Category: Novels

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 38

I had never had an English class be so proactive.  And, I had never allowed any class to create and execute a lesson plan.  Until now.  It was two classes.  My tenth and eleventh grade English classes persuaded me, Monday and Tuesday, to play only a secondary role in class instruction.

Tenth graders, Ben Gilbert, Joanie Kittle, and Clara Ellington, did an excellent job in describing the interrelationships between plot and character.  “Plot is the events of a story, just what happens along the way.  Plot-driven stories can be interesting and keep your mind wondering what will happen next.  But, if you want a real story, one that provides a deeply emotional experience, you have to have one or more characters who trigger a reaction in your heart.”  Joanie had said right off the bat Monday morning.  It wasn’t an inaccurate statement at all.  I only added, “a good story includes both.  Plot drives character and character drives plot.”  Ben and Clara next presented a lesson and the class interacted with their young teachers for nearly thirty minutes.

It was not until almost 8:15 that I learned what they were up to.  After Ben said, now let’s talk about how Judge Taylor’s true character is revealed, it hit me that the three class leaders and likely the entire class, had read and pondered the final drafts of the outlines my five Creative Writing teams had prepared.  I initially resisted an attempt to regain control, but Ben did a good job of persuading me to “sit back and trust them” for the rest of the class.  I really didn’t have much choice.  The whole class was engaged, and the three instructors were relaying critical elements of story structure.

During the final fifteen minutes of class I learned their plan, what these outliers had up their sleeves, at least concerning the relationship between Stella Gibson and Chief Judge Daniel Taylor.  These want-to-be writers intended to follow Team Five’s outline.  With one exception.  They were creating a character who, behind the scenes, was like a puppeteer to the Judge.  He was a real estate tycoon of sorts, one who was prone to use extortion and blackmail to get what he wanted, whether it was money, an abandoned but potentially valuable property, or an invitation to an exclusive private party.  The still-unnamed tycoon had also contributed heavily to Judge Taylor’s campaigns.  It seemed Georgia, like Alabama, elected their judges.  Right before the bell rang I learned from Clara, that Stella Gibson had discovered that Judge Taylor had issued a ruling in a hotly-contested case that would benefit the tycoon.  Stella smelled a rat. 

My eleventh-grade class pulled the same trick.  I again submitted.  This time, Travis Bryant, Brandi Skylar, and Renee Preston did an excellent job teaching.  It was like they had spent all of Fall Break refining the trio wave as they called it.  They, like the tenth-grade class, had been smart enough to know they had to provide something substantive.  They, likewise, stuck with story structure.  I was surprised they had chosen mood and theme.  Of all components that make a good story these were often the most difficult.  “Think of Miss Katie when you hear the word mood.”  Brandi had said.  This certainly had gotten my attention.  “She seems always happy, is often serious, and is rarely bitchy.  If your protagonist, let’s say Stella Gibson, our story version, is as sexy as she is in the The Fall, the TV series, then we might want to add that mood.  That’s a side of Miss Katie we don’t know.  Not to say she’s not gorgeous.”  The class burst into laughter and I sat silent pondering the disjointed statement I had just heard about mood.  Brandi had used improper reasoning.  The character’s physical characteristics and personality normally are not what sets the mood of a story, although they can accentuate it.  Mood comes more from setting and plot.  It took me ten minutes to gain control of the class but only to again succumb to their pleas for the trio wave to continue.  Unlike the tenth-grade class, it seemed the eleventh graders were dead set on following Team 4’s outline.  Jackson Burke, the founder and president of Burke Manufacturing, would attempt to control Stella Gibson via his manipulation of her teenage daughter.  As the class ended, it seemed the trio wave was headed toward revealing their story’s midpoint.  However, they stopped short and spent the remaining few minutes of class describing how fiction readers expect a major directional change around the middle of the story, something that is both surprising but expected.  When the bell rang I don’t think there was any agreement among the seventy-five students exactly what that meant.

After school Tuesday, Cindy and Alysa met Cullie and me at our house.  The teenagers had been wanting to prepare a complete meal for both families.  Two girls in Cullie and Alysa’s English class had sisters in the eleventh grade.  Both were taking a culinary class.  Someway this had inspired our girls.  The new stove that Wayne had delivered last week seemed to be the trigger for today’s request. At 7:00 p.m., all seven of the Sims and Barkers would assemble in the dining room around Wayne’s antique table for a meal of made-from-scratch tacos, enchiladas, burritos, and for dessert, a German-Chocolate cake, also fully-constructed by the creative chefs.

While Cullie and Alysa were knee-deep in flour, Cindy and I ran an errand.  We were moving the 2005 Nissan Quest from Nanny’s barn to an old logging road like the one that led to Patrick Wilkins and his decaying body.  But, this one was in Dekalb County.  I had found it Sunday afternoon after Cindy and I left Boaz High School and she had returned home.  Google Maps helped a lot.  I had returned home to my iPad and WiFi.  Google’s satellite feature saved me hours, maybe days.  I first picked out two remote areas within a thirty or forty-minute drive.  I could see that the second area was the least populated, having only one house within what I calculated to be nearly a mile.  The second feature that convinced me this was the better spot was this multi-hundred-acre area bordered DeSoto State Park.  To me, this would provide an extra barrier for potential visitors since the best access to the logging road was across the southern edge of the Park.

Everything went like clockwork.  Cindy had dropped me off at Nanny’s driveway and drove on to our designated meeting spot.  I was able to walk to the barn and drive away from the sad and lonely burned-out home on Bruce Road without seeing a single car pass in either direction.  Cindy had pulled in behind me at Aroney and we had driven without incident to the State Park.  By 4:20 p.m., the van was nestled in a grove of trees on a rough and rugged trail, one hundred feet beyond the end of the old logging road.  After turning left off State Highway 89 we had not seen a single car, at least not one operable.  At the entrance to the logging road, we had seen two old rusted-out pickups, both Fords, sitting quietly as though taking detailed notes on who was coming and going.  The thought left me almost as soon as it had come.  The eerie feeling it produced lingered until we returned home.

During the return trip in Cindy’s car, she had asked, “one apple down and five to go.  What’s your thoughts?”

I didn’t have any thoughts.  I was still reeling from the past week’s activities.  It seemed the debilitating stress from killing Patrick and confronting Paula would be enough to put Cindy and me both in bed for a month.  Surprisingly, she was eager to march forward with our Six Red Apples plan.  “I don’t have any.  But, if I did, I can assure you they wouldn’t be centered on kidnapping and killing the Faking Five.”  I wanted Cindy to know I didn’t have it in me to become a serial killer.

“I agree.  In part.  Our plan for Wilkins was a near disaster.  There’s no way he suffered the way he deserved.”  I speculated that Cindy could easily become not only a cold-blooded killer but a monster who thrived on watching her victim suffer.  I was overstating her evil, but I wasn’t the one who was carrying a baby I hadn’t chosen to have.

“Okay, you’re scaring me some but please share.”  I said, stretching the word ‘you’re’ for emphasis.

“You have, we have, enough evidence on those five bastards to cause them to dance to our music.  I say we drain them dry financially before watching them die a slow death by their own hands.”  I had to give it to Cindy.  She had a vivid imagination.  My creative partner in crime continued.  “You have one videotape of them committing a horrible crime.  Why not give them another one?  Not actually give them a tape but make them think another one exists.  This one from our make-believe camera showing an arson being committed.”

“You’re recommending we squeeze their balls until they cry for mercy, mercy enough to pay us a tidy sum.  Correct?”  I said, a little surprised that I wasn’t as eager as Cindy for real revenge.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see them burn, I just was too scared to light the fire.

“Why not?  Two struggling school teachers should get paid for making the world a better place.”  Cindy had a point.  The Faking Five were far better off than me and Cindy, although Steve made a wonderful salary at Marshall-Dekalb they likely spent everything they made with three kids and a sizable mortgage according to prior comments by Cindy.

From Collinsville, through Rodentown, and all the way back to Smith’s Chapel, Cindy and I brainstormed multiple ways of extorting cash from the Faking Five.

After a surprisingly delicious meal from Cullie and Alysa’s skilled hands, Wayne called.  I guess Cindy had seen the excitement in my face and motioned me to enjoy myself.  As I walked away from the kitchen sink where Cindy was finishing up washing the final dirty pan, she whispered, “we’re about to leave. Cullie can go with us.  Ask him to come kiss and caress you.”  I thought she would die laughing.  She had tried to be funny and carefree.  To me, it was the best idea she had all day.

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 37

By Saturday night, Cindy was two bundles of nerves, each had a separate controller.  Paula Wilkins and Steve.  I had returned from the State Park early Thursday afternoon.  Cindy and her family made it home yesterday shortly before noon.  She wanted me by her side every waking second.  I was lucky she had let me come home at night to sleep and remain until after my early morning writing sessions.  Cullie thought she was lucky too.  She had spent the entire week with the Barker family.  To her, there was nothing better.  Last night, Cindy followed me to my car as I was about to come home.  “Katie, please go with me to Sunday School and Church.  I hate having to go but if I don’t Steve will know something major is wrong.  Please.”

As instructed, I met Cindy in the Church’s parking lot at 9:00 a.m., fifteen minutes before the Assembly began in the Young-But-Maturing Sunday School Department.  She had told Steve the two of us were going to work a few hours this afternoon in our classrooms at school, and for him to transport the kids. 

“I know you think it is insane for me to go to the one place on earth that Paula Wilkins will be this morning.”  Cindy said under her breath as an older couple pulled into the parking spot next to Cindy’s with their windows lowered.

I nodded several times.  We stood between our cars, both of us rearranging our hair in the reflection of the car’s windows, and Cindy slipping on the matching jacket to her pants suit.  Finally, as the blue-haired woman and the hairless man were out of earshot, Cindy reopened her car door, leaned in and took out her Bible.  Apparently, she had forgotten it.  “I almost forgot my pacemaker.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it called that, but I guess it fits.”

“This morning, probably about the time you were walking into, what did you call it, The Thread, I was talking with my Savior.”  Cindy looked puzzled.  I did not know if she was going to cry or scream with excitement.  It could have gone either way.

“What did He say?”  This was the part that had always lost me.  God had never, that I could remember, talked with me.  Although I had often wanted Him to.

“That He is with me always, knows my needs, and will never forsake me.”  Cindy said, but did not seem overly confident of her words.

“Then, His shield will defend you against every arrow shot by Paula or anyone else.  Hadn’t we better be going?  I thought you said it started at 9:15.”

“It does.  Assembly does.  That’s where all four classes in our department meet for general announcements, and fellowship.  I sometimes skip that and go sit in my class, especially if I haven’t read my lesson.”  Cindy said, and I pondered what lesson her teacher had prepared for us today.

After we talked another fifteen minutes, mostly me listening to Cindy speculate whether Paula would confront her at all, we walked inside the Education Building and rode the elevator to the fourth floor.

Maxine Fulton taught the Ruth Sunday School class.  It was for married women although Cindy said there were a couple of recently-divorced woman members.  I was probably the only never-married human in the entire department.  Cindy said this was her fourth Sunday with Maxine and that she and Steve had decided to try separate classes the first of the new Sunday School year.  I thought it oddly appropriate that the lesson title was “The Submission of the Christian Wife,” taken from Ephesians 5:21-32.

Maxine was an excellent teacher, combining short Bible analysis with modern-day examples, and gently but directly drawing the class into a discussion.  By the end of the class I was close to believing that the hierarchical structure espoused by the Apostle Paul could likely work for a man and a woman who were truly soul mates, if they never disagreed.  As I was showered with ‘nice for you to come,’ and ‘we hope you come back next Sunday’ salutations, I couldn’t help but realize why I had always desired a more equitable relationship, one where the two partners were equal, with the total absence of domination.  As Maxine handed me a copy of the Sunday School quarterly, I realized I probably would have been better off if I had been as lucky as Cindy to find a man like Steve.  They both believed strongly in the Bible but seemed to live their lives more according to the model I had always wanted but never found.

I had almost forgotten about the grieving Paula.  I must have subconsciously believed she would restrict herself and her sadness and anger to her home.  This feeling vanished when Cindy and I entered the lady’s restroom.  I guess we were fortunate the three of us were the only ones needing to pee or freshen our makeup.  A pretty face was the last thing on Paula’s mind when she caught us coming in while blotting her lips before the mirror.

“Where the hell is my husband?”  Paula didn’t mince words or waste time.  I didn’t believe she was talking to me.

“I don’t have a clue what you are talking about.  Obviously from your rude and despicable phone call last Thursday, your sweet and faithful husband has been lying to you.  I dare you say he and I are having an affair.”  Cindy wasn’t intimidated.

“I haven’t seen or heard from him in nearly a week.  The last thing he did before he went on his run was apologize.  He confessed the two of you were having an affair.”  Paula looked like she could pounce any minute.  I was glad she hadn’t said Wilkins claimed that Cindy was pregnant, although that’s what I thought he had told her.  Of course, that’s what I had discovered from my Real Justice fictional world.

“I wouldn’t doubt he’s telling you a partial truth.  He probably is having an affair.  God knows he’s hit on me enough at school.”  Cindy said, stopping short of describing how she had resisted.

