The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.
The Boaz Scorekeeper, written in 2017, is my second novel. I'll post it a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Gina’s funeral was delayed until Sunday, November 12th, because of her autopsy. I had mixed feelings about being unable to go. One side of my mind desperately wanted to be there, to make sure she had at least one real friend standing by her side. The other side was divided. It wanted at all cost to avoid another dose of the exhaled air spewing from the mouth, eyes, and hands of Wade and James, and every male member of the families of the Flaming Five. From this, I could tell I still felt somewhat positive about their wives, especially Judith, and their ex-wives, Sara and Cynthia.
I found a strange form of peace after Matt’s funeral report. He said First Baptist Church of Christ was packed, and Wade was showered and bathed in Christian love as the choir sang Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, and Beulah Land. Pastor Kevin Walton from Pell City lead the service with calmness and cogency. He couched his statements under the banner of worship restating Bible promises that the body returns to dust but the spirit goes immediately to be with the Lord. He admitted that the evil of violence is difficult to accept but understandable in a fallen world if it is only something we read about that has happened at a distance. However, when it strikes us and our loved ones, the best we can do is endure the black night of mystery with absolute assurance that God is still in control, and has built for us a glorious home in Heaven.
Matt shared that Gina’s funeral was one of the most uncomfortable meetings he had ever attended. He said, even though he was not a member of First Baptist Church of Christ, he expected to be treated with loving kindness. It was anything but that, with stares and looks that could cut one in half. Matt concluded that Gina’s friends and church family could easily accept spiritual principles laid down in Scripture, but weren’t so eager to hold to the Constitutional principle of innocent until proven guilty, even though this too was a Biblical principle. “It was good for Wade that he was not yet a suspect. I won’t be surprised if his church family circles their wagons in his behalf. Hard to figure people out sometimes.”
After Gina’s funeral, Matt told me he and his wife Ginger went for lunch at Grumpy’s Diner. He shared how he had used his ‘ear piece’ as he called it. It was some high-tech devise he had ordered online. Matt said he overheard scuttlebutt from two nearby tables. From the closest table, the gossip was that Wade and Gina had been having trouble and she was planning on leaving him. From the table a little farther away, the two men and two women both agreed that something big was about to go down in Boaz. The younger couple’s son was a Boaz Police Officer and had shared with them that two officers on the night patrol had been seeing a suspicious vehicle around Boaz that looked ‘federal.’
Matt brought me a copy of yesterday’s Sand Mountain Reporter and encouraged me to read the ‘Unsettled Issues’ column. This was a recent creation for the Reporter. It seemed to be their attempt to offer a hardcopy social media forum. The column consisted of the Newspaper’s Chief Editor describing a major Sand Mountain area issue that desperately needed attention. Readers go online and comment like they do on Facebook. The Reporter’s twist is to print all the comments in the next issue. The ‘Unsettled Issues’ column Matt wanted me to read was titled, “Where are John, Randall, and Fred?” The Editor had written that it seemed their cases had gone cold and it was time the community united and solved these crimes. The Reporter had printed nearly two pages of reader comments. Matt had highlighted a string of similar comments on the second half of the first page and scattered on to the end. The first highlighted comment by a reader named ‘SHolmes1972,’ said that “Micaden Tanner has the strongest motive to kill every member of the Flaming Five than anyone I know. Who wouldn’t want to commit violence against someone who had set you up and was the cause of you spending over six months in jail and suffering from the fear of being convicted for murder and spending the rest of your life in prison. I know I would not just have motive I would kill the bastards that did this to me. Has police taken a close look at Tanner and whether he was involved in these deaths?”
After Matt left, I read not only the comments he had highlighted, but every comment printed throughout the two pages. When I finished, and was returned by two deputies to my cell, I lay on my bunk and had that same strange and sick feeling that my current capital murder case could turn even more serious. I hadn’t thought that possible before Matt had arrived. Of course, I was often naive.
The Pencil-Driven Life 