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 Safecracker, written in 2019, is my seventh novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
Fred Martin, a 1972 graduate of Boaz High School, returns to his hometown after practicing law and living in Huntsville for over thirty-five years with two goals in mind. First, to distance himself from the loss of Susan, his wife of thirty-seven years who died in 2013 of cancer. And second, to partner with his lifelong friend, Noah Waters, to crack the safes of Elton Rawlins and Doug Barber, two men who got under their skin as high school football players.
Little did Fred and Noah realize the secrets the two old Mosler safes protected. Who murdered three Boaz High School seniors in the fall of 1973? Is a near-half-century-old plan to destroy Fred’s sister and steal the inheritance from a set of 44-year-old illegitimate twins still alive and well? How far would Fred’s mother go to protect her family?
What starts out as an almost innocent prank turns life-threateningly serious the more Fred learns and the more safes he cracks. All the while, he falls in love with Connie Stewart, his one-date high school classmate who may conceal a secret or two herself.
Chapter 8
I had just gotten up Saturday morning when my iPhone vibrated. It was Noah. I was thankful he had waited until nearly 8:30. He knew I liked to sleep later on the weekends, a habit formed after I had graduated from Boaz High School and moved away to Auburn University from Martin Mansion in 1972.
“Yep.” My standard greeting for my best friend.
“Elton Rawlins died late yesterday afternoon. I feel sorry for Rebecca but sure won’t shed any tears for our dear old friend.” Noah said. I could hear the faint sounds of a couple of different voices in the background.
“Don’t try to be funny. You know you suck at that.” Noah was the most serious person I had ever met. Even back in high school he was driven to succeed and rarely would relax or crack a joke.
“What happened? I heard he might be stable enough to transfer to UAB.”
“Apparently not. He died during the med flight. I heard he had a heart attack just before the helicopter landed. Rebecca saw him die.” I barely heard Noah while the background noise increased.
“Are you at work?” I asked.
“Yea, sorry. I’m with the general contractors doing a walk-through at the new UPS facility in Huntsville.”
“Must be nice working in the big leagues. One would think you wouldn’t need a part-time job.” I said, always better at comedy than Noah.
“Don’t go there. Remember, I don’t exist. I’m silent you know. That means I don’t have any job other than Waters Security.”
“Okay Mr. Serious.”
Noah ended his call and I poured a bowl of cereal and sat in my recliner. Elton Rawlins. I couldn’t help but speculate a connection between my uninvited visit to his home, and his death. I concluded that much stranger things happened every day. The reality was I didn’t know about them. Neither could Elton know about my visit.
After Noah told me Elton had died, I wanted to reminisce about how all this had gotten started, but cell phones weren’t the best way to discuss such delicate subjects. I made a mental note to ask Noah next week about his memory of how Elton and Doug Barber crawled under our skin during the three years we played high school football.
Elton Rawlins was a real estate broker with Rawlins Realty, a company his father had started after returning from World War I. The story goes that Ellijay Rawlins did it mainly on a whim to compete with Ericson Construction and Real Estate, a company, albeit under a slightly different name, that had been around since before the turn of the century. Ellijay and Benjamin Ericson were lifelong enemies. I didn’t know why. As to the other skin-crawler, Doug Barber was a pharmacist who operated his own company,
Both Elton and Doug were former Boaz High School football players, having graduated in the early 1960’s. They seemed to be good friends with Coach Hicks since he let them meet and interact with the players, especially in the team meetings before each game. But, it was their little speeches a couple of times each week after practice that aggravated Noah and me.
Each of them always started off reminding us that football builds character. Elton liked to repeat the phrase that was posted over Coach Hicks’ desk in the field house: “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Neither Noah or I had a beef with this. It was his virtual preaching that pissed off the both of us. It never failed he spoke as though God had a plan for each of our lives and our part was to be obedient. I will never forget how Doug often said that Jesus would give each of us our own Damascus Road experience like he had the Apostle Paul. But only if we were sincere and believed with all our hearts.
This may sound silly but by the end of our senior football season, during the Fall of 1971, both Noah and I had already seen the light. We were, as far as we knew, the only two on the entire team who fully believed Elton and Doug were the most deluded men in Boaz. Unbeknown to them, the trials and tribulations of football, including enduring their routine preaching, had spawned a life-goal for Noah and me.
Over the years, life’s pressures and priorities had evolved. It wasn’t until I had carefully explored Papa Martin’s black journals in 1999 and discovered both Elton Rawlins and Doug Barber owned a Mosler safe, that I had introduced a foggy idea to my best friend. But, it wasn’t until nearly eighteen years later that we had acted. Even though the Rawlins burglary (and the yet to be executed Barber burglary) was intended to rattle the cage of the two men who had gotten under the skin of two naive teenage boys, at no time had we contemplated (or desired) physical harm to anyone. The only concession I made to myself was that Elton’s driving, his auto accident, had nothing to do with my criminality. Especially, since he had no way of knowing his safe had already been cracked.
Hearing the news of Elton’s death was troubling but it still, strangely, gave me some consolation. I think it was my memory of how damned certain Elton was some forty-five years ago. He had a way of twisting everything into the Master Plan, Master meaning God Almighty. I recalled how he shared with the team after the tragic death of one of our teammates. The young man, Terry, had been arrested over the prior weekend for something and committed suicide by hanging while still in his jail cell. The wisdom of cocky Elton revealed that Terry’s death was all by God’s plan and intended to teach us a lesson. I always hated when he said “we see through a glass darkly and don’t always know God’s reasons, but the Master does. He is mysterious to us, but we can trust that he always acts in our best interest.”
I nearly poured the remaining milk in my cereal bowl into my lap when I wondered how clearly old Elton was seeing now.
The Pencil-Driven Life 