An excerpt (remember this is rough draft time). In effect, what I'm writing is a story about a story:
As I drove down the highway, I thought about Hakeem’s and Bosco’s words — I couldn’t help but laugh at those two young men wanting to — what? Offer themselves up as husbands? Be my protectors? I seldom picked up on those kinds of currents. As role models, my parents gave me the gift of watching their near-perfect relationship, perfect except for my father’s belief that my mother kept a secret he couldn’t crack. However, I didn’t seem to fall for the occasional men who took me out for coffee and complimented me. I literally didn’t understand the process of “I take you out for dinner, you have sex with me.”
From there, I thought about Sonya’s words. “If you’re looking for the Alvar, you’ll have to look in the worst places.” Wasn’t that always the case with fairy tales? The Hobbits had to throw the One Ring into Mount Doom, a raging volcano. Little Red Riding Hood had to go through a dark forest and visit the wolf to pass through menarche, symbolized by the red hood. Would my quest follow the parameters of the Hero’s Quest?
I was not a hero. I was an academic without a job and without any useful skills except the ability to crack Schmidt locks — and other locks, albeit with the help of a lock pick. I was an anthropologist searching for the inevitable, unpublishable study, a study of the origins of a mythical people. If the Alvar actually existed, what would I do if I found them? If they didn’t exist and I found the human origin of the tale as if it was an urban legend, where would I publish my findings?
Did I chase the legend simply because my mother once told it to me in a bedtime story?
I pulled myself back to reality and saw a roadblock up ahead, just before Eau Claire. I slammed on my brakes, nearly skidding as I approached the barricade with three men, all armed with semiautomatic machine guns. When one of them walked up to me, his hand on the strap of the gun slung over his shoulder, I rolled down my window, hands shaking. “What seems to be the trouble?” I asked, trying to school my voice into calmness.
“Your papers,” the man, with the hard voice and face of the military, held out his hand.
Of course I had identity papers. My parents had warned me that, if I had to bug out of town, that I needed at least a copy of my birth certificate and my drivers’ license. I had not been asked for them before this moment, and I wondered if I had hit a border to a newly formed country.
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May you find wonder in your day.
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May you find wonder in your day.
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