Month: June 2024

The Marginalian: The Measure of a Life Well Lived: Henry Miller on Growing Old, the Perils of Success, and the Secret of Remaining Young at Heart

Here’s the link to this article.

BY MARIA POPOVA

“On how one orients himself to the moment,” 48-year-old Henry Miller (December 26, 1891–June 7, 1980) wrote in reflecting on the art of living in 1939, “depends the failure or fruitfulness of it.” Over the course of his long life, Miller sought ceaselessly to orient himself toward maximal fruitfulness, from his creative discipline to his philosophical reflections to his exuberant irreverence.

More than three decades later, shortly after his eightieth birthday, Miller wrote a beautiful essay on the subject of aging and the key to living a full life. It was published in 1972 in an ultra-limited-edition chapbook titled On Turning Eighty (public library), alongside two other essays. Only 200 copies were printed, numbered and signed by the author.

Miller begins by considering the true measure of youthfulness:

If at eighty you’re not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual and you should get down on your knees morning and night and thank the good Lord for his savin’ and keepin’ power. If you are young in years but already weary in spirit, already on the way to becoming an automaton, it may do you good to say to your boss — under your breath, of course — “Fuck you, Jack! You don’t own me!” … If you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you’ve got it half licked.

He later adds:

I have very few friends or acquaintances my own age or near it. Though I am usually ill at ease in the company of elderly people I have the greatest respect and admiration for two very old men who seem to remain eternally young and creative. I mean [the Catalan cellist and conductor] Pablo Casals and Pablo Picasso, both over ninety now. Such youthful nonagenarians put the young to shame. Those who are truly decrepit, living corpses, so to speak, are the middle-aged, middleclass men and women who are stuck in their comfortable grooves and imagine that the status quo will last forever or else are so frightened it won’t that they have retreated into their mental bomb shelters to wait it out.

Miller considers the downside of success — not the private kind, per Thoreau’s timeless definition, but the public kind, rooted in the false deity of prestige:

If you have had a successful career, as presumably I have had, the late years may not be the happiest time of your life. (Unless you’ve learned to swallow your own shit.) Success, from the worldly standpoint, is like the plague for a writer who still has something to say. Now, when he should be enjoying a little leisure, he finds himself more occupied than ever. Now he is the victim of his fans and well wishers, of all those who desire to exploit his name. Now it is a different kind of struggle that one has to wage. The problem now is how to keep free, how to do only what one wants to do.

He goes on to reflect on how success affects people’s quintessence:

One thing seems more and more evident to me now — people’s basic character does not change over the years… Far from improving them, success usually accentuates their faults or short-comings. The brilliant guys at school often turn out to be not so brilliant once they are out in the world. If you disliked or despised certain lads in your class you will dislike them even more when they become financiers, statesmen or five star generals. Life forces us to learn a few lessons, but not necessarily to grow.

Somewhat ironically, Anaïs Nin — Miller’s onetime lover and lifelong friend — once argued beautifully for the exact opposite, the notion that our personalities are fundamentally fluid and ever-growing, something that psychologists have since corroborated.

Miller returns to youth and the young as a kind of rearview mirror for one’s own journey:

You observe your children or your children’s children, making the same absurd mistakes, heart-rending mistakes often, which you made at their age. And there is nothing you can say or do to prevent it. It’s by observing the young, indeed, that you eventually understand the sort of idiot you yourself were once upon a time — and perhaps still are.

Like George Eliot, who so poignantly observed the trajectory of happiness over the course of human life, Miller extols the essential psychoemotional supremacy of old age:

At eighty I believe I am a far more cheerful person than I was at twenty or thirty. I most definitely would not want to be a teenager again. Youth may be glorious, but it is also painful to endure…

I was cursed or blessed with a prolonged adolescence; I arrived at some seeming maturity when I was past thirty. It was only in my forties that I really began to feel young. By then I was ready for it. (Picasso once said: “One starts to get young at the age of sixty, and then it’s too late.”) By this time I had lost many illusions, but fortunately not my enthusiasm, nor the joy of living, nor my unquenchable curiosity.

And therein lies Miller’s spiritual center — the life-force that stoked his ageless inner engine:

Perhaps it is curiosity — about anything and everything — that made me the writer I am. It has never left me…

With this attribute goes another which I prize above everything else, and that is the sense of wonder. No matter how restricted my world may become I cannot imagine it leaving me void of wonder. In a sense I suppose it might be called my religion. I do not ask how it came about, this creation in which we swim, but only to enjoy and appreciate it.

Two years later, Miller would come to articulate this with even more exquisite clarity in contemplating the meaning of life, but here he contradicts Henry James’s assertion that seriousness preserves one’s youth and turns to his other saving grace — the capacity for light-heartedness as an antidote to life’s often stifling solemnity:

Perhaps the most comforting thing about growing old gracefully is the increasing ability not to take things too seriously. One of the big differences between a genuine sage and a preacher is gaiety. When the sage laughs it is a belly laugh; when the preacher laughs, which is all too seldom, it is on the wrong side of the face.

Equally important, Miller argues, is countering the human compulsion for self-righteousness. In a sentiment Malcolm Gladwell would come to complement nearly half a century later in advocating for the importance of changing one’s mind regularly, Miller writes:

With advancing age my ideals, which I usually deny possessing, have definitely altered. My ideal is to be free of ideals, free of principles, free of isms and ideologies. I want to take to the ocean of life like a fish takes to the sea…

I no longer try to convert people to my view of things, nor to heal them. Neither do I feel superior because they appear to be lacking in intelligence.

Miller goes on to consider the brute ways in which we often behave out of self-righteousness and deformed idealism:

One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless… I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God’s blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side.

But despite observing these lamentable human tendencies, Miller remains an optimist at heart. He concludes by returning to the vital merriment at the root of his life-force:

My motto has always been: “Always merry and bright.” Perhaps that is why I never tire of quoting Rabelais: “For all your ills I give you laughter.” As I look back on my life, which has been full of tragic moments, I see it more as a comedy than a tragedy. One of those comedies in which while laughing your guts out you feel your inner heart breaking. What better comedy could there be? The man who takes himself seriously is doomed…

There is nothing wrong with life itself. It is the ocean in which we swim and we either adapt to it or sink to the bottom. But it is in our power as human beings not to pollute the waters of life, not to destroy the spirit which animates us.

The most difficult thing for a creative individual is to refrain from the effort to make the world to his liking and to accept his fellow man for what he is, whether good, bad or indifferent.

The entire On Turning Eighty chapbook, which includes two other essays, is a sublime read. Complement it with Miller on writing, altruism, the meaning of life, what creative death means, and his 11 commandments of writing.

Flash Fiction: Whispers in Wisteria Lane

In the heart of Wisteria Lane, nestled between overgrown ivy and untamed roses, stood a quaint brick house that seemed to hum with secrets. Its occupant, Clara, a retired librarian, was a woman of precise routines and quiet solitude. Yet, despite her serene appearance, Clara lived in a constant state of vigilance, haunted by the fear of being overheard.

The trouble had begun six months prior, when Clara had inadvertently learned a secret. During one of her routine evening walks, she had overheard her neighbors, the seemingly perfect Mr. and Mrs. Henderson, in a fierce argument that revealed Mr. Henderson’s ongoing affair. Shocked, Clara had hurried home, her mind racing with the implications of what she’d heard.

