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 Schoolteacher, written in 2018, is my fifth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
In the summer of 2017, Katie Sims and her daughter Cullie, moved from New York City to Katie’s hometown of Boaz, Alabama for her to teach English and for Cullie to attend Boaz High School . Fifteen years earlier, during the Christmas holidays, five men from prominent local families sexually assaulted Katie. Nine months later, Katie’s only daughter was born.
Almost from the beginning of the new school year, as Katie and fellow-teacher Cindy Barker shared English, Literature, and Creative Writing duties for more than 300 students, they became lifelong friends.
For weeks, Katie and Cindy endured the almost constant sexual harassment at the hands of the assistant principal. In mid-October, after Cindy suffered an attack similar to Katie’s from fifteen years earlier, the two teachers designed a unique method to teach the six predators a lesson they would never forget. Katie and Cindy dubbed their plan, Six Red Apples.
Read this mystery-thriller to experience the dilemma the two teachers created for themselves, and to learn the true meaning of real justice. And, eternal friendship.
Chapter 7
Out of the Darkness was started as a psychological thriller. It was about a woman who had been gang-raped and how she had coped mentally and emotionally. Now, fourteen years after my award-winning novel was published, it would seem natural to think my book idea had been seeded by my own traumatic experience. That would be wrong, since the five men who raped me had done so during my 2002 Christmas visit to Boaz, eight months after Out of the Darkness hit the shelves in bookstores across America. If I believed in karma or some other-worldly notion, I could easily conclude my writing had somehow caused or at least anticipated the worst thing I had ever endured. But, knowing there was little if any credible evidence for the supernatural of any stripe, did little to ward off bouts of writer’s block. The move back to the heart of the crime scene had thrown my writing mind completely off track. Now, after nearly three weeks living in Boaz, I have been unable to write a single scene in my current project I was subconsciously dubbing Real Justice. It is a fact; I was stuck. I had, as writers often say, hit the wall.
I had never, well, not since college, gone this long without writing at least a thousand words a day. This daily accomplishment was so ingrained in me that it was as fixed as the color of my hair, although I had been noticing a little gray emerging above my right temple when I pulled back my hair. Other than the wellbeing of Cullie, my entire life, my mood, my teaching motivation, my self-worth, everything about me, was controlled by whether I daily produced those thousand words as part of a current project.
This morning I was as lost and unmotivated as I had been in more than 14 years. Not since the Faking Five had shown less respect for me as a human being than they would have for a silicone sex doll, had my mind and heart wandered so far out into the dessert. I knew myself well enough to know that my teaching and my parenting would once again fail, just as it had during the months after I was raped and had given birth to Cullie. I could not let that happen again. I had to avoid the drugs and the alcohol. Just like the Walton drug for Nanny, the writing drug for me was the only thing that would keep me from falling into the abyss far below the precarious track of my life.
Maybe it was the prayer I had said this morning when I arose. Yesterday’s prayer I had promised to believe and pursue. Maybe my simple request to God that He would guide me today was the seed that had given me those three words. The Faking Five. Less than two minutes ago I had never put these thirteen letters together, in that order, in my mind. I sipped my coffee and smiled to myself. This was what I was talking about. Or, was it? Thirteen letters? Why not twelve or fourteen? I had never been superstitious. I wouldn’t start now. These thirteen letters, such a simple idea. It could be the door that opened a whole new world. I hadn’t had to spend $1,000 on a cruise, or even $25.00 on a new novel. What was occurring to me was priceless. The fathers of Warren Tillman, Justin Adams, Ryan Radford, Fulton Billingsley, and Danny Ericson had been known since the early seventies as the Flaming Five. This name had spawned from their ability to set the basketball nets on fire. The entire Boaz community had adopted the name. Their sons, my attackers, had now spawned their own name, not by ten thousand or more people but by one. Me. The one who knew the truth. These five, Warren, Justin, Ryan, Fulton, and Danny, were individually and collectively living fake lives. The people of Boaz thought they were community leaders, devoted husbands and parents, gentlemen, servants of Christ. In truth, they were the Faking Five.
