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 11
Wednesday morning, I got up at 4:30 a.m. as though yesterday hadn’t happened, and I had slept soundly for my usual four or five hours per night. I had hardly slept at all, but I knew the more I allowed my routine to change the more likely I would slide off track, into the abyss that had almost destroyed me more than once. I grabbed my coffee and descended the basement stairs. It was one of those glorious mornings. They didn’t happen every day but when they did I already knew the gods had favored me. I already had a scene bouncing around in my head. It had come forth during the night, gently settling into my subconsciousness. The scene virtually wrote itself. My only regret was it was only 700 words, 300 short of my daily goal. I would accept it with unconditioned thankfulness. My justification was I needed to ponder what had prompted Darla to choose Out of the Darkness as one of the novels she had packed inside her suitcase.
It was the copy I had given her when she and Nanny had flown to Washington, D.C. to see me awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in the Great Hall of the Folger Shakespeare Library. That was April 2002. I couldn’t recall a single time Darla had ever mentioned my first and only bestseller, much less ever had engaged in a discussion of its contents. I had always assumed she hadn’t read it. I almost hadn’t brought it down to the basement with me. For some reason I had willingly violated my most important rule: never get distracted before you’ve written your daily goal. The rule was negative. Don’t do this, don’t do that. Don’t check my email. Don’t check Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. And, even more negative than that, don’t carry anything into my writing space that could tempt me to distraction. This morning, Out of the Darkness had figuratively blocked my bedroom doorway before I could head to the kitchen for coffee (not a distraction). It’s like the book had jumped from the old rocking chair beside my bedroom door, spread its wings, and leaped into my arms. It had said, ‘I’m here for a reason,’ and then it had asked, ‘is it a positive or a negative reason?’ I never ceased to be amazed at how my mind worked. How it seemed I had little control over my thoughts.
The dust jacket had been removed. I could have easily spent the remaining thirty minutes in my writing closet pondering why. What was it about the long, winding driveway leading to the faint image of a cabin in the woods that Darla hadn’t liked? She had thrown away the full colored, thick covering. Or, maybe it had just gotten lost. Either way, there was a message or two here, one I would likely never discover. Inside the hardback book, on the first blank page, Darla had written, “But for the darkness I would not recognize the light.” I quickly concluded this was a quote, but Darla hadn’t used quotation marks. Unsurprising. She likely was unconcerned about the niceties and nuances related to the rules of grammar. She had read the phrase somewhere, maybe heard it on Oprah or some other talk show she loved. Or, it was Darla’s attempt at being religious. I did seem to recall from my long-ago days in youth group at Tillman Temple (another phrase that hadn’t entered my mind in over twenty-five years) Jesus had said something similar. ‘The light penetrates the darkness; it can’t resist it’ or something like that. I think it was in the Gospel of John. I’d check later.
On the next blank page Darla had written. “Unlike Trevor, I will never escape the darkness.” She had read the book, at least enough to know my protagonist and how my story had ended. After I was so viciously attacked in December 2002 I often had thought that Out of the Darkness had been an omen of sorts. I had written it and received national awards and acclaim for it months before the worst experience of my life, yet the entire book seemed to foreshadow what I would endure. It was like I had a premonition all during the years it had taken me to create the novel that had spent ten weeks on the New York Times Best Seller’s list. Ultimately, I had concluded it was a mere coincidence. Doesn’t everybody have a dark time in their life? One emotional trauma, often one born out of physical trauma, that defines that life? An event that changes everything about them? Even though Trevor’s experience, being falsely accused of killing his girlfriend and spending ten years enduring sexual abuse in prison, was radically different from Darla’s, it seemed from her statement that her nightmare continued.
“I can’t believe you are here.” Cindy said at 7:00 a.m. coming into my classroom. She was carrying a beautiful bouquet with white lilies, white roses and white mini carnations, all interspersed with some lush greens. The blue glass vase was stunning.
“The last thing I need is sitting around feeling sorry for myself as I wait on the autopsy. That may take a week.”
“I hope you are okay with flowers. I also hope you know how truly sorry I am. The bouquet was Steve and Alysa’s idea.”
