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The God Illusion: What we learned from the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting

Here’s the link to this article.

Most delegates still oppose women pastors, IVF is evil, and abuse reform can wait. But at least the new president doesn’t wear jeans in the pulpit.

JUN 13, 2024

The Southern Baptist Convention, which has been dealing with a massive sexual abuse crisis for years now, finally got its priorities in order this week at its annual meeting… by threatening churches that believe women can serve as pastors and agreeing that in vitro fertilization is “dehumanizing” and must be opposed at all costs.

Let’s start with the sexism.

On Tuesday, delegates (“Messengers“) at the convention voted overwhelmingly (6,759-563) to expel Virginia’s First Baptist Church of Alexandria, a church that currently has a woman serving as “Pastor for Children and Women” and openly declares on its website that the Bible “not only permits women to serve in the offices of pastor and deacon but confirms this with examples by name.”

The church saw the writing on the wall two years ago when they were first ratted out for their disobedience. It didn’t matter that the church, which has existed for well over a century, donated millions of dollars to the SBC for missionary work. The Associated Press said that “the pastor of a neighboring church reported” them to the SBC after discovering they employed two women as pastors. (A man was still the “senior pastor,” but that was irrelevant.)

Their open belief that there’s nothing wrong with having women on staff as pastors is what pushed the SBC over the edge.

The vote came after the denomination’s credentials committee recommended earlier Tuesday that the denomination deem the church to be not in “friendly cooperation,” the formulation for expulsion, on the grounds that it conflicts with the Baptist Faith and Message. That statement of Southern Baptist doctrine declares only men are qualified for the role of pastor. Some interpret that only to apply to associate pastors as long as the senior pastor is male.

It would be unfair to call this church progressive given that it opposes same-sex marriage and denies the existence of transgender people, but even symbolic gender equality was a bridge too far for most Southern Baptists who voted.

The expulsion came a year after the SBC kicked out Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church for ordaining three female pastors.

But all of that was merely a prelude to what happened Wednesday when the SBC voted on a formal policy (called the “Law Amendment,” after the name of the person who proposed it) to banish any SBC church that placed women on the leadership hierarchy or openly supported that idea.

The policy, which needed two-thirds of the vote, two years in a tow, ultimately failed. They couldn’t get over the 67% threshold this time around.

Still, it’s hardly a victory when over 60% of SBC delegates support the Only-Men-In-Power doctrine. (Had this Amendment passed, the First Baptist Church of Alexandria would have been expelled from the SBC for having a female pastor and believing women can be co-equal leaders. As it stands, they were only kicked out for the latter offense.)

As reporter Kate Shellnutt of Christianity Today explained, the SBC will still be able to punish churches with “female lead pastors,” like they did with Saddleback, but they won’t have a zero tolerance policy for churches that place women in other leadership positions.

Had the Law Amendment passed, it could have led many churches to step out from under the SBC umbrella, as Bob Smietana noted at Religion News Service:

Southern Baptist churches have long relied on women to teach Sunday School, lead outreach ministries and do all the behind-the-scenes work to keep their congregations running smoothly. Southern Baptists also raise hundreds of millions of dollars every year in the names of legendary missionaries Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong. But they have also banned women from the pastorate — especially serving as senior pastor of a church. 

… Passing this new rule, known as the “Law Amendment,” could lead to hundreds or thousands of churches leaving the SBC.   

Just because the vote failed, however, doesn’t mean those churches will stay put.

The fact that this rule—no women in church leadership!—was even an issue tells you a lot about where the SBC is at. They’re literally arguing about a mild version of gender equality while the rest of their house remains on fire. Sexual abuse runs rampant within the SBC but a large part of the focus this year was on whether a woman serving as associate pastor was substantially different from a woman serving as senior pastor. For the majority of delegates, it’s better to have women labeled as servants and let them keep doing the same work, I guess.

Had they chosen to expel churches that employ women as pastors, the expectation was that a lot of churches would quit before they could be fired. Some still may.

Some churches made the decision to leave before they might be asked.

…

The Rev. Christy McMillin-Goodwin, pastor of First Baptist Church in Front Royal, Virginia, said she was surprised to discover that another Virginia clergyperson had listed her church as an example of one whose clerical leader was “sinning against God.”

“Our church decided to take a vote last May (2023) and the decision was unanimous,” she said of the church that had long stopped sending donations to the SBC and is affiliated with the more moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. “People actually yelled ‘Yes.’ It was very impassioned that we don’t want to be a part of an organization that does not fully support women in leadership in the church.”

They were proud to be part of a historically racist and currently anti-LGBTQ organization, but punishing churches that have women in leadership was a dealbreaker? Got it. (Someone make that make sense.)

It’s not just slightly progressive churches that need to decide their membership status. A lot of Black churches are making similar decisions, turning an organization that’s already known for its support of white Christian Nationalism into one that more closely looks the part.

When that happens, it will be a completely self-inflicted wound.

Telling women they’re equally capable of spreading the Gospel seems to be the sort of thing that would draw in more Christians than it alienates. But dogma, for many of these Southern Baptists, overrides common sense. The majority of Southern Baptists want to force underage girls to bear their rapists’ babies but they can’t handle a grown woman in the pulpit.

On top of that, the SBC also voted to oppose IVF treatments, even though plenty of white evangelicals have used the technology to have babies. While the vote wasn’t a surprise, it’s an extreme approach that may signal the next phase in the Christian Nationalist attack on reproductive rights.

IVF, of course, is a procedure in which a sperm and ova are joined outside the body, in a laboratory dish. It’s meant to help couples struggling with infertility or other health problems. The concern for anti-abortion extremists is that, in IVF, the embryos that aren’t implanted inside a uterus may be discarded or placed in a freezer. They believe that’s tantamount to murder. (Oklahoma State Senator Dusty Deevers has said parents who use IVF are “waging an assault against God.”)

If you cut through the fluff in the actual SBC amendment, these paragraphs are what it boils down to:

IVF destroys human life. IVF promotes eugenics. IVF will lead to the murder of millions of teeny tiny “human beings.” Therefore we must oppose IVF no matter what.

It’s a thoughtless statement from a heartless organization.

It’s also a slap in the face to all the Christian women who have used IVF to have babies because, without it, they were unable to have children.

While the resolution has no teeth, and people who use IVF will still be allowed to stay in their churches, it’s a signal that conservative Christians are not satisfied with the Supreme Court banning abortion rights and that they fully intend to support politicians who want to ban IVF, too. They will also use this vote to put more pressure on Republicans who support IVF because it’s overwhelmingly popular.

POLITICO puts it bluntly:

Though the resolution is nonbinding, nearly 13 million Southern Baptists across 45,000 churches may now face pressure from the pulpit or in individual conversations with pastors to eschew IVF.

…

The Southern Baptists’ Wednesday vote could encourage other evangelical denominations and churches to follow suit in declaring — or at least teaching about — their ethical concerns with IVF.