By 6:00 a.m., I returned the half-finished first draft into the middle drawer of the old roll-top desk in the corner of the basement, having spent all my time brainstorming instead of writing. At least, I had controlled my emotions and allowed imagination to intelligently revisit my horrible trauma and consider what a hypothetical person in my shoes might do to get revenge. And, justice. The novel’s name would likely change but for now I liked Real Justice. Of course, a novel is fiction, made up, but it is quite okay to base the story on real events, what has already happened. As any novel writer would, the names of all my characters would change. I had already decided the setting would be a small town in Georgia and that my protagonist would not be a teacher, but a secretary at a law firm. One thing would be the same. The secretary, Stella was her name, would be raped by five men in the legal community. Maybe one would be a judge. I didn’t need to know that yet. I already knew how Stella would think and how her mind wanted revenge but what I didn’t know was what she would do. I would have to get to know her much better and spend days observing her. I had no doubt that once I started, daily, following Stella around, she would reveal her story and how she would exact real justice.
I had somehow crawled back onto my track. As I straightened my desk, I felt whole, alive, driven. Words and stories were my lifeline, the real blood coursing through my veins. Now, I had to share this gift with a couple of hundred hormone-driven teenagers.
Cullie and I arrived at school at 6:30 a.m. She wasn’t happy and had almost decided to ride the school bus until she learned it came past Nanny’s country home at 6:15. The real source of her foul mood was the near-screaming incident that had occurred when she came down the stairs. I had forgotten to look at her Saturday’s clothes purchases. The tight jeans and the even tighter blouse was bad enough, but it was the revelation of a blossoming bosom that ignited the fireworks. She had not said a word as I had driven us to school. My attempt at humor, “loose-fitting clothes keeps them wondering. A mysterious woman is more attractive than a billboard,” had failed miserably as she sat peering into her cell phone without a smile or a jeer. To me, there would be no ninth grader at Boaz High that was more attractive than Cullie with her high-waisted, knee-length denim shorts, flowing white top, boots, and a feather necklace. My darling daughter was gorgeous.
For the next hour Cullie sat at a computer workstation I had set up in the corner of my room. As I had done for my entire twenty-year teaching career I quickly read through today’s lesson plans and closed my eyes. I had developed a practice of visualizing each class and imagining the interaction with each student. It was during the next hour that I would refine the one main goal I had for each class. There were always secondary goals, but I had learned a long time ago that if I could effectively accomplish one goal, teach one important idea or principle, then my work was successful.
But, this wasn’t going to be as easy as it had been at Eleanor Roosevelt High School. There, for the past six years, I had taught two subjects, American Literature and Creative Writing. There, I had only two classes per day. The New York City School Board’s philosophy was more akin to that of a university. Specialization. Each teacher had a specialty. The Board believed the best teachers were the ones who prepared the most. The four plus hours per day that I wasn’t in the classroom, I was in the lab. That’s what they called it. It was simply my time alone to research, write, relate, and record. Also, what they called it. The Board knew that writing was the key to thinking and that if a teacher, no matter her subject, didn’t put words on paper, words exploring her lessons, that the class, and thus each individual student, would likely be deprived from core and vital truths.
Here, at Boaz, Cindy and I shared the load of teaching Language Arts, including English and American Literature, Vocabulary, Spelling, and Composition of all types, to every tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grader. Over 300 students. I envied Rhonda Hudgins and Jennifer Kirkpatrick who shared the same responsibilities as Cindy and I but they only had 148 ninth graders. The fear of failing to properly teach and reach my 150 or so students was lessened only because I had convinced Mr. Harrison during my initial interview that a narrow focus was the key. He had agreed, at least temporarily, to allow me to use one carefully selected story at a time to serve as the basis for teaching all aspects of the Language Arts curriculum. For example, this week the focus was A Good Man Is Hard to Find, a short story written by Flannery O’Connor in 1953.
Cullie left my classroom at 7:25, in time for me to gather my things and walk to the auditorium. The brilliant Mr. Harrison and Mr. Wilkins had decided to try something new this year. I would teach the basic English class to one full grade at a time. This meant my first three classes were taught in the auditorium to seventy-five plus students each period. Normally in Alabama, English is not required for twelfth graders. The Boaz City School Board’s new superintendent, Mr. Krieger, from Chicago, had made the change this past summer. “It may not be the only way, but it is one way I believe we can begin to counter the ignorance of North Alabamians.” I hadn’t yet met the man but knew he shouldn’t completely unpack his bags.
