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Weekend Writing Warrior 7/26/15 #8Sunday

promoThis month I’m posting excerpts from my short story collection The Futility of Loving a Soldier. This week is a continuation of Lindy’s story in “Crash.” She’s just returned from combat and her dad isn’t sure how to react – and neither is she.

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Lindy strode down the sidewalk, trying to look as if she had a purpose, although she did… kind of: getting away from her dad. He was trying his best to help her, but barging into her room whenever he felt like it, wanting to talk, wasn’t doing either of them any good; she wasn’t a little girl anymore, for crying out loud.

Her mom had tried to explain her dad to her once. Mom lay in her hospital bed, one of the many times towards the end, and Lindy had burst into her room upset because Dad had tried to get her dinner from the ice cream truck.

“Your dad’s a doer,” Mom had told her, “and when he sees a problem, he wants to do something to fix it because for him, anything is better than nothing.” Mom smiled at her and said, “You’re a doer too.”

Her mom had died a couple weeks later, and Lindy often returned to her mom’s assessment of her, because maybe that was why she’d enlisted right after graduation; the army gave her plenty to do. But she’d turned into a thinker since then, and here she was again—struggling as every action brought up thoughts she didn’t want.

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Read more about Lindy in The Futility of Loving a Soldier, then post a link to your eight sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Weekend Writing Warriors website.

4 Comments

  1. Nothing short of perfect, ED. You flat out gave us the back story and now we understand how lost and troubled she is.

  2. That’s a problem lots of people have–the need to fix things now, which often leads to having to fix them again and again.

  3. Wow, I could relate to the fix-it-now kinda character. Nicely done.

  4. I enjoyed her self analysis and the smooth way you’ve worked in details, like about her mother’s fate, for example. Excellent excerpt – nothing is easy in this story, for anyone, I can tell.

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