Once again, it’s First Page Feedback!
Today, we have Asylum Street, a work in progress from Rolf Semprebon.
The First Page
Oregon, Summer, 1880
Late on a sunny afternoon the appaloosa stallion trots down Asylum Street in East Portland, determined look on its face, riderless but with a custom-made saddle. A couple of eleven-year-old farm boys, sweating and panting for breath, in straw hats and britches, no shirts or shoes, run after it.
Cooter looks up from his whittling at the clop of hooves on packed dirt. “What in tarnation! Dagger! What you doin’ all by yer lonesome?” Ignoring him, the appaloosa strides past. Cooter throws his whittling project in a vest pocket to chase the steed.
“Mister,” gasps one of the boys, tugging at Cooter’s sleeve. “Help us catch our horse?”
“Your horse!” Cooter scoffs. “Too fine a beast for the likes of you or me. That be Dagger, Senator Mitchell’s horse. How long you followin’ him?”
“Two miles, I reckon,” says the kid. “Saw him trot past my daddy’s farm.”
“Reckon he’s a-headed home.” Twenty feet ahead, Dagger turns down Seventh Street. Five minutes later the horse whinnies and trots into the front yard of the Mitchell mansion. Muttering to each other, the two boys turn to head home, trudging slowly. John Mitchell, a tall man with piercing eyes and long, graying beard, comes out on the porch.
“Bless-ed news, Senator Mitchell, sir.” Cooter reaches the bottom of the stairs. “Dagger comin’ home.”
“But where’s Tommy?” Mitchell frowns.
“Tommy?”
“He rode out on Dagger. Horse returning alone is not good news at all.”
Cooter remembers, Tommy, John Mitchell’s son, rode east with Lindy Sue Hawthorne several days earlier.
“I was beginning to worry,” Mitchell mutters. “Gone since Thursday. They should’ve returned. Now just the horse? Not good at all, Cooter. Go tell Doctor Hawthorne we’ve a problem.”
Setting
We learn from the very first line that we’re in Oregon in 1880. The next paragraph tells us more specifically East Portland.
And what does East Portland, Oregon, look like in 1880? We get the picture almost immediately: Hard packed dirt roads, shirtless, shoeless kids in straw hats. A house with a front porch, then a gated yard on a mansion. It all gives us a very efficient sweep of the class structure, and how the interact.
Characters
The main character seems to be Cooter. Job unknown, but we he has a house with a front porch that he can sit on and whittle. He knows the senator and, even if he doesn’t know these specific kids, is immediately aware of their socioeconomic background.
He knows the senator well enough to recognize his horse, and call him by name.
Plot
We immediately learn about the central (at least at this point) mystery: Two missing persons. Tommy Michell and Lindey Sue Hawthorne. It’s possible the plot for the rest of the story revolves around either the search for these two, or the misadventures they get into after they’ve gone missing. It’s too early to tell at this point, and this mystery may just be a hook to draw us into the larger story.
Miscellaneous
I don’t get the genre in the submission form, though this seems to be historic fiction. I don’t know if it’s a fictionalized account of a true story, or a purely original story set in 1880 East Portland. The two names we learn: Hawthorne and Mitchell, are both street names in Portland, which means they were likely prominent families of the time, which is why I think the story might be based on true events.
“What in tarnation” sounds almost like a joke to me. Possibly just because of recent memes using that phrase as a way to mock rural people in the US. As I mention in the video, this may just be a variation of the Tiffany Problem, in which something may be completely historically accurate but sounds more modern to our ears so becomes, however irrationally, off-putting.
Also, Cooter remembers Tommy riding east on the horse three days ago. Why does he think it’s good news that the horse has now come home without him? Hopefully, this question is answered later. The senator corrects him now, though: Saddled, but riderless horse, isn’t a horse that escaped it’s pasture. It left its rider. Most likely because something happened to him.
Also, we got the same information, that Tommy rode off on Dagger three days ago, from two different sources in two paragraphs in a row, which sounded a little redundant to me as I read it.
There is a video of me reading this page and talking about it on my Youtube Channel at https://youtu.be/rb4vQW7Bgwo
Thanks and Future Submissions.
I’d like to thank Rolf Semprebon for his submission this week. If you’d like to submit the first page (200-300 words) of your own work and have it read on Youtube and feedback provided there and here on my blog, please see the form at https://pluther.us/submission-for-first-page-critique/