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 14
“Mother, when are you going to let me start dating?” It was a question I had repeatedly heard from Cullie since the first of her eighth-grade year. Until now, she had said it, smiling her gorgeous smile and telling me with her eyes that she knew she was too young. Today was different. It was the first time she had asked the question since we arrived in Boaz. I had come out to Papa’s barn late Tuesday afternoon. The loft had become her favorite spot on the forty-acre plot to hangout and ponder her future.
“When you are old enough?” I said settling back against a stack of hay bales Mr. Crocker kept stored above a half-dozen abandoned cow, pig, and goat stables.
“You always say that but never discuss. I am old enough. All the popular ninth grade girls and probably half the mediums are dating.”
“Mediums? What the heck is a medium?” I said, looking over at Cullie stretched out on a bed of unbaled hay. She was tall, lean, and shapely. She was no longer my little girl, the one in pigtails in middle school, especially the sixth and seventh grader who secretly spent hours alone playing with Barbie dolls. Now, her too-tight jeans revealed a female who had evolved and shed her baby flab. I predicted within a few months her body would be as perfect as that of Brooke Shields in Blue Lagoon. I still could not understand why I had watched this 1980s movie two nights ago on Netflix curled up in my bed after midnight.
“Alysa explained to me those are the girls, midrange if you will. They are not popular or gorgeous. Not all popular girls are pretty, you know. And, the M’s are not homely either. They make good grades and show promise of someday transforming into a prospect.” Cullie said shifting backwards and up on her elbows. “Mediums are always girls, prospects can be boys or girls.”
“Prospect?”
“Someone who’s a real candidate for dating.”
“My gosh, I’m so out of touch. Now, I semi-understand more of the snippets I’ve been overhearing from my tenth Graders.”
“Grandmother was dating when she was in the ninth grade.” Cullie surprised me. Not so much that she had referred to Darla as her grandmother. That was truly accurate but also rare. Cullie did this when she used her subtle ability to play with my emotions. She knew how I had always longed to have had a normal, maybe an extraordinarily wonderful, relationship with my biological mother, like Emily Fink had with her mother in New York City.
“Did you hear me?” Cullie prompted as I sat beginning once again to feel sorry for myself.
“How exactly do you know that my dear?”
“Nanny told me. You know, sometimes when I get home from school and after you have visited a few minutes, I sit with her. About every other day she seems normal. Yesterday, I had asked her when she had let you start dating. She didn’t hesitate and said at the Valentine’s Dance in your tenth-Grade year. I didn’t like her answer, so I said, ‘what about grandmother?’ Her words, exactly, ‘that was Papa’s doings. Beginning of the ninth grade and it was the worst thing we did. She spread her wild oats and never stopped until she was pregnant with your mother.’”
“Nanny said all that?”
“Yep. Now that I know when grandmother started dating, isn’t it time I know who your real father is?” And I thought the, ‘when will you let me start dating?’ question was what I feared.
“Honey, I’ve told you a hundred times that I don’t know.”
“Katie, I’m not as dumb as you sometimes think. Miss Cindy told Alysa and me that most people tell you the minimum. She said this over pancakes Saturday morning when we were discussing A Good Man is Hard to Find. She said they rarely tell you all they know. Miss Cindy gave the grandmother in O’Connor’s story as an example. Said the old woman was highly manipulative with her son.”
Cullie sometimes called me Katie, always when she wanted to have a full conversation, one uncolored by our mother-daughter relationship. “I’m confused, are you studying Flannery O’Conner’s most popular story?”
“No, but Miss Cindy was lab-ratting us. Some angle she intended to explore with her students. So, show a little respect for your only child. Tell me who got Grandmother pregnant. I wish I’d tried out for cheerleader.” Cullie was now standing up and doing knee bends and arms rolls and kicks that looked like they would touch the weathered tin overhead.
Oh, the mind of a teenage girl. “Darla was wild no doubt. Believe me my baby, I don’t know, and I don’t know if Darla ever knew, who got her pregnant. It was during her graduation party. She was at a place where she shouldn’t have been doing things she shouldn’t have been doing. There were six guys present. The story is that Darla had sex with five of them. That’s where I got started.”
“Only one of the five can be your father. His little sperm found Darla’s little egg. Humans can’t have multiple fathers.”
“You now are an expert embryologist?”
“Something like that. No, but Alysa and I are pretty good researchers.”
“Honestly, I don’t know why Darla never sought a paternity test. I think she would have if she hadn’t gotten involved with Raymond Radford. It was her way, I think, of showing a weird sort of respect. You asked so I will tell you, but please keep it very secret. Raymond’s son, Randall, the one who is still missing or simply ran off, was one of the five who Darla slept with that fateful night.” I said not believing my little girl and I were having this conversation.
“Who were the other four?” I knew this was coming. Cullie had for weeks been revealing the makings of a future attorney.
I hesitated. What good could come of Cullie knowing who her grandmother had sex with and who might be her grandfather? On the other hand, being truthful, even when it hurt, couldn’t hurt the most important relationship in my life, one that needed to be grounded on a deep and wide foundation of trust. “Wade Tillman, Fred Billingsley, James Adams, and John Ericson.”
“And, Warren Tillman, Fulton Billingsley, Justin Adams, and Danny Ericson are their sons. So, Wade Tillman could be my grandfather, and his son, Pastor Warren, could be my cousin?” Cullie asked.
“In that scenario I think he would be more like a step-brother once removed, but I’m not really sure. I’d have to sketch that out.” This conversation was going nowhere fast.
“I think you need to find out who your father is. I’m glad I know Colton is my dad. Is he still coming for Christmas?” I almost envied Cullie’s ability to pivot. Her mind was so alive and spontaneous, hungry for knowledge. I hoped she someday found a real purpose to channel her intelligence and energy.
“We’ll have to see.”
“You never answered my question.” Cullie brought us back full-circle.
“Now if you want to, but with rules my dear, strict rules. Maybe a double date with Alysa at a cook-out. Cindy and I are getting pretty good at grilling chicken.”
“Yuck. To the chicken and the six-way. I’m okay with Alysa, me, and two prospects, but no parents allowed.” Cullie said, headed for the loft’s ladder.
“Rules my dear. I’m not about to turn you loose. No way. Men can be animals. Boys are just less imaginative and brave.”
In a sense I was trapped. We were now into the third week of my first-year teaching at Boaz High School. After my long and scary conversation with Cullie, and nearly two hours watching The Walton’s and eating from TV trays, I had come to my room, propped my pillows up on the headboard and started reading. I both loved it and hated it. I was caught in a schedule that required at least an hour, often two, per night, reviewing and commenting in the five Facebook groups I had created. I had been surprisingly pleased that the majority of my 150 students were actively participating. I enjoyed learning. I enjoyed being surprised by how teenagers thought, sometimes revealing intelligence that I could only envy. At midnight, reading and responding to the final student comments from my Creative Writing class, I was glad I hadn’t yet disclosed my plan to add five more Facebook groups, all focused on one class’s major writing project. Lying back and dozing my subconscious kept telling me it was too much, ‘just limit this novel writing project to your Creative Writing class,’ and one more Facebook group. Stick to short stories or even some flash fiction with your other four classes.’
I didn’t know where she came from but by Wednesday morning I was in full agreement with the wise and wonderful subconscious woman who resided deep inside my head.
The Pencil Driven Life 