All of this is happening while membership in the SBC is at a 47-year low.

In 2003, the SBC had a record high 16.3 million members. In 2023, the number dropped to 12.99 million, continuing 17 straight years of declining membership.

Meanwhile, the sexual abuse crisis remains a massive problem for the SBC.

It all stems back to revelations from 2022 about the SBC, in which we learned that, over the previous decade, more than 250 SBC staffers or volunteers had been “charged with sex crimes” against more than 700 victims. We also learned in the SBC’s own investigation that a private list of alleged predators (that wasn’t shared with member churches) included “703 abusers, with 409 believed to be SBC-affiliated.” The situation was so bad that the Department of Justice announced it was investigating “multiple SBC entities,” though not specific individuals, about their mishandling of sexual abuse cases. Last month, a former seminary professor became the first person indicted in the investigation. (He has pleaded not guilty.)

This month, we got an update from the SBC as to how its internal investigations are going… and it was predictably disappointing. A volunteer task force that was supposed to implement reforms announced that it would close up shop. While they created some resources to help churches deal with the problem, the biggest reform they could have made was creating a database of abusers so that criminals and known problematic people couldn’t church-hop after getting kicked out of one place… but that “Ministry Check” never happened because of a lack of funding and fears over getting sued.

To date, no names appear on the “Ministry Check” website designed to track abusive pastors, despite a mandate from Southern Baptists to create the database. The committee has also found no permanent home or funding for abuse reforms, meaning that two of the task force’s chief tasks remain unfinished.

Because of liability concerns about the database, the task force set up a separate nonprofit to oversee the Ministry Check website. That new nonprofit, known as the Abuse Response Committee, has been unable to publish any names because of objections raised by SBC leaders.

The SBC raked in over $10 billion in 2023. They could fund abuse reforms if they really wanted to without even noticing a change in their bank account. They just don’t want to. They would rather form a task force with no teeth than risk the world finding out just how many of their leaders are alleged (or charged) abusers.

When Lifeway Christian Resources (an arm of the SBC) released the results of a survey of congregation leaders last month, they found that only 58% of them required background checks for staffers who work with kids. With the number that low, the abuse is bound to continue.

Lost in the shuffle of all these votes was the election of the SBC’s new president, Clint Pressley, a megachurch pastor from North Carolina who represents the more conservative wing of the already conservative denomination. (The Religion News Service article about his election says, in the first paragraph, that Pressley “does not wear jeans in the pulpit.” Because that would be heretical.)

Pastor Clint Pressley speaking at Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte (screenshot via YouTube)

Pressley supported the anti-women Law Amendment and had “questions” about the proposed database of abusers, in case you had any questions about where he stands. Oh. And a volunteer at his megachurch was arrested in May after being accused of sexually abusing his own daughter. (The church thankfully reported the man to secular authorities leading to his eventual arrest.)

Keep in mind that the second largest Protestant denomination recently voted to get rid of its anti-LGBTQ policies and allow gay clergy members.

The SBC, on the other hand, is still debating which way to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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Flash Fiction: Fences and Forgiveness

In the quiet suburb of Maplewood, the fences were high but the tensions were higher, especially between two neighbors: John Green and Rick Dale. Both had lived side by side for years without much interaction, their mutual disinterest a bridge too wide to cross. John, a meticulous gardener, took pride in his immaculate lawn and blooming flower beds. Rick, on the other hand, was the proud owner of a large, boisterous Rottweiler named Max, whose barks echoed through the neighborhood like rumbling thunder.

The uneasy peace shattered one sunny afternoon when Max managed to break through a weak spot in the fence and charged into John’s yard. John’s beloved Beagle, Toby, was enjoying the sunshine, and the intrusion ended in chaos. Toby was severely injured in the attack. Although he survived, the incident left him with lasting injuries and a palpable fear of other dogs.

Furious and heartbroken, John confronted Rick, demanding that he restrain Max and repair the fence. Rick, somewhat remorseful yet defensive, promised to fix the fence but shrugged off the severity of Toby’s injuries, chalking it up to animal instincts. The conversation ended with harsh words and heightened animosities, leaving John to stew in his anger as he cared for his recovering pet.

Over the following weeks, John watched as Rick made a half-hearted attempt to repair the fence but did nothing to train or better secure Max. The sight of Max roaming near the flimsy boundary fueled John’s resentment. Sleepless nights plotting revenge became his new routine. He imagined sabotaging Rick’s yard, lodging complaints with the homeowners’ association, or even letting Max out to get him impounded. Each scenario played out in his mind with a vindictive satisfaction.

One evening, as John sat on his porch, his plotting was interrupted by the sight of Toby, tail wagging, trying to peek through the fence at Max. Despite his fear, Toby’s curiosity about his neighbor seemed undiminished. It was then that John realized that his desire for revenge was poisoning him more than it was affecting Rick or Max. The sight of Toby, still gentle and forgiving, made John ashamed of his dark thoughts.

With a deep breath, John decided on a different course of action. The next morning, he invited Rick over for coffee. Rick, surprised by the gesture, accepted cautiously. Over cups of strong brew, John expressed his fears for Toby’s safety and his frustration with the ongoing situation. He proposed they jointly pay for a professional to reinforce the fence and even suggested they could share the costs of a trainer for Max.

To John’s surprise, Rick agreed, embarrassed by his previous neglect and moved by John’s change in approach. The men spent the next few Saturdays working on the fence, their cooperation awkward at first but gradually becoming more amicable. Max, under the guidance of a trainer, became less aggressive, and Toby slowly regained his confidence.

Months later, John and Rick, now on much friendlier terms, watched as Toby and Max cautiously sniffed each other through the secure fence. It wasn’t a perfect friendship, but it was a peace hard-earned and much preferred over the bitterness of revenge. In repairing the fence, they had also mended fences of a different sort, learning that forgiveness could be more satisfying than retribution.

Novel Excerpts–The Boaz Schoolteacher, Chapter 27

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 27

“I have a god-awful prediction unless we do the hell something.”  Ryan said as he walked into Pastor Warren’s man-cave after Prayer Meeting Wednesday night.

“Sounds like you Radford, always wanting to stir something up so we can have more of these damn meetings.”  Justin Adams said standing and gazing into a double-doored closet that contained Warren’s media collection, much of which he acquired from his father and grandfather, both former residents of the Church’s parsonage.  The only thing Warren had added was 200 porn movies.

“Adams, you apparently haven’t heard.  Your monthly head-in-the-sand trips to the beach keeps you behind.  I said a good one, your behind is exposed when you’re so disconnected.”  Ryan and Justin were best of friends but loved giving each other hell.

“Their quarterly, not monthly trips.  You guys would benefit from a few days of uninterrupted silence.”  Justin said opening a CD case and inserting “A Fun Day at the Water Park” into Warren’s DVD player.