Since that night, paranoia crept into Clara’s life. She began to notice small things: whispers that hushed as she approached, glances that skittered away. It wasn’t long before she felt eyes lingering on her from behind curtains and heard footsteps pausing outside her door. Clara couldn’t shake the feeling that the Hendersons knew she was privy to their secret and that they were watching her every move.

To protect herself, Clara took to speaking in hushed tones, even when alone. She bought heavy curtains and rugs, trying to muffle any sound that might escape her house. Every conversation, every phone call was coded in layers of ambiguity. She started using aliases for people in her stories, changing details that might reveal too much about her own life or the lives of those around her.

One afternoon, while tending to her rose garden, Clara noticed Mr. Henderson standing at the boundary of their properties. He was trimming his hedges, but his eyes, Clara felt, were fixed on her. The shears in his hands clicked ominously with each snip. Clara’s heart pounded; her hands shook as she pruned her roses, petals falling like whispered secrets.

Determined to confront her fears, Clara invited the Hendersons over for tea the following week. As she set out her finest china and prepared lemon cakes, her mind buzzed with anxiety. She rehearsed neutral topics, steering clear of anything that could veer too close to dangerous waters.

When the Hendersons arrived, Clara was a perfect hostess, her smile tight but polite. The conversation flowed awkwardly around mundane topics: weather forecasts, local news, the recent bake sale. Yet, underneath the pleasantries, Clara sensed an undercurrent of tension. Mr. Henderson’s eyes occasionally flickered with an unreadable emotion, and Mrs. Henderson’s laughter seemed a tad too forced.

As the afternoon waned, Clara felt the weight of unspoken words pressing down on her. Just as she was about to bring out more tea, Mrs. Henderson leaned in, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. “Clara, we know it’s difficult to keep certain things to yourself. But trust me, it’s safer if some stories remain behind closed doors.”

Clara’s heart skipped a beat. The confirmation of her fears was both a relief and a new worry. From then on, she knew her life on Wisteria Lane would never be the same. Her home, once a sanctuary, was now a fortress of silence, where every whisper carried the weight of potential betrayal.

Novel Excerpts–The Boaz Schoolteacher, Chapter 20

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 20

I had just come to my bedroom after watching three episodes of The Walton’s with Nanny and Cullie.  Sammie was unnaturally tired, so we let her relax in her apartment while Cullie and I watched Nanny.  After brushing my teeth, I had just sat on my bed when I received a text from Cindy.  “Can you meet me at school?”

I couldn’t imagine why she wanted or needed to meet.  It was almost 10:30 p.m. on Monday night, the end of the long Labor Day weekend.  We both had a habit of being at school by 6:30 each morning so I would see her in eight hours.  “Why?  Can it not wait until morning?  But, if you need me, I can.”  I almost hadn’t written the last sentence.  It was my friendship with Emily Fink that reminded me of the importance of having one person in my life who was there for me no matter.  Emily had been that person.  She had been the only one in my life who had come close to caring for me more than I cared for myself.

“I hope you know I wouldn’t ask you at this time of the night if it wasn’t important.  You are the best friend I have, and I need your wisdom.”  Cindy was the type of woman who appeared to always have it together.  To me, she was the perfect role model for Cullie.  Cindy was educated, happily married with three wonderful children, and was a teacher’s teacher.  My description wouldn’t be complete without saying she was as dedicated a Christian as I had ever met.  She had faith like a mountain and believed prayer gave her a direct line to God and His son Jesus.

“What time?  Where?” 

“11:00 p.m.  Your classroom.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Thanks for being such a wonderful friend.”  I was glad to see that Cindy felt the same as I did.

I was waiting in my little office when I heard the hallway door open.  It had one of those little dinger things mounted on the top.  During the school day I usually left the door open but closed it at most other times.

“Katie, it’s me.” 

“In here.”

When Cindy appeared in my office doorway I could tell she had been crying.  Her face complexion was much redder when I had seen her in the afternoon and her eyes were not only dark green but puffy.  I had never seen her without eye makeup.  She was still attractive in a redhead type of way but hardly looked the same as the vibrant and exuberant Cindy I was accustomed to.

“All weekend I’ve been mentally drafting and redrafting my little talk with you.  On the drive in tonight I burned all that up and threw it out the window.”  I liked the image Cindy created.  She was a Literature and Writing teacher.  She thought in word pictures.

“Okay, so you have something to tell me, but you don’t know how?”  I asked, worried that I had done or said something that offended her.  Maybe she had taken something I had said about Alysa the wrong way.  I didn’t have a clue what that could be.

“I do.  Patrick Wilkins raped me.  Last Wednesday night.  After church.”  Cindy delivered the four short statements like a first grader reading a book from the top shelf, meaning she shouldn’t be reading it.  She started to cry and walked into my office.  I stood, speechless, but open-armed.  I held her for what seemed like ten minutes, although it was probably no more than one.  Just as she seemed to gain control of her sobs, a rush of fear and hatred poured from my mind and pushed tears from my eyes.  My breathing almost ceased.  It was like I was smothering.  I had never experienced anything like this.

“Oh Cindy, my dear friend.  I’m here, all I know to say is that I am here for you and always will be.”  I had never been so sincere.  It was strange, but it was like Cindy’s pain launched my feelings for her, my belief in her, to the next level in friendship.

“I know.  That’s why I asked you to come.  I was dying.  I had to talk.”

“Have you told Steve?”  I asked.

“No.  I haven’t told anyone, and I don’t plan to.  Other than you.”

“Cindy, this is a hundred times worse, infinitely worse than his assault on you last week.  You have to report this to the police.”

“I can’t.  It will ruin my life.  It will change everything, especially my relationship with Steve.”  On one level, Cindy made sense, but no doubt her and Steve’s relationship was strong enough to weather this.

“Steve is the best friend you have.  You two are true soul mates if there ever were such a thing.”  I said, trying to persuade her she could not remain quiet.  Then, it dawned on me.  That’s exactly what I had done.  Who was I to be giving Cindy advice?

“You’re right and I want to keep it that way.  I’m afraid he will, deep down, think that it was my fault, that I somehow had done something, maybe the way I dressed, I don’t know, something to cause Wilkins to come on to me.”

“Steve wouldn’t think that.  He knows you to your core.  Aren’t that what soul mates are all about?”

“Even if Steve handled the news perfectly, that’s just the beginning of a whole new life, one I have no desire to live.”  Cindy had now recovered enough to return to the other side of my desk and sit down.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I know the right thing in one sense is to report this to the police and see that Wilkins is convicted of rape.  I’ve watched enough Law and Order, SVU, to know I can’t go through that.”

“He is a criminal Cindy.  He is a sexual predator.  Don’t you think if he gets away with this he will be emboldened?  I’m going to be direct and blunt as needed.  What if he turns his attention to young girls, even Alysa and Cullie?  I know you don’t want that.”  I knew I was treading on sensitive ground.  I sure didn’t want to put a world of responsibility on her precarious shoulders.

“I know.  You’re right.  And, we certainly don’t know what he has been doing.  Isn’t it unlikely I’m his first?”  I was glad Cindy was asking a question.  She was engaged, thinking.

“This leads obviously to the health risk he may have exposed you to.  You need medical attention.  You said you hadn’t told anyone.  Not even a doctor?”  I asked.

“No one means no one.  Sorry, that sounded wrong.  I didn’t mean to be a smart ass.”  I was surprised Cindy said that.  I had never heard her say a single cuss word, dirty word of any kind.

“You don’t have to answer this, but you said this happened at church Wednesday night?”

