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 23 (sorry for formatting issue)

The school week after Labor Day was the longest of the year so far, even though it was only four days.  Time spent in my classes and in office visits with students was what I lived for, other than Cullie and Nanny of course.  Almost that time or stay after school.  Cullie made the choice for me.  By 3:00 immediately after announcing the Real Justice novel project, I had little choice but to share my thirty-minute lunch break from 11:25 to 11:55. It was either answer questions from inquisitive team leaders during p.m. every day, she was ready to go home to Nanny, and the barn loft.  The true reason the week slowed more and more as each day passed was what happened during my 10:30 to 11:25 break and planning period.

Cindy, before her declaration late Labor Day night that she had been raped, normally popped into my room a few minutes before lunch.  Beginning Tuesday, she was waiting for me in my classroom when I returned at 10:30 from my twelfth-grade English class in the Auditorium.  The only thing she wanted to talk about was her Six Red Apples project that she kept assuming I had agreed to help her construct and execute.  If by Friday this wasn’t bad enough, Cindy’s lunchtime prayer (before students arrived) was causing similar discomfort.  I didn’t know why.  A quick ‘thank-you for our food’ might be okay, even nice, but a multi-minute exploration of the problem of evil, God the mysterious, and a too-long final verbal paragraph confessing ‘your will, not mine,’ was teasing out my long-abandoned condescending attitude.  I had developed it in college because of a dorm roommate’s continuous and arrogant assertions she knew the mind of God.  I had been pleased that the wonderful and dedicated, not to mention, humble, Catholic nuns and teachers at Marymount Catholic High School in Los Angeles had dissuaded me from believing all Christians were like my sweet-from-a-distance dorm-mate.  By the end of today’s prayer, Cindy’s ‘your-will’ phrase sparked the unwanted memory and unhealthy regret, I had agreed to go with her to the Sunday School Department’s quarterly social at church on Saturday night.

 

The only thing I ever wanted to be late to was my funeral.  Tonight, there was a close second vying for the number one spot.  It was the Sunday School social.  And I was late.  On our way to our cars yesterday afternoon after the last bell rang, Cindy reminded me to be in the church’s Fellowship Hall no later than 6:20 p.m.  She had said that Lane McRae, the Department Head, was a stickler for promptness.  Cindy said these events were always crowded and Lane had a peculiar way of assigning seats.

At 5:55 p.m., Saturday evening, just as I was walking out the back door to the garage to leave, I heard Sammie scream, “Nanny’s gone. I can’t find her.”  I raced inside and down the hallway to where Sammie stood semi-frozen and screaming.  “Calm down, when did you last see her?”  I asked.

“Two minutes ago, three at the most.  She was brushing her teeth in her bathroom.  I had to go myself, so I ran to the half-bath beside the kitchen.  When I returned to her room, she was gone.”

“Grab the flashlight from the pantry and go outside.  I’ll fetch Cullie upstairs and join you.”  I said, almost ashamed of myself for thinking this would be a good excuse not to attend the social.

Cullie wasn’t in her room.  I descended the stairs three steps at a time.  As soon as I was beyond the garage, I saw a light at the front of the barn.  It was two lights.  I walked the fifty yards or so and saw Sammie and Nanny shining their lights into the opened hayloft door where Cullie was sitting with her feet dangling, with her eyes closed.  Fear and trepidation sprouted for two seconds until I noticed her ear buds and the white cables to her iPhone in her left hand.  She was simply listening to her music and was in what she called, ‘the zone.’

By the time I got Cullie’s attention with the toss of two pea-sized gravels and learned that Nanny had told Sammie she had come out to check on Cullie, my own iPhone vibrated in my pocket.  It was Cindy.  “Where are you.  We’re about to start.”

“Nanny caused a stir.  I’m on my way.”  I said but did not say.  It must have been Cindy’s praying that prompted me to create such an orderly arrangement of words.  Otherwise, I would have stayed at home.

I was glad that when I arrived, Robert Miller, the youth pastor, was standing at the entrance to the Fellowship Hall.  He led me to Cindy’s table.  to I sat beside her.  She leaned over and whispered to me, “so glad you came.  Lane’s still introducing visitors.  You’ve not missed anything.  We’re about eat.” 

After Lane led a rather short prayer of thanksgiving, mainly for the food, Cindy introduced me to Tiffany Tillman (Pastor Tillman’s wife), and Karla Radford (Ryan Radford’s wife).  I knew both enough when I saw them but had never been formally introduced.

When the four of us returned to our table after going through the food-laden buffet, I noticed the empty chair beside Cindy and the absence of Steve.  “Where’s Steve?”  I whispered to Cindy as Tiffany and Karla were critiquing a green-bean casserole.

“He’s at the front, see?”  She pointed towards the head table along the outside wall of the Hall behind the podium and where Lane had stood earlier.  “Tonight, is Steve’s turn.”  Cindy wasn’t making any sense.

