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 53
I had never spent an entire class period discussing one vocabulary word. Until today. The word was self-preservation. Yesterday afternoon, before leaving school, I had almost forgotten to post Tuesday’s focus word. It was only the second week of following this new routine. For nearly three months, I had provided these words a week at a time. But, with the Facebook groups and the Real Justice project, the students had the tendency to jump ahead and pick and choose their favorite word or words and use them to speculate about how they related to our novel writing project. I liked my new routine. At least, until today.
Initially, I wasn’t sure why I had chosen self-preservation. It isn’t included on either the SAT or ACT lists of words to know before taking either of the standardized college admissions tests. Maybe, probably, my own quest for self-preservation caused this aberration. Every one of the sixty-three words so far had been selected from one of those two key lists.
If I had paid more attention to the chatter on Facebook last night I would have been expecting a lively discussion in the classroom. I heard, more than once, a reference during class time, to a comment made by another student either yesterday or earlier this morning.
After checking the roll, I said, “let’s spend a few minutes on our vocabulary focus. We need to finish our discussion of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose Bierce.”
Surprisingly, not one of the seventy-four students, Joanie Kittle was absent, said a word. I proceeded to read Merriam-Webster’s definition: “Self-preservation is ‘preservation of oneself from destruction or harm; a natural or instinctive tendency to act to preserve one’s own existence.’”
Before I could begin the illustration, I had chosen, Ben Gilbert sat straight in his seat on the front row and said, “is this tendency innate, like, built-in to our DNA?”
After I told him it probably is, but our class purpose wasn’t to focus on the science of the word, what causes us to have such a tendency, Clara Ellington asked another question, “Do we have any power to ignore this tendency? Does something like our environment, our education, even religion, do any of these things? Do they give us the ability and strength to resist this tendency?”
From there, I lost complete control of the class. Looking back, if the class discussion hadn’t been so personal to me, I would have relished every moment. The fifty-minute class came as close as any one I had ever taught to being the near-perfect illustration of what high-school teaching and learning, at least the learning part, should be. The class did a good job of incorporating Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. From the Facebook comments that were brought into our discussion, it seemed Eric Smothers was infatuated with how Peyton Farquhar would have felt as he contemplated his hanging in Bierce’s short story. Eric did quite a good job illustrating Peyton’s desire to preserve his life, stating at one point, “the ticking of Peyton’s watch and the few moments before the cannonball landed two feet from him, reveal what’s important. It’s seconds, not minutes, and it’s family.” I had always loved this short story masterpiece, set during the American Civil War. It’s the story of Peyton Farquhar, a man, believed to be a Confederate sympathizer, one about to be hanged, whose love for his wife and children help him envision his escape..
Eric’s statements seemingly had launched the class into a subject closer to home. My own self-preservation. Although the class, as far as I knew at the time, talked only of their outlier Real Justice project and not about me directly. I must admit, before the class ended, I felt I had been standing too close to a raging fire and that my hair, skin, eyelids, every part of me, had been singed.
The consensus of the class was that self-preservation was for all humans as natural as breathing. Just as education, environment, and religion did not determine whether humans continued to breathe, at its heart, self-preservation was, like the ticking of Peyton’s watch, unalterable, even unstoppable. The class however did expand on Merriam-Webster’s definition. They believed that every human has the same tendency to preserve his loved one’s existence.
This is when the class, Ben Gilbert to begin with, brought up Stella Gibson. It seemed the class was upset that I hadn’t responded to last night’s Facebook comments asking when I would be writing my chapter on the disappearance of Stella’s daughter. I would have been caught off guard if I hadn’t noticed a week or so ago that my Creative Writing student’s outlines had changed their third plot point from the destruction of Stella’s house by a secret arsonist, to a kidnapping and contemplated murder of Stella’s daughter.
For a few minutes my mind left the classroom and visited its private little zone. A place I had often visited but never when I had chosen the time. The class continued its discussion but all I could think about was the strange and eerie feeling I had last week, maybe the week before, in The Thread. A side benefit of this little semi-dream visitation was a reminder that my writing life was going to hell. I had missed more early morning writing sessions recently than I had in years; I anticipated that a whole other habit, one of not writing, was in full development. The main benefit, or purpose, of my zone visit was to remind me that the only real explanation for what seemed like a direct connection between the Real Justice project and my own life was that someone had bugged my office or had crawled inside my head.
My mind was faster than a train and landed back in the classroom, hopefully without a single student knowing I had taken a worldwide trip in less than two minutes. The first thing that registered upon recovering from my landing jolt was, “Cindy Barker is a real-life example of self-preservation. Wouldn’t you agree, Miss Katie?” Clara apologized for having to rephrase her question. I was glad she had because I hadn’t heard her first version.
“I’m not sure what you are talking about?” What else could I have said.
“She kidnapped Mr. Wilkins to preserve her marriage.” Ben said. I could tell by how he slumped in his seat that he wasn’t too proud of himself for saying this, maybe he was worried he had done something illegal in making such an accusation.
“Class, let me be clear. There is a limit to what you do with rumors. The first rule, the best rule, is to never repeat them.” I said with another paragraph to follow but I was almost verbally attacked by the entire class.
Almost in unison, the class said, “it’s not a rumor. She’s been arrested. She’s in jail.” I heard one student, I think it was Eric Smothers but I’m not positive, say, “Hell, she’s in jail.”
“Just because someone is arrested doesn’t mean he or she is guilty. I would hope you learned that in ninth grade civics class, at the latest.”
Again, I didn’t have to plead for class participation. “She’s also pregnant. Most likely, Wilkins’ baby.” Clara said, sounding unlike the polite and respectful scholar she had been since the first day of school.
“Now, you are back to rumor. What did I say you’re to do with rumors?” I said, never so anxious for the end-of-class bell to ring.
“It’s not a rumor if what Riley Radford said on Facebook is true. She said she has proof.”
Ben’s words were only half-way drowned by the bell. It was louder for some reason, in the auditorium versus in my classroom. I was glad for that and stressed. The loudness of the bell reminded me of the booming anger that was welling up in my mind and gut. For once in a very long time, the two were in sync. So much that I thought I could kill myself over letting my class get so out of control.
As I exited the auditorium and headed the hallway to my classroom several of my tenth graders tagged along, including Clara and Ben. Both were apologizing at virtually the same time asking me if I was okay. Clara said my face was redder than the flag. I think she meant the red in the American flag. “Are you having a heart attack?” Ben asked.
I finally shooed them away as I was unlocking my door. I made it halfway across my classroom toward my little office before the cannonball landed. It wasn’t a heart attack, but it was just as life-altering, or so it seemed. What I had learned in the classroom I had just left, combined with my sudden recall of an episode of CSI last night dealing with an FBI-planted bug at a Senator’s house, prompted a moment of clarity I rarely experienced. At that moment, I knew my little office had been bugged.
Ten minutes later, I was five minutes late for my eleventh-grade English class, but I was holding what no doubt had to be a listening device. I found it on the top shelf above my credenza, behind an 8 x 10-inch framed photo of me accepting the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in the Great Hall of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., in April 2002.
Only Wayne could tell me for sure, but that would have to wait.
The Pencil Driven Life 