“Actually, it was after Wednesday night’s prayer meeting.  Steve had taken the kids and gone home.  I had driven separately knowing our Sunday School Department had scheduled a time after the prayer service to talk about the upcoming social.  Every quarter all four Sunday School classes in our Department get together for a meal and a speaker.  The meeting didn’t last thirty minutes.  Everyone else had gone but I had walked to the Education Department to pick up our new Sunday School quarterlies.  The teacher in me wants everyone to have their new lessons at least a couple weeks before the start of a new quarter.  When I was walking out, Patrick Wilkins met me in the hall outside the elevator.  You know he is the Church’s Education Director.”  Cindy’s words stopped.  It was like a spicket had been turned off.  Her tears returned.  She just sat there, frozen, with her head looking at her hands in her lap.

“You don’t have to give me any details.”  I walked around my desk and sat down beside her in the other chair I always had under the little window.

“You already know the horrendous details.”

“He sure was bold.  Right there in the church office.”  I said trying to rid my mind of Wilkins overpowering Cindy.  Probably pulled her into his personal office, closing and locking the door, and forcing Cindy across his desk.

“That’s not where he raped me.  He forced me to walk out to the parking lot.  That’s where I screamed when I saw Pastor Warren headed on foot to the Parsonage.  He turned around and stood there looking our way.  I know he could see us and know who we were.  We were standing under one of the big street lamps along the edge of the parking lot.  It was like Warren yelled out something but by that time Wilkins had me in the front seat of his vehicle.”

“You’re sure Pastor Warren recognized you?”

“He had to.  He was probably less than a hundred feet from us.”  I turned my chair to face Cindy and took both her hands.

“I’m so sorry this happened to you.  It’s like a nightmare.  I know what you’re going through.”  The words just appeared, in my mind, milliseconds before they slipped past my lips.

“Katie, I love you, but please don’t tell me you know what I’m going through.  I know you’re trying to help but that rings a little hollow.  Right now, I need bald-faced truth.  Just say you can’t imagine what I’m going through.”  Cindy said, softly, with her green eyes lightning up just a shade.  She was so kind and respectful.

“Cindy.”  I clutched her hands more tightly, my mind teetering atop the highest mountain, unsure which way to fall and kill itself.  Which way was less painful?  Head first or feet first?  Either way, the distance into the abyss was the same.  I doubted the pain would be radically different.  I chose head first.  “Look at me.  I have a secret I have never divulged to anyone.  I do know how you feel.  In 2002, I was raped.  The only difference with your horrible experience is that five men gang-raped me.  I did, and you do, feel helpless, totally powerless.  I know.  I’ve been there.  I’m still there.”

“Oh my gosh.  Katie my dearest.  I would never have guessed.  You seem so happy and complete.”  Cindy was doing her best to console me.

“Believe me, some days, inside my head, I’m a train wreck.”

“The lowdown bastards.”  Cindy again surprised me.  She was beginning to sound like me, at least my words below my breath.  Sometimes.  Sometimes not.  “Did you know who raped you?  Sorry, you don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.”  I now knew how I had sounded to Cindy.  We both were being a little artificial.  Real friends were much blunter, simply asked anything and everything they wanted to know.

“You can ask me whatever you want.  Just like I can with you.  I know that for sure.  You are real.  We are real for each other.  Oh, by the way, yes.  I knew who raped me.  And, you know them too.”

“Oh my gosh.  I keep saying that but oh my gosh.  It happened here in Boaz?  When?  Who are these guys?”  Cindy now was operating in full friend mode.

“I was home for Christmas holidays.  From California.  I had never thought of Boaz being a place where a single woman, alone, had to be wise, be smart about where she was.  I had always loved the downtown fountain.  I had driven my rental car there from Birmingham’s Airport before I drove on to Nanny’s.  I was abducted returning to my car after having walked into the Mall from the parking lot across the street from First State Bank.”

“Katie, I have to know who they are.  For mine and Alysa’s sake at least.”

“Hang on to your hat.  Warren Tillman, Ryan Radford, Fulton Billingsely, Justin Adams, and Danny Ericson.  Those five men repeatedly raped me in a tent somewhere, I suspect, twenty minutes or so from here, out in the country, down a long gravel road.”

“You couldn’t tell where you were, where they took you?”  Cindy asked.  I hoped she would keep this our secret.  Someway, I knew she would.

“No.  They had grabbed me from behind, just as I was walking past the little public restrooms building next to the parking lot.  They slipped a black hood over my head at the same time I first felt their hands on me.  I never saw them.  After it was over, they threw me beside my car with my hands loosely tied behind my back.  It was only then that I was able to remove the hood.  By then, they were long gone.”

“Sorry, but how did you know who raped you?”  Cindy said, asking a question I wished she hadn’t.

There was no use turning back now.  I was in for the full trip.  “Two ways.  I somehow, subliminally maybe, knew from their smells, touches, groans, that it was them.  I know that wouldn’t hold up in court but trust me.  I knew.  The second way was from the tape.  They had recorded it.  I’ve recently come into possession of that tape.”

“The bastards.  Dumb asses for sure.”  I had never heard my New York friend Emily Fink say a single word off-color, and she was a wonderful friend.  Now, I knew, a real friend is not prohibited from stepping one foot inside the muddy gutter.

“They truly are but that makes them even more dangerous.  Funny thing is I have let it be known to our fine pastor that I know they were the ones who raped me.”

“Do they know you have the tape?”  Cindy asked.

“I’m not sure, but if I were to bet, I would say yes.”

“Now I’m wondering.  It just hit me.  Pastor Warren and Patrick Wilkins.  He, Warren, may have known what Wilkins was up to.  My scream would have told anyone else in the world that it was a scream for help.  Yet, he ignored my cry.  Just looked our way, registered seeing Wilkins with Cindy Barker, then turned and walked away.  They are despicable.”

“I certainly agree.  Cindy, it’s too late for justice for the five men who raped me, but it’s not for Patrick Wilkins.  Please reconsider reporting him to the police, hey I know, talk with Sheriff Waldrup.  I spoke with him this morning about Darla’s case.  He is a kind and compassionate man, and no doubt, strong enough to take on your case.”

“Katie, I’ve been totally serious with you.  I’m not going to the police but thank you for caring so much.  But, I will help you get justice of sorts if you will help me.  I’ve been thinking of how I was going to deal with our fine Mr. Wilkins.  I must confess, what’s crossed my mind is contrary to the Bible, the verse that talks about vengeance being the Lord’s.  I can’t do anything.  He needs to be punished somehow.”  Cindy was breaking all records now, surprising me like I would have never imagined.

“Be careful my friend.  Revenge is a dangerous animal, like a boomerang, it can come back to cut off your own head.”  I said trying to plant a contrary opinion in Cindy’s mind.  To me, she was straying into the wrong side of town.

“You and I both have watched movies and read novels about this very thing.  Where the criminal justice system can’t or won’t do anything to balance the scales, to mete out punishment where it has clearly been earned.  At least think about something we could do to embarrass these six men.”

“I have been thinking about it for years.  For the five men who raped me.  I have tried to stay away from the thoughts that have appeared in my mind over the years, thoughts to cut the you know what off the five bastards, or better yet, to take a gun and blow off their fucking heads.  Sorry for the F word.”

“It’s okay.  What has held you back?”