“Paula, I’m sorry, but I have to agree with Cindy.  Patrick is a womanizer and has flirted with me since school started.  He’s always looking down my blouse or standing way too close.”  It was the right thing for me to do.  Defend Cindy.  I knew she would never have an affair with anyone.  I also knew Patrick had raped her.  I would risk my life for Cindy.

“Shut up you little bitch.  Did I ask you?  This is between me and this slut.”  Paula might want to calm herself just a little.  I didn’t know but I suspect Cindy could take care of herself, especially since Paula was a smaller bitch than me.

“You’re not pregnant, are you?”  I thought I was hearing someone out in the hallway.  Paula had asked the one question I feared but never anticipated coming from her mouth.  “I wouldn’t doubt it.  It’s happened before.”

“What’s that to you?  If I were pregnant, and I’m not, it sure as hell wouldn’t be Patrick’s.”   I was surprised Cindy had used the ‘hell’ word while at church. 

“What did you mean, ‘it’s happened before’?”  I asked, willing to hear the ‘B’ word thrown my way once again.

“You don’t know?  You haven’t heard about last year.  I can’t believe that.”  Paula said looking directly at me.

“She just moved here in August.  I’ve lived here for years and I haven’t heard it either.”  Cindy was now defending my lack of knowledge.

“Seemed to me it was all over town.  Patrick and Pattie Winkles, but she was smart enough to have an abortion.”

Just as Cindy looked at me and scrunched her face into a puzzled and disbelieving contortion, Maxine walked in, saw Paula, took her hand, and expressed her sympathy over the missing Patrick.  Cindy and I walked, both apparently forgetting to pee, or freshen our faces.

After a short song service, Pastor Warren’s sermon was not much longer.  “Faith Can Move Mountains,” no doubt was meant to assuage everyone’s doubts over the fate of the missing Wilkins.  The final thirty minutes of the Worship hour was spent in personal testimonies and prayer.  I suppose Warren believed a few shared stories of how real people had experienced real doubts over their loved ones only to be ultimately rewarded with a satisfying resolution, would help Paula shore up against her raging storm.  The testimonies also inspired all twelve active Deacons to hover around the distraught Paula, lay their hands on her head and shoulders, and to pray that God would find Patrick and bring him home.  One Deacon pleaded, “Almighty God, bring our Education Director back to us in a chariot of fire.”  I had trouble deciphering his exact intention.

After the same Deacon led the congregation in singing three verses of “Amazing Grace,” Cindy and I followed Steve through the line to shake Pastor Warren’s hand.  Sometimes she made the poorest decisions.  I’m not sure she heard it because she was telling Steve what to prepare for the lunch she would miss.  Behind me and towards the entranceway to the hall that leads back to the elevators, I could see two of the Deacons that I had seen praying for Paula, standing and talking.  As the long line wound around closer to them I walked over to a display table holding contribution envelopes and prayer request cards.  I don’t think either of the men knew I was there. 

The taller man said, “Deputy Yates told me they at first hadn’t suspected foul play but yesterday they learned Wilkins was having an affair.  Seems like they might have discovered a motive.”

Right then, Cindy yelled at me, “come on Katie.”  That’s when both men realized I was standing at the corner table.

Wayne, the mysterious and handsome sheriff, called me at school on my cell before Cindy and I had finished the Big Macs we had grabbed at MacDonald’s.

After a two-way exchange of pleasantries, he said, “I’m sorry I haven’t called since our date.  Again, I apologize for not taking you to Huntsville as promised.”

“No problem.  You had a good excuse.  Maybe there’s still time.”  I said, regretting it immediately.  That sounded so desperate.

“I like keeping my promises.  Will you give me a rain check?”

“I’ll think about it.”  Now, he would think I was more like a teenager, playing kid games with him.

“That’s in my favor.  I hope.  I know you need to get back to your work, but I wanted to give you an update.  I’ve had to wait until the family was notified.”  Wayne was confusing me.

“Uh, I’m not sure what you mean?”  I said.

“You remember I had to stay in town during our date because of a new crime scene?”

“I do.”

“It was a murder.  Nathan Johnson.  Your Nathan Johnson.  I mean the man we suspected of killing Darla.”  Wayne was stumbling badly.

“I’m really confused now.  I thought Nathan Johnson was in jail.  Did another inmate kill him?  Or, did Johnson kill someone.”  It seemed it could be either.

“Sorry, Nathan Johnson was murdered.  And, not at the jail.  Again, I apologize for not being able to tell you any of this.  First, and don’t ask me how it happened, but someway his attorney, Nathan’s attorney Cliff Thomas, persuaded Judge Broadside to grant bail.  Johnson was set free that Friday and his body was discovered the following Saturday.  It’s taken a week to reach his parents.  Seems they were traveling in Europe and were truly off the grid.”

“How was he killed?”  This all seemed too convenient, too lucky for Ryan and probably Danny Ericson, maybe the entire Faking Five.

“Two fishermen found him in a slew on Town Creek. His body was tangled in an old dead tree that had fallen into the water.  Shot straight through the forehead.”  Wayne said, giving it to me short and sweet.

“Katie, sorry.  The DA’s calling.  I got to run.  Take care.”

After our call ended I knew without a doubt that Mr. Nathan Johnson was too much of a liability for someone.  I suspected it was the Faking Five.

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 36

I was sitting at my desk in The Thread by 4:00 a.m.  For obvious reasons, I had missed yesterday’s early morning writing session.  There had been plenty of time after I returned home from Cindy’s to conduct an extended make-up session, but I hadn’t.  My habit is too ingrained.  There’s just something about the predawn hours that spurs my imagination. 

The Real Justice scene I was drawn to write contained Stella Gibson and Nancy Fletcher, Noah Fletcher’s wife.  For years, I hadn’t doubted that my subconscious mind and my imagination were two separate entities.  But I also believed they lived together in the same neighborhood.  This morning, they partnered to inspire me to explore Nancy, the fictional educator, to attempt to determine whether there was any connection with Paula Wilkins, the living and breathing wife of the breathless Patrick.

As I was brainstorming and drawing on a pink 5 x 8 note-card, I laughed out loud, and acknowledged the weirdness of what was happening.  My twenty Creative Writing students and I were engaged in writing a fictionalized story that was growing more and more like not only one I had experienced but was moving rapidly towards a new world that Cindy and I had just entered.  The weird part, part of the weird part, was that my twenty students didn’t have a clue about the darker edges of my past or present private life.  I was unable to resist asking myself, “how on God’s green earth was this happening?”  I knew it was happening because I had spent over two hours last night sitting at the kitchen bar reviewing the final drafts of the five outlines the five teams had submitted to me Friday afternoon before school was out for Fall Break.

The good part about my role in the Real Justice project was that I was free to follow my imagination where it leads me while I’m in The Thread.  Later, I can modify my drafts as needed before distributing the sanitized versions to the five teams in my Creative Writing class.  There is nothing like this freedom, the ability to be boundless, allowing my mind to explore, create, and destroy lives, places, relationships, and whole cities.  It was this freedom I pursued as my imagination fed me connections between Nancy Fletcher and Paula Wilkins.

Both women had husbands who were unfaithful, and they knew it.  It was part of the deal.  But neither of them minded because they both realized their lives could be far worse.  Both had married up as they say.  Of the two women, only Paula had ever strayed from her marriage vows.  After her and Fulton had their one and only tryst, she vowed to never stray again.  Although Nancy Fletcher had on several occasions helped Noah extricate him from a potentially scandalously public affair, this was Paula’s first experience.  Her and Patrick’s relationship was unique, likely rare.  Her orgasms were accentuated when her loving husband whispered to her his quests and conquests as he ravaged her body four or five times per week.  She now had made him explore with her the same fantasy on three different occasions.  The last time being Sunday night.  It was then she discovered the sex between her loving Patrick and the slutty Cindy wasn’t consensual.  This was bad enough, until early yesterday morning, as he was getting ready for his run, he divulged even more shockingly disturbing and life-changing news.  Cindy Barker was pregnant. 

I continued to explore the lives of Nancy Fletcher and Paula Wilkins for nearly an hour, ending shortly before 5:30 a.m. in near-complete confusion over what was fiction and what was real.

Wednesday afternoon was spent at Guntersville State Park with a relaxed Steve, a carefully choreographed Cindy, and four beautiful, naïve, but wonderfully blessed kids.  Cullie and I fished from a pier.  Thankfully, the wind picked up around 3:30 and the four rambunctious teen boys sharing our real estate left us alone.  Ever since mine and Cindy’s talk at Wayne’s pond over a week ago, I had decided on three or four different ways to tell Cullie the truth.  On the drive down, I had abandoned each of them.  Just make it plain and simple.  That’s what I finally decided.  And did.  “Cullie, I’m sorry but I have lied to you all your life.  Colton Brunner isn’t your father.  I don’t know for sure who is.”

Her response was surprising.  “Thanks for admitting what I’ve known forever.”  I determined then and there never to underestimate a teenage girl.

It turned out Cullie didn’t know much at all but had stumbled toward the truth when her New York City eighth grade science teacher had asked her students to create a list of the physical characteristics they shared with their fathers.  Cullie had discovered that her and Colton were as different as her and her pet hamster.  “I figured it must have been painful for you and that you would tell me the truth when you were ready.”   I hated the thought that her biological father had unwittingly shared such wisdom with his daughter.  I knew for sure she hadn’t inherited the wise-gene from me.

Our conversation over the rape wasn’t so easy.  This was the part I had struggled with so much.  Should I lie and say that I had slept around, and the father could be one of five men?  Should I tell her the names of the prospective fathers?  I hope I haven’t made a mistake.  At the time, I didn’t think I had.  I virtually had Cullie swear that she would keep every part of her conception secret, other than the name of her actual father, once we discovered the truth.  I told her everything, including the names of the five men, and that we would soon know which one had impregnated me and was her biological father.

Again, she surprised me as she closed the tackle box Steve had let us borrow.  “Mom, people make mistakes.  Sometimes the best things result from the biggest mistakes.”  I cried.  She even let me hold her in broad daylight.  I whispered to her she was the best gift the world could ever give me and that I loved her with my whole heart.

“I know you do and I love you too.  Please don’t hold a grudge against those five men.”  She said as she grabbed her rod and reel, the tackle box, and walked back towards Steve and Cindy’s cabin.

I stayed at the pier, even sat down and hung my feet over the side.  I replayed mine and Cullie’s conversation over and over in my head and could only conclude that she was either the wisest fourteen-year-old in the world, or she was a superior actor, keeping buried her true thoughts and fears.  I suspected it was the latter. 

I hadn’t planned on it but both Cindy and Steve insisted.  It was late when we finished eating the wonderful rib-eyes he had grilled, and it had started to rain.  I spent the night sleeping on a couch that was made into a bed.  My only reservation had been the effect upon my early morning writing.  Oh well, one more missed session wouldn’t kill me, but it certainly made me anxious, as it always did.  It had always been nearly impossible to explain, the feeling of incompleteness, of virtually leaving my head on my pillow as I attempted to walk forward through my day.

Thursday morning, before anyone else was stirring, Cindy and I took a walk.  We were barely out of the cabin when she asked if I had looked at Facebook.  I had not, because I intentionally avoided it, other than interacting with my students in the various writing groups.

“It’s all over my Newsfeed.”  Cindy said assuming I knew exactly what she was talking about.

“It is?  Must be important.”  I could be indirect myself.

“People are saying that the police and sheriff’s departments will continue the search today.  Yesterday, apparently, there were about a hundred-people scouring every inch of Wilkins’ running path.  One guy said Paula, Patrick’s wife, had said he seemed upset when he left their house between 5:05 and 5:10 a.m.”

“I wonder how that guy knew that?  That’s one reason I hate Facebook.  Most of what you read is made-up shit.”

“I agree, but a lot of it isn’t.  It certainly seems natural that folks would be looking for our dearly departed leader.”  Cindy said, picking up our pace more than I wanted.

“I’m confident no one saw us.  I didn’t see a single car during the whole ordeal.  And, there’s no houses close enough on Tanner Road for someone to have seen our spot.”

“I agree.  I also know we didn’t leave a trace where we parked.  I doubt any of the searchers could connect tire tracks to our van even if they were able to determine where Wilkins met his fate.”  Cindy said speaking as confident as a twenty-year crime veteran.

“You’re assuming the bleach we poured on the blood spot on the ground where his head bled for a minute or so, eliminated every trace.”  I said.

“Even if an expert crime scene team found that spot, extracted a sample, and ultimately determined it was Wilkins’ blood, that still wouldn’t implicate us.  He could have fallen and hit his head during an altercation.”  Cindy laid it all out.  At least that’s what she believed.

“His blood and a missing body.  Don’t forget we have spawned a criminal investigation.  They are looking.  They are not yet looking for us, but they are looking for a link, any link, that will point them to the perpetrators.  I can assure you they know a crime has been committed.  As time goes by, this will become unassailable.”  I really wasn’t offering anything new. 

“I still say the weakest link in our plan is where and how we are storing the van.”  Cindy finally said the same thing I had been saying all along.  Maybe she was ready to shore up this loose end.

Her phone rang before I could respond.  Immediately after taking the call and learning who was calling, Cindy activated her iPhone’s speaker.  It was Paula Wilkins wanting to know if Cindy knew where Patrick was.  Paula declared she knew about Cindy and Patrick’s affair.  After another minute or two of Paula’s screaming threats, Cindy ended the call.

