The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.
The Boaz Safecracker, written in 2019, is my seventh novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
Fred Martin, a 1972 graduate of Boaz High School, returns to his hometown after practicing law and living in Huntsville for over thirty-five years with two goals in mind. First, to distance himself from the loss of Susan, his wife of thirty-seven years who died in 2013 of cancer. And second, to partner with his lifelong friend, Noah Waters, to crack the safes of Elton Rawlins and Doug Barber, two men who got under their skin as high school football players.
Little did Fred and Noah realize the secrets the two old Mosler safes protected. Who murdered three Boaz High School seniors in the fall of 1973? Is a near-half-century-old plan to destroy Fred’s sister and steal the inheritance from a set of 44-year-old illegitimate twins still alive and well? How far would Fred’s mother go to protect her family?
What starts out as an almost innocent prank, turns life-threateningly serious the more Fred learns and the more safes he cracks. All, while he falls in love with Connie Stewart, his one-date high school classmate who may conceal a secret or two herself.
Chapter 4
I wound up helping Dad plant four long rows of purple-hulled peas and set-out ten Big-Boy tomato plants. It was the first time in a year I had watched him get down on all fours. At eighty-eight years old he was still in remarkably good health, but his strength, stamina, and balance were waning.
Dad had grown up in Cincinnati. Frederick Martin, known as Papa or Papa Martin, Dad’s dad, had grown up at the Martin Mansion as it was called, helping his father and mother and eight brothers and sisters farm their hundred-acre tract. There were shades of many stories as to why Papa Martin had moved at age sixteen, north, first to Detroit and then to Cincinnati. To me, the most likely reason was he and my great-grandfather, Stonewall Lee Martin, had a falling out; Stonewall was like a thick stone wall, literally immovable, especially in his Christian beliefs. In 1928, Papa Martin married Mary Ruth Davis, a sophisticated woman from an old established Ohioan family. Dad was born in 1929 in Papa and Mama’s large Victorian home perched high on one of Cincinnati’s seven hills.
Dad’s experience growing up was almost identical to mine, except he came south every summer rather than north. Like me, he visited his grandparents. Dad always said he came in first place. He had missed only one summer coming to Alabama while he was growing up, after he turned six, and I had missed two summers. That’s where the similarities diverged. Even though Dad grew up a city boy, he loved the outdoors. It probably would have been different if he had grown up living in the country and having to farm. Dad and his grandfather, Papa Stone, spent nearly every waking minute of the two-week visits hoeing and harvesting vegetables from the garden, feeding the pigs and chickens, milking two cows, and fishing. Someway, the two of them had a connection that Papa Martin and the Stone Wall could never discover. Like Dad, my favorite spot was the three-acre pond, halfway between my little house and Martin Mansion.
Papa Martin had gone to work for Mosler in 1919, when he was only twenty years old. He had already completed a two-year accounting course which caught the eye of old man Mosler, the son of the founder. Like me, Dad met his future wife while in high school. He and Harriet Ann Parkland married in 1949. Neither went on to college and struggled for five years (refusing help from her wealthy family) until Dad decided in February 1954 to move, along with my thirteen-month-old sister, Deidre, and his pregnant wife, back home to live at Martin Mansion as Papa Stonewall lay dying.
Looking back, I had experienced the best of both worlds, country and city. Summertime in Cincinnati, and the rest of the year living on the same ground my great-grandfather Stonewall had purchased for $450.00 in 1896 and farmed until his death five months before I was born in August 1954.
Dad made me tag along with him back to Martin Mansion and to a grand supper prepared by the best cook I have ever known. Mother had the ability to make green beans taste like steak. I hated them, unless they were Mother’s. It seemed I was getting spoiled eating over half my supper time meals at the table built by Stonewall Lee Martin in 1896. Along with the beans, corn bread, and left-over ham from Sunday’s even grander lunch, Mom had fresh out-of-the-garden corn, peppers, onions, and tomatoes. The meal was heavenly. That was Dad’s description. His pre-meal prayer always ended the same, “Lord, thank you for this heavenly meal we are about to partake.” I was glad Mom was quiet. Normally, when it’s just the three of us, she had to say something about my loss of faith, even something so slight as, “Fred, you look tired. I wish you got more rest on Sunday’s. You know that’s what it was made for.”
