tell ya, you could make Mother Theresa kick a puppy,” Scott’s girlfriend smiled and, being of a kinder nature, appended his statement, “You’ve been there a month, and I can see that she likes you”.

The three young people, like an old ‘get-the-ball-bearings-in different-slots’ hand-held game, stood on the landing outside the apartment and, impatience having eroded affection, Scott turned to the non-girlfriend member of the group,

“Do you, or do you not, want to meet her?’

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

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Nurse Ratched’d by Denise, this weekly event celebrates the gathering of writers encompassing the complete spectrum of skill, intention and pent-up drives to add to their fifteen minutes of rhetorical notoriety.

The fun in this format, imo, lies in the near limitless parameters imposed on the author. Other than the eponymous number of sentences, we’re free to write whatever amuses us. For me, it is to practice writing, in general, and create scenes and impressions against a variety of backdrops, or in what the movie franchises so modestly refer to as the (-Franchise here-) Universe. Today, we’re off to our favorite fictional world of strip clubs and Radcliffe Unverstiy department chairs, fast cars and faster airplanes where we might find Ian Devereaux and them.

The prompt word this week is:

VERGE

“I’m tellin’ you, Devereaux, holidays ain’t what they used to be,” Lou Ceasare, standing behind the bar of his establishment, the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge, looked through the open shelves of liquor bottles that served as a divider between the Lounge and the Strip Club.

It was the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving and the club was half-crowded with students and businessmen; one group seeking a last minute Adults-Only fix before returning home for the holiday and the other, delaying their return home for the holiday.

I’d given my admin, Hazel, the day off and after a morning of sleuthing on the internet, alternating between LexisNexis, eHarmony and Ancestrydotcom, decided to have a late lunch before driving up to Cambridge, where my very close friend, Dr. Leanne Thunberg, promised some holiday-themed consciousness-raising.

Individual bottles of liquor not being at the top of the list of sound-proofing materials, I could enjoy the show, on the verge of the testosterone-mandated camaraderie and celebratory fist-bumping, as a new dancer, Crsytal Dale, in an admirable, if not slightly insane, display of creative dance, took off her full-on Pilgrim costume; only then did I notice that Lou had help behind the bar, a woman with multicolored hair, a touch of ink and an expression like Jane Goodall’s face on her first morning in Tanzania.

Nodding in her direction, “Who’s the new help Lou, if I knew you were hiring, I’d of brought my resumé,” Lou, his laughter, the burgeoning rumble of a domestic dispute between grizzly bears, looked over the top of his bifocals, “I was short on help and your buddy at that Café joint said I could give her a call.”

Looking up from cutting lemons into slices you could read through, the Bartender said, “You been told, Lou, you been told, I got a sociology paper due and I need a walk, not an apartment, on the Wild Side;” a silent two-count and they both laughed loudly enough to throw off Crsytal’s finish, her capotain flying into the dividing wall, nearly dislodging an eighty-five dollar bottle of Green Chartreuse; I decided the forty-five minute drive up to Radcliffe should be just enough time for my mind to transition from one world to the next.

 

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