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 17
Sammie’s children, all three in their early sixties, all lived at least a thousand miles away. They dropped by for a surprise visit Saturday morning. I could see the joy she was experiencing when they arrived and the sadness when, at noon, they were starting to say their goodbyes for the day, even though they promised to return Sunday morning. I insisted she go stay with them at the Hampton Inn in Guntersville where the three had spent Friday night. This left me alone with Nanny until midday Monday.
Half of Saturday afternoon was taken up by our trip to Walmart. When Sammie’s children had arrived, just about the time she and Nanny were about to leave, I had called HairStyle Salon and rescheduled Nanny’s appointment. Her world is so different from my own. She moves about as though she has no regard for time. Walking from our car in the parking lot she stopped to look at the buggy rack overflowing with grocery carts. I was trying to rush her on when she called me to come stand beside her. She took my right hand and turned it up flat. “Visualize a grain of sand on the palm of your hand. That’s the sun, our star, and your palm is our solar system. North America is our Milky Way Galaxy with billions of stars. Our galaxy is only one of billions, each with hundreds of billions of stars. You get used to the loneliness.”
I asked her how she knew this. She responded that Sammie had read this to her yesterday after Darla’s funeral. “Darla’s gone. She’s gone to God, whereever He is.” With that she tried to climb over into a buggy an older, sharply dressed, woman had pushed beside us.
I finally made Nanny understand that Walmart didn’t allow adults to ride in the grocery cars, that right was reserved for small children. She said, “I’m a child.” We finally made it inside HairStyle and time again was nothing. The kind stylist, Liz, said it would take about an hour if I wanted to walk around. I decided to sit out front in the small waiting area and watch Walmart’s customers coming and going.
Nanny was in her late eighties but believed she was just a child. Or did she? Was she being honest or was she still trying to protect me? And, she felt all alone. If I lived, would I relive my childhood? Would I feel all alone in a vast universe? Were we all alone? I leaned my head back against the wall above my chair. I closed my eyes. I thought, ‘God, I want to believe you are real. If you are, why are you so silent, so mysterious, so hidden? If you hear me, if you can, please comfort Nanny. She needs to know that someone more powerful than Sammie and me are taking care of her.’ I kept my eyes closed and I continued my attempt to reach out to God. I was thinking of how I wanted to spend more private time with Cindy, asking her how she knows and experiences God when Liz came out leading Nanny and holding her hand. “She’s been telling me about how her and Papa adopted you and how you loved playing in the barn loft.”
Grocery shopping was a frustrating adventure. Nanny would alternate between putting things in our grocery cart and then removing things, all while I was concentrating on our grocery list. The unique difference was what she added wasn’t on our list, but the things she removed were. At the milk coolers she held my arm and made me stand beside her as she counted the half-gallon milk jugs while attempting to tell me how Papa had tried to teach me to milk a cow when I was only ten. I noticed several people became frustrated when we didn’t move out of the way.
Saturday afternoon and evening were consumed with putting up the groceries, cooking supper, and watching what seemed like a half-season of The Walton’s. At least I got to drift in and out of sleep while Nanny was virtually receiving, intravenously, an extreme dose of her favorite and most effective drug. Her bath took over an hour and was humiliating for her and humbling for me. She made me play a Gathers Gospel Trio CD on a boom-box that was hidden on the top shelf of the linen closet. She said, “Sammie’s idea, counters the nakedness.” She then joined Bill and Gloria as they were singing “How Great Thou Art.” I couldn’t do anything but laugh. Nanny was an education. It was like she lived in two worlds. One akin to mine, where the words and concepts I dealt with and understood were natural, but then at unexpected times she would slip over the edge or around a corner and become a child. That world was one whose language was that of curiosity, intense self-awareness, and almost a supernatural imagination. I had first noticed the latter while grocery shopping as Nanny created a conversation between a can of whole kernel corn and a bag of Tortilla chips.
Saturday night was peaceful. At 10:00 p.m., we went to bed. Nanny in her room and me in Sammie’s next door, complete with the latest high-tech baby monitor on the nightstand. With the help of two prescription sleep-aids, Nanny did not make a sound. I rested but caught myself awake at the top of every hour, looking at Sammie’s digital clock anxious for her 5:30 a.m. alarm.
Nanny was enjoying toast and eggs (she had made me throw away my pancakes) when Sammie and Grover, her third son, walked in the back door. “My boys want to go with me and Nanny to church.” I knew instantly this wasn’t true but had never been so thankful for such an act of unconditional kindness. I had heard about Sammie and Nanny’s planned trip to Liberty Baptist Church in the Rodentown Community. Something about Darla’s funeral had triggered Nanny’s desire to visit her and Papa’s church home and the cemetery where he was buried. The only thing Nanny had said about going, before Sammie and Grover arrived, was “I’m glad you got your bath last night. As slow as you are we would never make it to church on time.”
I didn’t resist Sammie’s offer. If I weren’t so selfish I would have gone along with them, mainly to see Sammie’s methods of dealing with Nanny outside her household. Instead, I simply followed Sammie’s orders to clean the kitchen and let her dress Nanny. “She wants to go early and walk the cemetery before Brother Eugene starts preaching.” If a two-plus hour respite weren’t enough, as Sammie was leading Nanny back to her room, she had turned and said, “if it is okay with you, Nanny is going to spend the afternoon with me and my three boys. We have a little road trip planned. We won’t be back until sometime tomorrow.”
Again, I was pleasingly accommodative, to say the least. Thirty minutes after the three of them left I realized I wasn’t a good caregiver, not even a temporary one. Sammie was fully invested in her job. Unless she was the best actor in the world, she truly enjoyed her time and tasks with Nanny. Just one day of nothing else but focusing on Nanny had completely exhausted me. What made it worse was that I felt guilty; to me, at least subconsciously, I had viewed the extended time with Nanny as a dreaded chore. Over forty years ago Nanny and Papa had not been so selfish. They had altered their lives forever by choosing me. They had sacrificed their dreams of traveling the world to raise a one-year old child. I had never heard either of them voice any type of regret. Instead, I had experienced unconditional love, the love I hoped I was giving to Cullie, even though, deep down, I knew it did not compare with the patient and kind love Papa and Nanny had given me.
I slept the next three hours and woke up nearly as exhausted as when I had laid down. I tried for another hour to return to sleep but couldn’t. I kept tossing and turning feeling like I had neglected my classroom and my students, especially since I was off Friday for Darla’s funeral. At 12:45 p.m., I slid out of bed, showered, dressed, and drove to Boaz High School. I had to figure out how best to introduce Real Justice to my twenty creative writing students. More troubling and difficult, I had to devise a way to inspire them to not only write their first novel, but to unknowingly guide me in my quest to balance the scales for the Faking Five.
The Pencil-Driven Life 