“How in the hell does she know?”  I asked.

“Well, no doubt her slimy husband has been lying to her, making it sound like he and I have been having an affair.”  Cindy said as though that was her biggest problem.

“Cindy, wake the fuck up.  Affair, no affair, kidnap, rape, it doesn’t matter.  She knows enough to bury you, the both of us.  You are now in the cross hairs of this investigation.  You do know this, don’t you?”  I said, walking a shallow embankment to sit on a steel rail by the edge of the road.

“Hell, hell, hell, and more hell.  Something we never ever anticipated.”  She said, following me.

“At least not in real life.”  I said, with that same ominous feeling I had already experienced, not remembering when it was.

“You said all along that there would be some issue that would arise.  You said they always do.  Therefore, criminals get caught.  There is no way to plan for every possible variable.  Why did you let me talk you into this?”  Cindy said, pulling out her iPhone and again scrolling through her Newsfeed.

I didn’t respond.  I knew it was too late to make any difference.  If only I had stuck to what my head was telling me when Cindy had been playing with my emotions over what I had to do to square things up with the Faking Five.  The freedom I had felt yesterday morning in The Thread was now gone.  That was fiction.  This was real.

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 35

Saturday night came and went.  Our date was little different than going out to eat with my brother.  If I had a brother.  Wayne took me to a new little cafe in downtown Boaz called Pirates Cove.  It was a quaint little joint with exposed century-old brick on the walls.  The food was good.  Apparently, he liked country-cooking.  When he had called me early Saturday morning he asked if I was okay with going to Huntsville.  Everything he had said about where we were going and what we were going to do was perfect.  All day I fantasized about our romantic first date.  It didn’t happen.  When he picked me up he apologized and said he had to stay in town, something about a newly discovered crime scene.  He seemed anxious about it but wouldn’t disclose any details.  Wayne had taken me straight home from Pirates Cove, which was fine with me if he had stayed.  He hadn’t.  So much for all my Saturday fantasy thoughts.  Gone.  Evaporated like the early morning fog that had hovered over Wayne’s pond.

The following week of school went by in a blur.  I had conducted my teaching virtually on autopilot which I had sworn I would never do.  It cheated my students.  I never anticipated having a part time job planning and executing a kidnapping and killing (my crime partner refused to use or acknowledge the word murder).  Every day this last week before Fall Break was spent brainstorming and formulating our plan.  By Saturday afternoon we believed we had addressed every possible detail.

It would take place Monday, October 16th.  Cindy and Steve had secured reservations in early August for a cabin at Guntersville State Park.  Steve would take his three children and Cullie on Sunday afternoon, the 15th.  Cindy and I would join them Monday afternoon, using school and a pile of papers to grade as our excuse.  I would stay overnight with her and we would be waiting on criminal asshole Wilkins Monday morning when he turned east on Tarvin Road, probably around 5:10 a.m.

Our vehicle of choice was a tan-colored 2005 Nissan Quest, a van.  We had thought it would be easier for Cindy and me in moving Wilkins’ body.  The side door was much lower to the ground than the bed of a truck.  We had spent time contemplating whether to use Steve’s old pickup, the bright red and fully restored 1975 Chevrolet Silverado.  That would have been rather stupid.  A direct link back to Cindy if discovered.  We found the van at Jeff’s Auto Sales in Leesburg two weeks before D Day.  I suspect Jeff believed Cindy and I were both hookers just trying to make life easier on our johns. We both had worn disguises.  I was impressed with Cindy’s preparation and execution.  She had said, “cosmetology classes in high school and a theater minor in college, glad they finally came in handy.”  We had hidden our getaway vehicle in Nanny’s barn, thankful it hadn’t burned along with her house.

Wilkins was delayed a few minutes.  During the five-minute wait we beat ourselves up over our failure to consider that he and Paula might have taken a little trip this week themselves.  After all, it was Fall Break.  Just as our doubts were pushing us to abandon our plan, Cindy saw him turn right off Aurora Road onto Tarvin Road.  We had parked the van about a hundred yards from his turn.  I was glad Cindy had taken up her post across a shallow ditch and behind a grove of trees fifty feet or so behind the van, back towards Aurora Road.  We had been talking via two burner phones we had purchased in Gadsden.  The plan was for Wilkins to see me having car trouble and when I had him curiously inspecting whether my engine had died, Cindy would come assist.

“Patrick, man am I glad to see you.  Do you live around here?”  I could tell he was surprised.  “I dropped my daughter off at my cousin’s and I think my engine just died.  Can you look?”

“I’m not a mechanic, couldn’t help you if I wanted to.  Sorry.” 

“Can you help me remove my radiator cap.  It may just be out of antifreeze or something.”  I wanted to get him engaged, doing something to distract him. 

“Alright, I can do that.”  He walked from the middle of the road over to where I had parked the van, along the shoulder, almost in the ditch.

I stood very close to him.  I made sure my left leg and left elbow were touching him.  I said, “don’t you think it’s kind of neat for you to find me here.  A lady in distress.  This might be that opportunity we’ve both been looking for.”  I was having so much fun with the bastard.

“There, it wasn’t tight at all.”  He handed me the radiator cap and smiled.  We were now facing each other, still very close.  I reached my hand up to his face and gently felt his prickly beard.  “I like a man before he’s had his morning shave.”  He smiled.

“You’re surprising me.  You’ve never responded this way at school.”  He said looking at me with a devilish smile, his right lip curled upward just slightly. I had to admit, Patrick Wilkins was a nice-looking man, and fit.  He had on a sleeveless tee-shirt and jogging shorts.  His tanned body was sleek, like a runner, including taut stomach, and missing the gross muscles of a weight-room freak.”

“Patrick, believe me I’ve wanted to but, until right now, I hadn’t realized how much I’ve missed.”  I hesitated, giving him my shyest look, intentionally looking down to the ground.  “Too public.  I need my job.  But, we’re not at school now.  Are we?”

He reached out with his right hand and started to pull me into him.  That’s when Cindy hit him in the back of the head with a piece of steel pipe.  He fell forward into my arms.  My body only slightly slowed his collapse onto the ground.  In five minutes we had him bound, gagged, and in the back of the van.  I turned the van around in the middle of the road, turned left on Aurora Road, right on Highway 205, and were soon traveling south on Highway 431. 

It took us nearly thirty minutes to arrive at our chosen spot.  I drove below the speed limit and made a few detours to make sure no one was following us.  I eventually turned right on Highway 278, drove several miles west past the Mountain Top Flea Market and turned left on County Road 132.  Two left turns later and we were on Moody Chapel Road.  About a half mile past Salem Baptist Church, I made our final left turn onto a private road and drove another mile.  We passed one long-abandoned house.  The gravel road gave way to an old logging road that was barely passable.  A slow and bumpy mile later, Wilkins was home.  It was a densely wooded area and would provide plenty of shade for as long as he needed.

For some odd reason, Cindy and I had more trouble removing his body from the van than we had putting it in there to begin with.  It might have had something to do with him being dead.  But, I doubt it.  While I had driven, Cindy had administered a 100 mg dose of potassium cyanide, enough to kill a horse.  Surprisingly, it had taken him over ten minutes to die.  As expected, it took us almost forty-five minutes to dispose of the fearless assistant principal, including putting him in the ground, shoveling in the dirt, and dressing-up the site with an ample amount of leaves and limbs.  We were glad we had dug the grave last Saturday when Steve thought we were shopping.  Over three hours of back-breaking labor.

By 7:30 a.m., Cindy and I were back at her house eating the breakfast we had secured after returning the van to Nanny’s barn.  We had been careful to dispose of the blue tarp, and the thirty-inch section of steel pipe we had confiscated from a pile of scrap metal behind Steve’s shop.

Pastor Warren and Ryan had ordered their breakfast from waitress Gloria at Grumpy’s Diner when Sheriff Waldrup walked in the restaurant and over to their table.

“Radford, I’m glad I saw you.  I was planning on calling you today.  We need to talk.  When can you come see me?”  Waldrup said, not to engage in any pleasantries.

Ryan hesitated, looked at Warren, and said after the Pastor gave him an almost invisible nod, “How about 9:00 a.m. tomorrow?”

“That works for me.  Don’t be late.  I’ll see you in my office in Guntersville.”  The tall man in full uniform, including a wide-brim hat, said, and walked back to the counter for an order Gloria had waiting.

“What the hell do you think that’s all about?”  Ryan said.

“I suspect you know, your family is knee deep in the Darla Sims investigation.”

After Gloria brought their breakfast, the two spent twenty minutes developing a strategy, which was to tell the truth, at least part of it.

“Where the hell do you think Wilkins is?  I warned him against being late.  Pastor Warren said motioning Gloria for more coffee.

“If you ask me, he’s trouble.  By the way, why did you want me to meet with the two of you?”  Ryan said, downing in two swallows, a full glass of orange juice.

“I needed a witness.  Nobody else could come.  Fulton’s getting ready for a Board meeting.  Danny’s in Gulf Shores at a realtor’s conference, and Justin said he had the flu or something.  I think he was still pissed at me from Wednesday night.”  Warren said.

“Yea, he didn’t much like you having Nathan’s lawyer at our meeting two weeks in a row.  By the way, why were you needing a witness?”

“I wanted someone to know exactly what I told Wilkins, where there would never be any doubt that I had given him the final ultimatum.”

“Which is?”  Ryan asked checking out Katie Sims as she came in the restaurant, picked up and paid for her takeout order, and walked outside.  “Nice ass, don’t you think preacher man?”

“Let’s not go there.  If the bastard shows, I was going to tell him that he needs to keep his pants on, that he is going to feel some real pain if he ever scratches his little itch again.  Warren said.

“The rest of us told you all along not to bring him into the Club.  I may like women as much as he does but at least I’m discreet.”  Ryan said eying Gloria as she delivered food to an adjoining table.

“Anyone watching you would certainly know you’re discreet all right.”  Warren said, pulling his iPhone from his shirt pocket.  “Damn, nearly 8:00 o’clock.  Wilkins promised he would be here no later than 7:00.  Since he’s out of school this week, he probably went back to bed after his little run.  I think I’ll go swing by there.  Can you come?”  Warren asked.

“No, I’ve got to get to the store.  Monday morning staff meeting.”

“I’ll see you Wednesday night.  Can you bring a twelve-pack?”

“No problem.”  Ryan said as Warren left.  “Hey darling, can I have a coffee to go?”  Gloria frowned and pushed Ryan’s big right hand from her lower back.

“It’ll be at the register.”

“Thanks baby doll.”

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 34

Thursday morning, I was sitting at my desk in my little office reviewing the first drafts of the Real Justice outlines.  I hated outlines for my own writing, but I had to follow with my five creative writing teams a less imaginary method to complete this gargantuan project.  Otherwise, the story would likely run out of steam by mid-January.

I was particularly struck by Team Two’s creativity (who am I to say outlines squelch creativity!).  It also felt ominous.  This team’s antagonist is Noah Fletcher, the President of South Citizens Bank & Trust.  His wife, Nancy, is the principal at Gilmer County High School and appears to play a supporting role to her husband, even in his quest to bed Stella Gibson.  I noticed that in the second half of Act II, Team Two has Noah disappear along with his wife.  What made me feel so strange was when I recognized a similarity to my real life.  Educators and bankers.  Patrick Wilkin’s wife, Paula, works with Fulton Billingsley at First State Bank of Boaz.  In Real Justice, fiction, antagonist Noah is a banker with an educator wife.  The most eerie feeling came from Team Two’s plan for their characters to disappear later in their story as part of a faux climax.  As I set aside the outlines, I wondered whether Paula knew about Patrick’s womanizing?

My first three classes in the auditorium went well.  When I returned to my classroom, Cindy was sitting in my office, in my chair.  This was a first.

“Oh, the new Katie has a new bust line.  I like it.”  I said, not fibbing about wishing I had a sexier figure.

“Sorry, I needed to borrow a pen.  Seemed more comfortable filling out this form.  I’ll move.”

“No, sit there.  What are you working on?  Trying to win a prize?”  I figured she might be wasting her time with Publisher’s Clearing House or something similar.

“You need to sign here.  And, you’ll need to enclose a check for $289.00.  If you don’t have it, I can loan it to you.”  Cindy was shocking the hell out of me.

“Uh, do you mind telling me what you are doing?”

“Finding out who Cullie’s father is.”  Cindy said as I sat down across from my own desk.  I was now fully shocked.

“Could you maybe enlighten me a little?”

“You said last weekend, when we were sitting out on your pier, that you had to deal with Cullie, that she had to know the truth.  You said she deserved to know the truth and you had committed to being fully open with her.  Girl, first, you yourself have got to know the truth.  ‘Who’s your daddy?’ isn’t the question you want Cullie being asked all her life.  Forget Colton.”  Cindy had come ready for bear.

“So, what is the paperwork?”

“Application for DNA tests.  Lab work.  It’s not free you know.”

“I’m not much of a scientist but I know from Law and Order you have to have something to test.  Oh, by the way, can I assume you are talking about the Faking Five submitting to a mouth swabbing?”  Cindy was making me pull the facts out of her.

