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 16
I decided to have Darla’s funeral Friday afternoon, mostly because of Labor Day and Cindy and her family’s plans to visit Six Flags in Georgia over the long weekend. Steve had planned the trip several weeks ago and it was going to be a surprise. After Darla’s body arrived Thursday afternoon he had to tell Cindy because she was brainstorming ideas how to support Nanny, Cullie, and me at the funeral I had decided would take place Sunday afternoon. After I changed the funeral times Cindy had invited Cullie and me to come along. I declined, but Cullie was ecstatic.
It really wasn’t a funeral. It was a memorial service. And, there was no casket or body or flowers, just a couple of songs, a few words by Pastor Warren, after an hour of public viewing, but without the viewing. This was what Darla wanted. At least that’s what we all learned from Ryan as relayed by Raymond who was still in jail. This wasn’t the only surprise from Ryan. Darla’s desire was to be cremated. “Granddad said he and Darla had discussed all this type stuff before they married and agreed on it.” Darla’s body hadn’t stayed long at McRae’s Funeral Home. They didn’t perform cremations but instead shipped the body to a crematorium in Huntsville. Her ashes wouldn’t be back in town until several days past Labor Day.
Cullie spent the night, again, at Alysa’s. It was becoming a tradition. Steve wanted to leave early. A good enough excuse for Cullie to be there and let me sleep in.
At 2:30 a.m., I shot upright in bed. The little woman in my head who had no respect for time or tiredness plastered a thought across the stage of my mind. She hadn’t done this, at this time, in quite a while. I was thankful for that. She wanted me to ponder something that Ryan had said when he and I discussed and planned Darla’s memorial service Thursday evening. “Granddad said he and Darla had discussed all this type stuff before they married and agreed on it.” This type stuff. What did that include?
Raymond Radford was 44 years old when he married my 19-year-old mother. That was Thanksgiving 1973. Darla was high school classmates with Randall Radford, Raymond’s son. During the same graduation party where Darla became pregnant with me an even more horrible thing had taken place. Two girls from the party, twins from Douglas, had gone missing. A Micaden Tanner, who also was at the party, was falsely accused of the girls’ disappearance. He was later charged with their kidnapping and murder, even though at the time their bodies had not been found. Within a few months of the party, Raymond had met Beverly (aka Nanny). She had learned how Raymond and the other four fathers of the Flaming Five (Randall and his basketball playing teammates) were attempting to force Darla and the other Boaz cheerleaders who had attended the graduation party to lie. He knew they would be called on as witnesses to the events of that night. Someway that I will never understand, a romance between Raymond and Darla had blossomed over all those horrible events and deplorable manipulation.
I had forgotten about the two journals Darla had packed in her suitcase. I had hidden them, along with the videotape, behind my collection of literature textbooks. Before this morning, my mind had decided they could wait, that I was simply too busy with school and Darla’s death. The little woman in my head had just decided otherwise. I got up and slipped on a nightgown, a long-ago present from Nanny. It was flannel and it was late summer, but the house seemed unusually cold. I slipped downstairs to the kitchen, made a pot of coffee and returned to my room and the elaborate little writing desk Papa had made me in high school from the giant oak in the front yard that had fallen during what many believed was a rare winter tornado.
I wanted to spend a few minutes without the journals; forecasting, I called it. It was my way of predicting what I would see. It connected my brainstorming or free-writing method with a purpose. After a timed fifteen-minute session I had concluded Darla’s journals would reveal her two biggest regrets: not going to college and not being a real mother to me.
The first journal was current. It covered the last several months. Almost a year of Darla’s life. I scanned half the pages, skipping every two or three. It appeared to be an accounting of Raymond’s legal troubles. Along with a sobering sage of how money, wealth, and other material things did not produce happiness.
The second journal was old. The first entry was dated, Thursday, May 24, 1972. It read, in part, “Mother gave me this journal as one of my graduation presents. She made me vow to record my innermost thoughts for at least a year. After that I would either be hooked or hate it. Sorry Journal, I must go party. My buds are here, Rickie is blaring her car horn. Nyra Sue and Gina, I’m sure, are screaming at her to stop. Later my dear.”
At 4:30 a.m., I was tired. I had read every entry and was only on page 128 out of 200 pages from the second journal. I had read more details than I could ever remember. Darla had chosen, since returning from her graduation party, to focus on the activities of that night and the events that led to her maturing romance with Raymond. I placed a pencil inside the journal to hold my place and was about to return Darla’s writings to their secret spot when I decided to read the last entry.
It was dated, Wednesday, November 21, 1973. Darla had written nearly a page about her wedding, even though it was taking place the following day, Thanksgiving. All three of her paragraphs were filled with little snippets of how Raymond had been so kind and generous and had showered her with jewelry and clothes. Darla was convinced Raymond truly loved her. The last sentence, a one sentence paragraph, followed the first three. It took a different route, “The only thing I regret is the damn prenuptial agreement.”
The final page in the journal, a continuation of the 21st entry, laid out Darla’s concerns and the details of the unwelcome agreement. If her and Raymond ever divorced she would leave the marriage with only what things she had owned when they tied the knot, which wasn’t much no doubt. Darla’s words showed some relief when she turned her attention to something other than divorce (she had written, “we’ll never divorce.”) because they revealed that if Raymond predeceased her in death and at a time the two continued as husband and wife, Darla would inherit all of Raymond’s property.
In the next paragraph, Darla described how Raymond had joked since he was 44 that his age when they married would be their number. It raised my question, “their number, what’s the significance?’ Darla provided the answer. If 44 years transpire and she passes away leaving Raymond a widower, then he retains all his and her property. It was a little joke between them. However, it seemed neither believed that Raymond would outlive Darla. Why would they? She was twenty-five years younger than him.
My mind still wasn’t fully engaged. It might have been that I was running late for my writing session in the basement. I placed the two journals behind the literature textbooks on my top bookshelf. I changed into a pair of baggy shorts and a New York Knicks tank-top, overheated from my mental gymnastics. I poured another cup of coffee as I passed the kitchen and raced down the stairs almost tripping on the thought the little woman in my head held up to me like a flashcard. ‘Motive.’
Darla and Raymond’s prenuptial agreement was no longer funny. And, my math skills were not seriously engaged. Darla was born in 1954 and had married Raymond in 1973 when she was 19. It was now 2017. That’s 44 years ago. Well, not quite, today was September 2nd. In less than three months, on Thanksgiving Day, Raymond and Darla would have been married 44 years. And, Raymond is still kicking. Motive? Yes, he or someone, maybe Ryan, had a motive to kill Darla.
As I was attempting to set aside these thoughts, one final one kept clawing onto the stage. What would happen to Nanny? The funds to pay for Sammie and run Nanny’s household, other than her Social Security check, were being paid by Raymond?
My writing session didn’t go so well.
The Pencil Driven Life 