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 38
My fear of walking the dusty road around the edge of Dad’s garden to Martin Mansion pushed me to stay hidden behind the four walls of my cabin. Angela’s photo prompted me to pull out her 1973/Senior journal. I hadn’t read an entry yet in either it or her 1972/Junior journal. For some reason I wanted to read what, if anything, she had written during the time the photo had been taken. I knew the game was around the middle of October since I vividly recalled the Auburn vs. LSU game. Instead of driving home to Boaz, Susan and I had stayed in Auburn and on Saturday gone to Jordan-Hare Stadium to watch LSU trounce Auburn 20 to 6. What a lousy Saturday. I still regret not driving home to watch the sensational Johnny Stewart run roughshod over the Pennington Wildcats.
I started reading with Angela’s October 8th entry. It was Monday. Mostly, she wrote about school. In her last paragraph she mentioned how tired she was from the extra cheerleader practice over the weekend. Her final sentence was, “I can’t wait until Wednesday night to be happy again.”
My first thought was that Angela might have been depressed. Then, remembering what she had written on the back side of the library photo, I concluded she was sad, mad no doubt, about what appeared to be her loss of Johnny Stewart to my dear sister. I continued to read. There was nothing revealing on Tuesday, October 9.
Wednesday’s entry had been written Thursday morning by Angela’s own admission. Her first sentence was, “love the ludes.” At first my mind froze. I even took out my iPhone and Googled ‘ludes.’ The first result thawed my mind instantly. Angela had to be referring to Quaaludes. I started to pull down the box of bottles I had stolen from Doug’s safe but didn’t need to. I recalled exactly that two bottles contained, at least according to their labels, Quaalude-300’s.
According to Angela’s journal, for weeks now, after youth group, Elton Rawlins and Doug Barber had hosted a high/happy/session in the back room of the Lighthouse. I gathered from her writing, including Thursday’s entry, that the youth director Randy Miller had been instrumental in organizing the lab, again, Angela’s description.
Angela described how she was one of three Boaz High School cheerleaders, including Rebecca Aldridge and Randi Peterson, who had volunteered to take the drug and learn the effect upon their spiritual experiences. Angela wrote how mad she had gotten Wednesday night when, instead of Randi, Deidre Miller had shown up. Angela’s writing was convoluted and needlessly confusing, but I concluded that what had been going on in the ‘lab’ involved more than singing “Why Me” by Kris Kristofferson (for some reason this popular song represented the heart of what Angela referred to as ‘Ludes Lab’). To my shock, I learned that a little over an hour after their sessions began and the Ludes were ingested, the songs and the swaying had given way to sexual exploration. Angela never described it as a sexual orgy but that’s what vision my mind produced.
It was not clear at all to me why or how Deidre had shown up to replace the absent Randi. I got to counting and realized three girls and five guys wasn’t an even pairing, not that that was a requirement for the type orgy I imagined. The physical interactions became more apparent to me when Angela expressed what had made her so mad. Apparently, the Ludes or simply natural attraction, had isolated the magnetic Johnny Stewart with my dear Deidre. I may have read something untrue between Angela’s sentences, but it seemed clear to me that during the past ‘Ludes Labs,’ those where Deidre was absent, the Johnny hunk (Angela’s words) shared his high and happy touch with all three of the eager cheerleaders.
I knew I was running late but wanted to finish Angela’s writing through Friday. On Saturday morning she had written about last night’s game against J.B. Pennington and, for the first time, noted how mad she was at the football superstar. She wrote, “if I can’t have him, nobody can. Damn him and Deidre Martin. I’d send them both to hell right now if I could.”
If this language wasn’t shocking enough, she finished her entry by expressing the range of emotions she always experienced during what she referred to as ‘Faith’ time. This apparently took place after ‘Sex’ time (my label), after all present had experienced the highest of highs. Angela wrote how Elton and Doug had shown them a few weeks ago how to play Russian roulette. To them, this was how they showed their commitment to Jesus and His will for their lives. I had never in my life read something so sick and twisted.
I returned the journal to the top shelf of my pantry closet and headed out the door to Martin Mansion. All I could think about along the dusty trail was whether Deidre herself had played the game that could easily have taken her life.
The Pencil Driven Life 