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 29
May 1971
The next month raced by. It was like the earth’s orbit around the sun was being fed by a turbocharger. Maybe it was God’s way of getting me back to Chicago and out of Olivia’s life. It seemed like fate was conspiring to keep us apart. My end of the year Biology project consumed half my waking hours outside of school. Dr. Ayers had become a mother figure to me. In part. However, she never relinquished her role as the best teacher at Boaz High School, one completely uninfluenced by Southern Baptist fundamentalism. It also seemed that when I wasn’t working on impressing Dr. Ayers with my attempt to reconcile Darwin’s findings with what was going on in genetic research, Olivia was preoccupied with preparations for what the kids in the youth group referred to as ‘hell house.’ The formal name, the name used by Brother Randy and the three weekly ads in the Sand Mountain Reporter, labeled the three-day community-wide presentation as Judgment House.
The first performance was set for Friday night, two days after Olivia’s fifteenth birthday. She and I had planned our first date for weeks but hadn’t noticed the conflict with hell house, I preferred this name since it reminded me of the weeks and months that I had eaten my school lunches at the table from hell. There had to be a connection. Olivia had a key role in the annual program designed to literally scare the hell out of every young person for miles around. Thus, our first date would have to wait.
The only good part of the conflict was not having to see the movie Shane. We had planned on eating out in my Corvair at the Dairy Queen and then driving to the Martin Theater in Albertville. I had been able to learn what movie was scheduled and had not been impressed. Of course, that wasn’t at all important. I would have watched back to back reruns of Alice in Wonderland just to sit in a dark room with Olivia, holding her hand as we shared popcorn and Milk Duds.
Brother Randy always had a plan, a carefully choreographed plan. It was Wednesday, Olivia’s birthday and the last opportunity he would have to set the stage, figuratively, in the mind of his sixty-eight-member youth group before each one donned their carefully crafted uniforms as either a devil or an angel as background props in one of the six chambers of hell set up throughout the old church building. A week ago, Brother Randy had asked Olivia and me if we would present a skit tonight to the entire youth group. It would take place during the time he was normally standing in the middle of the two concentric circles down in the basement. He had asked us to simply sit and have a conversation. Olivia was to be pretty much herself, a devoted and knowledgeable Christian, albeit a young adult. I was to be an atheist. Unknown to Brother Randy I wouldn’t have to do much preparation. He asked us to politely support our positions. I suspect Brother Randy fully believed the outcome of our talk would prime every teenager in attendance to become more aware of what the unsaved believed and how to overcome their arguments. He probably also thought our skit, along with the upcoming series of three presentations, would scare the hell out of everyone.
Olivia and I had met after school for a few minutes. Long enough for me to wish her a happy birthday and to give her one of two birthday presents I had bought for her. The first one was a book of poetry I had found at a Gadsden bookstore Dad and I had visited a few weeks earlier. Love Isn’t Always a Straight Line, by Carolyn Augustus. The poet, a woman from Savannah, Georgia, had lost her husband in the Korean War. Most of her poems represented her evolving love the longer he was at war, before she learned he had been captured and probably killed. These poems dealt with experiences the two lovers had before he left for Korea. After the horrible news, Carolyn’s words revealed her anticipation of future experiences, ones where her husband was present, although in a spiritual form. I thought Olivia would relate these words to our own predicament and gain strength to endure our coming separation. The second gift I would hold until our first date. It was a Cameo ring that I hoped she would accept as a symbol of my love and commitment to her and my promise to wait for her as long as it took. As we walked down the long first floor hall after leaving her locker, she had said, “Don’t be too rough on me tonight. I’m having a hard time concentrating today.”
After the fellowship meal I learned that Olivia’s and my presentation had been moved to the large auditorium on the first floor of the old church building. Something about the youth groups from Albertville and Guntersville’s First Baptist Church were going to be in attendance. No doubt, Brother Randy’s attempt to spread the Good News.
Olivia and I sat on stage after the giant podium had been removed. The auditorium was nearly full. I don’t think I was ever so nervous. Brother Randy demanded we not use any type script or notes of any kind. This was to be the type of conversation that could take place on an evangelistic visit or simply over a cup of coffee at the Waffle House.
“Hi Matt, how are you? Long time no see.” Olivia started us off.
“Olivia, it’s so nice to see you.”
“I hear you just finished college and have a new job picking up garbage for the City of Boaz. I’m impressed.” Olivia’s attempt at reality was impressive, but one look at Brother Randy sitting on the first pew indicated he was against this type humor.
“I hear you married after high school and are a stay at home mom. How old are your children?”
“Three and six months. Boy and girl.” Olivia said turning her head quickly towards me as though she was shocked by the subject matter.
“No doubt you’ve already got them in church.” I said trying to get things rolling and to please Brother Randy.
“How else are they going to learn about God and His plan for their lives?” Olivia said sitting a little straighter in her chair.
“You are exactly right. Children learn about God or gods from their parents and their surrounding community. If you were brought up in the Middle East, you would be a Muslim. You would be carrying your boy and girl to a mosque. They would be learning about Allah, not the Christian God. They would believe Mohammad was the only true prophet and that Jesus wasn’t God’s son but only a great teacher, fully human.” I said knowing that Brother Randy might be squirming a little. I didn’t glance down at him.
