Hunting Eddies
The French Broad River was waiting. Maggie and Nell had hiked almost four miles along the Laurel Gorge trail to reach the confluence where Big Laurel Creek pours her guts into the French Broad who happily swallows them up. Rhododendrons filled the Spring air.
Nell lived in the area with two young children. Pearl, the oldest, was barely four. As an ICU nurse, her job for the past year had turned solely to the pandemic. “It’s just…the way they died…and then talking their families through it. Some wouldn’t even believe they died from COVID.” She fiddled with her hair in a messy bun, accidently dislodging strands and adding more bobby pins from her belt loop. Her fingers worked with practiced efficiency. Too many twelve-hour shifts tucking loose pieces of herself back into place. “Pearl misses her family. She wants to see y’all more,” Nell said, again, to Maggie. “You love being here. Come visit more often.”
“It’s hard for me to get away.” Maggie looked up at the clearest blue sky she’d seen, or at least paid attention to, in a while. She taught French at a local community college where most of the other instructors had quit. The sky seemed bigger here. Month after month of staring at empty classroom walls and computer screens, attempting to teach verb conjugations to students who logged off mid-lesson.
“Tell me about it. We’ve hardly talked in a year. How’s Henry?”
Henry was probably passed-out drunk. “He’s working hard, too,” she said.
“Well, that’s good. I guess.” She stopped to pick a wild Violet, tucking it behind Maggie’s dark curls. “I’ve missed you too, you know. It’s not just Pearl who wants to be around her family.”
“I know, Nell.” Maggie studied the way water rushed up and over the same rock over and over again. “I have to pee.” She looked to the nearest rapid. Big Laurel Creek had plenty that must be at least class four. The kind of white water someone could disappear in.
Nell pointed at the river where Maggie had been looking. “Here will work just fine. Look at that nice pool!” The sisters shed their clothes and waded into an eddy. “How many rivers do you think I’ve peed in?”
“Too many to count,” Maggie said, dreaming of raging currents.
“It’s still pretty cold from Winter.” She stood up, splashed Maggie good, then waded toward the bank. Maggie let the cold water drip down her face while she watched her sister climb onto the rocks before following.
They put their clothes on, picked up their backpacks, and continued on the trail. “We’re getting really close. Look–the tracks! The French Broad is right on the other side of these,” Nell said. Maggie quickened her pace, but Nell grabbed her backpack. “Wait! These are active train tracks so be careful.”
Maggie stood on the tracks. To her right, the tracks led up the mountain. To her left, the tracks led over Big Laurel Creek mere feet in front of the French Broad’s open mouth. Tribal wisdom says areas around where rivers converge are protected from tornadoes and other malevolent forces.
Maggie walked toward the river’s side of the tracks. The height made her stomach scream. “You think a person could live from a fall like this?”
“What are you doing? No. I don’t. But I don’t want to find out,” Nell said, inching closer to where Maggie stood near the edge.
“Don’t mom me.” Maggie turned and walked toward her sister.
“I wish Mom were here.” Nell grabbed Maggie’s wrist as soon as she was close enough.
The sisters walked down to the bank and looked at the two rivers flowing together. “It really is beautiful here,” Nell said. “But I think we may have to move home eventually. I miss everyone too much.”
“I’d do anything to never go back.” Maggie waded into the water knee-deep. Her Chacos pressed the rocks below.
RUNNR: Why is this story best told in flash?
Blake Bell: For one, the narrative is a single, if extended, moment in time between two sisters at a river confluence. Moments in time, provided there’s an arc, even if that arc is muted or fractured or one of discovery and not resolution, those kinds of story moments are fun to write in flash.
For two, the setting. On an intuitive level, rivers have that churning feeling I often get when I read and write flash. Flash is poetic in that way for me. The story barrels downstream in a similar way a poem flows out of me almost subconsciously. At least the first draft. On a more practical level, a strong setting and sense of place are a quick and effective anchor for stories with limited space.
For three, brevity and subtext complement each other. Confluences are symbolic, so there’s heavy subtext in the setting alone, but in a compressed narrative, every detail matters: Nell’s bobby pins, Maggie’s fixation on dangerous rapids, the train tracks. Compression encourages readers to read between the lines, making what’s unspoken and internal just as much of the story as the external action.
Which desires change and which stay the same?
What remains constant is both sisters’ need for connection, even if only one is seeking it out. Nell wants her family to be closer than they are, geographically and otherwise. Maggie is looking for escape from her marriage and career. Neither of their desires are resolved on the page, and though not inherently oppositional, they get in the way of each other.
What shifts, to me, is their recognition of those desires. Nell’s familial loneliness becomes clearer and more urgent as she spends time with her younger sister who is, despite some effort to obscure it, clearly struggling in a serious and dangerous way. Meanwhile, Maggie’s urge to flee intensifies as she spends more time out on the river.
What conflict most shapes your characters?
I’d say the central conflict is between obligation and escape. Nell is shaped by her duty as a nurse, mother, and older sister, trying to hold everyone together. Nell loves the lifestyle and natural beauty of where she lives but is feeling increasingly obligated to move home. Maggie is in a desperate state and just not able to be much more to her sister than someone else to take care of. Her pain has narrowed her vision, and she's got her eyes fixed on escape. They are water hitting rock again and again. Force and flow and obstruction. Nell is pulling and Maggie is pushing.
The setting amplifies this, in my perspective, natural tension between people (and bodies of water…) whose bond and separation are equally profound. The French Broad is one of the oldest rivers in the world. There’s so much history in a river. So much beauty and power and danger. They birth civilizations and destroy them. Women have this power too, of course. Nell’s power is heavy, and Maggie has lost sight of hers. The confluence can be a metaphor for their relationship. Two separate currents that meet, but one consumes the other.
Blake Bell is a writer and educator from South Louisiana. Read more from her at blakelbell.com, her substack For Whom the Bell Tolls, or find her on Bluesky @ blakelbell.art