“Who else is there?  Cullie’s father could be any one of the five bastards.  Right?  I am correct, aren’t I?”  Cindy asked.  I hoped she didn’t doubt what I had told her.

“Absolutely.  Back to the swabbing.  How do you propose convincing them to stand still and open their mouths?”

“Don’ worry.  They already have.  Well, not exactly, they didn’t know they were still and open.”  It was then I noticed five identical boxes, each about two inches tall and three or four inches wide, and maybe six or seven inches long, sitting on the far edge of my desk.

“Here’s the story.  You know Steve helps with the Wednesday night meal.  Your Faking Five always eat together.  It was easy.  He secured their eating utensils when he was cleaning off their table after they had left.  He says he was extra careful to identify which items went with which human.”

“Steve?  Now he’s in on my secret?”

“No, Blondie.  I’m imaging your dark curls transformed last night into Paula Wilkins’ gorgeous mane.”

“Weird you mention her.”  I said trying to figure out if a few people I know can read my mind.

“Why so?  Never mind.  Again, Steve is on a strictly need-to-know status.  I told him it was needed for some research Bryan Haney was doing with his history class—the origins of a few of our local leaders.  Steve can be a little gullible.”

“I trust you found a reliable lab?”

“I did.  Found them online.  They are out of Amherst, New York.  Been in business since the eighties.  Seems they’ve only recently gone nationwide, offering cheap but reliable paternity testing.”

“I thought that required blood.”

“New technology I guess.  The information pack they sent was extremely specific on the types of samples to obtain.  Did you know they can now remove your DNA from a Kleenex even if you didn’t blow your nose?”  Cindy obviously had done her homework.

“You sure received the information in a hurry.”  I said trying to sketch out a timeline.

“Can you spell O N L I N E?”  Cindy was making me feel like a low-tech zombie.

Cindy also told me that Wilkins’ routine was simply clockwork.  She apparently had conducted her early morning sleuthing two days already this week, including today.  After I gave her a check she left in a hurry.  Something totally unusual since it was now lunchtime.

“I’ll call you tonight.  I want to get these to the Post Office.  Later partner.”

At first while Cindy had been telling me what she was up to and how she had so smoothly choreographed Steve’s activities last night at church, I was angry.  My thought, ‘that’s my business and I’ll handle it my way,’ hadn’t lingered.  Now, I had set my emotions aside and was thinking rationally.  I was proud of Cindy.  She truly did know me.  She had concluded that I needed a little push, maybe a solid boot in the ass, to pursue the answer I so desperately needed.  As I unwrapped my bologna sandwich, I felt ashamed I had spent what seemed like hours during the night tossing and turning questioning why I would agree to help Cindy square the tables on criminal asshole Wilkins.  I banished for good the thought that I might be acting premature to trust Cindy.  Now I knew Cindy was for real.  She was a friend for life.

By 11:00 p.m., I had spent nearly an hour at the kitchen bar after Cullie had gone to bed reading and responding to a ton of student Facebook comments in our five online Groups.  I had just gotten up from my barstool to pour a glass of milk to hopefully settle my stomach when I heard a light tapping at the back door.  Once again, it was Wayne.  I motioned him in.

“You might want to invest in some blinds.  Does this uncovered glass door not bother you after dark?”  He said.  I barely heard him.  I had never seen a better-looking man.  It was the first time I had ever seen him out of uniform.  He was wearing dark slacks, a solid blue button-down shirt, and a light brown tweed jacket.  Without his Sheriff’s hat his whole face and head looked so different.  He was rugged and could pass for Walt Longmire’s twin brother, except for Wayne’s salt and pepper hair. 

“Katie, are you okay?”  I hoped he wasn’t one to read thoughts.  In the milliseconds the tall, dark, and handsome man had been standing inside my kitchen, my mind had traveled to Absoroka County, Wyoming and back, stopping only to linger at that big old oak tree beside the little cabin across from the pond.  I had not missed the smell of hours-old aftershave as he had pressed into me and locked on my lips.

“I’m fine.  I guess I was dreaming, certainly in a fog of sorts.”

“I saw your light on and thought I’d take a chance you might still be up.  I can give you an update if now is a good time.”  Had there ever been a more polite and respectful mind.  Of course, the electricity zipping up and down my spinal cord could be distorting my judgment.

“Now’s perfect.  Thanks for thinking of me.”

“That’s quite easy.  I followed up on what you shared with me last Sunday, about Nathan’s lawyer, Cliff Thomas.  He practices with his father in San Marcos, Texas.  I called on the local Sheriff who told me the two were well known as criminal defense lawyers and had the reputation of being willing to cross the line.  He gave me a couple of examples but here’s something probably a little more relevant.”  Wayne paused, and I asked him if he wanted to sit in the den.  He agreed and surprised me when he sat beside me on the couch.  I leaned back.  He didn’t.

“It seems our Nathan isn’t just a scraggly-bearded drifter.  His family owns the Lone Star Candy Company in Fredericksburg.  He’s the black sheep of the bunch.  Seems like Nathan Senior has had to bail him out quite a bit.  You guessed it, Thomas and Thomas, has been involved for years.  Get this, Clayton Thomas, Cliff’s father, spent seven years in Tuscaloosa beginning in 1958.  Here, look.”  I had noticed that he had been holding a book, a rather large book, under his arm ever since he had walked in.

“What is it?”  I asked.

“A University of Alabama Annual.  Here is the class photo, graduating class of 1962.  Read the names.”  Wayne pointed about two-thirds down the list of names I figured were for the students shown in the photo.  Wayne’s finger pointed to Raymond Radford and then on down to Clayton Thomas.  “Don’t you find it a little strange they knew each other.  By the way, Clayton stayed on in Tuscaloosa to attend law school, graduating in 1965.”

“You’ve discovered an odd coincidence.”  I said, not really seeing much relevance in what clearly intrigued the Sheriff.  As he closed the book, his right hand brushed across my knee.  He had not touched me at all when earlier he had laid the open Annual across my lap.  It was an innocent touch but awoke the electrical train that had pulled into the station while I had focused with Wayne on his update.

“Sorry, excuse me.”  Wayne had said our eyes connecting just long enough for me to notice he was visibly embarrassed.  His face was a light crimson.

“Silly.”  It was an odd thing for me to say.  He stood with Annual in hand and moved around the coffee table and into a wingback chair.

“I’m going to pursue this further.  I’ve asked the Hays County Sheriff in Texas to see if he can find a link between Clayton, or Cliff for that matter, and our local boys.”

“Wayne, I sure do appreciate all you are doing.  A quick update from me.  I had to have a repairman out to fix the stove.  I paid for it.  No problem, but just wanted you to know.

“Thanks, how much was it?  That’s my stove and my responsibility.”

“No way am I going to let you be that generous.”

His response, his invitation came totally unannounced and unpredicted.  “At least let me treat you to a nice dinner sometime.  Would you feel comfortable with that?”  Wow.  Is all I could say to myself.  Was the handsome fifty-five-year-old asking me for a date?

“You don’t have to do that.”  I was nearly twenty years younger.  He was old enough to be my father, yet I was attracted to him.  I was also figuratively pointing a gun at my foot.  If I turned him down, he probably would never ask me out again.

“Sorry Katie.  I’ve been too forward.  Please accept my apology.  I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”  Wayne Waldrup couldn’t be this nice.  It had to be a game.  Men, at least the ones that I had known the last fifteen or twenty years, were closer to animals.  Wayne was more like a god.

“Silly.”  Apparently, that was becoming my favorite word.  “I would be honored to go out with you.  You just caught me a little off guard.”

“I hope you don’t think you need a guard with me.  How’s Saturday night for you?”  Now, we were getting somewhere.  Saturday was much more definite than ‘let me treat you to a nice dinner sometime.’”

“It’s perfect.  What time?”

We spent the next ten minutes discussing times and places.  I could have talked all night.  I could have spent a week standing beside him next to the back door as he was attempting to leave.  We shared an awkward moment.  I wanted him to kiss me like I had imagined him doing so beside that big old oak tree, but apparently, he wanted to keep switching the Annual from underarm to underarm.  Our hands brushed together as he walked out the door.   That was intentional.  My intent.

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 33

Cindy was absent from school Thursday and Friday.  With the school week finally over, I dropped Cullie off to spend the night with Alysa and as she was getting out of the car I told her that next Friday night she had to stay with us.  I sent a text to Cindy that I would call her later just as I had done Thursday evening.  As I drove home I recognized the reason Cullie loved staying at Cindy and Steve’s.  They were a real family.  Steve was an in-the-flesh father.  By the time I turned off Sardis Road and onto Wayne’s long driveway, I felt sick about something I had to do.  Cindy wasn’t the only one harboring a secret.  I had to tell Cullie the truth about how she was conceived.  It was the last thing I wanted to do.

Yesterday afternoon before taking Cullie to Cindy’s I had dropped by Wells Fargo Bank and removed my copy of Darla’s journal from my safety deposit box.  For weeks I had been feeling the need to complete my review.  There were whole sections I had not read.

After my early morning writing session and eating a cold pop-tart seated at the kitchen table reminiscing over Sammie’s Saturday morning pancakes, I returned to my hobby room.  I had followed Karen’s lead, Wayne’s deceased wife, in naming the smallest of three bedrooms on the west end of the sprawling ranch.  In a sense, our hobbies were similar.  Karen had cross stitched.  Her pictures were scattered along walls and tabletops all over the house.  Both hobbies included the use of thread, weaving threads throughout the framed picture and creating patterns.  The patterns told a story.  For Karen, it seemed she loved weaving together country scenes.  Writing, especially novel writing, if it was any good at all, used many threads, some brightly colored, to weave together various story lines that intersect to form patterns, the main ones always altered the lives of everyone they touched.  After considering this analogy I decided to call mine and Karen’s little room, The Threader. 

I had read Darla’s journal for nearly an hour before she introduced a new thread.  It’s funny how prior thoughts sometimes linger.  It seemed I had split my concentration over the prior sixty minutes between an almost insatiable desire to continue the cross-stitching and writing analogy, and Darla’s equally strong need to capture the exploits of her husband.  I had found it interesting that Raymond had been so open with Darla about what he and Walter Tillman, David Adams, Fitz Billingsley, and Franklin Ericson were doing; at a minimum, all activities involved shady business dealings.  However, it was clear that she either didn’t know the full details or chose not to record them.  I concluded it was probably some of both.  By the time I finished Darla’s 2015 entries, a new thread appeared.  It had to do with Cynthia Radford, Raymond’s first wife, the woman he abandoned for the beautiful Darla Sims who was a full generation younger than the fading Cynthia.

In Darla’s January 1st, 2016 entry, she wrote, “New Year’s Day was a disaster.  Raymond, normally brilliant, but often stupid, invited the subtly-callous Cynthia to join the two of us, along with Rachel and Randall and their families.  Randall’s daughter Riley spoke loudly above the blare from the Rose Bowl game asking Raymond if he would pay for her college if she chose Stanford.  Cynthia had spoken up and said, ‘dear, please don’t ask me, I’m a pauper.  If granddad cannot cough up the dough, I bet sweet Darla will.  She’s loaded, unless the aging giant kicks over before she turns eighty years old.”  I hadn’t seen Raymond in years, probably a decade or more.  I guess, even in Cynthia’s eyes, he was, in more ways than one, a big man.

Apparently, Cynthia’s statement had set off a major blow-up between Raymond’s two women.  The last sentence Darla had written after spending nearly two pages describing, in detail, how Riley’s question had spawned a verbal cat fight between her and Cynthia, caught my attention.  It read, “how in the hell did Cynthia know the details of mine and Raymond’s prenuptial?”

Throughout Darla’s 2016 journal were scattered entries that documented the escalating tension between the two women.  After noticing an absent Cynthia from Darla and Raymond’s Thanksgiving festivities, I took a break for an hour, reviewed fifteen or twenty Facebook comments by my tenth graders related to Monday’s vocabulary word, ad Hominem, and made a pot of coffee.  When I returned and read the first December entry, Friday the 2nd, I froze.  Darla had written, “Per Raymond, the Texas lawyer, Thomas, called and said Cynthia had agreed to his offer.  He (Raymond) told me, “Cynthia knew too much.  I didn’t have any choice.”  The next part of Darla’s entry was disjointed at best, but it seemed to indicate that Raymond had changed his will leaving the vast portion of his estate to the last to die of Darla and Cynthia.  No doubt this had made Darla mad.  Towards the end of the entry, she had written, “the stupid man can’t see that Cynthia now has a motive to knock me off.”  Apparently, Raymond’s statement, “Cynthia might be a bitch, but she’s no killer,” did little to appease Darla’s worrying. 