“Not yet Adams, maybe when we finish.”  Danny Ericson said as he joined Warren, Fulton, and Ryan at the big round table by the windows.  “Ryan, tell Justin what triggered our little investigation and what we learned.

“Yesterday afternoon I picked up Riley at Kay-La’s Gymnastics.  I was running a few minutes late and she was standing outside with Cullie Sims and Cindy Barker’s daughter, Alysa.  Riley said the three of them are not friends and so she wasn’t paying them much attention but was close enough to hear Alysa ask Cullie why her mother had to go see Mr. Williams.  Cullie had responded, ‘Mother’s still tore up over losing my grandmother and just wanted to see what Mr. Williams had seen.’”

“Here’s what Ralph told me this afternoon.”  Danny pulled a notepad from his shirt pocket and laid it in front of him on the table.  ‘I told her I saw you (Ralph is speaking of me) and a man that at first I thought was Dale Joiner, but now I’m not sure that’s who you had in your truck.’  That’s exactly what he said.  I wrote it down after driving away from Ralph’s house.”

“I take it you went to see Williams after Ryan passed along what his daughter Riley told him?”  Justin asked, still trying to catch up on the full story.

Danny continued.  “I went under the ruse that Dale might entertain a much lower offer than his asking price for his pasture.  Ralph really wants that forty acres.  I slipped into our conversation that I had heard that Katie had come to see him.  I acted as though the Church was very concerned about her and wanted to support her in any way we could.  I’m sure he bought into my slurp slop story of how Raymond thought the moon rose and set with Darla.”

“I think it’s the sun and not the moon.”  Fulton added.

“Either way, Ralph didn’t have a clue that he was being interrogated.  I left there believing he had admitted to Katie that Nathan Johnson could have been in the truck with me.”

“What?  How would he know anything about Johnson?”  Justin asked, scrolling through Facebook on his iPhone.

“That’s not what I meant.  I only meant that he was doubtful about my passenger being Dale Joiner.  This opens the door to a lot of questioning if Sheriff Waldrup hears this and wants to know who was with me.  Hell, Williams originally didn’t even tell the Sheriff about seeing me.”  Danny said flipping his notepad to another page.  “Here it is, ‘All I told Waldrup was I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.’  Williams confirmed this a second time when I asked him again in a slightly different way.”

“What else did Ralph say he and Katie talked about?”  Fulton asked.

“That’s it.  Oh, he did mention Katie being interested in some dumb candy wrapper he had found that morning along the road.”  Justin said, closing his notepad and returning it to his shirt pocket.  “I didn’t write it down.”

“Write what down?”  Justin and Ryan both asked at the same time.

“The name of the candy bar.  What the hell was that?”  Danny said, standing and walking towards the bar.

“You never know what can become an investigator’s dream?”  Fulton said.  “Bring me a beer Danny, and a candy bar if you have one.”  The first laugh of the night finally appeared from everyone present, except Fulton.  “I didn’t mean that to be funny.”

“Lonely Star Chocolate or something like that.”  Danny said, returning to the table with two Bud Lights, handing one to Fulton.

“That’s just piss perfect.”  Fulton said slamming his beer can down on the table and glaring at Danny.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”  Danny said pushing his chair back from the table.

“You idiot.  Lone Star refers to Texas.  Did your twin idiot passenger throw out his litter after you too deposited Darla’s body by Ralph’s pond?”  Fulton’s intelligence had kept the five of them out of trouble on more than one occasion.

“Hey, I’m not my brother’s keeper.”  Danny now was clearly upset, and his face was red hot.

“Let’s settle down guys.  For sure, we are our brother’s keeper.”  Pastor Warren said, standing and leaning against the floor-to-ceiling windows.  “Danny, look at that moon.”  Warren turned and pointed outside, up toward a full moon, whose light was making its way through the thick cover of leaves on the trees surrounding the patio and rear entrance to his man-cave.  “The moon simply reflects the sun’s light and we have to be willing to serve our brothers.  That’s what you did when Ryan and Justin called you after discovering the missing videotape and silencing Darla.  It was a mere coincidence that Nathan was in town and with you that morning.  I do wish he hadn’t been so sloppy.”

“And, not been so dumb to steal the 22 pistol.”  Justin added.

“Here’s the deal my moon brothers.”  Fulton said looking at Warren as though making fun of the Pastor.  “Katie is even more of a problem than we ever dreamed.  No doubt she has proof we raped her back in 2002, thanks to Ryan and the missing videotape.  And, now, she has information we likely were involved in her mother’s death.”

Ryan interrupted Fulton, “I think, even before she went to see Williams, she was suspicious.  Later that morning I checked the caller ID on her and Raymond’s land line.  Darla had called Beverly Sims.  Her home number.  I checked it with the phone book.  Also, Beverly’s caretaker, Sammie, showed up that morning around 7:45 looking for Darla.  To me, that means Katie knew her mother was okay shortly before 6:00 a.m., that’s the time of the call to the Sims residence.  I bet Darla told them that Justin and I were there in the house.  Yes, no doubt, Katie, even before her little trip to see Ralph, had real suspicions that we were involved in Darla’s death.”

“We’ve got to take care of her.  I know it’s not a good choice.  But, for me, I’d rather the videotape be disclosed than to be charged with murder.  I’ve consulted with an attorney, don’t worry, it was one out of state.  We can’t be prosecuted for the rape.  The worst thing from a legal standpoint is a civil lawsuit.  Release of the videotape showing the five of us raping Katie would destroy us but at least we would still have our freedom.  If we can get to Katie before she communicates the findings she gathered from Williams, then Darla’s death can’t be linked back to us.”  Pastor Warren said.

“You’re being a little star-eyed.”  Fulton said, standing and walking to Warren, still gazing through the windows.  “Moon-eyed maybe.  Williams himself is also a problem.  He needs to be silenced.  As does Katie.”

Over the next hour, the five of them, the five referred to by Katie as the Faking Five, brainstormed the best way for the inquisitive Katie and the white-bearded Williams to meet their maker.  At 10:00 p.m., plan in head and hand, the five settled comfortably onto leather couches and chairs around Warren’s one-hundred inch flat-screen TV and spent an hour enjoying “A Fun Day at the Water Park.”

Novel Excerpts–The Boaz Schoolteacher, Chapter 26

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 26

Tuesday was the first day Cindy had come to my room during my planning period since before Labor Day.  She stayed until the end of my lunch break, a few minutes before noon.  It was not vocabulary words, short stories, or sentence and paragraph structures she wanted to talk about.  It was her idea of how to set up Patrick Wilkins.

“Ever since Saturday night’s church social all I have thought about is how to balance the scales with that sexual pervert known around here as the Assistant Principal.  I can’t stand even saying his name.”  Cindy said, sitting her book bag on one of the two chairs across from my desk in my little office.

“What got you so riled up.  He wasn’t even there.”