After 10:30, I would still have two more classes to teach: AP (advance placement) American Literature from 12:00 to 12:50, and creative writing from 1:10 to 2:40. This ninety-minute class was the other concession that Harrison and Wilkins had granted. I must thank Mr. Krieger for this. Otherwise, my plea for extra time to do justice to creative writing would have fallen upon deaf ears. Alabama had a terrible reputation when it came to its focus on the importance of writing. I intended to do what I could to change that. I was glad Cindy had full responsibility for teaching poetry. She agreed to this only because I had agreed to increase the size of my first three classes.
I had started the first class on the stage behind the giant podium. I quickly determined this wasn’t going to work. I was too far from the horde of kids who were sitting, as per my request, in every other seat in the front half of the center section. After I asked who had enjoyed reading the story over the weekend and saw no raised hands, I didn’t take time to walk off the stage and down the side stairs. I sat down on the edge of the stage and slid down to the auditorium’s floor.
“Ben Gilbert, are you hungry?” I hadn’t yet found him but knew he should be present. This was tenth grade English class.
“I sure am Miss Sims. Where’s my steak?”
“Hungry for experience and learning? That’s the question.” I felt like I was lining up to kickoff at a football game, but I wasn’t even on the team.
“Not really. I’m kind of fine just sitting here and listening.” Half the class let out a giggle. It seemed no one was awake.
“Everybody keep your seat if you read the weekend assignment, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. No one stood up. “So, I’ll assume everyone did their homework.”
I looked over the entire class and didn’t say a word for maybe thirty seconds. Ben Gilbert stood up and apologized, “I forgot to take my book home and couldn’t get back in school yesterday afternoon when I thought about it.”
“That’s nearly as good as ‘the dog ate my homework’ excuse. I’m sorry you don’t have access to the Internet. Most every story we will be reading is readily available.”
Ben sat down mumbling something under his breath.
“Clara Ellington, who is the character in the story that we are told the most about?”
“The grandmother. She’s the character we’re told the most about.”
Thanks Clara. You read the story. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask you a question, it might be a little personal?”
“I guess.”
“Would you have stood up if I had asked my question differently? If I had asked, ‘everyone who read the story please stand up’?
“Probably not. I would have been too embarrassed.”
“Class, I remember what it was like to be in high school. The peer pressure is horrible. But, does that mean we simply ignore it even though we recognize it is a real problem?”
Several people in the class voiced an opinion, mostly saying they wished it didn’t exist. A few said it wasn’t a problem for them. One was Eric Smothers.
“Eric, please come up here and join me. Let’s have a little conversation.” He didn’t hesitate. He no doubt was cocky and a member of the football team, evidenced by his Boaz High football jersey.
When he stood beside me I asked, “are you saying that embarrassment isn’t ever an issue with you?”
“No way. What would I have to be embarrassed about? What you see is what you get. It’s pretty solid isn’t it?” His ego and arrogance were on full display.
“Eric, you are a lot like the grandmother in our story. You always get what you want. Don’t you?” I said not knowing for sure what he would say. I would hate to be a lawyer who should never put himself in this position. He always should know what the witness is going to say.
“You are pretty bright, pretty too. I’ve been taught that if you want something you have to go after it.” Eric said looking at his buddies on the back row who were giving him a thumb up.
“Would you say you are somewhat of a manipulator?”
“Absolutely, if that’s what it takes. I make things happen.”
“The protagonist in our story, the grandmother, made things happen too. Do you want to venture a guess how that turned out for her?”
“Don’t have a clue. I don’t like to read; I sure don’t like homework. But, my guess is she got embarrassed. That seems to fit what you’re talking about.” Eric said standing straighter than before.
“She got herself killed. Evil, as represented by the misfit, won out.”
The rest of the class was similarly unproductive. At 8:15, I gave up and had the class take out their books to start reading the story.
The rest of the day was worse if that was possible. I had never seen such a bunch of disinterested kids. I didn’t know for sure, but it appeared that Clara Ellington was the only student that had even attempted to read A Good Man Is Hard to Find.
If things could not have been worse for the first day of the first full week on my new job, what happened before Cullie came to my room after the last bell was almost unbelievable. Mr. Wilkins had appeared in the doorway of my small office. Without a word, he had semi-smiled and walked to my desk, standing to my left. Initially, I thought he was staring at the textbook laying in front of me, open to a short biography of Flannery O’Conner. I will never forget the ere feeling I got when I looked up and caught him trying to look down my blouse. Thank goodness, Cullie burst in before I could respond.
The Pencil Driven Life 