“Easy answer.  My writing.  I’ve forced myself to channel my anger into words.  Since it happened, I’ve been working on another novel.  Unfortunately, it grows and grows and is going nowhere.  It’s like I hadn’t found my true passion.  Instead, I’ve resisted a deep and innate need for revenge.  Now that I think about it, maybe that’s what’s missing, that’s why my novel has been floundering.”  I wanted to explore this issue.  I was shocked that I hadn’t been able to recognize this potential before.

“Katie, promise you will join me in thinking honestly about real justice for these men.  It’s only right.  I would like nothing more than keeping my life with Steve just as it is while at the same time seeing perfect Mr. Wilkins burn in hell.”  If I had reason to doubt whether a sincere and committed Christian had feelings and thoughts the rest of us animals do, that was now history.  Cindy was sounding genuine, genuinely human.

“I promise.  But, for now, we best go.  It’s only three and a half hours till my alarm goes off and motions me to my writing desk.

We walked outside my room together.  As I was locking my door, Cindy asked me to go with her to her Sunday School Department’s quarterly social.  I told her that it was funny she had brought that up because I had promised Cullie I would ask her about her Sunday School class.  I committed to going.  I even halfway promised I would join her and a dozen or so other women in their late thirties in the Ruth Sunday School class. 

As I drove home, I had this wonderfully sick feeling.  It was wonderful to know that Cindy and I had exchanged our blood.  Our two-hour talk had been a blood pack of sorts.  My feeling of sickness was from the existence of the shared experiences between Cindy and me, and how we had so easily agreed to consider and ponder stepping into the shoes of those committed to breaking the law.  I hoped Cindy would somehow herd the camel back into the tent and forget she had ever opened the barn door.

Novel Excerpts–The Boaz Schoolteacher, Chapter 19

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 19

Monday morning, Labor Day, I almost ignored my 4:30 a.m. alarm.  I had hardly slept at all.  After returning from my classroom Sunday afternoon I had binged on Netflix, alternating between Stella Gibson and The Fall, and Longmire.  The sexual tension between Walt and Vic in the latter series was noteworthy and spurred me to consider adding a romantic subplot to my own Real Justice work.  The only good thing that had come out of my binging was a reminder I was abusing the name Real Justice.  My current work in the basement was called Real Justice.  The creative novel project was labeled Real Justice and that was only for team one.  I hadn’t thought of it until now, but was team two’s to be called Real Justice II?  This was a problem I could solve.  No matter, the best thing my multi-hour binging had done was keep me from pondering Darla’s murder and the hot spot I had created for myself at school.

I was glad I somehow had the determination to follow my routine.  Once again, my writing time produced that feeling I longed for every day, that I had accomplished something special.  For years this feeling had guided my life.  If I had written at least 1,000 words towards an active project, then my day was successful no matter what happened the remaining twenty-two or so hours.  Today I had written a solid scene and had spent the last fifteen minutes pondering a change to my book’s title.  I was leaning towards The Light in the Darkness or The Darkness in the Light, somewhat of a sequel to my 2002 award winning Out of the Darkness.  I was deep in thought over the problem of evil in the world, trying to figure out whether it was fate or some mysterious plan of God that had caused the darkest day of my life when I heard the phone ringing upstairs.  It was the land-line, Nanny’s phone since the early fifties.  I normally wouldn’t have heard it but today I had left the door at the top of the stairs open thinking that Sammie and Nanny might show up early, hours earlier than the noontime Sammie had promised.

I started to ignore it, but the caller was relentless.  I answered on probably the tenth ring.  “Hello.”

“Katie, Katie Sims?”  The deep voice said from the other end of the line. 

“Yes, this is Katie Sims.”

“This is Marshall County Sheriff Wayne Waldrup.  Do you have a few minutes to talk?”  The first thing I thought of was Cullie.  Fear rushed through me like I had never known.  Why would the Sheriff be calling me so early?  I had stayed longer than usual in the basement, but it was still only 6:30. Cullie and Cindy and her family must have been in an accident.

“What’s happened?  Is Cullie hurt?”  I asked, frantic, sitting at the kitchen table and virtually jumping up before he could respond.

“Katie, my call has nothing to do with Cullie.  I’m calling to give you an update on our investigation into your mother’s death.”  I sat again, relieved, as though I had just heard the best news of my life, thinking how weird it was that something horrible, in the right context, could be good news.

“I’m sorry.  I’ve never had a law enforcement officer call me, much less so early.  My daughter, Cullie, is away with friends and is scheduled to return today.  I jumped to the conclusion there must have been an accident and Cullie was hurt.”

“No need to apologize.  I have two children of my own.  I probably would have responded the same if I had been in your shoes.”

“Has there been some progress in Darla’s, I mean, Mother’s case?  Do you have a suspect?”  I said believing this would be why Sheriff Waldrup would have been calling.

“We do have a suspect but have been unable to identify him.”

“Who is he?”  When the words left my mouth, I realized my mind hadn’t quite recovered from its former desperation.  “Sorry, dumb question.  How do you know about him if you don’t know who he is?”

“He was caught on camera pawning what we believe is the murder weapon, a 22-caliber pistol.  We have a good relationship with Joe’s Pawn Shop.  They gave us a call yesterday morning relaying their suspicions.”

“What made them suspicious?”  I concluded Joe’s maybe had heard about the murder.

“When we have a missing gun case, we always alert local pawn shops, and when we know. telling them the make, model, and caliber, and encourage them to be on the lookout.  Of course, the shops know to always be on the alert when any gun is being pawned.”

“The man, on camera, what does he look like?”  I was ready for Sheriff Waldrup to describe Ryan Radford or Danny Ericson.  It was funny or weird or both that I had already solved the case.  Both men had a motive to kill Darla.  And, Ryan was with her shortly before she was found, not only dead, but with a bullet hole in the back of her head.

“Short, stocky, curly, scraggly dark hair.  He has a beard, but Joe suggested the beard looked fake.  The video isn’t the best quality.”

“You said the gun was probably the murder weapon.  I assume that means the ballistic tests haven’t been completed?”  I guess I had watched enough Law and Order and CSI to know that would be the first thing the Sheriff would do.

“Correct, the State Department of Forensics is closed for the holiday weekend.  Deputy Childers will be waiting with the subject gun in Montgomery when they open in the morning.”

“Do they do the fingerprinting or is that something for your department?”  I was glad I had some interest in criminology and had watched all those TV shows.

“We conducted preliminary tests.  The gun contained two sets.  One belonged to Joe at the Pawn Shop.  The other set didn’t match anyone in our database.  The State has more resources than we have here at the local level.  I’m hoping their testing will produce better results.”

“I assume you broadcast the man’s photo, a camera shot to news stations?”

“We did.  Joe called us late Saturday afternoon, and by midmorning yesterday, local radio, and all the TV stations in Huntsville and Birmingham, had the information.  They are asking the public to call our hotline if they know the man or believe they have seen him.”

“I hope you get a break.  Can I tell you something I believe could be relevant to solving Mother’s case?”  I said, almost forgetting what I had discovered in Darla’s journals.

“Absolutely, we need to know everything, even things unlikely relevant.”  There was something about Sheriff Waldrup’s voice.  I had seen a photo or two of him in the Sand Mountain Reporter; Nanny had probably been a lifelong subscriber.  He was tall and strong looking.  He could have given Walt Longmire a run for his position in Absaroka County, Wyoming.  Like Walt, Wayne had a kind and gentle voice, one that commanded respect and a healthy dose of fear.  I gained confidence in his investigation just from his voice.

