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 34

January 4, 2018

While Olivia and I had been in Mentone for two days, Tiffany had arranged to have some discarded furniture from younger son Devan’s room moved to my virtually empty little pad on College Avenue.  It seems Tiffany had run into Brandi Ridgeway at Boaz Furniture sometime last week while shopping.  Brandi was there exploring the idea of furnishing one of her two rental houses and offering them to visiting professors at Snead College and others who might be in town on a short-term basis.  I was glad to have, even though just for a few more days, an actual bed to sleep on and a comfortable couch for napping.  Olivia was also pleased since she suggested we change our plans for their post New Year’s Day party.  The party would be Thursday night at Warren and Tiffany’s, more particularly, in the basement man-cave.

Olivia and I had agreed during our last trip to Mentone that we would spend the day in Warren’s basement with Olivia’s family.  I hadn’t liked the idea even though a few hours watching football on Warren’s giant TV would be enjoyable.  As things often do, our plans changed.  It was Olivia’s idea.

I didn’t resist.  It would give a much better opportunity to see if I could tease out a few old and deeply hidden secrets from the woman I unconditionally loved.  Now, a day alone, a day alone with Olivia to see if she would open the dark corner of her mind where she had locked away the most horrible memories of her life.  But, that would have to wait a few hours.  I had something I had to do before Olivia arrived at 11:00 a.m.

Betty Tillman had, just last week, moved from Branchwater in Boaz to Brookdale in Albertville, both were relatively new assisted living facilities.  Betty had lived at Branchwater for several months, ever since the beginning of Walter’s legal troubles.  She had moved to Albertville to be neighbors with her best friend, Reba Ericson.

I arrived at 8:45 a.m. and found Betty and Reba in the cafeteria.  They were just finishing up breakfast and offered to buy mine.  I declined and said I had an important question for Betty and was hoping we could discuss it in private.  “I bet it’s about my darling daughter.  That’s always been your main interest.” 

I wheeled her to her room, followed by a nurse’s assistance with Reba in a similar chair.  We said goodbye to her at Betty’s door.  When we were settled inside in the privacy of her room, without prompting at all Betty said, “horrible, simply horrible, what Randy Miller did to Olivia.”

“How did you know that was what I wanted to talk about?”  I said, as shocked as I could recall.

“You should know Reba and I talk about everything.  She shared with me about your recent visit.”

“Betty, I really need to ask you a few difficult questions.  May I have your permission to do so?”

“Ask me anything.  I’m tired of secrets.  A woman not far from ninety years old shouldn’t have to watch her words.”

“Did you know that Walter raped Olivia?”  I thought there was no use in dancing around the issues.  I doubted Betty had a clue what she had agreed to.

“Oh Matt, you have your story wrong.  That would have been horrible.  As though it wasn’t horrible enough what Brother Randy did.  Things that got him killed.”

I was certain I now had the truth but was confused over Betty’s apparent confusion.  “What do you mean?”  I said, feeling I was about to be hit with something I had never considered.

“Here’s the deal.  I think you will admit that I pulled a few strings for you back when you lived in Boaz as a teenager.  Even lied for you a few times to give you and Olivia a little time together.  Now, will you do something for me?”   Betty could have asked me for virtually anything and I would have agreed.  Her memory was spot on.

“I will do my best.  What are you asking me to do?”

“Keep a secret.  A big one.”

“I promise.”  What was I to say?

“Reba helped me.  It was the late eighties.  I had just learned that it was Brother Randy’s baby that Olivia had when she was a teenager.  Walter had always told me he didn’t know.  There had been a rumor around town about Randy and Olivia and I had confronted Walter.  He finally confessed.  Reba helped me give our dear Brother Randy a little justice.”

I wanted details but didn’t have the stomach.  I certainly wondered how Walter had been able to keep his dark secret from his wife for so many years.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth, that Brother Randy wasn’t the father of Paul Cummins.  Her and Reba had done something horrible, something that would, even now, be grounds for criminal charges, possibly prison.  I had promised to keep her secret.  I would do so.

I finally said, “I knew you would know the truth.  Thanks so much for talking with me.”

“I thought you had several questions.  Go ahead, ask whatever you want.”  Betty said as though there was no limit to what she would divulge.

“That’s all for now.  I need to be going.  Olivia and I are spending the day together.  What about you?”  I hoped she didn’t think I might be asking her to join Olivia and me.

“Warren is coming after me late morning.  I’m spending the day with his family and my husband.  You know things don’t look to good for Walter.”

“I’ve heard.  I’m sorry.  Have a nice day Betty and thanks so much for talking with me.” 

On my drive back to Boaz, Olivia called and said she might be a little late.  Eugene Lackey had died late Wednesday night and the funeral was today.  What a terrible New Year’s week for that dear family.  Olivia wanted to go by and give her condolences during the public viewing time.  Eugene was the Boaz High School basketball coach who had valiantly fought cancer.  The whole community, led by Warren and First Baptist Church of Christ, had given him and his family unlimited support over the past two years.  According to Warren, prayer had given Eugene the remission he had needed.  I guess prayer couldn’t give him the healing he, his wife and family, and the entire community had so desperately sought.

Olivia was sad when she arrived at 11:40 a.m.  “I feel so sorry for so many people I saw this morning.  Certainly, for Eugene’s family.  I will never understand how so many people believe that prayer is real.”

“You used to be just like them.  Fortunately, you had a breakthrough.  You know, that rarely happens to someone who is indoctrinated from birth.”  I said, not knowing where this conversation was going.  I had other things I deeply needed for Olivia to talk about.

“Looking back, I am amazed at how gullible I was.  John 15:7 says ‘If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you.’  That’s so clear a Fifth grader could easily explain it.  Yet, Christians eagerly stand up for God when confronted with, ‘why didn’t God heal Eugene when you asked Him to?’  They offer any number of arguments for God, ‘God is mysterious, how can we know His plans?’ or ‘I must have not abided in Him.’  Olivia’s words were not filled with bitterness but sadness over the unwillingness of so many of her hometown friends to ask questions seeking the truth.

“I guess, today, all those you saw at the funeral home would say that you have to have faith to truly understand God’s Word, He gives His Holy Spirit as a guide to proper interpretation.  Of course, it could be that there is not one single one of the dozens, hundreds I suppose, who prayed for Eugene who were in the right relationship with God to justify Him to answer their prayers for the young man’s healing.”  I said, munching on a huge vegetable tray Olivia had brought with her and set on the kitchen counter.

“They are truly gullible, my friends, most of my friends here in Boaz, but they don’t hold a candle to the most gullible person who ever lived.  Me.”  Olivia’s statement pricked my ears.  Where was she going with this?

“What do you mean?”

“Matt, I’ve put it off as long as I can.  You won’t agree with me, and you shouldn’t.  I’m not really a good liar.  I have been gullible in two ways.  At least two ways.  The first one concerned how I thought you would be better off not knowing the truth about Paul and John, me not telling you that you and I had children.  The second was more recent, of me telling you at Cracker Barrel that I got pregnant the night before you left Boaz at the end of your eleventh-grade year.”

“Olivia.”  I said walking over to her standing with her back to the kitchen sink.  “Stop, please stop.  I know a lot more than you think I know.  I’m sorry but I’ve been doing a little investigating myself.  In a way, I’m ashamed of that.  I should have been totally open with you.  For some reason, one I’ll probably never know, I had to determine for myself if I was the father of John and Paul Cummins.  My dear Olivia, I think you know the answer to that question is no.”

