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 29
Saturday, I stayed in the basement until early afternoon, coming upstairs only one time for Sammie’s glorious pancakes at 8:00 a.m. I was thankful Papa had included a small bathroom downstairs. I recall Nanny saying more than once during one of her regular strolls down memory lane that she had told him it was his bathroom and he had to keep it clean since he was the only one who needed a complete floor to house his hobby. As far as I knew, other than my writing, the basement had never been used for anything other than storing junk.
I binge-wrote about once every six months. I loved it and I hated it. When I walked down the stairs a little after 4:30 this morning I hadn’t intended on staying more than a couple of hours, which was at least thirty minutes longer than I ever did during the school week. It was something about the look on Cindy’s face when Wilkins caught her in his office. He may not have noticed it, but I had. For a split second, even from where I stood, I could see the animal that lies buried deep inside every human. Technically, we are animals, just like chimpanzees and kittens. Fortunately, millions of years of evolution has allowed us to realize survival depends on playing well together. The old fight or flight gene lies dormant deep inside our psyche. It stays that way until its owner’s back is against the wall. It was something about Cindy’s stance and the look in her eye, for that split second, that I thought Wilkins was about to lose his own eyes. For whatever reason, just as I suppose she acted when he had raped her, she had chosen to suppress the violence that is endemic in every human, given the right conditions. That split-second visual had prompted me to delve deeper into my own protagonist’s willingness to confront her rapist with fire and venom.
By 3:30 p.m., Cindy and I were watching another movie at the Premiere Cinema 16 in the Gadsden Mall. Cullie and Alysa were shopping. I had wanted to see “Wilde Wedding,” but I was outvoted or overpowered by the cunning Cindy. She kept repeating American Assassin’s tagline, ‘Assassins aren’t born, they’re made.’ The thriller starred Michael Keaton, and Dylan O’Brien as Mitch Rapp, a young CIA black ops recruit. His job was to assist a Cold War veteran in stopping the detonation of a rogue nuclear weapon. I thought the plot was rather mundane, clichéd, and missed several great opportunities to provide the audience with a few thrills, but it intrigued me enough to purchase novelist Vince Flynn’s book of the same name. I had heard of this best-selling author but had never read a single book in his Mitch Rapp counter-terrorism thriller series. Towards the end of the movie and after at least the tenth time Cindy had whispered ‘Assassins aren’t born, they’re made,’ she added, “you know Vince Flynn died of prostate cancer at the age of 47?” Off and on for the rest of the movie and during our time eating and shopping at the Mall, all I could think was, ‘in two years I will be 47.’
After Cindy dropped Cullie and me off at home, she spent an hour modeling her new clothes for Nanny and Sammie. I was surprised that Nanny had allowed Sammie to pause The Walton’s. Last month’s Saturday shopping adventure in Gadsden had spawned an exciting and engaging look in Nanny’s eyes. She had stood and talked with Cullie as she modeled jeans, blouses, tee-shirts, and boots. I was surprised tonight that Cullie felt comfortable and confident enough to undress down to her bra and panties right in the den. This thrilled Nanny and made Sammie fetch a few things from her bedroom that the two of them had purchased at Walmart a week ago today. I don’t think I have ever laughed so much as Nanny and Cullie, pant-less and both with pink blouses strolled around the den. Sammie whispered to me, “Nanny is reliving her youth. This is the happiest I think I have ever seen her.”
At midnight I had to make Cullie pick up her scattered clothes and go to her bedroom. I knew this adventure would turn into an all-nighter for Nanny who needed to stay on a strict schedule. Midnight was already two hours past her routine bedtime. Ten minutes after Cullie went upstairs and Sammie and I had restored the den from a modeling studio I visited Cullie as I often did, always hoping for a goodnight hug, maybe even a quick kiss. “I want to do this every week, even if I don’t have new clothes. I had no idea Nanny was so much fun.” I went to bed thankful that Cullie was connecting with the woman I knew as a teenager and who had inspired me to reach for the stars. I hated clichés but sometimes they were perfect.