I spent the next fifteen minutes telling him everything I knew, starting with the early morning phone call from Darla where she asked me to come get her.  I filled the Sheriff in on what Sammie had done and learned and what I had found in her suitcase.  I even admitted to him how I had come to have Darla’s things in my possession.  When I finished I could tell that Wayne, Sheriff Waldrup, was keenly interested in Raymond and Ryan Radford and what they stood to gain by Darla’s death.  For some reason, I chose not to tell him about the videotape, thinking and believing that it was only relevant to the spur-of-the-moment decision to kill Darla, and did not relate in any way to the prenuptial and thus the primary reason the Radfords would want her dead.

Sheriff Waldrup had just asked me when the best time for him or one of his deputies to come pick up Darla’s journals, when he abruptly said he had to take an emergency call.  This gave me a good excuse to drive to school and make a copy of both journals.  I knew he would be calling back and something prompted me that I should have an opportunity to complete my reading and to retain a copy just in case the Sheriff and his team somehow lost this critical evidence.

Between photocopying the 400 pages in Darla’s two journals, and drafting, editing, and completing my one-page Real Justice novel project handout, it was after 11:30 a.m. when I returned home.  I was making a sandwich when Sammie and Nanny entered through the kitchen’s rear door.  I hugged both and asked if they were hungry.  Nanny smiled and started fiddling with the long cord dangling down the wall as though she knew at least one phone conversation had taken place since she left yesterday morning.  We all sat, ate, and talked for over an hour.  I was glad to hear they had a good time, especially that Nanny had gotten to ride a lot on the back roads of Dekalb County, one of the favorite things her and Papa had done when he was living.  There had always been something inspiring for Nanny to see the places three generations of her family had lived and farmed. 

Just after Sammie and Nanny left the kitchen for her room and a nap, Cullie and Alysa burst through the back door with Cullie cuddling a small, black kitten.  “Mom, the man in Anniston where Steve stopped to buy gas said the kittens were headed to the animal shelter where they would be put to sleep.  I took this one, Midnight, and Alysa took three.  I hope you don’t mind.  I promise to take care of her, him, whatever, and to do more chores to pay for his food.  Please?”

“By the time Cullie finished her long and strong argument Cindy came in looking both apologetic and sad.  Or, was it frustrated?  I had, in our three weeks together at school, been able to detect when something was wrong.  Her face would be a tinge redder and her normally bright green eyes grew darker.  “Katie, I tried calling you.  I didn’t know what to do.  If you do not want to keep the kitten, Midnight, we’ll carry her home with the other three.”

“It’s not a problem.  I kind of like cats.  I haven’t had one since my high school days, didn’t even know they still made them.”  I tried being funny, hoping to remind Cindy I was truly her friend.  I wanted to spend some time talking with her, but Steve started honking the car horn.  I am sure he wanted to get home after being away all weekend.  It worked out for the best since I wanted to hear from Cullie and be close by her side. 

All afternoon, as we talked and created Midnight a nice little bed along with a litter box (thankful that Steve had stopped at Walmart in Gadsden) on the back porch, all I could think about was the feeling I had when Sheriff Waldrup called.  Cullie was the most precious and wonderful thing in my life.  She was blood of my blood.  Created in darkness but clothed in light that dispelled everything cruel, hateful, and evil.  “Thank-you God for giving me Cullie and bringing her safely home.”  I said the words aloud and noticed the breathtaking smile that appeared on Cullie’s face as she seemed pleased her mother was praying.

Snowflake Summaries–The Tomorrow File, by Lawrence Sanders

The primary aim of the "Snowflake Summaries" blog category is to showcase the creative writing of great authors. I use Randy Ingermanson's 'Snowflake' method to create these summaries. Here's a brief description of the one-sentence, one-paragraph, and one-page summary method.

Hopefully, these posts will motivate you to read great fiction and to write your own novel, whether your first or your fifteenth. 

The first great novelist I'll start with is Lawrence Sanders. Here's a short biography.

The Tomorrow File, by Lawrence Sanders

**”The Tomorrow File” by Lawrence Sanders** is a futuristic thriller that delves into a dystopian society controlled by governmental and corporate interests, where personal freedoms are surrendered to the state and human desires are commodified.

### One Sentence Summary:

In **”The Tomorrow File,”** Nicholas Blade, a high-ranking government official in a controlled futuristic society, navigates dangerous political intrigue and personal betrayal as he uncovers a sinister government project designed to manipulate and control the populace.

### One Paragraph Summary:

Set in a dystopian future where the government meticulously regulates all aspects of life, **”The Tomorrow File”** follows Nicholas Blade, an ambitious and cunning official in the Department of Blissful Relationships, tasked with ensuring citizens’ compliance with societal norms. As Nicholas rises in the governmental ranks, he becomes entangled in a web of deceit involving a controversial and secretive project known as “The Tomorrow File.” This project aims to perfect societal control by predicting and manipulating individual behavior on a massive scale. Caught between his loyalty to the regime and his growing moral unease, Nicholas must navigate a maze of power struggles, espionage, and assassination attempts. His journey reveals the horrifying extent of government surveillance and manipulation, challenging him to take a stand that could cost him everything.

### One Page Summary:

**”The Tomorrow File”** by Lawrence Sanders presents a chilling vision of the future, where government and corporate powers merge to control every aspect of human behavior. The protagonist, Nicholas Blade, is a senior official in the totalitarian state’s Department of Blissful Relationships, a branch dedicated to ensuring that citizens adhere to prescribed behaviors and relationships that maintain societal harmony.

Nicholas is a true believer in the system’s ability to create a perfect society, but his convictions begin to falter as he climbs higher in the governmental hierarchy. His rise brings him closer to the inner workings of a top-secret project known as “The Tomorrow File.” The project, driven by advanced algorithms and comprehensive surveillance, aims to predict and manipulate individual decisions, extending government control to the most intimate aspects of personal life.

Throughout the novel, Nicholas is portrayed as a complex character, torn between ambition and an emerging sense of right and wrong. His journey into the heart of political power exposes him to corruption, betrayal, and the brutal enforcement of state policies. Relationships with his colleagues, who range from ruthlessly opportunistic to covertly rebellious, further complicate his position. As he uncovers the true intentions behind “The Tomorrow File,” Nicholas finds himself in a dangerous position, targeted by those who view him as a threat to their power.

Sanders masterfully builds tension, crafting a narrative that is both a political thriller and a cautionary tale about the potential misuses of technology in governance. The stark, controlled setting serves as a backdrop for dramatic confrontations and ethical dilemmas, highlighting the individual’s struggle against a seemingly omnipotent state.

The climax of the novel is reached when Nicholas decides to leak details of “The Tomorrow File” to an underground resistance movement, risking his life to expose the government’s manipulations. This act of defiance leads to a suspenseful finale where Nicholas must outmaneuver the government agents sent to silence him.

In its conclusion, **”The Tomorrow File”** leaves readers with a provocative question about the balance between security and freedom. Nicholas’s fate is left ambiguous, symbolizing the uncertain outcomes of resistance against such a powerful and pervasive system. Sanders’ novel is a gripping exploration of themes such as privacy, freedom, and the human spirit’s resilience, making it a profound addition to the genre of speculative fiction.

Novel Excerpts–The Boaz Schoolteacher, Chapter 18

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 18

My classroom was freezing cold.  I could have sworn I had turned the thermostat to 80 degrees when I left Thursday afternoon, just like I had been instructed the first day of school.  Instead, it was set on 60.  I selected heat and reset the pointer to 80.  This was weird since it was probably 90 degrees outside.

