The Moving Friends

At left, public domain image from wikicommons. Early moving truck, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Not the best day to move. Always seems like snow and rain when the deed is required.

I have a friend moving "back" to Seattle after seventeen years of being here in nearby Ann Arbor. It's a work thing and he's being recalled to Seattle to the headquarters of his firm. He's spent his whole career with one company and now is joining the senior executive ranks upon returning home.

I'm going to miss him. It is how life is. Seattle is too far to expect to see him with any frequency and his involvement in the past-times I have excited in him are too tenuous to remain for long without frequent re-enforcement.

We'll see.

I'm thinking tonight of the unexpected loss of an ally and the effect on a protagonist.

In the middle of our story's turmoil when we have the serial encounters with conflict and obstacles, how often do we think of the loss of ally as a driving factor in the transformation of our character?

I know the bit about taking away all of a character's friends then in the next chapter, shooting his dog.

I think back to Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and I can remember the first time I read the story thinking that here -- in this part -- Smiley considers everyone he knows as a suspect. I remember the bottom dropping out of my stomach as I recognized here was a protagonist reduced to being alone by the process of his own reasoning.

I'm not able to execute so deft a turn; but, I can have associates arrested, or subject to a inconvenient demise, or just murdered. maybe having them isolated by the turn of their own mind isn't necessary for my purpose.

Would my protagonist continue without his trusted friend? Would he solider on filling the void from elsewhere in the cast? Would a former antagonist now become a friend?

I am not like my friend. He is placid and lacks a competitive nature. It makes him good for roles where the gentle hand of compromise is required through rapport and pacification.

I like to win.

At the moment, I am losing.