“Oh yes he was.  After you left, Steve helped Lane move the tables back to the storage room and arrange the chairs for Jared Insley’s Sunday School class.  Kathy, Lane’s wife, and I were standing inside the Fellowship Hall towards the back door talking and waiting on the men to finish when the asshole walked in.”

“You’re beginning to remind me of myself.  However, I would say he is horribly worse than that.  He is a criminal asshole.”  I added.

“I almost attacked him when he said, ‘good evening ladies, where are our lucky men.’  Of all things to say, especially at church.  That man apparently thinks of sex all the time.”  Cindy said sitting in the chair by her bag covered with giant sunflowers embroidered on both the front and back.

“That’s exactly what he deserves, even worse.  But, I’m not sure that’s the smartest way of dealing with him.  I want to be as open and direct as I can my dear friend.  Don’t make the same mistake I made when the Faking Five raped me.  That was nearly fifteen years ago.  Now, it’s too late for them to be criminally charged in Alabama since the statute of limitations is only ten years for rape unless DNA evidence can identify a suspect.  You are not so constrained.  I still believe you should report what happened to you, what the criminal asshole did to you.”  Right now, there was nothing I wanted more than for Cindy to report the crime.

“Katie, I know you believe you are looking out for my best interest.  I know you care for me and are trying to help but it’s impossible for you to know, really know, how complaining to the police and all that would naturally follow from doing so, how my life as I know it, would be over.  You don’t know Steve the way I do.  And, you certainly didn’t know him back in his younger years.  I’m certain my horrible news would throw him into a tailspin and he would get his revenge.  Katie, Steve would literally gut bastard Wilkins, and that would be after he had already cut his balls off.  I couldn’t live if Steve went to prison.”

“Aren’t you considering doing the same thing?  How would Steve fare if you went to prison?”  I had to make Cindy see she was being irrational.

“You’re not seeing the one major difference.  Steve would act impulsively, simply go kill Wilkins almost immediately after I told him, or he heard the news.  My idea is to plot and plan, like I do with my writing.  In that sense, Steve is more like you and your writing.  He is a seat-of-the-pants type revenge seeker.”

“In my opinion, either way can lead to the same destination.  Your way may be slower but if Wilkins turns up dead there will be an investigation.”  I said, losing interest and patience in mine and Cindy’s conversation.

“Who said I want to kill my rapist?”  Cindy said as she pulled a standard three-subject, wire-ringed, hole-punched, college-ruled notebook from her book bag.  Here, look at this.”

She flipped it open to the first page.  On the top half was a rudimentary, penciled drawing.  At the bottom I could see a numbered list of items under the heading, ‘Action Steps.’  “I can already see the Prosecutor’s first Exhibit at your murder trial.”

“You keep forgetting, I’m not interested in that.  Not right now at least.  Phase one is innocuous.  It’s simply a prank.  I do admit it is an embarrassing prank.  For Wilkins that is.”

“I might as well ask you to tell me about your little prank.  You’re not going to brainstorm with me how best to present The Snows of Kilimanjaro to my tenth graders unless I do.”  If Cindy was one thing, she was determined.

“I call it Operation Screen-Saver.  I want to install one on both his school and church computers.”  She flipped a page in her notebook and I saw another drawing and another set of ‘Action Steps.’  The operation will be successful if we get only one installed.”

“What streaming words do you have in mind for the world to see as they scroll across a Wilkins computer?”

“I’m not exactly sure, but ‘Women, run, run.  I’m a rapist,’ comes to mind as the front-runner phrase.”  Cindy said looking at me with a sly grin and a curled lip.

“A second ago, did I hear you say ‘we’?”  I was not liking this at all.  Cindy had simply assumed I would be a co-conspirator.

“Yes, I can’t do it without you.  I assumed from our earlier discussion that we had agreed our project, Six Red Apples, was going to be a team effort.  I help you get back at the Faking Five, by the way, I love that label, and you help me destroy asshole Wilkins.”  Cindy wasn’t wrong in her interpretation of that conversation.

“I guess I have to admit you are right.  I confess I did agree, but I never agreed to commit a crime.”

“This isn’t a crime.  Surely.”

The only thing we accomplished from 10:30 until nearly noon was review and banter about both lists of action steps and how they related to geographic locations on Cindy’s rudimentary but impressive drawings.  We also devoured our lunches.  It seemed taking the first innocent steps towards a life of crime triggered an aggressive appetite.

After school, I dropped Cullie and Alysa off at Kay-La’s Gymnastics & Cheerleading on Mill Avenue.  Both girls had recently decided they wanted to go out for cheerleader at the end of the school year.  I hated to tell them but, to me, neither one had the physical skills, flexibility, and coordination for such a sport.  I kept my mouth shut.  Instead, as they exited the car I said, “I’m proud of you two girls.  Both of you sure have the brains for learning the routines.”

At 3:30 p.m., I pulled to a stop at the end of Ralph Williams driveway, next to a giant screened-in porch nestled beside an over-sized garage.  A tall and thin man with at least a week’s worth of snow-white whiskers walked down the porch steps when I stood outside my car.

“May I help you?”

“Are you Ralph Williams?”  I said knowing it had to be him but as far as I knew I had never seen the man.  It could have been his father or brother or just a visiting neighbor.

“I am.  I hope I’m not in trouble.  You look like you are either a social worker or better yet, a prize-giver with Publishing Clearing House.”  He said as a short and stocky woman opened the screen-door and stood on the top step.  I thought she might be marking her ground, like she was telling me, ‘he’s my man, don’t you get any ideas.’  I almost laughed out loud.

“I’m Katie Sims.  We’ve been talking online, and I just wanted to meet you.”  I hadn’t planned that at all.  Usually, my smart-ass remarks didn’t set well, they often returned like a boomerang.  I was surprised to hear Ralph’s response.

“I was hoping today would be the day.  You are even more gorgeous than I imagined.  The naked pictures you sent do not do you justice.”  He said with a big grin alternating looking at me and then at the woman, I assumed his wife, standing, not smiling, now on the second step.

“I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have said that.  I’m not sure why I did.”

“It’s certainly not every day that a young, nice-looking woman comes by and flirts with my Ralph.  You too are a match.  He is the best comedian in Boaz.”  The bottle brunette said, now smiling and opening the screen-door and motioning me to come inside.

“I guess laughter is good medicine as I’ve heard all my life.  Let’s start over.  I’m Katie Sims.  You found my mother dead in your pasture.”

“Oh dear, I’m so very sorry for your loss and especially for how she died.”  I could tell Ralph was a real gentleman, even though the white beard someway didn’t seem to fit.  “Please come in.  Glenda will fetch us some lemonade.”

“Thank you.”  I said and accepted the couple’s invitation to go inside.  After he instructed me to sit where I wanted he repeated his condolences concerning Darla.  Glenda rejoined us with fresh-squeezed lemonade and was about to sit down when I heard their phone ring.  She disappeared once again.