Off and on for several days I had been thinking about the best way to administer the novel writing project.  There were twenty students.  I would divide them into five teams (there’s that five again).   Each team would be required to complete one chapter per month, maybe one scene per week, knowing at least one would be discarded.  I would create another Facebook group to enable contemporaneous communications.  If everything went according to plan, at the end of the year we would have five novels, each with four authors.  I had never seen a novel with more than two authors, but this did not dissuade me from my idea in the least.  In detail, I scribbled the administrative component of the project. 

How to generate the words, words fit to line up to create a story wouldn’t be so easy.  I had always liked Mark Twain’s first rule of writing: ‘a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.’  I think what he meant was that the best stories offered some form of meaning.  This characteristic of a story is normally referred to as the theme.   Stories require characters, although they did not have to always be of the human type.  Real Justice wouldn’t be about a dog or a whale, but about Stella Gibson (I’d worry about a different name later), the new editor of the Times-Courier newspaper in Ellijay, Georgia and how she balanced the scales for five local and prominent businessmen who had traumatized her (for now, my idea was to leave it to each team to describe how Stella was mistreated).  My subconscious mind was working on me and asking why I was not using the word, ‘revenge’? I knew that it meant to avenge oneself, and normally it included retaliation to some degree.  Right now, I didn’t think this was what I was after in my own life, but Stella, for sure, was after blood.

Again, I took out a notebook and began to write.  The name of the project and novel would be Real Justice (at least for now).   Setting: Ellijay, Georgia, Gilmer County.  Stella would be the protagonist, the main character.  The antagonists (all residents of Ellijay) would be: Mason Campbell, Mayor; Noah Fletcher, President, South Citizens Bank & Trust; Aiden Walker, Pastor, First United Baptist Church; Jackson Burke, Founder & President of Burke Manufacturing; and Daniel Taylor, Chief Judge of the Superior Court.

I was just about to provide introductory details concerning the book’s main conflict when I heard a knock at my office door.  After turning up the heat I had come into my small office and closed the door.  I now realized that I was sweating.  “Come in.”

I was hoping it might be Earl Chambers the School’s chief custodian.  He often worked crazy hours like me.  I was deeply disappointed.  “Katie, it’s like a sauna in here.  I walked by your room, noticed the light, came in and thought there must be a fire.”

I couldn’t tell if he was being intentionally melodramatic.  I began to sweat even more as I stood and walked past him to the thermostat in the opposite corner behind my bookcases.  “I must have left the air-conditioner on when I left Thursday.  I had flipped the thermostat over to heat and had gotten sidetracked.”  All I could think about was what had happened with Cindy.  Patrick Wilkins was a sexual predator.  I hadn’t seen or heard Earl since I arrived over an hour ago.  I was alone with the man who had already sexually harassed me on several previous occasions.

“I’m sorry about your mother.  I couldn’t make it to the memorial.  Let me know if there is anything I can do to help you through these dark days.”  He sounded so sincere.  No doubt I was hearing from his better personality.  I hoped the darker side didn’t appear.

“Katie, I hate to bring this up now, but we can’t allow your personal statement to remain on the website.”  Each member of the faculty was required to maintain a single web page on the School’s website.  Before a week ago, Mr. Harrison had already reminded me twice to create my page.  “You don’t have to write a dissertation.”

Tuesday night I had reviewed the other teacher’s pages and had gotten rather pissed with a couple of them.  One was Patrick Wilkins.  He and Coach Haney, Bryan Haney, were proselytizing, pure and simple.  Their pages were nothing more than Christian billboards.  I had become so pissed, I had written on mine: “I am an honest and devout Muslim.  There is no God but Allah.  Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.  I receive deep peace and hope from my five daily prayers.  I practice alms giving to the poor and sick.  Join me on my next pilgrimage to Mecca.”

“Why?”  I said coming back into my office with him still standing by the door.

“I thought you were a Christian.  I have seen you several times at church.”

“You are correct.  At least about seeing me at First Baptist Church of Christ.  I’m not sure if I’m a Christian, but I’m working on it.  No, I’m not a Muslim.”

“Then, why did you write what you did?”  Could the Assistant Principal be this dense?

“Can I ask you the same thing?  You wrote, let me think, that you are the Education Director at First Baptist Church of Christ, that you are a deacon, and that you sing in the choir.  I can nearly quote it, ‘I want my whole identity not to be with all of the other things I’m involved in, but in Christ and Christ alone.’  Boaz High School is an educational facility.  A public school, not a private school.”  I said wanted to get back to my novel project.

“That’s who I am.  I’m not ashamed of it.”

“That’s perfectly okay but keep it to yourself at school.  Haven’t you ever heard of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?”

“Of course, I have.  Again, I’m not trying to establish a religion.”

“But you are.  The First Amendment, as to religion, not only forbids the government from establishing an official religion, but also prohibits government actions that unduly favor one religion over another.  You, as a government actor, like Coach Haney, are favoring Christianity.  Students have a right not to be subjected to this.”  I said recalling how adamant the administration at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in New York City was about this issue.

“What’s Haney got to do with this?”

“He’s doing the same thing you are.  Except, he is even more egregious than you.  I walked over to my laptop and searched for Coach Haney’s web page.  This is what he says, in third person: “He is first and foremost a born-again believer in Jesus Christ, ‘…my glory, and the lifter up of mine head’ (Psalms 3:3).  His priority is to bring glory to Christ’s name in any and everything he does.  Because he loves Christ, his love for his students and players grows more and more.”

“How does this hurt anything?  Especially the students?”  Wilkins asked, likely being totally honest.  He didn’t have a clue he was so brainwashed.

“Haney’s statement, nor yours, has any place in a student’s mind.  He likely will conclude that he must play the Jesus card to make it in Haney’s class, and probably even worse, to succeed and excel at Boaz High School.  What Haney writes is atrocious, ‘my priority is to bring glory to Christ’s name in any and everything I do.’  That obviously includes his teaching, every lesson, every activity.”

“Kids need to hear the gospel.”  I must give Patrick credit.  He was a true evangelical.

“That’s your opinion.  Even if you are correct, school isn’t the place.  At church is one thing.  There, young people choose to go and to hear.  Every student at Boaz High School is here, in the main, because they are required to be here.  Of all places, school should be where the student is taught to think critically and to be exposed to every side of an issue, not force-fed someone’s religious beliefs.”

“Islam is a religion of violence.  There’s no way it’s true.”  At least Patrick wasn’t trying to make a move on me sexually, but he was still showing his true colors.

“How do you know Christianity is true?  I would bet you have never honestly investigated the claims against its veracity.”  I said looking at my iPhone as though I had just received a text.

“Katie, you can think whatever you want, but if you don’t remove your little Muslim post by the start of school on Tuesday it will be taken down for you.  This is not Turkey or Indonesia.  This is Alabama, the heart of the Bible Belt.”

“I’ll certainly remove my improper statement if you and Coach Haney will do the same.”  I felt the sweat returning to my forehead.  I was in no position to be demanding.

Wilkins didn’t respond but turned to walk out.  Without looking back towards me he said, “I like your tee-shirt.”  When I heard my classroom door close, I looked down at my chest and only then understood what Wilkins was referring to.  My shirt had a downward pointing arrow that contained three words, ‘down to ignorance.’  It was a shirt sent to me by an English & Literature organization I contributed to.  Admittedly, their ‘Words are Life’ campaign was more a success than their tee-shirt.  They had received complaints that it had a negative sexual message and had discontinued offering it on their website.  No doubt, Wilkins had picked up on the wrong message.