Olivia pulled me into her and laid her head on my shoulder.  We didn’t say a word for minutes.  I could hear her sobbing.  I could feel her tears wetting my shirt.  “Matt, please believe me.  I was about to tell you the full truth when I stated the two times I had been most gullible.”

“Let’s go sit in on the sofa and talk.  Why don’t you just tell me the full truth.  But, before you do, let me say, it’s not going to matter.  Olivia, I fell for you the first time I saw you.  That instant anchored my heart forever.  Your telling me the truth, now, shouldn’t present any hesitation or fear to your mind.  Okay?”  I said, leading her by hand to the den.

“It started at the beginning of my ninth-grade year.  He said that it was God’s will and I believed him.  It didn’t happen every day or every week, sometimes a month or more would go by and he wouldn’t come into my bedroom.  I was such a fool to not seek help, to not tell a single soul, even though I came close to confiding in Brother Randy.  I know I could have talked to him about anything.  He would have taken care of me.  Even after the Valentine’s dance, when I knew you cared so much for me, I could have confided in you.  I was such a fool, such a gullible fool.  Here is the most stupid way to put it, “I didn’t know that I could, I didn’t know I could tell someone.  I truly, fully believed it was God’s will.  How was I to question that?”

“Honey, you were a victim.  Your father should be taken out and shot.”  I said as angry as I have ever been.  Before this conversation, I had known the truth but now it was triply hard coming straight from Olivia’s mouth.

“Father?  Oh Matt, I guess I haven’t been clear.  I didn’t become pregnant by my father, it was Wade.”

I probably should have fainted.  Instead, I stood and walked over to the kitchen doorway, looking away from Olivia still seated on the couch.  Then, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  There was no better way to say it, cliché and all.  I had been such a dumb ass, and I held a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology and had spent the past thirty plus years teaching and researching genetics.  I understood, not to Jerry Coyne’s degree, genetics as good as most anyone.  When Jerry had told me that Walter’s sample matched Olivia’s and Paul’s I had not considered what no doubt would have been a first-year graduate student’s first question, ‘what about Wade?’  His DNA sample would have produced the same result as Walter’s.  Of course, I hadn’t secured and submitted a sample from him.  I never considered it; he was in jail anyway. 

I was glad Olivia had remained silent while she remained seated.  During my extended contemplation, my emotions alternated between relief and anger.  I was relieved to know the truth, but more so, I was angry.  I had never had such a thought.  If Wade had been in the room I’m sure I would have tried my best to tear out his heart.  Finally, I spoke.  “I’m sorry that I’ve been a poor investigator.  I had concluded Paul Cummin’s father had to be Walter Tillman.”

“In a way, Dad was as guilty as Wade.  It was Dad who beguiled me into keeping quiet, even believing it was God’s will.  He, Walter, orchestrated the elaborate plan, scheme is a better word.  Some would say that it was a gift from God that John Ericson got Jessie Dawson pregnant about the same time.  Dad and Franklin Ericson conspired to get rid of the two babies and bury a secret that would likely have destroyed them all, including Wade.”

I had been wrong.  Olivia’s news did matter to me, not that it affected my love for her, but it struck me differently than how the news of Walter had.  I, some way, could wrap my head around Walter and his power over Olivia, sexually abusing her, getting her pregnant.  He was, like allegedly Roy Moore was, a dirty old man.  But Wade?  How had he persuaded Olivia?  How had he kept her quiet?  I had to fight off thoughts and feelings that subtly included Olivia as a partially guilty party.  One thing I didn’t question was how Wade had gone on to become a pastor as though nothing of the sort had ever happened.  Christians were masters of compartmentalization.

Olivia and I explored every detail imaginable about her horrible experience.  At 4:00 p.m., we took a break, returned to the kitchen, and stood and ate a lite supper.  Neither of us were very hungry.  For food.  For each other was a different story.  It was like we were needing to help the other wash away the dirt, the filth of what we had been discussing.  We migrated to my bedroom and kissed, cried, made love, and started all over again for the next four hours before falling asleep in each other’s arms.

At midnight Olivia woke me, sitting alongside me eating a carrot.  “Hey, what’s up doc?” 

I couldn’t help but laugh.  “Carrots?  I want pancakes.”

“And bacon and sausage and coffee.”  She said reaching down and pressing her lips onto mine.  “I love you Matt Benson.  I want to be with you forever.  Can you do me a little favor and spend the rest of your life in my bed, in my heart, head, and soul?”

Sitting up leaning back on my elbows I said, “I’ll tell you after pancakes.  A lot depends on the pancakes.  Now get dressed and let’s head to the Waffle House.”

The pancakes were extraordinary.  I was glad they were, but they didn’t have to be for me to agree to Olivia’s little request.  We even made a little progress on putting together our post-Boaz plans.  We would go our separate ways tomorrow.  Olivia would drive back to Chapel Hill and I would drive back to Chicago.  Friday afternoon I would board a plane to Chapel Hill for a weekend with Olivia.  The following weekend she would come to me.  By February 1st we would easily decide which one was moving to the other.  Simple.  For a couple who had been given a second chance on their once in life love, it would be a piece of cake.

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 33

December 31, 2017 through January 3, 2018

Yesterday had been unseasonably warm.  It felt as though it was at least six months after Christmas.  In fact, it had been less than a week.  I had picked Olivia up at Warren’s just after sunrise.  We spent the entire day in Mentone, Alabama.  It was a place I had always wanted to visit.  Dr. Ayers, my high school Biology teacher, had introduced me to this inviting place over lunch one day in her classroom while she was describing how it had helped shape the most unique and beautiful love affair that had ever been.  It was her daughter Ellen, and her soul mate, Ruthie Brown, who had fallen in love at first sight when they both were about to enter the ninth grade.  Dr. Ayers said the two teenagers had spent Fall weekends in Mentone during their Freshman and Sophomore years, and that they had always come home looking as though they had bathed in a mysterious romantic brew.  She said, “the girls often referred to their time in Mentone as ‘Triple T: Time, Touch, and Talk,’ and always claimed without these three ingredients their relationship would be as bland as that of Romeo and Juliet.”  All during the remainder of my eleventh-grade year I had been intrigued by Ellen and Ruthie and whether in fact there could be a love affair that greatly exceeded that of the legendary Romeo and Juliet’s.  I had tried my best to find a way for Olivia and me to visit Mentone to see if it would have the same effect on us.  The trip never happened.  Until yesterday.

Mentone’s website described itself as “a “quaint, welcoming mountain village nestled atop the west brow of Lookout Mountain.”  Olivia and I had spent the morning ambling through two antique shops and touring the Mountain Laurel Inn that was across the street in downtown Mentone.  A rarest of coincidences occurred when the current operator and her grandmother, the former operator, took time to sit with us in the large den.  Over a cup of coffee and out of the blue I had asked the grandmother if she remembered two teenage girls, Ellen and Ruthie, who had visited in the late sixties.  Riddled with arthritis and confined to a wheel chair had not slowed the elderly woman’s mind.  She almost instantly responded.  “How could I forget the face of pure love.  Those two young ladies, unwise as most all teenagers, realized that true love is the rarest of things.  It’s a gift from the most miserly god.  It’s like a thriving, virtually extinct plant the day it arrives but without constant attention, will pack its bags and walk off without word-to-word and skin-to-skin nourishment.”  I think Olivia and the granddaughter got bored with mine and the grandmother’s conversation.  Finally, Olivia pulled me away and we enjoyed a late breakfast at the Wildflower Cafe across the street.

