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 20
December 20, 2017
The next morning John and Paul and I had ridden in my car the four miles back to the Appalachian trail and alternated hiking north and south, thirty minutes in one direction and then an hour in the opposite. No Eagle Scout would dare call it hiking. John and Paul didn’t either, but by late afternoon, we all agreed that we would be faithful to continue to grow our relationship. At one-point John suggested that Olivia and I should get married and finally complete our family. By the time I dropped them back off at The Martyn House B & B, all I could think about was, ‘what if Olivia and I gave it our best try?’ John and Paul and I once again shared man-hugs, this time allowing our real emotions to shine through. Tears were gleaming in each of our eyes as I drove away.
During my long drive back to Boaz I reminisced every conversation we had out on the Trail. The one that played over and over in my mind concerned John and Paul’s adoptive parents. The story was that Bret and Stacy Thompson of San Marcos, Texas had adopted the two boys as three-day old infants. All their lives, until the discovery of their mother’s letter after she passed away, the brothers had thought they had been born in Nashville, Tennessee. That’s what they had been told and their birth certificates had indicated the same. When the twins were two, Bret and Stacy divorced. At first, the couple were faithful to follow the custody agreement, each parent would have physical custody of both boys for one month at a time. This had worked well until Stacy moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Ultimately, the parents, tired and frustrated over the seeming deterioration in John and Paul’s mental health, decided to split custody. With the flip of a coin John stayed with Bret, while Paul went to live in Arizona with Stacy. The part that had interested me the most was that Paul was raised Christian, in a Baptist church and by a mother who was as fundamentalist as any Southern Baptist from Alabama. Even though John remembered occasionally going to church, his father hadn’t attempted to influence his religious beliefs. Clearly, John’s secular and Paul’s religious upbringings had influenced their current beliefs and philosophies.
My return from Ellijay, Georgia was two days ago, and I still didn’t have the results of the DNA test from the samples I had sent to my lab in Chicago. For some reason I had forgotten it was the end of the year and the State of Illinois Department of Forensic Sciences was in town conducting its annual audit. I was fortunate that Jerry Coyne, the imminent evolutionary geneticist, was also in town over the holidays and was bored from the lack of students during the semester break. Last night he had told me that “the bureaucrats were finishing up this morning. I will conduct the test tomorrow afternoon. I’ll email you the results. Keep in mind the results will be correct, but you’ll need an independent lab to verify if you ever want to use the findings publicly.”
I woke up this morning almost giddy over seeing Olivia. We had talked a dozen times since I got back into town. Her and Randi Radford had decided, spur of the moment, after I left for Ellijay, to take a trip to Gulf Shores. I should have seen her late yesterday afternoon but at the last moment, Randi had suggested they stop in Montgomery and visit with one of her college roommates. The intended two-hour visit had transformed into an overnight stay. This morning, I was acting like a teenage boy anticipating his first date. At 11:00 my cell phone rang. It was the woman, the beautiful woman, John and Paul wanted me to marry. It would take very little to persuade me to follow that road. I wondered what Olivia would think.
“Hey good-looking. I’m ready to see you.” So far Olivia was falling into the correct character. “If you’re free why don’t you come over. I’ve got the whole house to myself. Randi dropped me off and I found a note from Warren that he farmed out the kids and took Tiffany to Gatlinburg for a few days.”
“Sorry, I’m very busy. I have to make up my bed and polish the furniture.” I said, always trying to improve my humor.
At first it seemed Olivia thought I was serious. So much for my humor. “Okay, maybe later?”
“No silly, I can come right now if that works for you.”
“It does. I really want to see you. Come on over.” Olivia said, more eager than I could remember her, other than maybe half a century ago.
She met me outside on the front porch, even though it was cold. But, it wasn’t windy. I hadn’t worn my jacket.
“I like your sweater. You were always a sweater guy. I think they make you look sophisticated.” Olivia said hugging me, taking my hand, and pulling me inside the house.
“I’ve always been extremely sophisticated. So much so that I won your heart back in my prime.” I needed to think before I spoke. That statement seemed arrogant, certainly a put-off.
“Let’s go down in the basement. I love Warren’s man-cave. Hey, what does that tell you about me? Am I transgenderizing?” Olivia said with an aloofness unlike anything I had seen since reconnecting with her as an adult.
“I hope not. Is that even a word?”
“Seriously, I want to show you what I found. You know, obviously, that I grew up in this house. I’ll show you my room later. I’m still astounded that Mom and Dad left my room intact. There is a closet in the basement where Dad kept his music collection. You might not remember but he loved to listen to tapes on his eight-track player. Everything is still there. Warren upgraded the entire basement but left that closet like a shrine.”
“Man, that brings back memories. I bet you’ve forgotten but I just remembered the night before I was to present my first semester research paper to Dr. Ayers.”
“Mr. Matt, you are not the only one with a memory. By the way, don’t let me forget to tell you someday about my own presentation to her during my eleventh-grade year. Of course, you were not around. You were sophisticated in Chicago.”
“Funny. Okay, put up or shut up. What do you remember about that night?” I said wanting to probe into Olivia’s past, not about my Biology class project but hoping she might say something relevant about John Ericson. I was reaching.