“Turn?  For what?”  I asked.

“Lane rotates through the four Outreach Directors in our Department.  There are four Sunday School classes.  It’s Steve’s turn.”  Cindy said using her fingers to pull apart the largest fried chicken breast I’d ever seen.

“Once again, Steve’s turn for what?”  Cindy was normally much clearer in her language.

“Oh sorry.  He shares what he and his outreach team have been doing and the results of this past quarter’s visitations.  He will introduce anyone who is here because of outreach efforts.  He also must, it’s kind of a tradition, share a personal story about his own home life.  Listen carefully, you may hear how a real husband treats his woman.  I hope he doesn’t get too intimate.”

The meal was excellent.  It brought memories from my youth and how Pastor Walter, Warren’s grandfather, once per year, had encouraged all young people to bring a friend or two to the annual picnic that took place at the Boaz Recreation Center and attached Park.  He always made sure there was enough food there to feed everyone in Marshall County.  My thoughts of Walter spawned thoughts of Wade, his son and Warren’s father, who was in jail awaiting trial for murder.  I simply couldn’t get my mind around the idea that Wade, also a pastor here for decades, could have murdered his wife Gina, a close friend during high school of my own mother.

Tiffany and Karla were both likable.  To an extent.  When they were not talking among themselves about the food (apparently, they both were expert chefs in their own kitchens), they were ribbing Cindy a little about what they could expect from Steve.  The three of them, from what I could gather by reading a little between the lines, had rather vigorous sex lives with their darling husbands.  The statement directed my way, the one that made me swear to not return next quarter, or the following three hundred, was Karla’s.  “Katie, we are so pleased you have returned to Boaz and are so interested in teaching our teenagers to write.  Fictionalized stories are fun to read, especially those steamy Harlequins, but having real romance at home is irreplaceable.  I hope you can find a real man here in Boaz, one who is as kind, generous, and loving as Ryan.”  If this weren’t enough, she continued, looking at Cindy and Tiffany, “oh, sorry, and for these fine ladies, Steve and Warren.”  I almost got up and left.

Steve’s talk revealed a side of him I didn’t know.  He was serious about Sunday School and Outreach.  He introduced four couples who were present, who all stood and briefly shared how irresistible Steve and his teammates had been in encouraging them to give the ‘Young but Maturing’ Sunday School Department a try.  I was glad Steve was short-winded on the personal and intimate portion of his speech.  His, “many of you know I was a hellion until I met Cindy.  I don’t blame my prior behavior on growing up on the wrong side of the tracks.  I made a lot of bad decisions as a teenager and young man.  But, I do blame the pretty lady sitting beside Katie Sims, for all of my good behavior and decisions since we had our first date in 1999.”  That was a good place to stop, even though I’m sure my face was red from the embarrassing feeling that was crawling out of my gut after Steve mentioned my name.

Just as Steve had stood at the podium after being introduced by Lane McRae, I had spotted all members of the Faking Five.  Warren had come in late and had sat at the back, over beside the main entrance.  Justin and Ryan had apparently been in the kitchen and were now putting lids on food containers all down the buffet.  Fulton and Danny were sitting with who I suspected were their wives.  The same ladies I had seen them with the Sunday’s I had attended the worship service.  I was hoping Steve was as terse as Cindy said he normally was.  I was ready to get out of here.  I needed some fresh air.

“If it weren’t for the vasectomy my beautiful Cindy made me get in 2009 we would probably have ten more kids.  I’m thankful our God instructed us to be fruitful and multiply.  Cindy, my baby, I see your smile, you know I love you a boatload more than fishing.  Thanks baby for knowing how to push my buttons.”  Steve’s little personal statement had the crowd roaring.  One thing I could give Steve, he knew how to speak directly and without confusion.  For a lineman for Marshall-Dekalb Electric Coop, he understood language.  He seemed to be a master of sex talk, the type that is absent of sex words but clearly points the mind and urges toward the bedroom.

Before I closed my eyes to deafen my ears, I looked at Cindy who was as red as our tablecloth.  Our eyes met, and she leaned over and whispered.  “See why I can never tell Steve the truth.”  I nodded as though she was referring to something as innocent as having to confess to Steve that she had surprised Patrick Wilkins in his school office when he was telling a semi off-color joke to coach Haney.  Oh, if it were only that simple. 

It was when I was walking to my car parked at the far side of a crowded parking lot that I realized I had not seen Patrick Wilkins all night.  I guess he was smarter than he appeared.  At least he had the sense to stay away on the night Steve would be talking about him and Cindy.  I drove home interested in learning more about the former Steve, the one who had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks.  My literary mind told me that Patrick Wilkins would be a dead man if Steve Barker ever found-out Wilkins had lain naked next to and inside his darling wife.