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 Secrets, written in 2018, is my third novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
Fifteen year-old Matt Benson moves with Robert, his widowed father, to Boaz, Alabama for one year as Robert conducts research on Southern Baptist Fundamentalism. Robert, a professor of Bible History and new Testament Theology at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School enlists Matt to assist him as an undercover agent at First Baptist Church of Christ. Matt’s job is to befriend the most active young person in the Church’s youth group and learn the heart and mind of teenagers growing up as fundamentalist Southern Baptists.
Olivia Tillman is the fourteen year old daughter of Betty and Walter Tillman. He is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Christ. Robert and Matt move to Boaz in June 1970, and before high school begins in mid-August, Matt and Olivia become fast friends. Olivia’s life is centered around her faith, her family, and her friends. She is struck with Matt and his doubts and vows to win him to Christ. Over the next year, Matt and Olivia’s relationship blossoms into more than a teenage romance, despite their different religious beliefs.
June 1971 and Matt’s return to Chicago comes too quickly, but the two teenagers vow to never lose what they have, even promising to reunite at college in three years after Olivia graduates from Boaz High School.
The Boaz Secrets is told from the perspective of past and present. The story alternates between 1970-1971, and 2017-2018. After Matt left Boaz in June 1971, life happened and Olivia and Matt’s plans fell apart. However, in December 2017, their lives crossed again, almost miraculously, and they have a month in Boaz to catch up on forty-six years of being apart. They attempt to discover whether their teenage love can be rekindled and transformed into an adult romance even though Matt is 63 and Olivia is 61.
In 2017, Olivia and Matt are quick to learn they are vastly different people than they were as fifteen and sixteen year old teenagers– especially, when it comes to religion and faith. Will these religious differences unite them? The real issue is the secret Olivia has kept. Will Matt’s discovery destroy any chance he and Olivia have of rekindling their teenage relationship?
Chapter 11
August 1970
Saturday night Dad and I spent nearly three hours reviewing and discussing my notes so far, things I had observed over the past two months in Boaz hanging around Boaz teenagers. The only thing that surprised Dad was how quickly Olivia and I had connected given how many weeks at the beginning of summer that I hadn’t even met her. He attributed this to how sold out she was for Christ and how committed she was to convert me to Christianity.
Sunday came and went. About all I did was go to Church. Dad returned for the third week to Creekside Baptist Church, five miles out in the country in a little community called Aroney. He was connecting with the pastor, Gabriel Gorham, who, according to Dad, was just as much a Christian fundamentalist as all the other pastors he had met in Alabama. However, Pastor Gorham exhibited a humility unlike the near haughty arrogance of the two First Baptist pastors Dad had met. He had said, “If there actually was a Jesus Christ of the New Testament, I suspect he would be like Pastor Gorham: kind, respectful, generous, and oh so humble.”
I didn’t see Olivia at Church either service, morning or night. She had told me yesterday that she taught a middle-school girl’s Sunday School class, and during preaching she often volunteered in the nursery. Last night, the youth choir had visited Second Baptist Church and joined their choir to present a musical titled The Blessed Mary. Olivia had said the purpose was to persuade me and everyone that hears it to be ready for God’s call. This takes focus and commitment.
Summer had finally ended. My one year of high school in a Southern town began today. I both dreaded it and couldn’t wait. My excitement rested on my belief that I would get to see Olivia every day, or at least this was my hope. I rode my bike and wore an empty backpack, orders from Mrs. Gilbreath when I registered. It was a tradition at Boaz High School. All students reported to the gymnasium at 7:00 a.m. on the first day of school. Tables had been set up all around the large room, alphabetically ordered to reflect the student’s first letter of his or her last name. Over the weekend the teachers and administrators had worked to organize and assemble an easy book-distribution system. I reported to the ‘B’ table at 6:50 a.m. (I always liked being early) and didn’t have to wait. I filled my backpack with thirty-plus pounds of books. The Biology textbook alone seemed to weigh ten pounds. I walked to my locker on the second floor and stored all my books except my ten-pounder. It was now barely 7:00 a.m., and my first class didn’t start until 7:45 a.m. The Pirate Practice had warned against ‘wandering the halls,’ forbidding eleventh and twelfth graders from being on first floor unless we had a class there. It was reserved for ninth and tenth graders. I decided to go to my first period class and wait, and hopefully meet some other students.
Dr. Ayers was sitting behind her desk when I arrived. I knew her instantly from the Pirate Practice. It contained a photo of each teacher, a brief biography, and a list of the classes taught. I already knew she was from Chicago. She had taught Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago before moving to Boaz six years ago. She immediately got up and walked to me, shook my hand, and said, “Good morning Matt, seems like we have a lot in common.” I guessed she had conducted a little research on me after I registered for school.