“You don’t believe me, do you? I’ll show you. Noah’s Ark. Your silly little piece of fiction, at least that’s what I thought at the time, was all about proving that Mr. Noah’s story could not be true. You did, I bet with the help of your dear father, a credible job of showing how it would have been impossible to put two of every species on the 400-foot wooden boat. I remember you saying that there were, in 1970, more than thirty million species and at a minimum there would have been several million back four thousand years ago.”
“That’s crazy, isn’t it? To think, the earth, the universe, is less than ten thousand years old.” I interrupted.
“I think most Christian Fundamentalists believe the earth is only about 6,000 years old. They claim to prove this with the Bible itself, including its many genealogies.” Olivia said.
I was proud of Olivia for breaking free from her many years of entrapment in the biggest myth ever. I knew that it was almost impossible for someone brought up as the daughter of a Southern Baptist Fundamentalist pastor to overcome a lifetime of persistent brainwashing. “The key to evolution is time, a very long time. There simply wasn’t enough time in four thousand years for millions of new species to evolve.” I said.
“I don’t recall you mentioning a ton of other facts that destroyed the Noah’s Ark story.” Olivia said looking through records and tapes in Pastor Walter’s music collection.
“You forget it was a Biology paper. I had to stay in a narrow lane. I would have loved to include geographic, geological, and a ton of other arguments that clearly placed the little story solidly on the fiction shelf.” Just as I was about to ask her how on earth Christians could believe such nonsense, she screamed.
“Matt, look here. It’s Bobby Vinton.”
“Who?” I clearly remembered but wanted to see Olivia’s reaction.
“The song, “You Are My Special Angel,” you’ve forgotten. I can’t believe you don’t remember. That night, after you rehearsed your oral presentation, Dad let us stay downstairs and listen to some music. It became our favorite. We danced. I am so disappointed you have forgotten.” Olivia looked at me as though I had killed her puppy.
“I’m kidding. No way I’ve forgotten that song or that first night we listened to it. I would have to have lost my emotional mind to not remember how close we were. Or, how close I thought we were.”
“Let’s see if it will play. I bet it’s too old.” Olivia said trying to figure out how to operate the old eight-track player. Oh good, it powers up.”
A few seconds later, I instantly traveled back over forty-six years:
You are my special angel
Sent from up above
The Lord smiled down on me
And sent an angel to love (to love).
Olivia walked over to me as the song continued to play. It was as though we had rehearsed our next actions a thousand times. We both reached for the other at the exact same time. She pulled me in as I did her. For a minute she just lay her head on my shoulder as the song continued. We swayed and listened:
You are my special angel
Right from paradise
I know you’re an angel
Heaven is in your eyes
The smile from your lips brings the summer sunshine
Tears from your eyes bring the rain
I feel your touch, your warm embrace
And I’m in heaven again
You are my special angel
Through eternity
I’ll have my special angel
Here to watch over me
I feel your touch, your warm embrace
And I’m in heaven again
You are my special angel
Through eternity
I’ll have my special angel
Here to watch over me (watch over me)
Here to watch over me
(Angel, angel, whoa-oh-oh-oh, oh, oh oh, oh).
As the song ended we stood still and she looked up at me, pulling back just slightly. “Matt, I have never stopped loving you. Is that too hard to believe?”
“No. Not at all. Seeing you here in Boaz has brought back thoughts and feelings that I have long tried to bury. To be totally honest, I never got over you. It’s like I had to put you in a bottle and place you on a shelf high up in my mind, one that was virtually impossible to reach.” I said, anticipating the truth I would learn in a few hours when Jerry emailed me the results of his DNA analysis, but being overwhelmed with an extra important truth, my feelings and continued love for Olivia.
Then it happened. As things like this seem nearly impossible when I recalled my teenage years when sitting by myself contemplating how on earth I could find just the right time to kiss Olivia the first time. How to do it? When to do it? I had a thousand questions. But now, it was as natural as breathing. It was impossible to discern who made the first slight move. Our lips touched. The smell of Olivia, just salty enough to spice my life forever. Just sweet enough to keep me sane and wanting more. One kiss led to another. She interrupted our embrace long enough to restart old Bobby and his angel song.
Two additional replays along with more intense kissing accentuated with four hands that began to explore, ended with Olivia whispering, “do you want to go see my room?”
“I thought you would never ask.” I said exchanging looks of eager submission.
It was two hours later before we made the opportunity for Olivia to show me her doll collection. In the interim, we had shed our clothes and made love. It was like our bodies were let out of a cage, one we had been locked in for a million years. We were free. Our bodies needed to move. And, they did. Not always vigorously, but enough to make me realize I was much older than that first time nearly half-a-century ago. At first, I was surprisingly strong and enduring, but after our second attempt, I finally realized our activities were simply too much for my 63-year-old body. According to a few words exchanged during our intimacy, I realized that, like me, Olivia, had traveled back in time to the night before Dad and I left to return to Chicago. It was, in many ways, our first time all over again. No weeks, months, or years had intervened. We were both virgins, or so I thought at the time, in love, committing our lives to each other for an eternity.
Later, after a trip to Waffle House for a breakfast supper, and watching The Best of Me movie, we slept and fooled around some more, curled up in the basement on Warren’s huge leather couch in front of his seventy-two-inch TV.
.
The Pencil-Driven Life 