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.
The next section of Nate’s lengthy article was titled, The 1926 Murder of a Homosexual Couple.
In February 1926, David Howsley and Baynard Reed moved to Boaz from San Francisco. Reed’s aunt had passed away in 1925 and left him her house on Elm Street, and Reed Flowers and Gifts, the only such shop in Boaz. It was a small operation that allowed Sonya Reed to eke out a semi-comfortable living but not big enough to garner Club Eden’s attention. That is, until it found out David and Baynard were homosexuals. By the time the Club found out about the two men’s sexual orientation they had already leased a larger building for a flower shop. The new facility was next to present day Eaglemart and offered much better exposure to potential business. The old building, which Sonya owned, was small, on a back street, and suffered from fifteen years of sagging floors and leaking roof.
It was on a Monday, the first after the July 4th City wide celebration, that early morning customers saw the sign on the Shop’s front door. It read, “Thanks for all your support but we miss the West Coast. Good luck and God Bless.” Within two weeks, Anna Criar, the woman who the following year would become the wife of Benjamin Ericson, had reopened the shop as “Heaven’s Scent.”
Nate shared the story Rudolph had told him. He said that he and his fellow club members thought interracial marriage was the most despicable thing they would ever have to deal with. That was until homosexuals Howsley and Reed moved to town. Rudolph admitted that Club Eden was on very thin ice from a Scriptural standpoint concerning their hatred of colored people but clearly the Bible supported their virulence against homosexuality.
At first, Rudolph had told Nate that the Club had simply threatened harm if the couple didn’t leave Boaz, and that violence was unnecessary. With the Huntsville Dive Club’s discovery in May, Nate knew Rudolph was lying. Ultimately, on Nate’s second visit to Creekside Nursing Home, Rudolph admitted that Club Eden had abducted and murdered the two men.
Rudolph said Farris Billingsley and Benjamin Ericson watched the two men for nearly three weeks, enough to learn their weekend routine. On Sundays, Howsley and Reed would take their two English Terriers to R.A. Mitchell’s place outside Gadsden. The couple had met the former mayor of Gadsden shortly after opening their shop. He had come into town to purchase flowers for a cousin who had passed away. The three hit it off and Mitchell invited them to visit his place in Gadsden. The property, which later became Noccalula Falls, was the perfect place for an outdoor adventure: hiking, swimming, and picnicking.
During Howsley and Reed’s fourth Sunday trip to Mitchell’s, Eugene Adams and Samuel Radford accosted the two men as their Model T Ford made a horseshoe turn coming up Cox Gap. Rudolph Tillman and Farris Billingsley were standing outside the raised hood of Farris’ 1923 Buick Master. In less than five minutes, the four Club Eden men had the homosexual couple tied up in the back seat of the Buick. Adams drove the Howsley’s Model T Ford while Radford accompanied him.
When they arrived at Club Eden’s 288-acre headquarters, Benjamin Ericson had a two-horse wagon ready. The two men were removed from the Buick, and loaded onto the back of the wagon. They were carried to the backside of the land and walked inside a cave containing a spring that fed the creek that ran behind the Club’s cabin. Eugene Adams shot David Howsley, and Samuel Radford shot Baynard Reed. The bodies were left there until 1988 when their remains were boxed up and buried 80 feet below the surface of the man-made Aurora Lake.
The Pencil Driven Life 