“I’ve been meaning to come see you.  I hope you don’t mind me asking you a few questions.”  I said, not wanting to linger any longer without gaining some information.  I did have two teenage girls to pick up by 4:45.

“Not at all.  Ask anything you want.  I’ve been expecting you.”

“According to Sheriff Waldrup, that morning you didn’t see anybody here and about the neighborhood before you discovered Darla, my mother’s body.  Right?”

“No, that’s not exactly right.  The Sheriff’s question was, have you seen anyone or anything out of the ordinary?  To that I told him no.”

“So, that doesn’t mean you didn’t see anyone, you might have seen something you considered ordinary?  Or, am I confused?  I get that way fairly often.”  I said, wanting to be careful with the facts.

“Now you’re correct.”  Ralph said, scratching his beard.

“I take it you don’t normally have a beard?  Sorry, that’s none of my business.”

“You are quite unique.  I like your style.  The beard.  I’m getting a head start for Christmas.  I play Santa Claus in a little skit our church puts on every year.”

“Which church?”  I asked.

“Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, just up the road.”

“I’m sure you are an excellent actor.  I’ve seen you at work.”

“No compliment needed.  I just try to be myself and love on the kids.”

“Back to ordinary vs out of the ordinary.  Can you tell me everyone, everything, you saw that morning before you found my mother?”

“That’s easy, I saw Danny Ericson driving his gray Chevrolet Silverado.  He was going that way.”  Ralph pointed toward the south, away from Boaz.

“And, I assume you are saying that wasn’t out of the ordinary?”

“Not at all, at least it was recently ordinary? 

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Come here, let me show you.”  He led me off the porch and back outside onto his driveway.  We stood beside my car.  “See that big pasture across the road?”  Ralph pointed, now eastward and straight across the road from his and Glenda’s house.

“Yes.”  I saw it and saw an Ericson Real Estate sign beside a gate leading into the pasture.

“Danny was driving slow that morning.  He had someone with him.  I think it was Dale Joiner.  He owns that pasture.”

“I seem to remember that someone, maybe it was Sheriff Waldrup, said something about you wanting to buy that land.”  I was beginning to get a little excited.  Maybe these two saw something.  Oh my gosh, I didn’t look forward to having to talk with Danny Ericson.

“For a while I did.  Before Danny listed it for Dale, he dropped by and asked me if I would be interested.  I guess he had already talked with Dale and he hadn’t committed to listing with Ericson Real Estate.  It was, I suspect, Danny’s way of manipulating a commission out of the sale.

“You decided against it I assume.  It looks like it’s still for sale.”

“Right.  It’s priced way too rich for my blood.”

“Back to that morning.  Let me restate what I’m hearing you say.  You said you saw Danny’s truck.  Sorry, did you say where you were when you saw him?”

“I don’t think I did.  It was early for me and Glenda.  Since I retired from Goodyear we don’t get up at 4:00 a.m. anymore.  I think it was around 7:15, but it might have been a little later.  I was pouring a cup of coffee, standing at that window.”  Ralph said pointing to a double window I assumed was from the kitchen.

“Just looking out your kitchen window?”  I said.

“Yes.  As I said, Danny was driving slowly, almost like he had been stopped, or maybe had turned around.  Not going anywhere near the speed limit, thirty-five I think.  When I first saw Danny, I couldn’t make out who was with him.  Course, I couldn’t make out Danny either, but I knew it was his truck.  I could see that god-awful Crimson Tide tag on his front bumper.”

“And, he just drove on by?”  I asked.

“He did, but I got a better look when I walked into the living room as they were passing.  At first, I thought it was Dale Joiner as Danny’s passenger, sitting by the window closest to our house.  I must tell you, now that I’m really thinking about it, I may have lied, unintentionally, to Sheriff Waldrup.  I’m thinking now there had been something out of the ordinary that morning.  Dale Joiner, if that’s who Danny’s passenger was, looked awfully, oh, what’s the word, part of it sounds like a shovel?”

“Disheveled?”  I asked.

“Yes, I think that’s the right word.”

“It means the person is untidy, disordered, speaking of their hair, clothes, or appearance.”  I said, having used the word in my early morning writing just a day or two ago.

“Definitely, that’s right.  Dale didn’t look like himself.  He’s usually neat, well-dressed, and is downright a fanatic about his hair.  Hell, sorry.  Now, I’m thinking about something else.  I don’t ever remember Dale having a beard.”

“Could it be that you aren’t sure it was Dale Joiner?”  I asked.

“Now that we’ve had this little discussion, I sure wouldn’t bet on it.  It seems my mind just automatically filled in that name, the information that I am now unsure of.”

“Our minds do that.  It could have been that when you saw Danny Ericson’s truck and recalled your dealings with him over the pasture across the road, along with Dale Joiner as owner of that land, that your mind offered you a picture of what was going on.  Danny was out with Dale Joiner driving by the land he had just listed.”  I tried to make sense of what had happened to Ralph, a man who, to me, could be a spitting image of the type of man I envisioned Sheriff Wayne Waldrup to be.

“That makes sense now.  Come to think of it, I think it was just the day before that Danny’s real estate sign went up on Dale’s pasture.”

“I’m really thankful you’ve taken the time to talk with me.  One other question if that’s okay.”

“Sure, I’ve got until 5:00.  That’s when I must be seated for supper.  Glenda is pretty particular about meal times.”

“Can you think of anything else that happened that morning, whether it seemed odd or not?”

“Not really because I’m more forgetful than I used to be.  After I discovered your mother’s body and came back to the house to call 911, I walked down the road to the gate, my gate, there, you see?”

Ralph pointed to a gate that ran parallel to Pleasant Hill Cut-Off road, that led into his pasture and on toward his pond.

He continued, “when I reached the gate I noticed my chain was backwards.  I always loop it a certain way.  If we were down there I’d show you.  I’d also show you the lock I added since that day.”

“So, you believe someone else had tampered with your chain and maybe, possibly, had opened and closed your gate?”

“Yes, but I didn’t see any strange tire tracks when I walked on down to the pond.  I’ve got several neighbors I let fish, so they come in on their own and drive their truck or whatever down closer.”

“Thanks again.  It’s been nice meeting you.”  I said.

“Same to you Miss Sims.  I see you don’t have a ring.”

“No, I’m single.  Are you looking?”  I probably needed to be on some type medication.  I was certainly headed for trouble with my smart-ass mouth.”

“Not yet, but who knows what tomorrow will bring.  Seriously, Glenda and I would love to get to know you and your daughter.”

“Daughter?  How did you know I had a daughter?”

“I figured only a girl would have a pink book bag.  I saw it in the backseat of your car.”

“You are too much.  Cullie and I just might come see you, maybe go fishing.”

“Anytime.”

“I have to run; my daughter is waiting.”  By now I was standing beside my car with the driver’s door open.  “Take care.”  I sat down and just before I closed the door Ralph motioned me to stop.