The afternoon was spent at DeSoto Falls sitting with our backs against a huge rock as we watched and listened to the constant roar of water tumbling down over one hundred feet.  I couldn’t help but think of Ellen and Ruthie sitting on their Rock of Ages up on the mountain just downstream from where we sat below the falls.  I was pleasantly surprised that my memory was so acute. 

Olivia was like a different person.  For the first time since we met in Boaz nearly a month ago, she had asked about our future.  I had wanted several times to bring up the subject.  But, unfortunately, I had gotten sidetracked with my little investigation.  Yesterday, Olivia had shared how she didn’t want us to make the same mistake again, to let each other go.  “If you move back to Chicago and me to Chapel Hill, it will be the same thing all over again.  Matt, I cannot stand to lose you, a second time.  What do we do?  Oh, I forgot to say, I love you.”  Olivia had said laying back against my chest as I held her close with both my arms and my legs.  We both had kept our attention on the cascading water, feeling a slight mist landing on our faces and hands.

We had not come to any definitive conclusion even though we had spent nearly three hours in the same spot.  The best idea that we had come up with was to alternate weekends flying to the other until we could figure something out.  One thing we had no trouble deciding was there was no turning back.  We had now been given a second chance and we both knew how rare, exceedingly rare, it was for a once in life love, unnourished for decades, to be miraculously revived.

We had returned to Boaz a little past sunset.  I was glad I had not shipped G and H, the two samples I had retrieved from Robert Miller.  I had just kissed Olivia and said goodbye on Warren’s front porch when Tiffany opened the door and asked me to stay for supper.  Olivia indicated she wanted me to stay but didn’t seem overeager.  That second was a light bulb moment.  I eagerly accepted Tiffany’s invitation.  I wanted to see Walter Tillman.

The light would have never come on if it hadn’t been for a political story I had been following for the past few weeks.  Alabama Senatorial candidate Roy Moore had been enthralled in a story of horrible sexual allegations.  Six or seven women, all now in their early to late fifties, had come forward accusing Mr. Moore of sexually abusing them as teenagers, some forty years ago.  The first woman to come forward had said that she was only 14 when Mr. Moore, as a 32-year-old assistant district attorney in Etowah County, had taken her to his home in the woods and sexually assaulted her.  For some strange reason these accusations, and especially the one about the 14-year-old, had spawned an idea.  What if Walter had sexually abused his own daughter?  I still don’t know why I had thought this.  I really had no basis for thinking such a vile thought about Pastor Walter, a man who I had respected even midst the talk and rumors he was strict with Olivia, almost unbearable.  Nevertheless, I had pursued my hypothesis.  Without success Sunday night, even though I had shared a meal with the weak and pitiful Walter Tillman, I was unable to secure his DNA.

This didn’t mean I had quit trying.  After a New Year’s Day repeating most everything Olivia and I had done on Christmas Day, I had stumbled on a better idea.  Tuesday morning and the Post Office would be open.  I had packed a copy of Walter’s book, I’m From Boaz, that was published a little over a year after Dad and I had moved away from Boaz in 1971.  Olivia, we were still together, albeit at a distance, had talked about it and she had mailed me a copy.  I had not finished reading the book.  I had gotten bored with his monotonous story, how he was descended somehow from Boaz in the Old Testament and had miraculously wound up in Alabama at a city named after his Israelite ancestor.

While Warren was playing golf and Tiffany and Olivia were looking for good deals at the new shopping center in Albertville, I had arranged to again visit with Walter.  My excuse was to have him autograph my book, well actually, the copy I had luckily located in a local bookstore.  This time I was successful.  It’s because I was prepared.  I had a plan.  I had carefully sanitized the Class Century Cross pen that Dean Stillman, my boss at the University of Chicago, had given me last Christmas.  I had been careful to insert it inside I’m From Boaz.  As I sat and watched Walter write an elaborate note on the inside title page I couldn’t help but wonder what my life would be like if I had become a private detective.  I wondered if there were professional schools for that.  “Just put the pen inside the book, I’ll probably never use it again.”  I had told Pastor Walter chuckling aloud as I looked at him and pondered his future fate.  He just couldn’t be a criminal. 

After leaving the harmless-looking Walter, I had arrived at the Post Office just in time for Freda to process the box that contained, individually secure in their own evidence bags, a fork, a spoon, and a pen.  As I paid her, she looked straight in my eyes and said, “when you complete your investigation I sure hope you will tell me who killed Mr. Boddy.”  I stood confused.  Quickly, she had said, “you know, from the game Clue.” No doubt, Freda was on to something.  She either had an uncanny nose for these type things or she had installed some high-tech form of spy-ware inside my mind.

To my complete surprise, Olivia had surprised me early Tuesday morning with an unarguable declaration we were headed back to Mentone.  I was lucky to have had time to drop by the Post Office before she whisked me away to dream land.

While I had been enthralled with the grandmother’s memories of Ellen and Ruthie, Olivia had cornered the current bed and breakfast operator and arranged for us to return to the Mountain Laurel Inn for a couple of days.  I had not resisted.  We had arrived mid-afternoon and spent the next two hours until dark beneath the sheets in the Inn’s ‘Orange Room.’  Olivia, ever the observer, had made sure that the bedtime activities had included all three of the Triple T’s.  “Matt, baby, I promise I will always spend quality time with you, touch you all over every day, and talk with you, in person, all night long.”  I had responded, “you don’t miss a thing, do you?” 

Olivia’s third surprise for our Mentone adventure was her planned activity Wednesday morning.  Since our first trip here less than a week ago Olivia had tracked down Dr. Susan Ayers.  She was now living in Gulf Shores, a widow after losing her husband Travis to a freak car accident.  I suspect the two, Dr. Ayers and Olivia, had made good use of the occasion with Olivia leading with a sincere apology.  From what I had gathered, Olivia and Dr. Ayers had butted heads as the young teen, zealous for Christ, had argued with the evolutionary biologist over facts from the natural world and how they clearly conflicted with what the Bible claimed. 

No matter, Olivia had come away with enough information to lead us to Ellen and Ruthie’s Rock of Ages, a real giant of a rock that supposedly jutted out from the mountain high above DeSoto Falls just south of where Olivia and I had spent three hours Thursday.  Dr. Ayers’ directions were spot on.  We found the Rock of Ages with hardly any trouble at all.  Our day spent there couldn’t have been better.  If Olivia and I were at all lacking any degree of commitment to each other before we set foot on the giant rock, three hours later, there was no doubt.  No doubt, Ellen and Ruthie, had discovered the fountain of love.

Jerry’s email arrived late Wednesday night, shortly after Olivia and I returned from Mentone.  He explained his change of holiday plans which included him working most all week and then taking off a few days beginning Monday, January 8^th.  It was fine with me as if I had any influence on Jerry’s schedule.