For nearly two weeks Darla didn’t write anything else concerning Cynthia or the deal Raymond had made with her.  Then, on Tuesday, December 13^th, she wrote.  “The bitch said I was looking old.  Raymond will be looking for him something younger if he hasn’t already.”  Apparently, this statement was made before a meeting took place in Raymond’s study at his and Darla’s Country Club home.  Darla only recorded the highlights, but Cynthia was there with her attorney, a man by the name of Clayton Thomas.  She had my attention.  Darla, for whatever reason, had taped his business card to the top of the following page where her description of the meeting continued.  I noted Clayton’s firm was named Thomas and Thomas.  Then, I saw it, the second member of the firm, the second partner, was named Clifford Thomas.  The firm was located at a San Marcos, Texas address.  It had to be the same Cliff Thomas that was representing Nathan Johnson, the man who probably had killed Darla (and the same man Cindy and I had likely seen Wednesday night as we peered over the brick wall into Warren’s basement).  I was shaking; I could hardly sit still.  I managed to scan the remaining paragraph of Darla’s entry.  Raymond had made her and Cynthia, in exchange for him changing his will and the two cats’ mutual promises to call a truce to their bickering, sit down together and sign a written document.  It was not attached or included in Darla’s journal, but she had summarized its contents.  If either one of the women initiated an altercation between them of any kind, Raymond would disown both.

After leaving The Thread and walking to the kitchen and pouring another cup of coffee, I pulled my iPad from my book bag that was still sitting on the bar where I had left it yesterday afternoon after arriving home from school.  I pressed the Google icon and typed in “San Marcos and Google Maps.”  After finding the address for Thomas and Thomas I expanded the map.  I almost closed the iPad but then I saw Fredericksburg to the west of San Marcos.  A synapse or two connected.  That’s the city listed on the back of the candy bar wrapper Ralph Williams had given me just a few days before he had died.  Fredericksburg was less than seventy miles from San Marcos.  There had to be something relevant at work here.  I shook my head as though trying to clear my mind of the cobwebs that had fogged my thinking.  Finding a link between Raymond, Cynthia, and Nathan Johnson was already relevant, significant in fact.  Something was telling me there was yet more to discover.  As I closed my iPad I couldn’t help but believe that Cliff Thomas had once again traveled to Alabama on Cynthia’s behalf, this time trying to eliminate a threat to her well-being as well as that of Raymond’s.  I walked outside onto the screened-in back porch and speculated that Cliff Thomas had some connection to the Lone Star Candy Company.  My thought was a stretch.     

Cindy came over around 2:30 p.m.  I was sitting at the pond at the end of a long pier.  Wayne had two chairs secured to the wood slats by a lightweight chain.  I wondered who the second chair was for.  I saw her drive up and yelled at her when she exited her car.  As she walked through the pasture gate and along the pier, I could see the stress she was carrying.  She kept her gaze downward.  Of course, this could be because she was being careful walking an uncommon path.  But, it was her hands that betrayed her.  She kept clenching and unclenching her fists.  Finally, when she sat down beside me I noticed the tell-tell sign.  Her normally light green eyes had a vivid yellow tint.  I had seen her on more than one occasion with dark green eyes, but this was different.  It was like an abundance of blood had mixed in with the green, yielding yellow.  I didn’t know if this meant she was being extremely cautious or she was tasting blood.

“Are you feeling better?”  I might as well ask a dumb question.

“I’m great.  Steve and the kids went fishing at Henderson’s pond.  He encouraged me to get out and maybe come see you.”

“I’m glad he did.  I’ve missed you at school.  It’s not the same when you’re not there.”

“I’ve been thinking and researching.  Not all vasectomies are foolproof.  I read that only about two percent of women get pregnant after her husband or partner has a vasectomy.  I have a plan.  I’m going to be open with Steve about my pregnancy.  He’ll have the typical questions, but I can convince him that it happens and that I’m one of the two percent.  I’ll rave and cry and express my excitement over having another child.  Steve’s the type that won’t investigate to determine if his doctor screwed up the procedure.  He’ll just think it was God’s miracle.”

“That sounds good.  If it works.  But, what if word gets back to him that contradicts your story?  You know some men like to brag about their conquests.  Cindy, it might be ten plus years from now, but you need to recognize what I’m saying isn’t too far-fetched.”

“You haven’t heard the second half of my plan.”  Cindy said scanning a text she just received.  “Steve says hi and that Cullie just caught a big catfish.  I won’t read the rest.”

“Remember, you can’t do that.  We’ve agreed, if you start something you have to finish.  So, what else did Steve say?”  I hated it when someone said stuff like, ‘I’ll tell you later’ or ‘No, I better keep that to myself’ as they ponder some world-changing rumor they just heard.

“It’s kind of private but you caught me.  He said he wants us to make love in the back of his truck beside Henderson’s pond, out under the stars.”

“Darling, you are one lucky woman.  Now, tell me the remaining part of your brilliant plan.”

“Wilkins has to disappear.”  Cindy said as though she was a veteran mob boss.

“As in die?”  I figured I already knew what she meant.

“Sort of, probably.  If he can’t talk or communicate then I’m not at risk, Steve is not exposed to learning the truth.”

“That’s assuming he is the only other person in the world who knows he impregnated you.”  I started to be much more graphic but decided that would just inflame Cindy even more.

“That’s a risk I’ll have to take.  Even if someone other than Wilkins told Steve about the rape, I would deny it, saying it’s a despicable rumor.”

“I think we are avoiding the elephant in the room.  Murder isn’t some screen-saver prank.  It’s a horrible crime, virtually the worst, and it carries with it the strong likelihood that you will spend the rest of your life in prison.  Do you actually want to take that risk?”  I said, mentally recapping how the Six Red Apples project was cruising headfirst towards the precipice of the Grand Canyon.

“It won’t be murder.  It will be a killing, a justified killing.  You know, justice.  And, we won’t go to prison if we aren’t caught.”

“There you go with that ‘we’ stuff again.”

“I thought we were way beyond this silly conversation.  Remember, Six Red Apples?”  Cindy asked.

“I do and I’m not going back on my word, but we, I at least, have not quite developed a murdering mind.  The worst I’ve considered is some type of extortion, blackmail, whatever, making the five bastards pay real money along with a written but uncirculated apology.”

“I’m a little surprised that even after your Faking Five killed Darla and Nanny, your two mothers, and attempted to kill you and your own daughter, you wouldn’t be ready to blow their brains out, saw up their bodies into little pieces, and feed the remains to the wolves.”

“Truthfully, you’re close to the truth, but I reckon I’m a scaredy-cat.”  I said.

“Then, we’ll have to create such a foolproof plan that your nerves will take a long nap.”  Cindy said typing a return text, no doubt to the loving Steve.  I stopped myself from asking her how she had responded.  That’s when the fantasy blasted across my mind.  Steve’s suggestion had triggered a foreign feeling, one I hadn’t felt since before my attack.  Walt had me pressed against one of the giant oaks I was seeing beyond the pond, the one closest to his little cabin I could barely make out.  Our lips were locked in a long and sensuous kiss.  Then, I chuckled to myself.  It wasn’t Walt doing the pressing and kissing, it was Wayne.

For the next hour Cindy and I semi-planned how Patrick Wilkins would disappear.  She shared how he managed to stay in such good shape.  He was a slow-jogger, fast-walker type.  Someway she had learned that the criminal asshole Wilkins spent an hour before school every morning jogging and walking.  Cindy labeled it his right-road routine.  She explained that when he left his Country Club, Lindo Drive home at 5:00 a.m. Monday through Friday, he only made right hand turns until he returned home.  She clearly had done her homework because every turn easily rolled off the tip of her tongue.  Right turns on each of the following streets and roads: Lindo Drive, Highway 205, Aurora Road, Tarvin Road, Pleasant Hill Cutoff Road, Pleasant Hill Road, Highway 205, and Lindo Drive.  Cindy said, “this is his routine.  At least it was Thursday and Friday mornings.  Also, on Saturdays, at least today, he goes at 8:00 a.m. to the Therapy Plus Fitness Center next to the hospital.  It was after 10:00 this morning when he left.

I didn’t ask Cindy how she had gotten out of her house to go sleuthing the last three mornings.

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 32

By 4:30 a.m. Wednesday morning I had made my choice.  Ten days without writing had left me as anxious and frustrated as I had ever been.  Yesterday morning, the first morning to awaken in mine and Cullie’s new home, should have been a productive session.  It wasn’t, although I had gotten up at my appointed time, grabbed my coffee and strolled into Wayne’s giant study off the master bedroom.  I spent nearly an hour trying to get situated.  The room was nice, completely paneled with twelve-inch tongue and groove pine boards with a light beige tile floor.  The desk was perfect.  It was solid oak, large and included an L-shaped side desk, at the perfect height for my computer keyboard.  The problem was the room just didn’t feel right.  I never was able to put my finger on the exact issue.  It could have been how the light entered the room from a giant light fixture under the rear eve of the garage right beside the house.  The double windows in the study didn’t have blinds or curtains so I couldn’t shut out the light.  It could have been the clutter.  The bookshelves on three walls made for an impressive library, mostly biographies, military fiction, and, surprisingly, every novel written by Nicolas Sparks, my favorite romance writer.  The real clutter was Wayne’s collection of dogs and arrowheads.  They were everywhere and in most every form.  Figurines, mostly encased in curio cabinets, small and large, but with a sizable number placed high and low on corner tables, shelves, and along the front of his giant desk.  The walls were covered in both drawings and photographs of dogs and arrowheads.  By 5:45 a.m. yesterday morning, after writing one sentence, three times and finally deleting it, I ended my session more frustrated and anxious than ever.

This morning, I knew the moment I walked into the smaller of the three bedrooms on the opposite end of the house that I had found my spot.  Wayne had said he had just finished painting it.  The room had been his wife’s hobby room and it had taken his sons five years to convince their father it was time to move on with his life.  The only thing Wayne had left was an antique black walnut roll-top desk that was, as he had said, “from her French ancestors.”  Monday night I had found one very similar on eBay.  It heralded from France.  The eBay description on the only desk I could find like Wayne’s was, “a Unique French secretary (Scriban), Empire period (Napoleon I), Circa 1800, from La Rochelle, France, very famous for the quality of its ‘Meubles de port.’  Made from fruit wood, walnut, rosewood and marquetry.”  My new writing desk had fabulous carvings on each side with lion’s heads on each of its six drawers.  The chair no doubt had originated with the desk.  It was uncomfortable enough to keep me alert and focused on my writing.  The sparseness of the room, completely absent of clutter, was exactly what I needed.

Just because I had missed my early morning writing session ten days in a row didn’t mean I hadn’t thought about my current project.  In fact, during my walks around Steve and Cindy’s swimming pool last Saturday evening I had decided to abandon my current project.  I would put it in a drawer for now, until the end of the year.  I had always focused on only one project at a time.  This was the best way I had found for preventing me from being divided.  I needed to be consumed with one story at a time, live it, breathe it, smoke it if I smoked, and eat it, every moment of every day.  My Real Justice novel writing project was infecting my mind.  Saturday night I had decided to devout all my efforts into living naked as a jaybird.  It was best for my students if I gave them my fully-devoted attention.  This morning I figuratively traveled to Ellijay, Georgia to begin my immersion into Stella Gibson’s world.

The scene I drafted contained two characters.  Stella and Pastor Aiden Walker.  I keyed off Team 3’s character sketch.  It was my responsibility to write the transitions and the scenes whereby Stella interacted with each of the Real Justice’s antagonists. 

Outwardly, Walker’s overarching life’s purpose was to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  He had minored in marketing at the University of Georgia and was always contemplating ways to perk the interest of every resident of Ellijay who were not yet affiliated with First United Baptist Church.  This had prompted his first visit with Stella Gibson, the new editor of the Times-Courier.  During his drive to the newspaper he knew she would likely refer him to her Advertising Manager, but he wanted an opportunity to at least begin a friendly relationship with the woman who was the talk of the town.  Before he walked into her office his mind had been under attack by what his four jaybirds had told him last night at their weekly meeting.  “She’s a single-parent and a former Miss Southern Belle while she was in college at the University of Virginia.  She declined to be a part of Miss America because of a jealous boyfriend.” 

Inwardly, Aiden Walker was a lady’s man, or that’s how he viewed himself.  His wife and his congregation knew him as humble and dedicated to his Lord and Savior.  His four jaybirds knew he enjoyed an occasional Hagar (the Old Testament Abraham’s concubine, his wife Sarah’s servant, who she had shared with her husband and that had led to a little trouble for Abraham, his clan, and the world in perpetuity). So far, Aiden had avoided a public scandal, although there was the finally-hushed rumor among the Church’s deacons that Pastor Walker and the Chairwoman of the WMU had, for over a year during the first decade of the 21st century, been on a very different mission of sorts.  To Aiden’s surprise, the gorgeous Stella had devoted over an hour sharing several ideas that she believed could help him inspire many locals to visit his vibrant First United Baptist Church.  As he returned to the Church’s office he was proud of himself, Stella had agreed to a weekly meeting to closely monitor the responsiveness of the two new ads.

During lunch with Cindy I had reluctantly agreed to attend Prayer Meeting with her tonight.  She was correct in arguing that if we were going to learn the routines of our six red apples we had to hang around their orchard.  I sometimes loved and sometimes hated how Cindy put things.  Here, she was right.  After nearly an hour of prayers that addressed every sickness, temptation, and addiction both known and suspected, Cindy and I hid out in a grove of trees on the edge of the parking lot closest to the east side of the Fellowship Hall.  “I’m pretty sure this is where Pastor Warren exits and heads over to the Parsonage.”  Cindy had said.