“One other thing, probably nothing but you did ask.  Give me just a minute.”  He walked to the garage and inside.  Within a few seconds he reappeared and returned to my car.  I was standing now.  “That morning, I found this, just inside the gate.”  He handed me a yellow and gold wrapper with blue and red lettering across the front.  It read ‘Lone Star Candy Bar.’  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this brand.  Have you?”

I looked at both sides of the wrapper and noticed an address, 254 E Main, Fredericksburg, Texas 78624, along with a phone number, (830)990-9100.  “No, I’m pretty sure I haven’t.”

“It’s amazing what type of litter I find along this road.  You would think people could find a trash can.”

I felt bold.  “Do you mind if I keep this?”

“No, not at all.  It’s just garbage.  I wouldn’t still have it, but I don’t empty the garage garbage-can but once per month.”

“I have to run.  See you soon I hope.”  I backed out of his driveway waving at Ralph the whole way.  He was a genuine man.  He reminded me so much of Papa.  It wouldn’t do for Nanny to ever be around this tall and thin man with a wicked sense of humor.  She would declare Papa had come back to life.

I tucked the Lone Star Candy Bar wrapper inside my book bag and made it to Kay-La’s Gymnastics at 4:50 p.m.  I was greeted by four eyes standing alone outside a locked building, visually shouting, ‘where on earth have you been?’

Snowflake Summaries–The Tangent Objective, by Lawrence Sanders

The primary aim of the "Snowflake Summaries" blog category is to showcase the creative writing of great authors. I use Randy Ingermanson's 'Snowflake' method to create these summaries. Here's a brief description of the one-sentence, one-paragraph, and one-page summary method.

Hopefully, these posts will motivate you to read great fiction and to write your own novel, whether your first or your fifteenth. 

The first great novelist I'll start with is Lawrence Sanders. Here's a short biography.

The Tangent Objective, by Lawrence Sanders

**”The Tangent Objective” by Lawrence Sanders** is a gripping thriller that dives into the murky waters of international intrigue and corruption, centered around a lawyer’s perilous mission in Africa.

### One Sentence Summary:

In **”The Tangent Objective,”** lawyer Gregory Duncan finds himself entangled in a dangerous web of corruption and conspiracy as he navigates the political and corporate battles over oil in a turbulent African nation.

### One Paragraph Summary:

**”The Tangent Objective”** follows Gregory Duncan, a sharp and ambitious lawyer from New York, who is hired by a powerful corporation to secure lucrative oil contracts in the fictional African country of Luandia. As he arrives in Africa, he quickly becomes a pawn in a complex plot involving multinational corporations, cold-blooded mercenaries, and the country’s struggling government. Tasked with negotiating deals that favor his employers, Duncan’s eyes are opened to the brutal realities of exploitation and geopolitical gamesmanship. His journey from a naive lawyer to a hardened realist is fraught with moral dilemmas and physical dangers, as he allies with unexpected partners to expose the corruption and perhaps redeem his own complicity in the exploitation.

### One Page Summary:

**”The Tangent Objective”** by Lawrence Sanders is a compelling exploration of the intersection between corporate greed, international politics, and human rights. The protagonist, Gregory Duncan, is a young and somewhat idealistic corporate lawyer from New York who sees a job opportunity as a chance to escape his unsatisfying job and a broken relationship. He is hired by an international consortium to facilitate oil deals in Luandia, a country rich in resources but plagued by political instability and poverty.

Upon his arrival in Africa, Duncan is thrust into a world far removed from his previous life. He encounters a diverse cast of characters, including ruthless corporate executives, cynical mercenaries, corrupt government officials, and desperate rebels. Each of these players is driven by their own agendas, and Duncan must navigate their manipulations and betrayals. He is introduced to the harsh realities of business in developing countries, where the rules of engagement are dictated by power and money, not law and ethics.

As Duncan delves deeper into his work, he becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the role he plays in the exploitation of Luandia’s resources. He witnesses firsthand the impact of foreign intervention on the local population, including environmental damage, exploitation of labor, and the perpetuation of violence. These experiences ignite a change in him, prompting him to reconsider his values and his place in the world.

The narrative tension escalates when Duncan discovers a conspiracy that goes beyond mere corporate greed—a plot that threatens the very stability of Luandia and the lives of its citizens. With the help of a seasoned journalist and a disillusioned mercenary, he sets out to expose the conspiracy, but his actions put him at great personal risk. Sanders expertly weaves a story of suspense and action, as Duncan and his allies race against time to prevent a catastrophe.

In the climactic conclusion, Duncan confronts both the external enemies and his own internal conflicts. The resolution of the plot sees him taking drastic measures to thwart the plans of the consortium, redefining his sense of justice and morality. Through this journey, Duncan emerges as a more complex and enlightened character, though at significant personal cost.

**”The Tangent Objective”** is a thriller that not only entertains but also challenges the reader to think critically about the moral implications of global commerce and foreign policy. Lawrence Sanders crafts a narrative that is rich in detail and scope, offering a gritty and realistic look at the complexities of African politics and Western involvement. The novel stands out for its dynamic characters, fast-paced plot, and a thought-provoking message about the price of progress and who pays it.

Novel Excerpts–The Boaz Schoolteacher, Chapter 25

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 25

It’s Monday morning, September 11th, sixteen years after the event now known simply as 9/11.  That early Tuesday morning in 2001, the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda crashed two hijacked commercial airplanes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.  Less than two hours later, both buildings themselves crashed to the ground in a pile of rubble.  After my writing time this morning in the basement I was glad I had changed my mind on altering today’s lesson plans to focus on such a tragedy.  But, I would give each class an opportunity to have a moment of silence to remember all the victims from the event that changed the world forever.  I was feeling guilty over not doing more for the victims but ultimately realized I didn’t have a day to spare if I wanted to give my students the hand-holding attention they would need to complete a novel by the end of the year.  Most mornings I regretted considering such an audacious idea.

This morning, showering and getting dressed for school, I was happy I had only watched one episode of The Walton’s with Nanny and Sammie last night.  With Cullie at Alysa’s working on an American History project I had returned to my room and spent three hours sitting at my desk working on today’s presentation for my Creative Writing class.  A few days earlier I had the thought for the first time that I had to refine the novel writing project.  It had been ridiculous that I had first stated that my twenty students, broken up into five groups of four, would produce five books, each with four authors.  At best, we might be able to produce one novel.  Thus, my change of mind demanded I inform the class that their groups would remain intact, but their focus would change.  Each group would focus on one of the five antagonists.  I myself would be primarily responsible for drafting scenes dealing with Stella, our protagonist, when she wasn’t dealing directly with an antagonist. 

Today, I would also introduce character sketching.  I suspected the students were more interested in creating a scene, for the novel that is, than engaging in the prewriting phase.  However, novel writing is anything but glamorous.  It is tediously hard work.  And, like most things in life, is better accomplished with a plan.