Jerry’s altered working scheduled was the only good news his email contained.  “G & H are foreign to B, and I, E, F & B are four peas in a pod.”  Slowly, I reread the two statements.  G and H, the Robert Miller samples, are not a match for B, Paul Cummins.  Randy Miller was not Paul’s biological father.  I wished that Jerry hadn’t used the word, ‘foreign,’ but I had little doubt what he meant.  Then, as though I had missed it the first time, when I simply had cruised through Jerry’s math-like equation, I nearly fell to the floor.  Sample I, Walter Tillman’s DNA, matches both of Olivia’s samples, the E and F samples, and the B sample from Paul Cummins.  This meant only one thing, that Paul Cummins was Walter’s son.  And, Olivia Kaye Tillman, Walter’s only daughter, was the mother of Paul Cummins.

My blood began to boil.  I hated clichés, I hated Walter Tillman, and I almost hated ever having moved to Boaz, Alabama, including meeting Olivia.   Now, I knew why I had been almost enthralled with the story of Roy Moore and what he had allegedly done to that 14-year-old girl almost forty years ago.

I also now knew why Olivia had never told me the truth.  She was a victim of the worst kind.  She had been raped by her own father.  She had become pregnant by a man who claimed to love her and to love God with all his heart.  I didn’t have a clue as to what I would do with this information.  One thing I never doubted, was that I had to someway reveal to Olivia that I was still her protector, just like I was so, so long ago at that Valentine’s dance when another predator was touching the one girl who was eternally destined to be mine and mine alone.

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 32

May 1971

The next to the last week of school was filled with review and preparation for semester exams.  It seemed Pastor Walter and even Betty herself conspired against me and kept Olivia figuratively locked in her room after school pouring through a half-year of notes in seven subjects.  More likely it was their way of attempting to convince her that boys were and would forever be an impediment to her lifelong dream of becoming a missionary.

Mr. Jackson in Vo-Ag and Dr. Ayers in Biology had achieved something no two teachers had ever accomplished in my life.  Each of them, in their own way, had become a trusted adviser.  Dr. Ayers was comfortable relaying her perspective on most anything I wanted to discuss.  She knew she had taken on, at least in part, the mother role to me.  Mr. Jackson was a totally different story.  I don’t think he had a clue how his insights were burrowing into my psyche.  His little sayings as we worked in the shop or hung out as a class in the large grove of pine trees next to the school on his side of the building were not intended just for me.  He treated everybody the same.  I think he had a hard time growing up.  He had been in the military and after a time trying to find a way to make a living, had gone to college at Auburn to become a teacher.

Tuesday in Vo-Ag, Ryan and I were working on a lawn-mower in the shop when he walked by and overheard us talking about my upcoming date Friday night with Olivia. He saw we were having trouble with the pull rope and gave us a hand.  When he finished he said, “sometimes the cover is better than the book.”  He then walked over to Larry and Tinsley who were goofing off as usual.  When Mr. Jackson left I thought, ‘sometimes, you say such stupid things.’  It was normal for me to fail to see the connections he was making.  In this case, was our lawnmower the cover?  Or, was he referring to Olivia?  If so, did he know something I didn’t?  Whatever he meant, I suspected there was some wisdom buried in there somewhere.

Mine and Olivia’s first date was disappointing at best.  That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy every second with her.  I had picked her up and driven us to the Dairy Queen.  Wade and James were there, predictably according to Olivia.  She insisted we share a foot-long hot dog knowing we would want popcorn and candy at the movie.  Shane was ten times better than I had anticipated.  I someway identified with Alan Ladd as Shane.  He came to the small Wyoming town with one simple purpose, to be a farmhand.  Then, his world was turned upside down by a local conflict.  Both Shane and myself got involved with violence.  His of the real kind, physical, but my experience was also one of aggression.  Olivia Kaye Tillman had involuntarily torn my life apart.  She had infiltrated my soul, my mind, my body.  I wouldn’t have had it any other way. 

The best part of the night was the sweet time we had before the movie ended.  I figured with the guns blazing on the big screen might be the time to privately present the Cameo ring I had purchased for Olivia.  We burrowed down in our seats where we could exchange all the words needed.  She was flabbergasted and cried.  I told her this was just practice.  Practice for the time in three years for me to give her a real engagement ring.  For now, I was wishing her health, happiness, and hope for our future.  Since everything was timed, after the movie I drove Olivia back to her house and was hoping for a long and passionate goodnight kiss on her front porch.  Just as I was about to press my lips onto Olivia’s, Wade and James appeared out of nowhere.  No doubt this was part of Pastor Walter’s plan, as was the beaming porch light, aglow with, I suspected, a higher wattage bulb than needed to cast darkness away from an entire parking lot.

I saw Olivia less during the final week of school than I did the week before.  Her schedule was rigid.  All, no doubt, the creation of her father.  Taking exams during the day and studying for more exams at night.  I had never had much trouble taking tests.  I did study but nothing like Olivia.  For someone who bought into the Bible she was extremely critical of everything else she read.  I was thankful for her curiosity because that gave her a good reason to call and talk every night during this last week.  She shared how important her questions were and someway convinced Pastor Walter that I could help her find the answers she needed.  I was impressed with Olivia’s cunning.  Maybe I was wrong.  Probably was.  Likely, she truly was curious about things seemingly unconnected to us or most of the subjects she was studying.

The only good thing about the last week was when it was over.  I hadn’t seen her except in Poetry class and Mr. Johnson had been unusually strict, and focused on getting through the last two chapters of our textbook.  Wednesday night was a bust also.  Olivia, like over half of the other youth group, was absent.  I regretted going just as soon as Brother Randy stood in the middle of the circles.  I think he spoke about the body as the temple of the Holy Ghost and specifically encouraged us to eat a healthy diet.  He ended his forty-five-minute lecture by saying, “feed the Ghost too much sweets and Satan will devour you.”  I think he meant to say Holy Ghost.  I didn’t understand if Satan would devour me for the sweets or what.  I didn’t care too much for sweets anyway, so I guess Satan would choose kids like Tommy Dobbins who kept staring at me from his seat behind where Brother Randy was standing.  Tommy looked like he needed to lay off the sweets.  I had seen him eat two slices of chocolate cake in the Fellowship Hall less than an hour earlier.

I had been dreading it for over a month.  At the end of April Olivia had told me that the youth group’s annual mission trip to New Mexico was the first week after school was out.  She had asked me, repeatedly, to go with her.  At first, I wanted to but after talking with Ryan I decided I would rarely see Olivia, she would be teaching Vacation Bible School all day while I was getting sunburned helping put a roof on a new building another Southern Baptist church would have waiting for the adult men and the older male teenagers.  Nights would be spent singing and listening to testimonies about God showing up and showing out.

The eighty-member team left the Church’s parking lot at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday.  I had said my goodbyes to Olivia the night before at the Lighthouse.  I had wanted us to practice dating some more, even make another attempt at a real date like we had two weeks earlier.  A new rule put that to rest.  It seemed Brother Walter had forgotten to spell out some of the fine print.  Olivia could go out with the same boy but only at three-week intervals.  At midnight, right after Randy had quieted the band and said one of the shortest prayers I had heard him say, Olivia grabbed my hand and pulled me out through the front door.  “Darn rules, come on and walk me home.  I’m leaving early in the morning and away from Daddy for a week.”  We had taken our time and stopped at the darkest spot on Elm Street, where the street lights didn’t quite reach.  It was our first real embrace and kiss since our lovemaking on the leafy, muddy forest floor on the trail beyond Club Eden.  I may have been wrong, but Olivia seemed more passionate than ever, like, if it weren’t for her careful scruples she would have easily let me do a little exploring.  It was getting more difficult to recall Mother’s exact instructions on being a perfect gentleman.