It was nearly 7:45 before the next student showed up. Dr. Ayers and I had talked the entire time. She shared her story of what had brought her and her family to Boaz and the tragic death of her daughter, Ellen, almost five years ago. She was open about her faith, or, lack of faith. I will never forget her statement, “it’s difficult, near impossible, to believe in God and be an evolutionary biologist. At most, I’m a Deist, but that has its own set of problems.” She said it was her philosophy to instill and intensify each student’s sense of curiosity, to encourage all her students to capture the wonder of life, life that had evolved on earth for billions of years. I too shared my story and my lack of faith. I related Dad’s story (the parts I could reveal). Dr. Ayers made me promise that Dad and I would join her and her husband for dinner at their house very soon. She seemed especially interested in talking with Dad.
Biology II with Dr. Ayers was the highlight of my morning. Calculus I, American History, and English Literature were interesting, at least according to the Syllabi each teacher had distributed. By the end of the last three classes before lunch I could already tell Dr. Ayers was the exception at Boaz High School. Virtually every other teacher applied a heavy God-dose to their classroom environment. Things like, from Clark Reiner, the history teacher, “from the beginning, at the landing at Plymouth Rock, you will have no choice but to believe that God had His hand on America’s founding.”
I ate lunch with James and the other four members of the Flaming Five. So far, I liked them all except for Randall Radford. He was a bully, a giant bully, that was uninhibited when it came to everyone who didn’t bow down as he walked by. After thirty minutes of listening to him disrespecting the bodies of every girl that wandered by our table, I decided I would find another place to have lunch.
At 12:45 p.m., I was passing through first floor, headed to the gymnasium for a school-wide assembly, when I saw Olivia staring into her locker. My mind and my heart responded like I had just seen a ship appear on the horizon after I had spent the last several days alone on a piece of driftwood bobbing about a lonely and dangerous ocean. I was still twenty feet or more away from her when she turned towards me. It was like she sensed my presence. It was a gloriously welcomed sign of our budding friendship. In truth, to her, it probably was her anticipation of another chance to witness to me.
“Hi Matt, are you headed to hear Pastor Gorham?” Olivia said closing her locker without any attempt to discover how things were going on my first day at school.
“I’m headed to the gym. I take it Mr. Gorham, Pastor Gorham, is speaking?”
“Yes, you’ll love him. If my Dad wasn’t my pastor I would be an active member of Creekside Baptist Church. For its size, their youth group is larger than ours. Brother G, as he likes kids to call him, is a magnet for Christ.”
“Is it okay if we sit together?” Once again, my boldness surprised me. Up until Olivia, I had always been so shy around girls that I could barely carry on a conversation. I had never asked a girl for a date, not that going to assembly with Olivia would be a date.
“It’s allowed for these type things. I guess you know we can’t hang out together during normal break times? You have to stay upstairs with the pretty Junior and Senior girls.” Olivia said smiling, her blue eyes pouring waves of mystery inside my mind.
“I’m aware. I nearly have the Pirate Practice memorized. I’ve read it so much.”
“Loosen up a little. This ‘ain’t’ Chicago. Olivia said accentuating her best Southern drawl. “Come on, or we’ll be late.”
Principal Hayes gave us a stern look as we walked inside the double, exterior doors of the gym. “Olivia, you’re being a bad influence on our newcomer. Try harder next time.”
“Yes, Mr. Hayes. I’m sorry.” Olivia said pulling my right arm to get me to hurry up.
Pastor Gorham was just walking to the podium that had been set up in the middle of the basketball court. Clark Reiner had introduced him and was sitting down behind the podium in a row of chairs occupied by, what I later learned, were the town’s mayor and city councilmen.
I liked him from the start, as a human being. He spent five minutes at least talking about how honored he was to be speaking to all the students of Boaz High School. He made me feel important by elaborating on our future and how all of civilization depended on us and what we learned now and our attitude towards our fellow man. He inspired me to treat everyone as though they were the last person on earth and that they held the key to my survival. No doubt, Pastor Gorham, Brother G, was a caring and compassionate man.
However, I began to feel differently about him during the last part of his speech. He was speaking about faith and Christianity. I shouldn’t have been surprised that a school in the heart of the Bible Belt would start off the school year with an evangelistic message. Brantley, Jessie, and Tyler, my friends from Chicago, had warned me that “you’ll come back a Bible-thumper. Those schools down South are wholly unaware of the separation of church and state. To them, it’s just one big milkshake.” I couldn’t help but laugh. I missed my three amigos so much.
