Ben_R

A PLACE BY THE RIVER

prologue

The convoy enters the mountain road, slowing to negotiate the loose stones and uneven terrain. As the four trucks climb, lights flicker to the north, small fires in the villages that soon disappear. Lt. Alex Foster speaks into his radio. The sergeant in the truck just ahead answers. The conversation is curt. Foster turns his head past the driver, Corporal Sandstrom, to the rear seat. “How are you doing, Pashmina?” With only the dim illumination of the dash gauges, Foster can make out her general shape wrapped in a Kevlar vest.

Pashmina leans to the side, looking forward. She sees the side of Foster’s head fixed with night vision goggles. Through the windshield is darkness. “Fine,” she says, knowing the word does not convey what she feels. Their Humvee is rearmost in the convoy. 

Sandstrom steers the truck close to the rock wall as he enters the curves. The convoy climbs. His mind drifts to the vision of a pond and a turtle. He hangs from a rope looped high in a tree and falls to the green water where his friend waits, treading water. He feels his face grin, remembering his friend, losing the thought as the truck jumps and shimmies over a washboard of rock, forcing him to grip the wheel tighter. Through night vision glass he sees the road narrow ahead.

Pashmina sits with her hands tucked into her vest. The air from the turret above her feels cooler now. Out the side window she sees nothing, twisting around in the vest trying to get comfortable. The truck jumps and leans on the knotty road. She hears someone on the radio: “Mongoose tree six…” Lt Foster answers. It is gibberish to her. She closes her eyes, hears the noise, the rocking motion, the discomfort of the vest and helmet. Why would anyone put up with this kind of life? she wonders. Why would they choose it? But she’s thankful, the oldest daughter of the minister of transportation. He has requested the army move his wife, two daughters and son out of Kabul and into the mountains to his brother’s village. Pashmina closes her eyes, willing herself to sleep, hoping for sleep as the truck bounces over an ancient road designed for donkeys.

When she wakes, her neck is stiff, aching. She looks into the cockpit at Sandstrom, wrestling with the steering wheel, trying to guide the Humvee over the invisible road.

She leans forward. “Where are we?”

“Somewhere in the foothills of Afghanistan,” Sandstrom says.

“Thank you, Sandy,” with more than a hint of sarcasm, seeing the insect-like outline of his goggles move with the undulations of the road.

“We’re making good time, Pashmina,” Lt Foster says. “Hold tight for another forty minutes or so. Maybe less.”

A faint flash of light appears at the corner of her vision. A torch? She turns to the light. It’s gone, replaced by a far brighter flash. Foster reaches for the radio. Pashmina hears Sandstrom say, “Shit,” as Foster growls into the mic. Through the front windshield, the dark night turns to day as the lead vehicle explodes, jumping into the air, falling over in flames. Pashmina has her hand on the back of Foster’s seat, pulling herself forward, straining to see, straining to breathe. To know.

“Go, go, go,” Foster yells as Sandstrom coaxes the truck to move faster up the shale incline. Dim tracers arc across the small valley—tracers from the two Humvees just in front of her, the ones carrying her mother, sister, and brother.

The convoy is caught in a saddle. Foster is talking fast on the radio. The truck bounces, shimmies over the road. Pashmina stares through the side window at flames and twisted metal as Sandstrom maneuvers around the fallen vehicle, around the flames that light the sky, around the severed and bubbling limbs, out of the restricting saddle, away from the fire zone.

1. Story Statement

A young architect arrives in a small town eager to start her career with a well know architect. Hopeful of finding a quiet place to raise her twin brother’s son, Meghan and Alex find a secluded place that suits them both. A friendly neighbor offers to take Alex canoeing on the river. His wife, a gregarious matchmaker, entertains Meghan, offering to introduce her to someone she knows. But a series of events challenges Meghan and Alex’s lives as they could never predict. On the river, Alex witnesses a racist cop threaten the neighbor after which the two paddle through a furious storm that has them rescuing a group of campers. The same weekend, a soldier from her brother’s infantry company in Afghanistan leaves Meghan a business card in her door. He tells her the man who shot her brother is in the country and may try to contact her. All she wishes for is quiet solitude so she can create designs for structures that will both delight and endure. She finds that her wish is but a forced dream when she must deal with her employer’s sexual advances, a building contractor’s aggressive demands and a neighbor’s son who assaults Alex. But these are minor issues that occupy her and Alex while dealing with her brother’s army comrade and the potential threat of a Taliban soldier.