At 2:45 a.m., I awoke to pounding on my bedroom door and a feeling I was suffocating. I opened my eyes and could see my room was filled with smoke. It was like a heavy fog had enveloped my room as I looked across to a bright light streaming in along the edge of my closed blinds. “Mother, mother, get up, open the door, the house is on fire.” Cullie screamed over and over. At first, I thought I was dreaming, then the choking began. I stood up and gasped. I got down on the floor and crawled to the door. I don’t know why it was locked. I opened the door and Cullie was squatted down with a cloth over her mouth. Here, she handed me a wet bath cloth. “We have to get to Nanny and Sammie.” I said.
“We’ll have to crawl to the top of the stairs.” Cullie said. I could barely see her but caught a glimpse of her hand motioning me to follow. It seemed we were crawling on a reverse escalator. The further we crawled the faster it seemed to slide us back in the opposite direction. Finally, at the top of the stairs, we turned around and went down feet first with each of us using one hand to hold onto the hand-rail. Cullie was the first one to the bottom. I was still halfway up the stairs when she yelled. “Hurry, we have to get outside, the kitchen is an inferno.”
Then, it hit me. We are going to die. If by some miracle Nanny and Sammie weren’t already outside there was no way to get to them. Their suite was at the back of the house, down a long hallway from the kitchen, and there is no other route. In the few seconds it took to reach the first floor, I also realized that something else was going on. Just after Cullie and I had moved in at the end of July, I had bought six smoke detectors and installed two on each floor including the basement. I had instructed Sammie to test them at least once per week. As I turned towards the back of the house I didn’t hear the shrill sound of a single detector, but only the creaking, groaning, and popping of an old house that was being consumed by flames. As Cullie was tugging on me and telling me we had to go out the front door, my attention was drawn to a single light coming from the door right outside the kitchen less than twenty feet away. I started to crawl towards it and halfway there I was met with two things I will never forget. The heat from the fire was what one feels when she’s stood too long in front of a fireplace and has almost caught her jeans on fire, and the second was the faint outline of a hand around the light-end of the flashlight. It was either Sammie or Nanny, more likely Sammie. She had tried to get out, tried to get help. The kitchen was as far as she had gotten. Then she collapsed. The heat stopped me, and I retreated. Cullie was already outside having had no choice but to exit the house.
It took the firetruck another twenty minutes to reach us. By that time the house had been completely engulfed in flames for nearly as long, ever since Cullie and I had escaped and retreated halfway to Bruce Road avoiding the heat. It was the most helpless I had ever felt. While waiting, Cullie and I had walked around the house, staying at least a hundred feet from the raging flames. There had been no way to get to Nanny and Sammie, no door availed us. Every entrance spewed fire like a dragon.
By daylight the firemen had the fire extinguished, neighbors had brought Cullie and me a set of clothes to cover our smoky and singed nightgowns, and I had given a statement to Troy Logan, the Boaz fire chief. His final statement before Cindy and Steve took us home with them was, “I’ll be calling the District Attorney when I return to the Station, this appears to be arson. We found empty gas cans throughout the first floor.”
I was glad our neighbor, Charles Fordham, had let me borrow his cell phone. I had called Cindy and told her about half of what had happened, just enough for her to realize I was distraught. I rarely cry but this morning I did. It was so bad I couldn’t finish our conversation. Within fifteen minutes her and Steve showed up. They stayed with Cullie and me until the firemen recovered the bodies of the two dearest women I had ever known. After the ambulance left and with the firemen promising to stay all day if it took it to ‘cold the fire’ as they put it, Cullie and I held hands in the back seat of Cindy’s Nissan Altima, with her crying and repeatedly asking me, “What are we going to do? Where are we going to live?” In between my times of trying to reassure her that we would be okay, maybe even rebuild, the only non-suffocating thought I could muster was a feeling of satisfaction for having rented a safety deposit box at Wells Fargo Bank the Friday before Labor Day and storing one horrible videotape and one copy of Darla’s two diaries that I still had not finished reading.
The Pencil-Driven Life 