The slow drip didn’t begin for another twenty minutes.  First, Fulton and Warren appeared and headed toward the rear of the Parsonage.  Five minutes later, Ryan and Justin drove up and parked within fifty feet of where Cindy and I were standing.  Finally, before the two of them disappeared between a thick hedgerow at the rear of Warren’s place, Danny Ericson exited the Fellowship Hall, walked to his late model Suburban, tossed something in its front seat, and vanished into the dark between the hedges.  Cindy and I waited another fifteen minutes and crept towards the Pastor’s house.  “See why I told you to wear black.”  Cindy whispered as we approached what I could tell now were Blue Hollies.

I was impressed with Cindy’s courage.  After reaching the edge of the Pastor’s yard, I hesitated to move closer.  She had instructed me to “stay here, next to the hedge, keep a lookout.”  I obeyed and worked up a worry that she would be seen or worse, captured by the enemy.  It took her nearly five minutes to reappear.  “Come, follow me.  You have to see this.”

I reluctantly tip-toed behind the daring Cindy.  There was just enough light to make out a set of stairs that headed down to what I assumed would be the basement.  She moved a little to the right as I started down the stairs.  “No.”  She almost shouted, way above a whisper.  “Come here.”  Cindy was down on her belly crawling towards the top of a brick wall that extended above the ground maybe a foot.  I mimicked her and when we both were laying on our sides next to the wall she said, “look over the top but don’t linger.”  When I did I saw six men sitting around a round table a few feet inside a half-lighted room.  The Faking Five and another man, whose back was to me and who seemed to be caught in a light-less zone.  I lowered my head and asked, “who is the other man?  I see the Faking Five.  That’s not Wilkins is it?”

“No, I’m sure of that.  Wilkins is thicker than that.  And, his hair is not as gray.”

Cindy and I had almost lingered at the brick wall too long.  We thought we were caught a few minutes later when Justin and Ryan exited the rear door out onto the patio below and stood next to a pile of firewood.  They each smoked a cigarette and chatted.  Even though we were within ten feet of them we couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.  The central unit was running and drowning out their conversation.  But, just before they walked back inside, the unit shut-down and we heard one of them say, “he’s a smart ass but if he can make Johnson disappear I’ll vote for it.”

After they had gone back inside we lost no time returning to our vehicles.  I told Cindy what we had done was insane and could get us killed.  She insisted we were being wise and cautious.  She also insisted I follow her to MacDonald’s.  She had something else she needed to tell me.

Right as we sat down in a corner booth, over two McCafé French Vanilla Latte’s, Cindy didn’t mince a word.  “I think I’m pregnant.”

“Oh, my heavens.  You’ve got to be kidding.  It’s too soon to know.  What makes you think that?”  I could have continued spouting out a battery of questions.  I had surprised myself that my first thought had connected Cindy’s declaration to Patrick Wilkins, and not her recent disclosure that husband often Steve joked about having ten kids but for the vasectomy Cindy had demanded he have.

“I’ve been spotting.  And, it’s not my time.  Also, I’ve been cramping like you wouldn’t believe.  I did some research because I don’t remember doing this with my other three kids.  It seems my symptoms are common, early signs of pregnancy.  They call it implantation bleeding.  It occurs anywhere from six to twelve days after the egg is fertilized.  It seems many women mistakenly conclude the cramps and the bleeding are simply the start of their monthly period.”

“Oh hell, hell, hell, hell.”  I said believing I was living a dream.  The nightmare was getting worse by the day.  If only Wilkins hadn’t raped Cindy.  I could have dealt with my problems.  Hell, I had dealt with them for nearly fifteen years, holding it together pretty good and raising a fatherless daughter.

“Katie, my worst nightmare is coming true.  After Wilkins raped me I had a dream one night.  I kept asking myself, ‘what if I get pregnant?’  Now, it’s not a dream and I’m asking myself, ‘what am I going to do?’”

“Cindy, you have no choice, no choice at all.  If you are pregnant, and I’m hoping you are wrong, you must have an abortion.”

“Oh, you heathen woman.  I could never do that.”  Cindy said finishing off the first of two cinnamon rolls she had bought.

“So, okay, don’t do that.  Go home tonight and tell Steve the truth.  I’m sure, from what I’ve heard you say, he will simply forgive both you and criminal asshole Wilkins.  And, you and the perfect Steve will live happily ever after raising the bastard child.”  I said regretting the child’s description, realizing that Cullie was identical and I had always loved her with all my heart no matter if I had not been married to her father when she was conceived.

“Don’t say that.  You know I would love the baby with every fiber of my being.  I don’t know what to do.  If Steve hadn’t had a vasectomy I probably would just lie to him, let him believe the baby was his.”

“Oh, so lying is okay, but having an abortion is totally unacceptable?”  I asked.

“For now, I’m just praying for a miscarriage.  Maybe my little problem will simply go away.”

“I hope the resolution is that simple, but if I had to bet, you have a hard road ahead of you.  But please, don’t ever doubt I will be with you every step of the way.  I will never abandon you.  I love you Cindy.”  The words had just flowed out of my mouth.  I felt such compunction to say something truthful and reassuring.  The truth was certainly not reassuring but my commitment to my best friend was both.

“Thanks, dear.  Maybe this is all one big test.  God is seeing how much I love him and how faithful I will be.  He tested Job and he came through the storm.”  Cindy’s faith-talk worried me.  I hadn’t read the Book of Job in ages, but I did remember the central part of the story.  It was all about his suffering and his questioning God.  I had to do my best to help Cindy avoid such pain.

“You better be praying that God works a miracle in Steve’s life and does it in a couple of months at the latest.  If you don’t miscarry, Steve will learn, probably before Christmas, that you are pregnant with another man’s baby.  Maybe God will give Steve an extraordinary ability to forgive.”  I said.

“Forgive, I haven’t done anything wrong.  I didn’t have an affair and got pregnant.  I was raped.  It’s not my fault.”  Cindy, probably unknown to herself, was making a ton of sense.

“Exactly, and that’s why you need to tell him.  Furthermore, it’s why you need to complain to the police.  Please let me talk to Sheriff Waldrup.”

“No and hell no.  A lot can happen in two or three months.  I have to have faith that God will work a miracle and I won’t have to tell anybody.”   Cindy said bowing her head and whispering, “oh dear precious Jesus, help me, please help me.”

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 31

I had never missed an entire week of school.  I had also never missed a week of writing, at least since I began, in earnest, after taking my first teaching job in Los Angeles.  This wet and foggy Monday morning my classroom looked like it had been frozen in time since I was last here Friday afternoon over a week ago.  I placed the bologna sandwich that Cindy had made me in my refrigerator and walked to my little office and sat down.  I reviewed my To-Do list, now quite stale, and noticed the third item from the bottom.

It read, “take Nanny to the Fall Festival.”  The tears came unannounced.  I wasn’t one to cry so easily.  For over two weeks before her death, Nanny kept reminding me she wanted to go to this once per year celebration of sorts.  It was Liberty Baptist Church’s long-standing event to praise God for an abundant harvest.  It was rooted in long-ago times where farming was most everyone’s livelihood.  The church, Papa and Nanny’s church since they married, felt obligated to continue this tradition.  Nanny had missed last year’s event because of a bout with the shingles, and I was determined to take her this year.  What was making me so sad was how I had contemplated asking Sammie to take her.  What a selfish woman I was.  Now, I would never have the chance to see the joy spread across Nanny’s face.  She was dead, and she had died a most horrible death, and in a sense, it was all my fault.  If I had only handled things differently.  If I hadn’t been such a smart ass and practically told Pastor Warren I had the videotape, Nanny might still be alive.  Furthermore, I’m now positive, the Faking Five found out about my visit with Ralph Williams.

“You in there?”  I heard Cindy’s voice blaring.

“Back here.”  I wiped my eyes and opened my literature teacher’s guide.

“Sorry, I missed you this morning.  You must have left early.  Cullie’s in my classroom with Alysa.”  Since I hadn’t written this morning, nor for the previous eight days, I had gotten dressed early and driven out to the home place on Bruce Road.  I hadn’t been but once since the fire over a week ago.  I think my need to see the past before engaging the future was why I went.  As a writer, transitions were important.  It was like I was both writing a story and living as the main character. 

“Thanks for bringing her to school.  I didn’t want her with me as I strolled around a war zone.”  Even though the house was destroyed, it had maintained a semblance of its former glory.  All the outer walls on the first floor were still standing.  I should thank the Boaz and Sardis City fire departments for all their valiant efforts.  Even though the upper floor had fallen in, I sensed the surviving walls were a testimony to Nanny and her resilience over the years.  It was like they were pointing upwards praising God in the bad times just as they had done during the many good and bad times for going on seventy years.

“I just wanted to see you for just a minute before our first classes and wish you godspeed.”

“Thanks Cindy, you are the best.  I hope you know how much I love you and how much I’m grateful for all you, Steve, and your family have done for Cullie and me, especially since the fire.”  I said trying to remember when I had told another teacher that I loved her.  I hadn’t even told Ellen Fink that.

“I love you too.  And, I hope you know you do not have to move out.  Why don’t you stay a while longer?  I’m still a little uneasy about you moving in with Sheriff Waldrup.”

“That’s not happening.  I told you he is going to be staying in his little cabin on the back side of his property.”  I said, recalling mine and Cullie’s visit yesterday afternoon and how we both fell in love with his home, a ranch nearly as large as Steve and Cindy’s.

“Why do I sense a little romance in your future.  Wayne, you’ll need to call him Wayne, is a mighty handsome man.  Even if he is ten years older than you.  That’s what you said, right?”

“He is but at best all I’m interested in is a platonic relationship.”

“Oh, so you are thinking about a relationship.  Good.  You silly teacher, don’t you know that all romances start out being platonic?”  I didn’t know why on earth Cindy was being so humorous.  Maybe she thought I needed it.  My eyes were probably red from crying.

“Get out of here.  I have things to do.”

“So, hurry up.  I’ll be back at 10:30, if that’s okay.  I’ve got an idea.”  Cindy said walking out and not even asking me permission to crash my planning period.

Over the next thirty minutes I realized that my week off had been productive.  At least from the standpoint of the Real Justice novel writing project.  All during the week I had received multiple emails from each of the five Creative Writing teams.  Everyone had shared their condolences and asked how I was doing.  They even told me how much they missed me.  I was proud of how hard they were working, and I was impressed with their almost-completed character sketches and with their first chapter drafts.  Who says high school students don’t have initiative?

After scanning the wave of emails from yesterday and Saturday, I noticed that the five teams were coalescing around the story’s inciting incident and key event.  Every novel, the experts say, needs to follow a structure.  All of them contend writers should follow a three-act structure, and in act one, two things need to occur.  The first thing is the inciting incident.  This is a plot point that begins a story’s problem.  The key event is the time when the main character, the protagonist, becomes connected or engaged by the inciting incident.  I like the example that expert K.M. Weiland (her name is Katie!) uses to illustrate these two terms: “In most detective stories, the inciting event (the crime) takes place apart from the main character, who doesn’t become involved with it until the key event, when he takes on the case.”  I wish I was half as smart as this Katie.  She is a master at word pictures: “the key event is the glue that sticks the character to the impetus of the inciting event.”

I shouldn’t have been so surprised that my five Real Justice teams had decided that our five antagonists (Mason Campbell, Noah Fletcher, Aiden Walker, Jackson Burke, and Daniel Taylor) were all part of a secret club that thrived off sinister games, including sexual exploitation and murder.  The five teams were a little vague in their email description, I think intentionally, but I gathered that the five antagonists were involved with the disappearance of a high school girl whose father is an outspoken blogger.  Stella received an anonymous tip that triggered her interest and investigation.  Thus, the tip is the glue that stuck Stella to the inciting event, what appeared to be an abduction of a teenage girl by a club known as Jaybird. The only meaning I could ascribe to the club’s name was ‘naked as a jaybird.’  I think the phrase had originated nearly a century ago.  At the time it was simply ‘J-bird,’ and meant jailbird.  It referred to prisoners brought in from a bus and after taking a shower they had to walk naked from one end of the prison to the other.  As I walked to the auditorium and my first period class, all I could think about was how the Faking Five still imagined me ‘naked as a jaybird.’  No doubt, I was still in prison.

My first three classes were easy.  I didn’t resist letting each class talk.  The first two had been as active as my official Real Justice students although these outliers were contemplating the five Ellijay antagonists individually preying on Stella Gibson.  She became glued to the story’s problem because she herself was the independent focus, for sexual gratification I might add, of the Mayor, the Bank President, the Pastor, the business owner, and the Judge. 

The third class, my senior English class, was content discussing Ernest Hemmingway’s Hills Like White Elephants, a story about the end of a relationship.  The class discussion quickly moved from one of the story’s main themes, the difficulty of dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, and onto abortion.  It was clear most of the guys were for it and the girls were not, at least if it didn’t concern them.

Cindy was sitting in my room when I returned at 10:30. Sometimes, I almost wished we hadn’t exchanged classroom keys.  At least she had waited until I arrived to enter my private little office behind my classroom.

“You look tired.  Difficult classes?  Here, I brought you a Red Bull.”  I took the can, thanked her, and walked into my office.  Cindy was right on my heels and her voice, both high pitch and rapid, revealed she may have been literally full of Bull.  “Let’s start with Pastor Warren.  He seems to be closer friends with Wilkins than the other four members of your Faking Five.”