James and I spent the next week hanging out at his house and at the gym with him trying to teach me how to dribble, shoot, and pass the round ball he loved nearly as much as life itself.  He shared with me how this year was the second in a row he had refused to go on the youth group’s mission trip.  “Seems to me the same people get saved again every year.  And, I hate trying to be a carpenter.  It may have been good enough for Jesus, but he didn’t know about basketball.”  James was always a straight-shooter in multiple ways.

The youth group had left on May 28th and were supposed to return Saturday, June the 5th.  However, one of the buses broke down in Amarillo, Texas five hours after leaving Albuquerque, New Mexico.  A delay in obtaining the needed parts delayed the three-bus caravan from arriving in Boaz until late Tuesday evening.  Instead of having four days with Olivia before Dad and I pulled out of Boaz on Thursday the tenth, we would have one day, only one day to say our goodbyes.

No doubt it was Betty who came to our rescue.  She did everything imaginable to distract Pastor Walter.  I think she created two emergencies, one in the afternoon and one in the evening.  The first one was a fender-bender her and Reba Ericson got into in Albertville.  The second was an extended prayer meeting.  It seemed three different people had special prayer requests and needed some counseling after the service disbanded.  At the time, I hadn’t known any of this, but Olivia had shared it with me in a letter the week after Dad and I got back to Chicago.

After youth group Wednesday night, Olivia and I had set outside on the front steps of the old auditorium.  I wanted to be alone, alone, with Olivia.  I invited her to go home with me and help me finish packing.  I knew Dad would be late.  He and Travis Ayers were visiting one final time with Brother Gorham at Clear Creek Baptist Church.  He had invited them to go out after the service for coffee and dessert at Shoney’s in Albertville.

I had donated mine and Dad’s beanbag chairs to the Lighthouse, so they were still in the den.  Olivia and I packed up my bookshelves and settled down in the two chairs for our final talk, hand in hand, for possibly three long years.  We both cried as we repeated the same words we had for weeks.  This time it seemed we both, especially Olivia, were running through the short version.

“Let’s go back to your room.”  Olivia said squeezing my hand.

My bed was still in total disarray.  It was rented furniture and only the covers would make their way back to Chicago.  I hated making my bed every morning and had pretty much stopped after Mother had died.  Dad hadn’t seemed to care.  “Okay.”

After we entered my room Olivia turned in close to me and pressed her head against my neck and shoulder.  She was too tall to lay her head over my heart but that was what she wanted.  “Lay down across your bed.  I want to hear your heart.”  It had happened during Spring Break, at Aurora Lake.  She had discovered our talks took on an even more intense nature when she was listening to my heartbeat.  Tonight, I assumed our talks would return to that verbal zone that reminded me of the physical component that had been added during the rain dance we had laying on the forest floor.

It was the most natural thing, at least what I assumed was natural.  I didn’t have experience to draw on.  Only my imagination, fed by a few steamy novels I had some way read at home thanks to one of my three Chicago amigos, painted a clear picture of how it would be.  Our talk and Olivia’s heart monitoring had quickly evolved into her laying on top of me and kissing me like never.  I mean never.  The evolution continued.  She rolled over and moved straighter up in my bed placing her head on one of my pillows.  I followed her lead and lay beside her.  Our bodies drew closer and our lips encouraged our hands.  Mother seemed to leave the room.  I was glad.  I can’t remember who made the first move.  I think it was mutual.  We giggled a little as our clothes came off, but seriousness took over.  I raised myself on my elbow and considered Olivia’s precious face, intermittently kissing her and asking her if she was okay with what we were doing.  I told her, “I love you too much to destroy our relationship.  I want all of you.  Right now, but only if that is what you want.”

It was more than natural.  If Olivia had asked me during our time, the time our bodies were joined and dancing, to admit I believed in a supernatural being, I would have eagerly agreed.  Thankfully, she didn’t.  I would have thought we would have been so much more awkward than what we were.  It was like Olivia was my teacher.  Maybe she had read a little more broadly than I had thought.  The only interruption that we had once we were committed to sharing our bodies was my total lack of preparation.  I didn’t have a condom.  I had never had a condom.  I didn’t even know where you bought a condom.  The decision came quickly.  Neither of us, during these precious moments, were patient.  “Make love to me Matt.”  Those were words I heard.  I’m still not sure my mind hadn’t played a trick on me as it often had.  We did make love, and I have never regretted it.  Olivia was all the woman I would ever want.

The walk back to Olivia’s was too quick.  I don’t think either of us said a word.  Our hands, together, said volumes.  I was the happiest I had ever been.  Our heads and our hearts were as one.  We were committed to each other forever.  Ours was truly a once in life love.

Dad and I pulled out of Boaz at 6:00 a.m. the following morning.  Olivia had wanted to come see me off, but I had convinced her it wasn’t for the best.  I wanted our time together at my house and our walk back to hers to be our last memories of being together until we would be together forever in just three short years.

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 31

May 1971

The number I heard was 1,837.  This was the number of folks who had walked through the six degrees of hell during the three presentations of Judgment House.  The other number, the most important, was 129.  This, according to Pastor Walter on Sunday morning, was the number of souls who were saved from eternal fire and torture in Hell’s pit.  Only about six percent of these were adults.  The remainder were mostly teenagers although there were twenty or thirty around the age of ten, the minimum age the Church allowed into the scariest show on earth.  It was comforting to see firsthand the love and kindness shown to those children nine and under.  It was almost like these Baptist fundamentalists realized their little show might inflict mental harm on such young minds.  If only they had applied their rule to everyone.  I had always thought it rather odd that there is no ‘Hell’ in the Old Testament.  It was introduced in the New Testament, I suspect, as a marketing tool, one that most folks, especially in a day of widespread ignorance of how the world worked, were simply afraid not to believe.

It rarely ever happened.  This morning, Brother Walter announced there would be no services tonight.  His justification, one no doubt God himself had communicated to the zealous pastor, was that everyone needed some rest.  The valiant effort by adults and teenagers alike had taken a toll.  Everyone was exhausted from two weeks of preparation and what seemed like a thirty-two-hour marathon beginning Friday afternoon at 4:30 p.m.  When I heard this good news from the pulpit, I wasn’t tired at all.  I had known this since late last night when Olivia and I, and Brother Randy, were closing Hell.  She had whispered to me this news and suggested we start our first date.  She said it would be a sort of trial run.  She was fully committed to our original plan: supper (what she called it) at Dairy Queen and Shane at the Martin Theater.  I had given her no resistance to an afternoon of dating practice.

I picked Olivia up in my Corvair on Elm Street beside the parking lot that is the furthest from the parsonage.  When she got in the car she said that she thought she was going to have to call me with a change of plans.  At the last minute, Betty, her Mom, had interjected some assistance, encouraging Pastor Walter to his Sunday afternoon nap an hour earlier than normal.

“I thought you could start dating when you turned 15.”  It was not unusual at all for me to be confused when it came to Olivia and her house rules.

“You left off one word, supervised.”  Olivia said pouring her baby blues into my heart.  She was gorgeous no matter the time of day, what she was wearing, or whatever her mood.  She truly didn’t need makeup.  Her skin wasn’t dark, but it had a hue and glow to it, especially after an hour or so in the sun that made me imagine what the goddess of love would look like.  Today, she had on jeans, a little tighter than normal, an old Boaz Pirate practice jersey, and a thick, unbuttoned denim shirt, probably Wade’s.  She had her long and silky blond hair pulled back.