It was after dark when I arrived at my four-room cabin. It was built as a log-cabin, but my great-grandfather had decided in 1953 it needed an upgrade. It was his last big job before he died. Re-framing the outer walls, adding insulation, and covering the studs with clap-board siding. Dad always believed his grandfather had some premonition that caused him to undertake such a project at age eighty-two. Maybe some way he knew my own journey and struggles would lead me back to my roots.
I changed out of my dusty gardening clothes and sat down in what used to be a bedroom before I converted it to my study and library. I booted up my desktop to check my work email. I was pleased to see that Darryl Nelson had asked whether Alfa dealt with annuities. I responded in the affirmative and told him I would call tomorrow with additional information.
I was just about to shut down my old Acer and go to the den for a little TV before going to bed when a Gmail notification flashed across my screen. I opened it. It was from Luke. I almost was afraid to read it, subconsciously believing my agreement to communicate with him over such a sensitive subject was akin to plotting an assassination of the president.
“Tyler said that if I had grown up in Indonesia or Turkey I would likely be a Muslim and believe that Allah was the one and only God. What do you think?”
I continued to ponder whether to renege on my promise. After five minutes my battle with family and tradition had lost. I was too much of an adherent of humanism and the quest for truth no matter where it lay to go back on my promise concerning such an important subject. It wasn’t like Luke was six years old. He was a bright young man, curious about life, deeply troubled over what he had always been taught. I typed out a short response: “Tyler is probably correct. I have read several articles on this subject. It seems to be basic common sense. A child is born with some basic instincts, like how to nurse from his mother’s breast, but the baby certainly doesn’t know anything about religion, politics, sports, you name it. I suppose it is nearly impossible for a child not to adopt the beliefs and practices of his parents, especially those who are loving and kind. In my own experience, it took a rather big jolt to spawn my first embryonic thought that I might have been misled. I’ll not share that story now, but it happened when I was about your age.” I clicked on ‘Send’ and shut down my computer.
I walked to the den and flipped on the TV. I couldn’t find anything interesting, so I turned it off and laid back in my recliner. All I could think about was my own story, the one I had not shared with Luke.
It was 1970. I had completed the tenth grade and was in Cincinnati at Papa and Mama Martin’s. He had just showed me how to remove the locking mechanism on an old Mosler. We were out in his garage. Mama brought us some lemonade and we all three sat down at an old dusty table. Mama soon got tired of hearing Papa rattle on about how he had acquired the safe that now had a ten inch by ten-inch hole cut out of its back. She left us and walked back to their house.
It was the one and only time Papa ever mentioned religion. He said he had come to believe that a safe was like a person’s heart. It was a place where we kept our innermost secrets. He shared how his first boss in the accounting department had told him how Gustave Mosler, one of the company’s original founders, had compared the safes his company built to Christianity. Both were virtually impenetrable. Both were made of time-tested materials. Layer upon layer of the materials that had kept lives and whole societies secure for centuries.
Papa hadn’t said it directly, but I sensed he someway had broken away from the faith of his father and family. He described how, over the years, he had become intrigued with the stories that bounced off the walls in the accounting department. Stories from all over the country from people who had either bought a Mosler safe, often without the combination, or who had discovered one behind a hidden wall. Papa said what really aroused his curiosity was the stories of the different ways folks had gained access to the locked away contents. He shared with me how, over time, he had analogized the physical safe to his father’s Christian beliefs, pondering what it would take to gain access to the very reason his father held on to the inerrant scripture. Papa said his father believed in Adam and Eve and the creation story, Noah’s flood, and Christ’s resurrection. It was one statement by Papa that made me think something, somehow, had gained access to his own heart, otherwise thought to be impenetrable. He had said, “if you can act as though you have never heard of Christianity while you are listening to a Southern Baptist Fundamentalist, questions will arise, such as, ‘how can the earth be only six thousand years old? You will start to question. Questioning everything is the secret to cracking a safe.”
Before those two weeks ended during the summer of 1970, I heard one other thing that probably changed my life. Mama said one afternoon while we were waiting for Papa to arrive home from work, “I think your grandfather would become a professional safecracker if he wasn’t afraid he’d get caught. He’s absolutely obsessed with the secrets people lock behind a combination.”
Now, starting to doze, I wish I had just one more afternoon with Papa Martin. I got up, walked to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and stared into the mirror. I wondered whether I would have the courage to tell him about last night’s adventure to 200 Thomas Avenue.
Richard L. Fricks 