I tried for the next hour to draft a formal handout on Real Justice to give my creative writing students on Tuesday.  My mind simply couldn’t settle.  All it wanted to think and ponder was how actions have consequences.  If I hadn’t reacted so negatively and quickly to Haney’s and Wilkins’ web page postings, the confrontation wouldn’t have taken place, and now I wouldn’t be dealing with a conflict that had placed me in a most uncomfortable position.  I had no choice but to remove my Islamic statements.  As I gathered my things and walked to my car my mind offered up a contrary message.  ‘Fighting ignorance and abuse may not be comfortable but it is necessary for a free and progressive society.’  Sometimes, I truly loved that little woman who lived inside my head.

Novel Excerpts–The Boaz Schoolteacher, Chapter 17

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 Marginalian: Love After Life: Nobel-Winning Physicist Richard Feynman’s Extraordinary Letter to His Departed Wife

Here’s the link to this article.

BY MARIA POPOVA

Love After Life: Nobel-Winning Physicist Richard Feynman’s Extraordinary Letter to His Departed Wife

Few people have enchanted the popular imagination with science more powerfully and lastingly than physicist Richard Feynman (May 11, 1918–February 15, 1988) — the “Great Explainer” with the uncommon gift for bridging the essence of science with the most human and humane dimensions of life.

Several months after Feynman’s death, while working on what would become Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (public library) — the masterly biography plumbing the wellspring of Feynman’s genius — James Gleick discovered something of arresting strangeness and splendor.

“My heart stopped,” Gleick tells me. “I have never had an experience like that as a biographer, before or since.”

In a mass of unread papers sent to him by Feynman’s widow, Gweneth, Gleick found a letter that discomposed his most central understanding of Feynman’s character. A generation after computing pioneer Alan Turing tussled with the binary code of body and spirit in the wake of loss, Feynman — a scientist perhaps uncommonly romantic yet resolutely rational and unsentimental in his reverence for the indomitable laws of physics that tend toward decay — penned a remarkable letter to a physical nonentity that was, for the future Nobel-winning physicist, the locus of an irrepressible metaphysical reality.

Richard Feynman as a youth

In high school, the teenage Richard spent summers at the beach in his native Far Rockaway. There, he grew besotted with a striking girl named Arline — a girl he knew he would marry. Both complement and counterpoint to his own nature, Arline met Richard’s inclination for science with ardor for philosophy and art. (The art class he took just to be near her would lay the foundation for his little-known, lifelong passion for drawing.) By his junior year, Richard proposed. Arline accepted. With the eyes of young love, they peered into a shared future of infinite possibility for bliss.

Richard and Arline, 1940s

But they were abruptly grounded when a mysterious malady began afflicting Arline with inexplicable symptoms — a lump would appear and disappear on her neck, fevers would roil over her with no apparent cause. Eventually, she was hospitalized for what was believed to be typhoid.

Gleick writes:

Feynman began to glimpse the special powerlessness that medical uncertainty can inflict on a scientific person. He had come to believe that the scientific way of thinking brought a measure of calmness and control in difficult situations — but not now.

Just as Feynman began bombarding the doctors with questions that steered them toward a closer approximation of the scientific method, Arline began to recover just as mysteriously and unpredictably as she had fallen ill. But the respite was only temporary. The symptoms returned, still shorn of a concrete explanation but now unambiguously pointing toward the terminal — a prognosis Arline’s doctors kept from her. Richard refused to go along with the deception — he and Arline had promised each other to face life with unremitting truthfulness — but he was forced to calibrate his commitment to circumstance.

Gleick writes:

His parents, Arline’s parents, and the doctors all urged him not to be so cruel as to tell a young woman she was dying. His sister, Joan, sobbing, told him he was stubborn and heartless. He broke down and bowed to tradition. In her room at Farmingdale Hospital, with her parents at her side, he confirmed that she had glandular fever. Meanwhile, he started carrying around a letter — a “goodbye love letter,” as he called it — that he planned to give her when she discovered the truth. He was sure she would never forgive the unforgivable lie.

He did not have long to wait. Soon after Arline returned home from the hospital she crept to the top of the stairs and overheard her mother weeping with a neighbor down in the kitchen. When she confronted Richard — his letter snug in his pocket — he told her the truth, handed her the letter, and asked her to marry him.

Arline and Richard, 1940s

Marriage, however, proved to be a towering practical problem — Princeton, where Feynman was now pursuing a Ph.D., threatened to withdraw the fellowships funding his graduate studies if he were to wed, for the university considered the emotional and pragmatic responsibilities of marriage a grave threat to academic discipline.

Just as Feynman began considering leaving Princeton, a diagnosis detonated the situation — Arline had contracted a rare form of tuberculosis, most likely from unpasteurized milk.

At first, Feynman was relieved that the grim alternative options of Hodgkin’s disease and incurable cancers like lymphoma had been ruled out. But he was underestimating, or perhaps misunderstanding, the gravity of tuberculosis — the very disease which had taken the love of Alan Turing’s life and which, during its two-century heyday, had claimed more lives around the globe than any other malady and all wars combined. At the time of Arline’s diagnosis in 1941, immunology was in its infancy, the antibiotic treatment of bacterial infections practically nonexistent, and the first successful medical application of penicillin a year away. Tuberculosis was a death sentence, even if it was a slow death with intervals of remission — a fact Richard and Arline faced with an ambivalent mix of brave lucidity and hope against hope.

Meanwhile, Richard’s parents met the prospect of his marriage with bristling dread. His mother, who believed he was marrying Arline out of pity rather than love, admonished him that he would be putting his health and his very life in danger, and coldly worried about how the stigma attached to tuberculosis would impact her brilliant young son’s reputation. “I was surprised to learn such a marriage is not unlawful,” she scoffed unfeelingly. “It ought to be.”

But Richard was buoyed by love — a love so large and luminous that he found himself singing aloud one day as he was arranging Arline’s transfer to a sanatorium. Determined to go through with the wedding, he wrote to his beloved:

I guess maybe it is like rolling off of a log — my heart is filled again & I’m choked with emotions — and love is so good & powerful — it’s worth preserving — I know nothing can separate us — we’ve stood the tests of time and our love is as glorious now as the day it was born — dearest riches have never made people great but love does it every day — we’re not little people — we’re giants … I know we both have a future ahead of us — with a world of happiness — now & forever.

On June 29, 1942, they promised each other eternity.

Richard and Arline on their wedding day

Gleick writes:

He borrowed a station wagon from a Princeton friend, outfitted it with mattresses for the journey, and picked up Arline in Cedarhurst. She walked down her father’s hand-poured concrete driveway wearing a white dress. They crossed New York Harbor on the Staten Island ferry — their honeymoon ship. They married in a city office on Staten Island, in the presence of neither family nor friends, their only witnesses two strangers called in from the next room. Fearful of contagion, Richard did not kiss her on the lips. After the ceremony he helped her slowly down the stairs, and onward they drove to Arline’s new home, a charity hospital in Browns Mills, New Jersey.

Meanwhile, WWII was reaching its crescendo of destruction, dragging America into the belly of death with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now one of the nation’s most promising physicists, Feynman was recruited to work on what would become the Manhattan Project and soon joined the secret laboratory in Los Alamos.