“Then how are we getting to go out next Friday night?  Is Papa Bear coming along?”

“No, not exactly, but we will be monitored no doubt.  Probably Wade and his buddies will be at Dairy Queen enjoying burgers and onion rings while we are.  Somebody, I’m not sure who, but probably someone I won’t recognize, will be at the theater.  And, of course, everything will be timed.”

“So, whose watching us now?”  I said, almost regretting coming.

“Mom’s watching.  Well, not actually.  Dad doesn’t know.  You will never know how much Miss Betty trusts you.”  Olivia said moving over next to me as we turned left on Highway 179.

“She likes me too.  She sees me as her future son-in-law.  I just know it.”

“Marvelous Matt, don’t get ahead of yourself.  You have at least six degrees of hell to pass through before you even get in the running for Olivia Kaye Tillman.”

Ever since Spring Break we had been semi-planning a little adventure.  It was a little risky.  We wanted to try to find Club Eden at Aurora Lake.  We had been too preoccupied with simply being alone during the five afternoons we had spent that week on an old cotton blanket beside the Lake.  This afternoon was the first chance we had of doing a little exploring.

I turned off Lawson Gap Road, down a trail almost too narrow for my car.  I parked, and we walked back across the road and down to the Lake and across the dam.  This had been as far as we had ventured during Spring Break.

“There should be a trail that leads to the back side of the camp.”  Olivia had shared with me how she had heard bits and pieces about this secret place, a place that Wade and his buddies, probably every member of the Flaming Five, came and brought females and food.  Olivia said the guys stayed overnight down here a lot, especially after basketball season.  She assured me they wouldn’t be here today.

Before crossing the dam, we found the two hiking sticks we had hidden along with the old cotton blanket.  We couldn’t figure out why they were still in place while the plastic wrapped blanket was missing.

“You’re sure there won’t be anyone around?  I’d hate to get caught trespassing and more so, I’d never forgive myself if I got you in trouble.  Didn’t you tell me that no one has seen this place but the Flaming Five and their dads?”

“And their forefathers.  I think this place has been here, I’m talking about the cabin and Club Eden, since the late 1800’s.  Also, from what I can gather, quite a few girls have been here, but they’ve never seen it.”  Olivia said picking her way down a rocky path alongside a little stream that appeared to be fed by the Lake’s runoff.

“That’s confusing.  They’ve been here but haven’t seen it?”

“I meant to say they don’t know where this place is.  I’ve heard Randi say the guys put black hoods over the heads of the girls before they get anywhere near this place.”

“Sounds eerie.”  It took nearly twenty minutes to reach the first sign of civilization.  The woods were thick and tall, blocking out most of the light from the sun.  The tall and narrow wooden box turned out to be an outhouse.  This was specifically determined after we gained our courage to peek inside the wooden door with a half-crescent moon carved in the top quarter.  It was a skinny little structure, with less than two feet by four feet of floor space in front of a bench with two cut-out holes.  I suppressed the thought of two members of the Flaming Five sharing a time here relieving themselves.  We didn’t tarry long.

We continued along the creek and within a few minutes came upon an old Army tent, a rather large one.  We walked up the creek bank and around to the front of the tent.  Again, the brave Olivia, opened the door, lifting a dark green canvas curtain.  Inside were two large wooden poster beds covered in animal skins.  I didn’t know there were bears around these parts.  The floor was a dirty looking carpet.

“I just can’t see my brother laying here with a girl.  He’s not like that.”  Olivia was either joking or as naive as a rock.

“He’s sixteen going on seventeen.  Believe me, it wouldn’t take a teenage goddess to make Wade strip down naked under the bear skins.  I bet a Playboy magazine would do the trick.”  I wished I hadn’t said my last statement.  It sounded dirty and I always tried my best to be the gentleman Mother had drilled into me from the time I was barely walking.

“Let’s go see the cabin.”

We walked outside the tent and back towards the creek.  In fifty yards or so we came upon a fire ring encircled with huge rocks from the creek, and surrounded by old wooden benches and a half-dozen metal chairs.  It was there we saw the cabin.  It was set back from the fire ring and creek maybe a hundred feet.  It was on a little hill.  From where we were, we couldn’t see the front.

I followed Olivia up the knoll and around to the front.  Here, we saw a graveled driveway coming from the south through a thick grove of trees.  The cabin was truly a log cabin, probably made with trees cut down from the surrounding property.  It had a porch across the front.  We walked up the wooden steps and sat down in two of the five oak rocking chairs.

“Don’t you want to go in?”  I said feeling like someone was probably waiting inside to scare us, maybe tie us up for being here.

“It’s locked, I tried the handle as you were moving our chairs closer together.”  Olivia said sitting beside me and taking my right hand.

“Okay, this is a good time to practice.  You are doing great.  You took my hand.  This is exactly what you are supposed to do once we get seated at the movie.  Then, when the lights go down and the previews begin, you place your lips on mine.  This is where I need to be prepared.”  I was hoping Olivia would appreciate my humor, clothed in real hope.

“Settle down Matty boy.  Let’s enjoy the view.  Talk to me, I’m sad.”  I knew this would happen.  It seemed every time we had privacy all she wanted to talk about was what was coming, me leaving.  It was less than a month away.  I guess it hadn’t quite hit me as hard as it had Olivia, and that was weeks ago.

For the next hour I listened as Olivia gave me a familiar story.  She loved me enough to run away with me if only I would.  She described how she didn’t believe she could live without me and that three more years of high school, apart from me, would be an eternity.  I loved her with all my heart.  And, told her this as she poured her soul out to me.

At one point she got down on her knees in front of me, took both my hands, and said, looking up with me with the saddest blue eyes, “Matt, you probably wouldn’t love me if you knew the real me.  The things that I’ve done.”

I started once to question her, because clearly, I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.  I felt like, no, I knew, this wonderful girl, a fifteen-year-old girl whose body could easily pass for a twenty-something year old woman.  Her mind was both young and naive, and mature beyond an older woman who had weathered it all.  It was almost like she could see from outside herself, like looking down on herself from above.  That disconnected self, recognized that she was merely a puppet for her father and all his Christian constituents.  She easily responded to every string pull.  At other times, that disconnected self could see that Olivia was near a breakthrough, like facts, evidence, experiences, were mounting up and pulling her towards truth.  It seemed the only thing missing was someone to whisk her away to freedom.

“Olivia, what I care about is you, who you are right this moment.  I don’t care if you killed the Pope, I love you.  You say you love me.  I believe you.  You show, in every way, that you love and care for me.  We talk like we are committing our lives to each other.  Is it possible I have misread you?”  Once again, I had to ask.

“Goofy you.  You are so slow.  But, don’t worry.  I would tell you a thousand million times that I love you and that I want us together.  I am yours if you want me.”  By now, Olivia’s knees were hurting from too-long pressing against the hardwood of the porch’s floor.  She got up and leaned back against the porch railing.

“She says wonderful things to me, yet, she gets up and moves away from me.”  I said realizing that my statement had been completely unprepared but eerily significant.

