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8 Pitch There are four men with guns in a boat just offshore at night. They’re on a mission to survey the beach for an imminent invasion. They are the good guys and the odds are against them. They’re in the moment of the other life, the eternal present in which they know they aren’t going to live. The elements conspire to bring out the beauty of the Pacific night, St. Elmo’s fire in a distant rigging, phosphorescence on the waves. It’s a moment when we’re willing to believe almost anything. One of the soldiers leans over the bow and retrieves a bottle with a message inside from his love. He reads it silently and begins to weep. We’ve known from the start that he’s the one who’s going to die, who must be sacrificed in the end for our beliefs. We can’t know at this moment whether he’ll be shot or stabbed, whether he’ll suffer for long or die quickly on the beach. He has a sweet face, large shoulders, and a hitch in his speech. He pulls himself together and wipes his cheeks with the back of his hand, folds the message along its crease, then slips it in his pocket. The water laps against the boat. The oars dip in and out. Music plays inside a cloud. We know the ending before it starts but need to see these men in the open boat as if we were ignorant of the outcome. We need to see what happened again in order to separate the facts from life. We have no idea what any of the men were really like as they paddled to shore that night. What any of them said or did before they landed and measured the beach, then paddled back without the kid. deNiord text-2.indd 8 11/10/10 10:40 AM ...

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