Feynman’s Los Alamos badge

Arline entered the nearby Albuquerque sanatorium, from where she wrote him letters in code — for the sheer fun of it, because she knew how he cherished puzzles, but the correspondence alarmed the military censors at the laboratory’s Intelligence Office. Tasked with abating any breaches to the secrecy of the operation, they cautioned Feynman that coded messages were against the rules and demanded that his wife include a key in each letter to help them decipher it. This only amplified Arline’s sense of fun — she began cutting holes into her letters, covering passages with ink, and even mail-ordered a jigsaw puzzle kit with which to cut up the pages and completely confound the agents.

But the levity masked the underlying darkness which Richard and Arline tried so desperately to evade — Arline was dying. As her body failed, he steadied himself to her spirit:

You are a strong and beautiful woman. You are not always as strong as other times but it rises & falls like the flow of a mountain stream. I feel I am a reservoir for your strength — without you I would be empty and weak… I find it much harder these days to write these things to you.

In every single letter, he told her that he loved her. “I have a serious affliction: loving you forever,” he wrote.

Richard and Arline at the Albuquerque sanatorium

In early 1945, two and a half years into their marriage, Richard and Arline made love for the first time. He had been too afraid of harming her frail health somehow, she too afraid of infecting him with the deadly bacterium consuming her. But Arline insisted that this pent up desire could no longer be contained and assured Richard that this would only bring them closer — to each other, and to the life they had so lovingly dreamt up for themselves:

I’ll always be your sweetheart & first love — besides a devoted wife — we’ll be proud parents too… I am proud of you always Richard –[you are] a good husband, and lover, & well, coach, I’ll show you what I mean Sunday.

But heightened as their hopes were by this new dimension of shared experience, Arline’s health continued to plummet. Her weight dropped to eighty-four pounds. Exasperated by the helplessness of medicine, which Feynman had come to see not as a manifestation but as a mutilation of the scientific method, he invested all hope in an experimental drug made of mold growths. “Keep hanging on,” he exhorted Arline. “Nothing is certain. We lead a charmed life.” She began spitting blood.

At twenty-seven, on the precipice of a brilliant scientific career, he was terminally in love.

On June 16, 1945, while working at the computing room at Los Alamos, Feynman received a call from the sanatorium that Arline was dying. He borrowed a colleague’s car and sped to the hospital, where he found her immobile, her eyes barely tracing his movement. Early in his scientific career, he had been animated by the nature of time. Now, hours stretched and contracted as he sat at her deathbed, until one last small breath tolled the end at 9:21PM.

The wake of loss has a way of tranquilizing grief with the pressing demands of practical arrangements — a tranquilizer we take willingly, almost gratefully. The following morning, Feynman arranged for his beloved’s cremation, methodically collected her personal belongings, and on the final page of the small spiral notebook in which she recorded her symptoms he wrote with scientific remove: “June 16 — Death.”

And so we arrive at Gleick’s improbable discovery in that box of letters — improbable because of the extreme rationality with which Feynman hedged against even the slightest intimation of metaphysical conjectures untestable by science and unprovable by reason. During his courtship of Arline, he had been vexed by her enthusiasm for Descartes, whose “proof” of God’s perfection he found intellectually lazy and unbefitting of Descartes’s reputation as a champion of reason. He had impishly countered Arline’s insistence that there are two sides to everything by cutting a piece of paper and half-twisting it into a Möbius strip, the ends pasted together to render a surface with just one side.

Everything that appeared mystical, Feynman believed, was simply an insufficiently explained mystery with a physical answer not yet found. Even Arline’s dying hour had offered testing ground for conviction. Puzzlingly, the clock in the room had stopped at exactly 9:21PM — the time of death. Aware of how this bizarre occurrence could foment the mystical imagination in unscientific minds, Feynman reasoned for an explanation. Remembering that he had repaired the clock multiple times over the course of Arline’s stay at the sanatorium, he realized that the instrument’s unwieldy mechanism must have choked when the nurse picked it up in the low evening light to see and record the time.

How astonishing and how touchingly human, then, that Feynman penned the letter Gleick found in the box forty-two years later — a letter he wrote to Arline in October of 1946, 488 days after her death:

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweetheart.

I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.

It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing.

But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can’t I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures.

When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.

I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are surprised that I don’t even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I — I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.

My darling wife, I do adore you.

I love my wife. My wife is dead.

Rich.

And then, with the sole defibrillator for heartache we have — humor — Feynman adds:

PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.

Complement this particular portion of the altogether magnificent Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman with Rachel Carson’s stunning deathbed farewell to her beloved and Seneca on resilience in the face of loss, then revisit Feynman on science and religion and the meaning of life.

Flash Fiction: A Lesson in Letting Go

In the quiet town of Elmwood, Harold sat at his kitchen table, thumbing through a stack of old photographs. Each picture, a whisper from the past, showcased moments with Marion, his wife of 46 years. Both had been high school teachers, dedicated to nurturing minds and fostering dreams. But now, the house felt as empty as the classrooms during summer break.

Harold picked up a photograph taken on their first day at Elmwood High. Marion, radiant and eager, stood beside him, her smile wide, holding a globe, symbolizing her love for geography. He, a math teacher, held a calculator, the two of them poised for a life of shared equations and explorations.

Their lives had intertwined not just in love but in purpose. They had been partners, both in life and across the hallways where they taught. Retirement had been kind, offering them leisurely mornings and tranquil evenings, until Marion’s sudden illness swept through, as unpredictable as a pop quiz, and just as merciless.

Now, Harold faced mornings filled with silence instead of Marion’s humming in the kitchen. He missed how she would weave stories of historical expeditions into their morning walks, making every step an adventure.

As autumn crept in, Harold found himself walking to the school they had devoted their lives to. He wandered through the corridors, now lined with lockers that echoed the laughter and secrets of generations. Approaching the geography room, Harold hesitated before pushing the door open. Inside, the world map still hung on the wall, each country a testament to Marion’s teachings.

He approached her desk, touching the surface where lesson plans had been crafted and dreams encouraged. A pang of sorrow tightened around his heart. How many times had he watched her from his classroom door, her eyes alight with passion as she recounted the voyages of explorers?

Lost in thought, Harold was startled when a young teacher entered the room. “Mr. Watkins? I’m Emily, the new geography teacher. I heard so much about Mrs. Watkins. I hope I can fill her shoes.”

Harold smiled, his eyes moist. “Marion believed every place on that map could be visited, if only through imagination and knowledge. She left big shoes to fill indeed.”

Emily nodded, her expression earnest. “I’ve kept all her teaching materials. I use them to guide me. She had a way of making the world come alive.”

Gratitude washed over Harold. Marion had left an indelible mark not just on him but on countless others who had passed through this room. “She’d be thrilled to know her legacy continues with someone as passionate as you,” Harold replied.

As he walked home, the weight in his heart felt lighter. Marion’s presence in the school, in the very essence of the town, and in the minds she had shaped, was palpable. Harold realized that though her physical presence was gone, her spirit, like the lessons they both taught, would linger on, touching lives far beyond the classroom.

Harold no longer felt he was navigating his days alone; Marion was there, in the stories they had crafted together, in the lessons they had imparted, and in the budding dreams of every student she had inspired. He understood, finally, that letting go wasn’t about forgetting; it was about moving forward, carrying their shared past proudly, like a well-earned diploma.