“You got it wrong.  He ups and moves away from me, north to Chicago.  Matt stay, please stay.  You can live with us, no that won’t work, but, you can live with Brother Randy.  We can find you a place.  Please.  I need you to be here.  I can’t live without you.”  I was so dissatisfied with myself.  Why was I so gutless?  Here I was, within reach of the most wonderful girl I would ever meet.  She was begging me to either take her away, to run away, or to stay in Boaz while Dad returned to our home in Chicago in less than a month.  I’d read too many novels to not know that time and distance are the greatest enemies to the type of relationship Olivia and I had, a once in life type of love relationship.  Who was I kidding to think that three years, Olivia’s tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade years, could go by and we would remain just as connected as we were right now?  No doubt she was the prettiest girl at Boaz High School.  She would be inundated with male suitors.  I doubt she would be able to resist temptation for so long a time.  I was likely the naivest eleventh grader in the world.

This conversation would have probably continued until forever, at least until late afternoon when we would have just enough daylight to hike the long way back to my car, if we hadn’t thought we heard a car or truck coming down the driveway.  We heard it at the same time.  Instantly, we looked at each other and knew what we had to do.  We had never moved so fast.  We were down the porch steps, to the side of the cabin, and headed beyond the fire ring and to the trail that led to the outhouse and on toward Aurora Lake before we realized that it was thunder.  What we thought we had heard was just our minds playing a trick on us.  Whatever sound it would have been, would have been fed, virtually created, by our concern over being in a place we were not supposed to be.  We had unconsciously been on alert.

Before we were half way to the Lake it started to rain.  The trail quickly became slick.  I think we realized it at the same time.  Olivia, always in the lead, turned around and said, “our walking sticks, we left them on the front porch.”

“Too late now, it’s getting dark.  We don’t have time to go back for them.”  I was surprised how quickly the woods had grown eerily black.  The bright sunshine of a few hours ago had provided just enough light through the thick covering of leaves to allow us comfortably to make our way down the trail.  Now, with the thunderstorm moving in and pushing the sunlight away, I could barely see the trail. I was growing more and more concerned about how Olivia was going to explain being soaking wet to her father when she turned and walked the few steps back to me.

It was pouring buckets; the thick canopy overhead didn’t seem to slow the torrents of water coming from the heavens.  “Hold me Matt.  I don’t want to miss this moment with you, here, in the rain.  This is storybook.  Don’t you see this is God’s confirmation?  He is giving us the most wonderful romantic moment, one that I, for one, will never forget.”

I started to voice my agreement, but felt an unusual degree of courage.  I pulled Olivia’s drenched body into mine and kissed her.  At first gently, but she allowed the passion between us to erupt.  Deep kisses, fully sexual, engulfed our actions over the next few minutes.  Our bodies sunk to the leafy, muddy mess on the forest floor.  We made love as beautifully as any two teenagers ever have, even those who, like us, were head over hills into a once in life love relationship.  The only thing different was our clothes stayed on, other than that old denim shirt of Olivia’s.  Our lovemaking was beyond sex.  Holding and kissing Olivia planted one thought deep into my psyche, ‘if being overwhelmed with Olivia, feeling the ecstasy of her body next to mine was other-worldly with our clothes on and no body parts touching skin to skin, how much more unbelievable will it be when we are free to be naked and share our bodies, minds, and hearts in total freedom?”

The sound of a lightning strike on a nearby tree caused our heads to come down out of the clouds.  The South was turning me into a cliché addict.  We quickly knew we had to get back to my car.  The storm wasn’t letting up.  It was simply too dangerous out here, no matter the pleasures we were experiencing.

At 2:00 a.m., with Olivia safe, dry, and warm in her room and me the same at home in mine, we were still giggling over the best afternoon of our lives.  She said she had spent two hours after dinner recording our adventure in her journal.

“Did you actually write down how you convinced your father?”  I asked.

“I did.  I couldn’t have ever done it without Mother.”

I didn’t ask how she had pulled off this feat.  It could have been disastrous.

It was the only all-nighter we ever had.  We talked nonstop until dawn.  We pretty much had drawn out a sketch of our entire lives.  I was about to ask her the real reason she had chosen New Mexico as our home after college when she shouted, “Matt, I’ve got to go.  I’m sick.”

It was weird.  I heard the phone hit the floor or that’s what it sounded like.  I didn’t hang up.  Her bathroom was right next to her room, within a few feet of her bed.  I could hear her heaving and gagging.  I imagined her bent over the commode.  I felt powerless.  I so wanted to run to her house and squat beside her, patting her forehead with a wet cloth.  I finally had to hang up, I couldn’t stand the horrible sounds any longer.

I surprised myself and fell asleep.  At six-thirty Dad came in to rouse me up for school.  He could tell I was worried about Olivia, especially after I gave him the grueling details of what I had heard.

“Sounds like your mother when she was carrying you.”  Dad said pouring him another cup of coffee before heading out.

I couldn’t believe he would say such a thing.  That was a sick thought, Olivia was a teenager, a ninth-grader at that.  How could he equate Mother’s experience at twenty-one, pregnant and married, to that of an innocent teenager, one so dedicated and faithful to her God.  He knew I was more than upset when I stormed back to my room.

I didn’t make it to school at all. Instead, I went to see Olivia after lunch.  She too had stayed home.  She seemed fully recovered and really didn’t want to talk about her sudden sickness.   It was the first day of school that both of us had missed all year.  So much for perfect attendance.

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 30

December 29 & 30, 2017

My own natural curiosity and skepticism weren’t satisfied with John’s story.  In a way it made sense, Brother Randy had complete access to Olivia, virtually any time he wanted to be alone with her.  I guessed that Pastor Walter had been blind to the possibility.  He gave the youth pastor unhindered permission to mold his younger daughter into an obedient and submissive servant of Christ.  My bent towards science and its ability to provide answers no doubt spurred my discontent, silently gnawing at the edges of my mind and urging me to take one final step.

For some crazy reason Pastor Warren and the Church had cancelled the normal Wednesday night service and rescheduled it to Friday night, including the 6:00 meal.  Since public schools were out for the holidays, most of the youth group were taking a respite from Brother Robert’s concentric circles.  Early this afternoon Olivia had driven to Talladega to visit Wade and to pick up her father, who somehow had been granted bail.  I supposed it had to do with his health and the fact the trials had been delayed, some were saying it would probably be summer at the earliest before their fate would be determined.

Brother Robert had already been through the serving line and was sitting alone at a table at the back of the Hall.  After I placed a glass of tea on my food tray I noticed he was motioning me over.  I offered no resistance since this perfectly fit my overall mission, to obtain a DNA sample from the grandson of the late Randy Miller.  It would likely be a fork, maybe his glass.  Maybe I could pull it off without being charged with stealing.  I could overnight the DNA sample to Jerry and hope that he hadn’t decided to start his New Year’s Eve celebration and vacation a few days early.

Brother Robert looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.  His hair was uncombed.  With his overall disheveled appearance and the faint smell of body odor, I concluded he probably hadn’t showered in a few days.  This may have been why he was sitting alone.

I wasn’t one to insult someone but the look in his eyes and his overall appearance seemed to beg me to figuratively shock him enough to point him back towards his normal world.  “Brother Robert, thanks for inviting me over.  Are you okay?  I have to admit you look like you’ve had a bad day.”  My statement was polite enough but maybe made him aware of how others might perceive him.