At my little desk last night, I had determined that my twenty students and I would begin with Mason Campbell, the Mayor of Ellijay, Georgia.  My purpose in relaying my own character sketch was not to dictate to Group 1 (the Mason Campbell group) who he was to be in the book, but simply to give them an idea of the method to use in building and describing their assigned character.

To be completely honest, I really did not like the prewriting phase.  I personally was a seat-of-the-pants type writer, versus what novel writing experts referred to as plotters or planners.  But, I also realized that most writers, especially brand-new fiction writers, didn’t have a developed enough imagination nor a sufficient knowledge of the necessary components of a modern story to simply sit down and start writing.  They needed an outline and an outline needed fully-developed characters.  Those experts typically argued that, “you need to know everything possible about your character, his eye and hair color, his height, weight, and build, his hobbies,” and on and on, including “his fatal flaw.” 

That final little thing was the big thing according to the experts.  “Every protagonist has a flaw that defines him, something that has happened in his life, usually some traumatic physical or emotional experience that has so affected him that he now believes a lie.”  One example that is often used is the one where Billy’s fiancé died in a robbery where he was present, and he couldn’t save her.  After it happened and even now, some five years later, he believes he is unworthy of a woman’s love.  This is the lie he believes, and it is causing him major problems with every woman he encounters and later tries to date.  For Billy to have a positive character arc (he is positively transformed by the end of the novel) he must deal with this lie.

For Mason Campbell, I would offer him to the class and primarily to Group 1 as an arrogant, ex-football star who returned to Ellijay after winning a national championship with the Georgia Bulldogs.  Mason’s father was a former mayor and was still well respected.  Mason was used to getting his way in every area of life, especially with the ladies.  The lie that Mason believed was that no matter what trouble he got into, there was a way out, one that was, at most, slightly painful.  He believed this lie because that’s the way it had been all his life, but the focus experience was in college when he was accused of raping a cheerleader.  The short of it was Mason’s father came, once again, to his rescue.  This time, with the behind the scenes disappearance of the victim.

At 2:40 p.m., I was satisfied.  My day had been virtually perfect.  Every class seemed unusually attentive, focused, self-policing even.  My Creative Writing class that had just ended was the best prepared and engaged of any day so far.  They critiqued my Mason Campbell character sketch in ways I did not anticipate, even made me see it for its shallowness and the likelihood it would produce a story that was tired and boring.  I knew this day had to be a complete aberration, but I accepted it as a gift from God. 

When Cullie came into my room after the last bell, I knew instantly something was wrong.  Her eyes were red and puffy.  The mascara above her left eye had transformed into what appeared a horribly black birthmark that encircled the eye like a giant C.  No doubt she had been crying.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” 

“I hate school and I hate my life.”  Cullie said, throwing her book bag onto the floor halfway before she reached my desk at the head of the classroom.

“You want to talk about it?”  I said.

“No, I just wish Daddy were here.  In English class we were working in small groups on interpreting a silly little poem about a family of birds.  Riley Radford, the queen bee of all ninth-grade queen bees, who seems to hate me, said, ‘what type of name is Cullie?  Sounds like you are a cull.  That’s more a boy’s name, like Cullen.  Is your dad named Cullen?  You probably don’t even know who your dad is, kinda like your mom.’  She just kept on.  I told her my dad was Colton and he was coming during Christmas.  I hate her.”

How in the hell had this happened?  Mine and Cullie’s history center stage in her ninth grade English class, albeit in a small group?  I knew of Riley Radford, it was Ryan and Karla Radford’s oldest daughter.  Come to think of it, her and Cullie could almost pass for twins.  What if?  Hell no, I couldn’t dare think that. 

“Honey now is a good time to thicken your skin.  Kids can be horribly mean, even hateful.”  I said, not knowing exactly what to say.

“If Daddy were here, he would tell me to burn Riley’s locker or sneak into her house and cut off a foot of her long and silky red hair.”

“He would do no such thing.  If he did say that he wouldn’t be serious.”  I wanted to lay my head down on my desk or run out into the hall screaming.  Colton Lee Brunner was not Cullie’s father, but she certainly didn’t know that.  He was a scapegoat, the man I was dating, seriously, in 2002 when I was raped.  One decision had altered my life.  At the last minute he had to change our plans.  He and I had already purchased our tickets to fly from Los Angeles to Birmingham and drive on up to Boaz.  That was Christmas 2002 when his estranged brother was murdered.  Colton stayed to support his mother.  I had flown, by myself, home for the holidays.  But for that random, drive-by shooting and Colton’s decision to forfeit his ticket and remain in Los Angeles, I would not be having to lie to Cullie about her father.  Then, I was once again reminded of the horribly wonderful truth.  But for Colton staying in Los Angeles, there would be no Cullie.  He would have been with me when I had visited old downtown Boaz and its dilapidated Fountain, and I would never have been gang-raped. The gang-rape that had produced my darling daughter was also my traumatic, life-changing event, my fatal flaw.  The lie that it had spawned was that I too, like Billy in my Creative Writing class example, believed I was unworthy of love.  But, that wasn’t the only lie it spawned.  I had lied to Cullie about her father.  In truth, I did not know who her father was.  Did Riley Radford’s statement to Cullie, the daughter of Ryan Radford, portend the discovery and revelation by Cullie of this lie?

I felt Cullie shaking my arm.  “Earth to Katie.  Listen to me, one thing is for sure, Daddy would tell me something, give me some real tangible advice.  That’s more than you could ever hear from your father.  You never could even talk to him since you never knew who he was.”  I now regret having told Cullie about how I came to be.  Sometimes the truth is too dangerous and needs to be altered.  I now wish I had, along with Darla’s help, created a story, a beautiful love story that had ended tragically in the sudden, unexpected death of Darla’s Romeo, but only after I had been conceived.  I hadn’t done that. 

I had chosen truth over comfort.  As I leaned back against my desk looking over at the back of Cullie’s head and her curly black hair while she stared into an open refrigerator in the corner behind my bookshelves, my gut felt like it had been jerked into a thousand knots.  How was this going to play out?  Was it time to tell Cullie about how she had come to be?  Was it time to tell her the truth?  She deserved to know the truth.  She deserved to know her real father.  I almost laughed out loud.  I didn’t even know which one of five men had given me the best gift of my life.  Truth for sure, was always stranger than fiction.

Novel Excerpts–The Boaz Schoolteacher, Chapter 24

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 24

Sunday afternoon after church I was laying in my bed dozing after having read over a hundred Facebook comments, most all concerning the Real Justice project, when Sheriff Waldrup called.

After two rounds of pleasantries, he said, “we got him.  The man who pawned the murder weapon.  From the camera at Joe’s Pawn Shop.  I’m sorry I didn’t call last night but wanted to have a more complete picture.”

“That’s good news.  Where did you find him?”