Pastor Gorham said, “You can’t be a non-believer and know and serve Christ. You must abandon everything, including reason, and allow faith to be your guiding star. Always, remember, Christ and His ways are foolishness to the non-believer.” He then brought up the highly revered Martin Luther, the radical twelfth-century theologian that redirected Christianity back to faith and away from works. I will never forget three statements Gorham shared, all attributed to Martin Luther. The first one seemed to encapsulate all three: “Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things. But, more frequently than not, struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.” The second statement, according to my reason (I wasn’t trying to be funny) naturally followed: “Whoever wants to be a Christian, should tear the eyes out of his reason.” As did the third: “Reason should be destroyed in all Christians.”
I could barely believe what I had just heard. I had never heard such foolishness. In all my sixteen years, I had been taught to think; to use my reason; to ask questions; and to be critical. According to my eleven years of education so far, (including Kindergarten) I had been taught to be a skeptic. Now, I was sitting in what was called a school, a place where I was supposed to continue my education, and I was being told, with full permission of Mr. Hayes and I assumed the entire Marshall County, Alabama Board of Education, that I should take some dynamite and blow up my reasoning faculty. I had known for years that true faith is believing something without evidence. Over the past year or so I had learned, thanks to Dad and my interest in science, that faith was believing something in spite of evidence to the contrary.
Pastor Gorham made me feel a little better, but not by much, when he seemed to confine his statements to my spiritual life. In other words, I was to keep my reasoning ability sharp and use it in every area of life except when it comes to God. I didn’t believe in God at all, but even if I did, all I could think was, “God must be a little loony. He creates man with the ability to think. The reasoning ability had to come from God if you believe in the Genesis creation story. Yet, God says you can’t use the wonderful ability when it comes to discovering and serving Him. Just as loony, God created everything to look billions of years old, yet the Bible seems to describe the earth as less than 10,000 years old.”
As Olivia and I left the gym, I was confident that I had made the right decision. Years ago, I had chosen the ‘faith’ of my father, instead of my mother. Dad’s ‘faith’ existed, thrived, provided hope, because of reason and my willingness to use it.
“Matt, I hope Brother G’s talk helped you, and I hope you accepted his invitation at the end to believe in and surrender to Jesus Christ.” Olivia said as we walked like snails to maneuver away from the crowd that was siphoning out of the gym.
“I have to admit; his talk was interesting and did give me hope. Thanks for letting me sit with you.” I said, hoping Olivia would ask me over to her house after school to study together, walk her dog, or anything, even to sit and play cards with her parents. One thing was obvious, according to my reasoning, I wanted to spend as much time as possible with this beautiful, but loony, 14-year-old girl.
Two more classes and my first day would be over. I couldn’t wait. We had a substitute teacher for Poetry. Mr. Johnson was apparently sick. The substitute passed out the Poetry syllabus and had us sit quietly the entire hour and read the introduction and Chapter One from our textbook, The Limitless World of Words and Life, by Gretchen Ellsworth. I had never heard of her, but she won me over immediately in the Introduction. There, she wrote, “there is no limit to what you can discover if you put no limit or boundaries on your thinking.” This was going to be, along with Biology II, the highlight of my year.
I had chosen Vocational Agriculture as a joke for my three amigos in Chicago. I had no interest in learning how to milk a cow, castrate a pig, or rebuild a lawn-mower engine. After the first day, the joke was on me. Mr. Jackson, at first and during his fifteen-minute lecture in the classroom, seemed like a drill Sergeant in the Army. He laid out his classroom rules, none of which I had seen in the Pirate Practice. Especially the one about corporal punishment. Follow my rules or favor a hot ass. He didn’t say that exactly but that’s what he clearly meant.
The one statement I liked during his talk was, “if you’ll pay attention and apply a little effort, you will surprise yourself at what you can accomplish. Many of you probably are here because you wanted an easy class. This is going to be the hardest class you’ve every loved. Here, you will learn how to make a living, to survive, even if you never go to college.” After the first fifteen minutes Mr. Jackson had all eighteen of us follow him into the shop. It was filled with all kinds of machines and tools. He spent several minutes emphasizing the importance of safety and how ‘dicking around’ is how you get hurt, maybe lose a finger or hand, plus get your “ass lit up.” As he guided us around the large room describing some of the things we would be doing, no one in our class made a sound. We all imagined we had been drafted into the Army. Mr. Jackson ended class with a joke. “What did the pig say to the chicken as the Goldkist chicken haulers drove onto the farm? Which came first the chicken or the egg?” Everyone laughed, including me, even though I didn’t catch the punch line. As the bell rang, he said, “try to not be a pig when you’re in my class. Remember, the pig and the chicken both are headed to the slaughter. Use your time wisely and don’t ask dumb questions.”
As I rode my bike home, I figured that I would learn more about life in the trenches with Mr. Jackson than I would from any other teacher, except of course, Dr. Ayers. At least he had not said, “Which came first, reason or faith?” Nor had he said, “Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason.”
Life in North Alabama, attending Boaz High School over the next school year, was going to be anything but boring.
The Pencil Driven Life 