“Thanks for noticing but I’ve really had a good day.  It’s strange that I would say that, but I do this every year.  I spend a whole week as a homeless man.  I convinced my former church a few years ago to allow me to conduct some research.  At first, the benevolence committee thought I was crazy, ‘they’re no homeless people around here’ was their response.  I had done my homework.  After one week, undercover I guess you would call it, I came back with stories to share, ones that had broken my heart.  Homelessness, of some sort, is a nationwide problem.  Small towns aren’t exempt at all.”  I was impressed with Brother Robert.  His behavior was something new to me.  He was trying to help people with real problems.  He was doing more than praying and talking from the middle of his concentric circles.  I wanted to know how he would involve the youth group and how the faces of the homeless would affect them, but I also was hoping he could tell me more about Brother Randy.

“Brother Robert, I hope I don’t offend you with my question.  I have to tell you I have concluded that you are a truly genuine person and one who doesn’t run from the facts.”

“Just ask me.  Right after I eat I’m heading home to shower.  As you can see with our empty table, Christian love has its limits.”  He said laughing and devouring what looked like a double portion of lima beans, cornbread, country fried steak, and scalloped potatoes.

“You know I was a member of your grandfather’s youth group back in 1970 and 1971, during the one year I lived here in Boaz?”

“You and Olivia told me that last Wednesday.”  Robert said, with a mouth full of food and not slowing down.

“I always admired Brother Randy.  I was impressed with him, his dedication to what he believed.  I never saw anything that caused me any type alarm.  My question, did you ever hear about him having an improper relationship with Olivia, or any other teenage girl as far as that goes?”  I said, not believing I had really said something so surprising and probably so offensive.

“All I know is what I’ve been told.  Granddad died his horrible death in the late eighties, a few years before I was born.  I was a young teenager before I knew anything about it.  My family, including my Nan, what I called Granddad’s wife, and my Dad and Mom, kept all this pretty close to their vests.  You might expect they defended Granddad, denying that he had done anything wrong.  I know I don’t have any personal knowledge to confirm any of this, but my family said Pastor Walter and a few of his friends were responsible for Granddad’s death.  Dad told me.  You may not know but he died rather suddenly a couple of years ago.  Dad told me on his death bed that when a very scathing letter was circulating around town about Granddad that he had told him all he had ever done was look after Olivia and that he was uncomfortable with her home life.”

“I appreciate you telling me what you know.  I’m still concerned about Olivia.”  I said more as something to fill an awkward moment than as a cry for help.

“I’ve gathered that you and Olivia were close as teenagers and maybe are in process of rekindling a long-lost love, something of that nature.  Right?”  Almost in mid-sentence Brother Robert downed the last of his tea and stood up.  “I need to go, I’m itching, probably with something moving.  Maybe we can talk more later.  See you Matt.”

“Don’t worry with your tray, I’ll take it with mine.”

“Thanks a bunch.  See you later.”  Robert said heading for the door at the back of the Hall.

I used clean napkins to separately wrap his fork and his spoon.  I hadn’t noticed which he had eaten with.  I wanted to be on the safe side.  I stuffed them into the inside pocket of the sport coat I was wearing, anxious to read Jerry’s terse statement that would arrive in less than a week.  I suspected it would read, ‘G, H and B, three peas in a pod.’  Even with what Brother Robert had told me I suspected he was relaying family loyalty.  My logic pushed me to conclude, especially with what John had read in his adoptive mother’s journal, that Randy Miller had to be Paul Cummins’ father.  There was simply no one else in Olivia’s teenage world who fit the profile that was clearly shaping in my mind.

Olivia and Walter didn’t make it to Warren’s until late afternoon on Saturday.  After leaving the Federal prison in Talladega, Walter had asked Olivia to drive him to Atlanta.  He said he needed a little time to prepare for his return to Boaz.  They had spent the night with a pastor friend of Walter’s, one he said had supported him through many dark days, recent and past.

I didn’t have the courage or stomach to sit through another meal at Tiffany’s table.  She was a fabulous cook but the dynamics of tonight’s family time, I knew, wouldn’t digest well with the steady mystery that had been gnawing at my gut almost since I arrived in Boaz less than a month ago.

Instead, Olivia and I went to the Cracker Barrel in Guntersville.  “Thanks for rescuing me.  I think I would have died to spend another hour with Walter Tillman.”  She said, surprising me.  I didn’t know her reasoning but I was glad she hadn’t insisted that I join the family reunion.

“I’ve missed you.”  I said it because it was true.  Driving us down Highway 431, through Albertville and over the railroad tracks at Mitchell Grocery, my mind involuntarily retrieved a poem from the little book of poetry I had given Olivia on her fifteenth birthday.  I had grown to like the book’s name, Love Isn’t Always a Straight Line.  After returning to Chicago in 1971 I had bought my own copy.  Now, I was thinking of a poem, one that said true love didn’t exist until the line, the slightly curving line, intersected with trouble.  The author, writing from her own experience, had discovered after she married her husband, and after he was stationed in Korea, that he had cheated on her shortly after they had become engaged.  It was devastating.  She had confronted him, via mail, and he had been truthful with her.  The poem’s point was not what I had expected.  It wasn’t that two people in love, if they will be honest, can forgive and get through the hard times.  The point was that the hard times, meaning the very issue that was both a surprise and a shock, could be just what is needed to bend their love back toward the needed destination.  This place is the same for all couples, all those who would dare describe their relationship as a once in life love.  This place is holy ground, where two souls can not only forgive each other, but forget the bad thing every happened.  For the poem writer, the past had to be buried and forgotten.  The future bliss had already been prepared, it was waiting.  All the couple had to do was, together, gently push the line away from the natural, towards the supernatural.  Until now, I had never understood why I had connected with this poem.  I didn’t at all believe in any form of supernatural, but I did believe in natural. 

Cracker Barrel’s parking lot was nearly full.  We had to park around to the side in the farthermost spot.  As we walked toward the front door our hands touched.  Her hand in mine was so natural.  I had never had this with Alicia even though we were always kind, respectful, and loving in an almost ramped up brother-sister sort of way.  There would never be another Olivia.  She was in every cell of my being.  It seemed to no longer matter that she had lied to me forty-six years ago and seemed to be willing to continue to keep me from the truth.

Our hands separated as I held open the front door for her to enter.  And, for an older couple that was right behind us.  When I caught up with Olivia I used my left hand to press against her back and lean her towards the back wall filled with candies and jellies, sweet things.

“We need to register.  I’m hungry.”  Olivia said, a little surprised that I had guided her here.

“I’m starving too.  I just wanted to see how easy it was to bend the line.”  I don’t think she had a clue what I was talking about.  She looked at me, cocked her head to one side, as though to ask, ‘can you explain that?’  It was silly, my thoughts and my actions.  In the world that I was looking for, it was as natural as tomorrow’s sunrise. 

As we ate supper, Olivia once again enjoying turnip greens and cornbread, I felt as though we were nearing the peak of a mountain.  It was no doubt a sharp peak, one with hardly any room to move.  I looked at Olivia, her eyes occupied, gazing towards the fireplace behind me.  All I needed, all I wanted, was to be on that mountaintop with Olivia.  She was truly my once in life love.  I was ecstatic about the possibilities but also dreadfully fearful about us falling down the other side of the peak, no doubt causing at a minimum, separation, and at most, the death of an extraordinary relationship, one I suspected, few ever experienced.

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.