“Start with?  Explain.”  I almost regretted having shared with Cindy my anger and my comparing myself to a Mama Bear protecting her cubs.

“Burn their asses.”  Cindy said sitting across from me.

“Wow, I’m beginning to think you were in the Navy.  Lately, you’ve been cussing like a sailor.

“Who says revenge is Victorian?”  Cindy said, no doubt referring to Victorian England when women were thought to be shy and virtually perfect in dress, manner, and especially speech.

“I’m listening.”  I may not have said it so bluntly as Cindy did but I hadn’t changed my mind.  I was ready to teach six men a lesson.  I was ready for Six Red Apples.  Although, I hadn’t thought about burning them at the stake.

“If Pastor Warren and criminal asshole Wilkins are as good friends as we think they are, then they do things together; they spend time talking.  Maybe they play golf every Thursday afternoon.  I don’t know but we must find out.  Once we learn their routine we can begin planning how to burn their asses.”

“You’re liking that phrase.  I can tell.”

The remainder of my planning period, until 11:25, Cindy described how she had already been conducting a little surveillance on Danny Ericson and Fulton Billingsley.  She wanted to stay on during my lunch period, but I persuaded her I had a ton of work I needed to do since being away for over a week.

After school, Cullie and I ran by Walmart to buy a few groceries, mainly cold items.  Yesterday afternoon Wayne had suggested this since the only thing in his refrigerator was a half-empty gallon of three-day expired milk, a large bag of wilted salad mix, and the remainder of a green bean casserole that his sister had left last Tuesday.  What he lacked in the refrigerator he made up for in his pantry.  It was stocked with every imaginable type of canned soup and vegetables, and at least four kinds of cereals.  I was thankful Cullie and I had spent Saturday shopping for clothes.  I was content with Walmart selections but, not wanting to drive to Gadsden, Cullie had been surprisingly pleased with what she had found at Goodies and Factory Connections.  I was also thankful we had left all our furniture in storage after moving to Boaz from New York City.  Although we didn’t need furniture now that we were at Wayne’s, we would in a few months after we built a house at Nanny’s.

A little before 7:30 p.m., right after I had cleaned off mine and Cullie’s soup bowls from the table in the breakfast nook, I heard a knock at the back door.  I looked and saw Wayne.  I hadn’t closed the blinds on the door.  He had his hands around a large cardboard box.  I walked over and opened the door.

“Hi Katie.  I promise I’m not going to be a pest but I need to apologize.”  I motioned him in and noticed the box contained several Walmart shopping bags.

“Why do you need to apologize?”  I said, not having a clue what he was talking about.

“I invite you to stay here and don’t even give you a house-warming gift.  Here’s a few things I hope you and Cullie enjoy.”  He set the box on a kitchen counter and started pulling out packs of steak, pork chops, and chicken.

“You didn’t need to do this.  Letting us stay here is gift enough.  By the way, I’m going to pay you rent, no matter what you’ve said.”

“Oh no.  Forget that.  Again, I’m sorry I didn’t clean out the refrigerator.”

Cullie had walked in from the den where she was watching TV.  After she smiled at Wayne and inventoried all the good meats he had brought, she thanked him and returned to the opposite side of the great room and kitchen combination.  “I suspect you are tired and wanting to go home.  Sorry, you are home.  I meant your new home.”  I said.

“But, you would like to know if I have learned anything new?”  I guess Wayne was a mind-reader or I had a big question mark carved into my forehead.

“Yes, do you mind?”

“Not at all.  That’s another reason I came by.  Late this afternoon I received word from Montgomery that Nathan Johnson’s DNA was on the Lone Star Candy Bar wrapper you gave me from Ralph’s.”

“How did they match it?  How did they have Johnson’s DNA?”  I said.

“I thought I had told you.  When Cliff Thomas, Johnson’s lawyer from Texas, arrived a week ago, he gave us permission to swab his client’s mouth.  That was before he knew we had any tangible evidence other than the gun.  I guess he already knew from talking with his client that Nathan’s fingerprints would have to be on the 22-pistol since we had him on camera at Joe’s Pawn Shop trying to hock it.  Again, we kind of conned him by not disclosing the candy bar wrapper.”

“So, that shows Johnson was at the murder scene?”  I asked.

For a minute, Wayne didn’t responsd.  He rolled his head around like he was unsure what to say.  “Probably, but not definitively.  The DNA match proves Nathan had handled the candy bar wrapper.  Mr. Thomas might argue that his client had left the wrapper in Danny Ericson’s truck but was not with him that morning at Ralph Williams’ place.  But, with what Ralph told you about the passenger he saw in Ericson’s truck, it seems likely that Johnson was there.”

“What about Ralph being dead?  Obviously, he cannot testify.  Isn’t my word hearsay?”

“You’re correct.  I’m sorry the law and criminal cases can be so complicated.”

“I already knew that.  I’ve watched enough Law and Order and CSI and those type shows to realize Darla’s case wasn’t going to be easy to resolve.”

Wayne looked at his watch.  I was still amazed by people who still wore watches.  Now that smartphones hang on nearly every belt.  “I’ve got a few calls to make so I must go.  Do you need any help putting up these groceries?”

“No.  I think I can handle that.”  I said looking up at the tall and handsome Wayne Waldrup.  His blue eyes met mine and lingered about two seconds longer than he probably meant to.  He smiled and said, “Remember, you promised me you would tell me if I became a bother.”

“I promised that.  Yes.  I will honor that promise.  You better believe.”

“Let me know if you need anything.  Oh, one other thing.  I nearly forgot.  The gas cans seized at the fire.  The perpetrators either wiped them clean or they used gloves.  There were no fingerprints on them.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.  I was hoping we might get a break.”

“The closest to that right now is that all six of the cans were the same brand.  Locally sold only by Walmart and Radford Hardware and Building Supply.”

“If they were new cans couldn’t we, you, investigate the sales at both locations?”  I said feeling like I wanted to write a detective series.

“Already on it.  It’s a long shot but at least it’s a lead of sorts.  I’ll keep you posted.  Sorry, I’m running late but I have to go.”

“When do you ever rest?  I’m sure you have more than the fire and Darla’s cases to deal with.”  I said, feeling sorry for him.

“I rest all the time.  I’ve been here, what fifteen minutes?  It has been like an afternoon at DeSoto Falls, just talking with you.  Sorry, that didn’t come out just right.  What I meant is I find it peaceful and satisfying talking with you.  You are so kind and respectful.”

“I take that as an extreme compliment.  Thanks.  I enjoy you too. Talking with you.  I appreciate all your help.  I’m sorry we had to meet under these circumstances but I’m still enjoying getting to know you.”

“Take care Katie and get some rest yourself.  You’ve been through a lot.  Tell Cullie goodnight.”

“I will.”  He left, and I watched him open the door of an older looking Ford Bronco.  It didn’t have a Sheriff Department insignia on it.  I figured it was a personal vehicle.  I smiled as I thought Wayne Waldrup was a spitting image of Walt Longmire, the only man I had let into my heart since that horrible night in 2002.

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 30

I may have slept for a week but for Cindy.  At first, I thought I was dreaming.  I kept hearing, “oh Father, touch her, oh Father, show her your mighty power, oh Father, give her your peace, the peace that surpasses all understanding.  Oh Father, let her know we love her and that she can stay here but give her just the right home whereever that is.”  What scared me was the part where I was falling down an elevator shaft, the elevator was speeding just ahead of me and it was on fire.  The red flames were licking my face but not burning me.  A soft and gentle hand reached up and touched my face.  I awoke to Cindy’s flaming red hair and her adorable smile.  Our eyes met just as she completed her prayer.  I felt, or believed I felt, an electricity rush through my body.  Had God been so quick to answer Cindy’s prayer?

“I’m sorry to wake you but I was getting worried.  You’ve been asleep nearly twelve hours.  It’s six o’clock and I have supper ready.”  Cindy said, standing and pulling back a heavy quilt and blanket leaving me covered with only a sheet.  “Steve is an enigma.  He’s hot natured and can swim in the pool with snow on the ground but can’t go to sleep without a pile of covers.”

It was then I realized I must be in her and Steve’s bed.  Yet, the bed seemed small.  “I pictured you having a giant king-sized bed.”  I said.

“We used to until his mother gave him this bed.  He grew up sleeping in this oak oasis as he calls it.  I’ve gotten used to it and to sleeping in his arms.  He’s one who loves cuddling.  At first it wasn’t easy, I’m such a light sleeper.  The Ambien helps.”

I laughed to myself.  “You’re one lucky woman.  He worships you.”  For the first time in nearly fifteen years I wanted a man, not just any man, but one who would love me like Steve loved Cindy.  After the rape, I couldn’t stand the thoughts of being touched.  This revulsion had destroyed mine and Colton’s relationship.  We had remained friends, but no couple can survive without intimacy.

“Katie, I know you know this, but I have to say it.  I am so sorry for what happened.  I know how much you loved Nanny, and Sammie for that matter.  I can’t imagine what you are going through.”

“Actually, I haven’t been feeling much of anything.  Did you say I’ve been here for twelve hours?”

“Yes, no doubt it was the Valium.”

“What?  Valium?  You drugged me?”  I asked.

“No.  Dr. Landers did.  Don’t you remember going to the Sand Mountain Clinic?”

“No.”

“He is one of Steve’s fishing buddies.  On our drive back from your house, after the fire, Steve called and asked him if he would see you and Cullie.  Both of you were in shock or something like it.  Dr. Landers met us and examined both of you.  He said ya’ll needed to sleep so he prescribed one Valium each.  Yours worked better than Cullie’s.  She’s been up since noon.”

“How is she?”  I couldn’t believe I had lain in Cindy’s bed for half-a-day and not been taking care of Cullie.  She had just lost her great-grandmother and no doubt had to be reeling.

“She’s thankful to be alive.  She told us about Midnight.”

“Oh my gosh.  Midnight.  Did he make it out of the house?”  I hadn’t even thought about the beautiful black-as-night kitten that had touched Cullie so much she was dreaming about starting an animal shelter.

“No.  I’m sorry.  I guess we could say he sacrificed his life so you two could live.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Don’t you know?  Cullie said if it hadn’t been for Midnight she would have never woken up.  And, you probably wouldn’t be here right now.  Another few minutes and you two would have been overcome by the smoke.”

“Life sure is held together by a slender thread.  A stray kitten is adopted by a teenage girl who happened to stop at one of a dozen gas stations.  The kitten goes on to save its new owner and her mother from a raging fire.”

“A fire that was intentionally set.”  Cindy said, giving me a look that was at least a cousin to the one when confronted by Wilkins in his office.  “Katie, my dearest friend in the whole world.  Early this morning, someone tried to kill you and Cullie.  They succeeded in killing Nanny and Sammie.  And, Midnight.  How does that make you feel?  Or, are you still in so much shock you can’t feel anything?”

“My feelings are a jumbled mess right now, but my mind just woke up.  I know, and you know who did this.  There is no doubt in my mind it was the Faking Five.  They are the only ones who have any motive.  This changes everything.  I can take a lot of abuse, but they stepped across the last line when they attacked my family.  The idiots, they should know you don’t go fucking around with a mother bear when her cubs are around.”

“This is really not the time to ask but I know our friendship is strong.  Do you think you are ready for Six Red Apples?”  Cindy asked, pouring her green eyes into me, not cracking a smile.

“Hell yes.  Mama Bear is angry.”

Cullie and I stayed a week with Cindy and Steve and their family.  They helped us more than we could ever repay.  I think Cullie would have stayed forever.  She witnessed what a real father was all about.  Steve loved his wife and his three children.  He worked hard all day at his job but when he was off he invested full time talking, walking, playing, and fishing with the Barker tribe as he called them. 

Wednesday, after Nanny’s memorial service, Steve took Alysa and Cullie fishing in Guntersville.  I liked how he was a take-charge guy.  He had seen how distraught Cullie was at the funeral home.  It was something about not being able to see Nanny in her casket that had shaken Cullie to her core.  I think it was the fact that the State hadn’t been able to perform an autopsy.  She had overheard me talking on the phone with Dr. Vincent.  I had made the mistake of having him on speaker, not realizing that Cullie was listening from the hallway outside Steve and Cindy’s bedroom.  Dr. Vincent had said, “her body was too badly burned for us to conduct an autopsy.”   After the service, Steve had held her in his arms, told her he loved her, and said, “you need a change of scenery.  Alysa and I know just the spot.”  I will forever be grateful for the miracle he performed that afternoon.

Saturday night, almost a week after the fire, I sat out back on Steve and Cindy’s patio.  They had tried to get me to go with them to the Gadsden Mall, something to do I suppose to get out of the house that was growing smaller by the day, even though it was a sprawling ranch, with four bedrooms and a giant great-room/kitchen combination.  Cullie loved the idea and tried to persuade me to join them.  I couldn’t.  That place was too tied to the horrible memories of the worst night of my life.  I knew if I went all I would think would be, “I’m watching American Assassin and in six hours I will be nearly burning alive.”

After twenty minutes or so of wondering how, when, and where I would ever get back to writing, my iPhone vibrated in my pocket.  It was Sheriff Waldrup.  After his wife had given me his cell number I had entered it into my Contacts.

“Hello Sheriff.”

