To Fight in the Shade - Part 1

[lovesrain44]

Sam stood at the middle of the circle of dirt at the edge of the field, and pointed the gun at the paper target, which was tacked to a stack of old hay bales. Overhead, the sun blazed, sending down death rays of yellow and bright orange.

Comments

[anyjay]

You do a great job of capturing young Sam and his conflicted feelings. Not liking John a lot, here, but the part at the beginning when Sam is wrong about the safety being off did give me some sympathy for him. As did Sam being 20 minutes late. John knows all kind of bad things that can happen in 20 minutes.

I'm not at all sure why John thinks being good at soccer is too high profile. It's not like Sam's trying out for the olympic team or anything.

Too bad Sam doesn't know John is keeping the trophy in his storage room.

[lovesrain44]

Thank you so very much. John is a complex character, and I both love and hate him at the same time, but yes, sometimes he's right and Sam is wrong - except Sam never sees it that way, poor boy.

I think about the soccer, my goal was to paint a picture where Sam was SO good, won a trophy and everything, that it was possible (as far as John could see) that he would then go on to play it in high school and maybe professionally...and then he'd be exposed to the world. I mean, John didn't want Sam to go to college either, where surely he could have melted into the college scene, right? If Sam's playing soccer (center field, or another, central position) he'd be even more exposed than college. So that's my thinking there.

And yeah, Sam'll be surprised to find out one day, won't he. : D