“You might be right but hopefully there would come along a Christian missionary or two to share with me the truth about Jesus and how I could be saved.” I almost felt sorry for Olivia. It wasn’t her fault. She was the perfect representation of what is produced from the environment in which she was raised. Pastor Walter would be proud of her.
“How do you know your beliefs are true?”
Olivia was ready to respond to the question I had lobbed at her. “I know it from two sources, the Bible, and the world around me, some call it nature or the natural world. Others call God’s nature His general revelation to all mankind. Both perfectly reflect Yahweh and His son Jesus. God’s special revelation, the Holy Bible, gives us every detail we need. God inspired faithful and honest men of old to transcribe his words, words that clearly lay out the plan of salvation. The Bible shows that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. We are all born sinners, therefore God sent His only son, born of a virgin, to die on a cross as the perfect sacrifice for my sins and yours.” Olivia didn’t let up until she had tommy-gunned a dozen bullets against my unbelief.
“What if you’ve been misled?”
“I haven’t. I know in my heart that God is real and that He loves me.” Olivia was so predictable. In no other part of her life would she be so gullible.
“Olivia, you have been programmed to say all these things. You didn’t come to believe these things without those in authority over you telling you they were true and that you had to believe them.”
“I have been blessed to have a lot of faithful Christians around me who have loved me and shared the truth, the truth from God’s word.”
“They’ve also loved you enough to scare you to death. They have told you that if you reject God, the Christian God, you will spend an eternity in hell and that hell is a bad place, a hot place, a horrible place.”
“That’s right, exactly.” Olivia looked at me as though I was pampering her with my gentle statements.
“Why would God choose you and let Muslims go to hell. Does that sound like a loving God?”
“God doesn’t let them go to hell, they choose to when they reject Christ.”
“What if they never hear about Christ? Will they still go to hell?”
“The Bible says everyone knows God, that He exists. This gives everyone the chance to accept or reject God.” Olivia was the typical Southern Baptist fundamentalist. There was nothing in the world, no amount of evidence, that would ever change her mind. She was taught from the cradle not to question her beliefs, to accept God’s written word, every word of it, as the literal truth.
“If you read something other than the Bible you might learn that there is no evidence that Jesus was anything more than an itinerant teacher. To be totally direct, there is no good evidence that He ever even existed. No secular writings in the first century even mention him, much less confirm him. An honest inquiry into the believability of the Bible would have you face the facts that the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not written by the titled person, that they are not historical accounts of Jesus, that they were written generations after Jesus supposedly lived, and that the many manuscripts that have been found, none of which are the originals, conflict with each other nearly as much as they agree. And, more damaging to your two supporting pillars of why you believe God exists, is evolution. That theory, that scientific theory that is truly confirmed fact, destroys a literal interpretation of the Bible.”
“Do I get a chance to respond or are you going to keep lecturing me?” I could tell Olivia was uncomfortable with me bringing up evolution. I had often shared with her what I was learning in Dr. Ayers’ Biology class. Up until now Olivia at least had a smidgen of interest.
“I’m sorry. You may talk, say whatever you want.” I tried being as polite as I could. The last thing I wanted was to make Olivia mad at me. Gosh, it was her birthday.
“In Genesis it says that God made man and woman in His image. That fully refutes your little theory that humans have evolved from an apelike creature.” Olivia looked as though she had discovered the fountain of youth.
“Actually, the Bible says that God made man in His image. Woman came from Adam’s rib. From my reading of the Bible it seems God didn’t have much of a high opinion of women. Especially in the Old Testament, women are not much more than property. Not better than a herd of cattle to their male owners. It seems most every story denigrates women, showing them to be liars, whores, and, as I said, chattel property. God didn’t seem too upset with Lot sleeping with his two daughters. How could he be blamed for having sexual intercourse with his two young virgin daughters, he was drunk.” I was now sweating. I knew I had gotten away, totally, from what Brother Randy had intended.
Our conversation ended with quite a moving two-minute speech to me and the crowd by Olivia. She eloquently argued that the most important way that she knows that God and Jesus exist is from her heart. She, if I didn’t know otherwise, was persuasive as she shared how Jesus lived in her heart and how He talked with her, answered her prayers, and gave her strength to endure trials and tribulations. I almost laughed when she shared how Jesus had helped her just today find her Literature textbook that she had lost. She ended her talk by saying that no matter what the world says, no matter what evidence is thrown against the Christian wall, she will never doubt God loves and cares for her.
After the skit, and after everyone had left the old auditorium, Brother Randy congratulated us. He told Olivia that he still needed to meet with her before she left after refreshments. As Olivia walked away I felt cold beads of sweat start forming across my forehead.
“Matt, you are too smart for your own good. I had no idea you could be so convincing. You will be a great actor someday.” Brother Randy said walking closer towards me.
“I guess that was a compliment. Thanks.” I said.
“Change of plans. Instead of you working in Heaven during Judgment House I need you in Sixth Degree Hell. Charlie has had a death in his family and won’t be available to be Satan. Is this okay with you?” Brother Randy said looking at me with less than friendly eyes.
“I would be honored to be the devil.” I meant it as subtle humor. I was the only one who smiled.
Two hours later I called Olivia at home. It was as though our on-stage conversation had never taken place. I suppose she was somewhat used to our discussions over the past year. All she wanted to talk about was Love Isn’t Always a Straight Line. At 1:00 a.m., we ended our call with my three favorite words, I Love You, spoken in perfect unison.
The Pencil-Driven Life 