“Katie, can we talk?”  It was the second time I had talked to him since the fire.  Cindy had said that he had called Sunday afternoon, but she had told him I was in another world and needed to stay there.  Monday morning, after breakfast, he had called just to check on me and Cullie and to tell me how sorry he was for our loss.  That call had lasted just a couple of minutes.

“Yes.”

“Have you and Cullie made any plans about where you will be living?”

“We’ve been talking about it.  Cullie wants to stay here with Alysa.  Cindy and Steve are wonderful and said we could stay as long as we wanted but I can’t do that to them.  They have a large family and need their space.  I’m afraid of how us staying could eventually affect mine and Cindy’s relationship.”

“I have an idea, and please don’t think ill of me.”

“I doubt that will happen.”  I said, always thinking of Sheriff Walt Longmire every time I talked with Sheriff Waldrup.

“I have a place you can live until you decide what to do.  It’s in Smith’s Institute, right past Sardis City.”

“That’s very generous of you but we couldn’t do that to you and your wife.”  I said almost shocked that Walt, Wayne, would be so caring and generous to someone he barely knew.

“Uh, I’m not married.”

“That’s odd.  I talked to your wife last Friday night.  She told me you were in Atlanta.  She also gave me your cell number and said it had been hacked or something.”

“That was my sister.  She always comes and babysits my house when I’m out of town.  She lives in Rainbow City.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.  I just figured the very nice lady had to be your wife.”

“She is nice.  As was my dear wife.  Karen died five years ago.  Breast cancer.”

“I’m so sorry.  Sheriff, I do appreciate your offer but, quite frankly, it doesn’t seem right.”  I couldn’t quite figure out what to say or how to say it.  I couldn’t move in with a man, even a very nice man.  I had never even met him in person.  It would not be what Cullie needed. 

“It would seem wrong?  Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Yes.”

“Let me see if I can be clearer.  You and Cullie could live in my house.  I wouldn’t be living there.  My two boys, both grown and gone, built a log cabin on the back side of our property when they were in high school.  It became their hangout.  It’s about a half-mile from mine and Karen’s house.  Way past the pond.  Quite frankly, I’d love living there for a while.  I’m rarely home and don’t need all this room.”

“We’ll take it.  Your house.  Under one condition.”  I said, not believing I had made such a big decision so quickly but feeling like Cullie and I had squatted at Cindy’s exactly the right amount of time.

“Okay, let me hear it.”

“You promise you will be honest with me, completely honest, and tell me if things are not working out.  Cullie and I do need a place to live for a few months.  We have pretty much decided to rebuild.  I simply cannot see buying or building anywhere else.”

“I promise to be completely honest.  Now, when do you want to see my place.  Don’t commit fully until you come to kick the tires.  You may not like it.  Please know you are not under any obligation to take it.”

“I expect it will be just fine.  For some reason, I have a feeling that you’re not a slob.”

“Thanks for the compliment but if it weren’t for my sister you might change your mind.  Ever since Karen died in 2012, my one and only sister has come to check on me at least once per week.  She is a perfectionist when it comes to housekeeping.”

“I promise to take care of your house.  Your sister can maintain your cabin.”

“Her name is Rhea. Rhea Armstrong.  You remind me of her.”

“How old is she.  Forty-six.  She’s ten years younger than me.”

“Thanks again for the offer Wayne, Sheriff.”  I said embarrassed that I had called him by his first name.

“Call me Wayne.  Now, when do you want to take a tour?”

“How about tomorrow afternoon after church, say 2:00 o’clock?”

“Sounds good.  If something comes up, I’ll call you.  The address is 8853 Sardis Road.  If you come to Leeth Gap Road you’ve come too far.  My place is the last one on the left before Leeth Gap.  It’s a one-story ranch with a red windmill in the pasture in front of the house.  You can’t miss it.”

“Cullie and I will see you at 2:00.  Thanks so much.”

“Sounds great. Bye.”

I walked around Cindy and Steve’s swimming pool three times after my call ended with Wayne.  All I could think of was Cindy’s prayer late Sunday afternoon.   She had asked God to give me, Cullie and me, just the right home.  Now, here I was with an offer of a place to live, a totally unsuspected offer.  Was it God’s will?  Had He answered Cindy’s prayer?  It sure looked like God was at work.  What else could it be?

The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.

The Boaz Schoolteacher, written in 2018, is my fifth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.

Book Blurb

In the summer of 2017, Katie Sims and her daughter Cullie, moved from New York City to Katie’s hometown of Boaz, Alabama for her to teach English and for Cullie to attend Boaz High School .  Fifteen years earlier, during the Christmas holidays, five men from prominent local families sexually assaulted Katie.  Nine months later, Katie’s only daughter was born.

Almost from the beginning of the new school year, as Katie and fellow-teacher Cindy Barker shared English, Literature, and Creative Writing duties for more than 300 students, they became lifelong friends.  

For weeks, Katie and Cindy endured the almost constant sexual harassment at the hands of the assistant principal.  In mid-October, after Cindy suffered an attack similar to Katie’s from fifteen years earlier, the two teachers designed a unique method to teach the six predators a lesson they would never forget.  Katie and Cindy dubbed their plan, Six Red Apples.

Read this mystery-thriller to experience the dilemma the two teachers created for themselves, and to learn the true meaning of real justice.  And, eternal friendship. 

Chapter 29

Saturday, I stayed in the basement until early afternoon, coming upstairs only one time for Sammie’s glorious pancakes at 8:00 a.m.  I was thankful Papa had included a small bathroom downstairs.  I recall Nanny saying more than once during one of her regular strolls down memory lane that she had told him it was his bathroom and he had to keep it clean since he was the only one who needed a complete floor to house his hobby.  As far as I knew, other than my writing, the basement had never been used for anything other than storing junk.

I binge-wrote about once every six months.  I loved it and I hated it.  When I walked down the stairs a little after 4:30 this morning I hadn’t intended on staying more than a couple of hours, which was at least thirty minutes longer than I ever did during the school week.  It was something about the look on Cindy’s face when Wilkins caught her in his office.  He may not have noticed it, but I had.  For a split second, even from where I stood, I could see the animal that lies buried deep inside every human.  Technically, we are animals, just like chimpanzees and kittens.  Fortunately, millions of years of evolution has allowed us to realize survival depends on playing well together.  The old fight or flight gene lies dormant deep inside our psyche.  It stays that way until its owner’s back is against the wall.  It was something about Cindy’s stance and the look in her eye, for that split second, that I thought Wilkins was about to lose his own eyes.  For whatever reason, just as I suppose she acted when he had raped her, she had chosen to suppress the violence that is endemic in every human, given the right conditions.  That split-second visual had prompted me to delve deeper into my own protagonist’s willingness to confront her rapist with fire and venom.

By 3:30 p.m., Cindy and I were watching another movie at the Premiere Cinema 16 in the Gadsden Mall.  Cullie and Alysa were shopping.  I had wanted to see “Wilde Wedding,” but I was outvoted or overpowered by the cunning Cindy. She kept repeating American Assassin’s tagline, ‘Assassins aren’t born, they’re made.’  The thriller starred Michael Keaton, and Dylan O’Brien as Mitch Rapp, a young CIA black ops recruit.  His job was to assist a Cold War veteran in stopping the detonation of a rogue nuclear weapon. I thought the plot was rather mundane, clichéd, and missed several great opportunities to provide the audience with a few thrills, but it intrigued me enough to purchase novelist Vince Flynn’s book of the same name.  I had heard of this best-selling author but had never read a single book in his Mitch Rapp counter-terrorism thriller series.   Towards the end of the movie and after at least the tenth time Cindy had whispered ‘Assassins aren’t born, they’re made,’ she added, “you know Vince Flynn died of prostate cancer at the age of 47?”  Off and on for the rest of the movie and during our time eating and shopping at the Mall, all I could think was, ‘in two years I will be 47.’

After Cindy dropped Cullie and me off at home, she spent an hour modeling her new clothes for Nanny and Sammie.  I was surprised that Nanny had allowed Sammie to pause The Walton’s.  Last month’s Saturday shopping adventure in Gadsden had spawned an exciting and engaging look in Nanny’s eyes.  She had stood and talked with Cullie as she modeled jeans, blouses, tee-shirts, and boots.  I was surprised tonight that Cullie felt comfortable and confident enough to undress down to her bra and panties right in the den.  This thrilled Nanny and made Sammie fetch a few things from her bedroom that the two of them had purchased at Walmart a week ago today.  I don’t think I have ever laughed so much as Nanny and Cullie, pant-less and both with pink blouses strolled around the den.  Sammie whispered to me, “Nanny is reliving her youth.  This is the happiest I think I have ever seen her.”

At midnight I had to make Cullie pick up her scattered clothes and go to her bedroom.  I knew this adventure would turn into an all-nighter for Nanny who needed to stay on a strict schedule.  Midnight was already two hours past her routine bedtime.  Ten minutes after Cullie went upstairs and Sammie and I had restored the den from a modeling studio I visited Cullie as I often did, always hoping for a goodnight hug, maybe even a quick kiss.  “I want to do this every week, even if I don’t have new clothes.  I had no idea Nanny was so much fun.”  I went to bed thankful that Cullie was connecting with the woman I knew as a teenager and who had inspired me to reach for the stars.  I hated clichés but sometimes they were perfect.

At 2:45 a.m., I awoke to pounding on my bedroom door and a feeling I was suffocating.  I opened my eyes and could see my room was filled with smoke.  It was like a heavy fog had enveloped my room as I looked across to a bright light streaming in along the edge of my closed blinds.  “Mother, mother, get up, open the door, the house is on fire.”  Cullie screamed over and over.  At first, I thought I was dreaming, then the choking began.  I stood up and gasped.  I got down on the floor and crawled to the door.  I don’t know why it was locked.  I opened the door and Cullie was squatted down with a cloth over her mouth.  Here, she handed me a wet bath cloth.  “We have to get to Nanny and Sammie.”  I said.

“We’ll have to crawl to the top of the stairs.”  Cullie said.  I could barely see her but caught a glimpse of her hand motioning me to follow.   It seemed we were crawling on a reverse escalator.  The further we crawled the faster it seemed to slide us back in the opposite direction.  Finally, at the top of the stairs, we turned around and went down feet first with each of us using one hand to hold onto the hand-rail.  Cullie was the first one to the bottom.  I was still halfway up the stairs when she yelled.  “Hurry, we have to get outside, the kitchen is an inferno.”

Then, it hit me.  We are going to die.  If by some miracle Nanny and Sammie weren’t already outside there was no way to get to them.  Their suite was at the back of the house, down a long hallway from the kitchen, and there is no other route.  In the few seconds it took to reach the first floor, I also realized that something else was going on.  Just after Cullie and I had moved in at the end of July, I had bought six smoke detectors and installed two on each floor including the basement.  I had instructed Sammie to test them at least once per week.  As I turned towards the back of the house I didn’t hear the shrill sound of a single detector, but only the creaking, groaning, and popping of an old house that was being consumed by flames.  As Cullie was tugging on me and telling me we had to go out the front door, my attention was drawn to a single light coming from the door right outside the kitchen less than twenty feet away.  I started to crawl towards it and halfway there I was met with two things I will never forget.  The heat from the fire was what one feels when she’s stood too long in front of a fireplace and has almost caught her jeans on fire, and the second was the faint outline of a hand around the light-end of the flashlight.  It was either Sammie or Nanny, more likely Sammie.  She had tried to get out, tried to get help.  The kitchen was as far as she had gotten.  Then she collapsed.  The heat stopped me, and I retreated.  Cullie was already outside having had no choice but to exit the house. 

It took the firetruck another twenty minutes to reach us.  By that time the house had been completely engulfed in flames for nearly as long, ever since Cullie and I had escaped and retreated halfway to Bruce Road avoiding the heat.  It was the most helpless I had ever felt.  While waiting, Cullie and I had walked around the house, staying at least a hundred feet from the raging flames.  There had been no way to get to Nanny and Sammie, no door availed us.  Every entrance spewed fire like a dragon.

By daylight the firemen had the fire extinguished, neighbors had brought Cullie and me a set of clothes to cover our smoky and singed nightgowns, and I had given a statement to Troy Logan, the Boaz fire chief.  His final statement before Cindy and Steve took us home with them was, “I’ll be calling the District Attorney when I return to the Station, this appears to be arson.  We found empty gas cans throughout the first floor.”

I was glad our neighbor, Charles Fordham, had let me borrow his cell phone.  I had called Cindy and told her about half of what had happened, just enough for her to realize I was distraught.  I rarely cry but this morning I did.  It was so bad I couldn’t finish our conversation.  Within fifteen minutes her and Steve showed up.  They stayed with Cullie and me until the firemen recovered the bodies of the two dearest women I had ever known.  After the ambulance left and with the firemen promising to stay all day if it took it to ‘cold the fire’ as they put it, Cullie and I held hands in the back seat of Cindy’s Nissan Altima, with her crying and repeatedly asking me, “What are we going to do?  Where are we going to live?”  In between my times of trying to reassure her that we would be okay, maybe even rebuild, the only non-suffocating thought I could muster was a feeling of satisfaction for having rented a safety deposit box at Wells Fargo Bank the Friday before Labor Day and storing one horrible videotape and one copy of Darla’s two diaries that I still had not finished reading.