“They’re beautiful. Thanks for caring.” I hugged Cindy and gave the flowers to Cullie coming out of my office. “Honey, please put these on my desk.”
“Did you know that Darla was sick?” Cindy asked.
“She had told me yesterday morning that she couldn’t drive right now, that her doctor had told her it was state law after a person passes out. No driving for six months, then only if no further incidents. She had called me to come get her at Raymond’s house. I’m hating myself this morning for not caring enough for my own mother to fulfill one simple request.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. God is mysterious. He already knew it was Darla’s time. You couldn’t have stopped Him.” Cindy said as though she had just gotten off the phone with the God of the universe.
“I wish I had your faith. It looks as innocent and beautiful as those gorgeous flowers.” When I said this, my ‘I wish’ statement, I truly meant it. It shocked me. For nearly twenty-five years I had been like Jonah in the Old Testament, running from God.
“It’s coming dear. You just wait. I’m praying for you every day. I got to run. See you at lunch?” Cindy said walking towards a growing crowd of noisy students beginning to interact around opening and closing lockers.
“Lunch it is.”
My first three classes were good in two respects. Many of the students had heard about Darla’s death. They had shared their condolences, Clara and Ben had even come to the front, hugged me, and asked if there was anything they could do.
The second good thing was from a literary standpoint. Student participation in our class discussion of O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find was widespread, something I had not seen or even imagined so far in nearly two weeks at Boaz High. I think it might have had something to do with the teams I had established, student assistants as secondary teachers. More likely it was the Facebook groups I had set up, requiring one-hundred percent student participation. I owed the idea solely to Emily Fink, an award-winning English teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in New York City. She had shown me the art of student engagement by revealing how she interacted with every one of her students. She said it was like having a one-on-one private session. The gist of it was a private group was formed for each class. Every student was required to join. I would pose a question to the group. Initially, responses were voluntary. The hope was for viral like participation. If that didn’t occur I would call on my student teachers to weigh in. At least half of them had to or I would start calling names. At the end of a student-teacher response (the Facebook term is ‘Comment’) she would simply tag one of her assignees.
Yesterday’s question was, ‘what makes a person good?’ I had added, ‘if you choose, comment on whether the grandmother in A Good Man is Hard to Find, was good?’ Emily Fink was not your typical Literature instructor. Nor was I. Neither of us believed a student had to deliver an answer, one that reconciled with most literary scholars. Each student’s thought ignited a conversation that made Emily Fink the envy of the most creative high school English teacher.
Tenth-grader Clara Ellington had been the first to respond, “it depends on who you ask. I suspect everyone thinks herself good. It’s easier to say the Misfit was bad, pure evil. Good and evil are opposites. Treating everyone with respect makes one good. The grandmother was not evil, but she annoyed me to death. Therefore, she wasn’t good, or, at least, was missing some necessary ingredient.” Ben Gilbert had responded. He was one of Clara’s students. “Asking a person whether he is good is like asking the fox if he is guarding the chickens. You won’t receive a reliable answer. There must be a standard. For me, the Bible sets out what makes a person good. Without it, all is relative. It is subjective. The grandmother was not good. But, she did think she was good.”
From there, forty other students had chimed in. Before coming to class this morning, I was speechless over the response from my first Facebook question. I made a mental note to email Emily and thank her. This new teaching method wasn’t going to be easy. If I did my job right, I needed to read every comment and reply often when it seemed some thread was going derailing.
By the end of the day, I decided to expand my newly discovered teaching nugget to my other two classes. Cullie was already in my room after the last bell rang when I remembered I wanted to borrow a VCR to watch Darla’s videocassette tape I had found in her suitcase. For once, I was glad to see Patrick Wilkins. He was more than eager to accompany me to the dark little room behind the drama department’s stage. After ten minutes of the two of us alternately climbing a step-stool, reaching up and over a dusty inventory of mostly antiquated stereos, reel-to-reels, and RCA camcorders, he eyed me from the tips of my shoes to the top of my head as he peered down at me holding an old Panasonic. Walking to my car with the heavy VCR with Cullie complaining it could not be as heavy as the book-bag she was toting, I no longer doubted Patrick Wilkins entertained erotic desires for every inch of my body.
The Pencil Driven Life 