2. Antagonists

There are several antagonists in this story aimed at different characters. The summation of their actions and behaviors creates an atmosphere within which Meghan, the main character, must confront her human and extra-human demons. The foremost in Meghan’s mind is Kashif, a Taliban soldier who killed her brother in Afghanistan and now seems bent on tracking her down. Behind Kashif is Sandy, a comrade-in-arms of Meghan’s brother in Afghanistan and now a self-appointed vigilante. Sandy needs Meghan’s help in gunning down Kashif, help she is reluctant to provide. In the background is her employer, a building contractor, and a neighbor whose son torments and hurts her nephew. The minor characters—black neighbors and a homeless man—confront their demons in different ways, but it is Meghan who internalizes their shared experiences, complicating her efforts to calm her own demons.

3. Breakout Title

Searching for the Bridge

The Good of Jambalaya

A Place by the River

4. Comps

I’m sure there are many, but I can’t seem to find any.

5. Hook Line

* A young architect, starting her career and raising her nephew, faces angry contractors and the advances of her employer as she learns her brother’s killer is searching for her.
* A young architect faces challenges at work and home while her brother’s killer, a Taliban terrorist, searches for her.

6. Protagonist’s Inner Conflicts

Primary conflicts: Meghan is a young woman beginning her professional career. She is confident of her abilities but lacks experience in how best to apply them. When faced with her employer’s unwanted advances, she questions her professional decisions. Knowing she is learning from his tutelage, she puts up with the man. Seeking to provide the widest opportunities for her nephew’s growth, Meghan struggles to know what grip to use on the reins. She questions her decisions when Alex is bullied and forced to kill a bird. Confronting the bully’s father, she must defend herself from his angry threats. Living beneath the building where she works—a converted house in town—is a homeless vet whom Meghan befriends. She wishes to waterproof the area beneath the porch for the man, but her employer quashes the idea. She seeks other alternatives with the help of friends, all the while wrestling with the decisions she faces concerning her brother’s killer.

Hypothetical scenario: Sandy alerts Meghan of Kashif’s intent to force her to help him find an Afghan girl studying in the US. Sandy wants to intercept Kashif and kill him. His plan is to camp out in Meghan’s back yard, install trip wire around the perimeter and wait for his quarry. Meghan is skeptical of this hare-brained plan and contacts various government agencies to see what threat she faces. She gets no suitable answers. All she wants is to be left alone to create original designs, but her world tightens with every breath she takes.

Secondary conflicts: Meghan and Alex live on a cul-de-sac with two other families: a retired black couple and a family with two boys. The boy's father is a racist bully whose ways have rubbed off on his older son, a sulky and battered boy. This triangle of troubles lives together in sometimes calm and other times heated confines.

7. Setting

A small town in Virginia where churches are many and the Civil War lingers. Meghan works on the second floor of a Victorian home. A black church where Meghan meets Red, a young attorney. Through the town and beyond, a river curls up close to tall trees that bow to its banks. Where hummingbirds flit and cicadas sing in the late spring is where Meghan and Alex live. A small house with a yard of lethargic grass and weeds on a cul-de-sac close to the river. This is the quiet and solitude Meghan seeks. The river. Soporific in its slide through forests and farmland under a warming sun. Until a freak storm arises in the west, racing east with Alex and his neighbor in a canoe. Lightning cracks open black clouds. Drums of thunder announce a furious rain, causing a tsunami of water to run the river’s length. It is absurd fun and high danger. A grand adventure. All a prelude, a symbol of what follows.