The Boy with One Ear
by Robert Fullerton
The Story
The “Boy with One Ear” is a feature length Fantasy / Metaphysical drama that takes place in a mountainous Mexican city over a period of 25 years. It explores the collision of ancient and modern beliefs and the impact on individuals, families and communities.
LOG LINE
A young boy’s discovery of how to communicate with long forgotten Gods initiates a chain of events that pits ancient beliefs against modern ones in a city’s battle to save itself from a debilitating drought.
SYNOPSIS
Nature has a way of occasionally creating something new, something truly unusual. What are the chances that a young Mexican boy, Benito, would be born with only one ear… that he would be so self conscious of his missing ear that he would develop an odd “earless” way of getting around… hugging whatever wall would hide his earless side?
Once on this strange path, it makes sense that his grandmother would give him an ancient mirror, one that had been used to communicate with now forgotten gods, to help him in his “earless” travel. It makes sense that the boy would meet one of these Gods and see the opportunity to ask the God make it rain, ending a long drought in his city.
What happened next though never made sense to any of the people that counted in this city.
It was in all the papers... A fatal bus accident... An overworked, underpaid detective labors over the mysterious circumstances but finally finds a way out, an explanation that the people will be happy with. The deaths are blamed on the bus driver, Esteban, who is jailed. The rain comes and the city moves on.
Two families never do..
25 years later, the city is again ravaged by a devastating drought. People are abandoning the land and now flood into the city hoping to find a way to survive.
Esteban, the wrongly accused bus driver and father of Arturo has finally been released from prison. He lives on the edge of poverty but finds solace in a few good friends while secretly yearning to have a family again.
Arturo hasn’t seen his father since that day when he was arrested and continues to blame him for the accident. Now an engineer with the city, he struggles to keep water flowing from the city reservoirs and at the same time hold back his anger at his father for destroying their family.
Reina, his wife, is the sister of the strange young boy who was purported to have died in the accident, a brother she never met. She is now pregnant with her second child, and is anxious about her first, Simi, now 7, who is having strange dreams and cries profusely. Reina’s mother, Carmen, lives alone, hiding the past to protect her little Benito.
Reina, determined to make her family whole, spurred on by a old Indio woman’s instructions to “find her brother, save her son” must act against her husband’s wishes... and her mother’s warnings, to discover details about the accident, including the shocking revelation of her dead brother’s absence from his grave and the mysterious presence of ancient and forgotten gods.
Arturo has stubbornly maintained his belief in his father’s guilt, but now he is a father himself. A he comes to realize his own fallibility and finally must confront his fear of accepting his father and of meeting him for the first time as a man.
In the end, a young boy’s courageous but forgotten battle with ancient gods is honored and the two families are made one… with a surprising twist.
© 2008, Robert Fullerton.
STATUS - In Development