“Floyd County Sheriff’s Department in Rome, Georgia arrested him late yesterday afternoon.  They received an anonymous tip and it was a good one.  Deputies arrested our man at an old roach-infested motel in south Rome next to the long-abandoned railroad line from Piedmont to Atlanta.  They arrested him without incident.”

“Who is he?”  I asked.

“His name is Nathan Johnson.  He’s a thirty-seven-year-old, ex-con.  He looks twice his age.  From what we’ve been able to gather he’s a drifter from Texas.”

“You said, ‘our man.’  I assume he has confessed?”  This was all sounding too good to be true.  You know how that usually winds up.  My gut was trying to tell me something, but I tried to suppress the feelings.  I usually screwed up when following my gut.

“No. Sorry. He’s not saying much at all, certainly hasn’t confessed.  I shouldn’t have used those words.  I only meant we got the man we were looking for.  Our prime suspect.”  The more I talked with Sheriff Waldrup the more I liked him.  He was a true gentleman and genuine with his openness.  When he was unclear he admitted it.  I liked a man who, unpretentious, was the same on the outside and the inside.

“If I had to bet right now I would say there is much more to this story than simply an ex-con drifter passing through Boaz who happened upon a lost and wandering Darla secluded next to a pond and shot her for no reason in the back of the head with a gun that he was brilliant enough to try and pawn one community over.”  I said.

“I had a feeling you were not the average bear.  No insult intended.  Katie, I feel the same way and it’s not just a feeling.  I have something else to tell you, but this must remain between us.  I hope you know I always try to keep the victim’s family fully informed but there are times I must withhold information for the benefit of the overall investigation.  My gut and my head both tell me I can trust you to keep a secret until told it’s okay.”

“Thank you for your confidence.  I agree to your terms.”

“Early this morning I received a call from Rachel Alford.  She reported that her mother’s 22 pistol was missing.  You might want to be sitting down for what I’m about to say.”  The polite and compassionate Walrup had to be an aberration in law enforcement or the crime novels I’d read needed a new slant.  “I’m taking it you don’t know Rachel Alford?”

“No.  That name doesn’t ring any bells.”

“She is the daughter of Raymond Radford.”

“Rachel Radford.  Now, that’s a name I’ve heard.  Her mother would be Cynthia Radford.  Doesn’t she live in old Country Club?”  I said.

“Correct.  I’m sure you are more familiar with the story than me.  See if I have it right.  Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Raymond and Cynthia married, probably in the early 1950s.  They had two children, Randall and Rachel.  Randall was the star child because of his basketball skills.  He was popular and went on to play college ball at Auburn.  Unfortunately, he’s disappeared.  Rachel was the oldest child, the studious one who also went to Auburn, but on an academic scholarship.  During the family breakup, and from what I’ve heard, she has sided with her mother.  Raymond and Cynthia divorced in 1972 or 1973 and shortly thereafter Raymond married your mother.  Rachel married after college and has lived in Birmingham working as a pharmacist.  She retired about a year ago and lost her husband a few months later, an accident of some sort.  She’s been coming to see Cynthia more over the last few months.  It seems she never forgave her father for what he did to her mother.  Cynthia wasn’t much of one to forgive either, from what I’ve heard.”

“Your account is pretty accurate.  What about the gun, the missing gun?”  I asked, growing tired of reliving the past and afraid Sheriff Waldrup was about to bring my illegitimate birth onto center stage.

“Rachel was here in Boaz on her weekly visit.  She was straightening up in her mother’s room.  She opened the drawer to the nightstand beside her mother’s bed to put up some paper and pencils when she noticed the pistol was missing.  Rachel told me that her father had given the 22 to Cynthia when she and Randall were young.  Raymond apparently traveled out of town quite a bit and wanted the children safe.  Cynthia apparently had kept the pistol in her nightstand beside her bed for all these years.  Now, we know this is the weapon that killed your mother.  Cynthia had kept the box the gun came in, along with the paperwork from a gun store in Fort Payne where Raymond had purchased it in 1958.  The serial number was typed on the invoice.  It matches the gun we recovered at Joe’s Pawn Shop.”

“Let me see if I’m understanding you correctly.  You are wondering whether Cynthia Radford killed my mother?”  I asked, this making much more sense.

“More particularly, I’m thinking there is good reason to investigate whether Cynthia, or Rachel herself, hired Nathan Johnson to kill your mother.”

“Seems odd that Rachel would call you if she was involved, but I suppose stranger things have happened.”  I said, not putting much stock toward an investigation into Rachel or Cynthia.  I’ve heard she has Parkinson’s disease.

“I see where you’re coming from, but you might be shocked to hear a few stories I could share, but I’ll refrain for now.”  I was growing more intrigued by the gentle giant of a man named Wayne Waldrup.  This is the way it has happened for years.  A future character in one of my stories was birthed from some encounter in life.  After Darla’s death is resolved I may have to interview the kind and sensitive Waldrup, maybe watch him and listen as he describes a few of his shocking experiences.

“What keeps getting me is the timing.  It seemed it all happened so fast and without plan or design.  I bet if I wrote about this I would have a hundred questions, one being, how would Cynthia, Rachel, or Mr. Johnson, know that Darla would be wandering about?  If one of them did have the opportunity to kill her it seems to me it is one of the most fantastical coincidences ever.”

“A few things we are not considering.  Someone stole the gun from Cynthia and he or she killed your mother.  Whoever shot Darla disposed of the gun and Nathan Johnson someway discovered it.  His only crime, albeit arguably no crime at all, is involved with the pawning.  And, further, we haven’t considered the possibility Rachel herself is involved.”

“You said Mr. Johnson wasn’t talking.  Correct?”

“That’s right.  He says he will talk after he meets with his lawyer.  Two of my deputies went to Rome to pick up Mr. Johnson and transport him back to our jail.  It was late when they returned.  DA Abbott instructed me to wait until tomorrow to see if Johnson has a lawyer.  My bet is he’s stalling.  It doesn’t seem to fit that a loner, a drifter like him, would have a lawyer on call, even though most ex-cons would have encountered a lawyer or two in their past.”

“I agree.  There’s no way Johnson would have easy access to a Texas lawyer, one who would be ripe and ready to respond to an ex-con’s call from an Alabama jail.  Sorry, I guess I assumed the lawyer would be from Texas.”  I said.

“Katie, I’ll call you as soon as I learn something new.  Again, please don’t mention anything about the pistol.”

“I won’t.  Thanks for keeping me informed.”

After our call ended, I lay back and stared at the ceiling fan that was slowly turning clockwise.  My imagination sprang to life.  There were five paddles on the fan.  They each were chasing the one in front of them.  They were all moving but going nowhere, just spinning in a circle.  It was like a dog chasing its tail.  I couldn’t quite get my mind around how all the Faking Five were involved with Darla’s murder but one thing I was certain.  Someone named Radford was involved.  My least favorite was Raymond.  I honestly believed he had loved my mother.  But I also recognize that money is a powerful force.  Raymond Radford himself could have had an awakening of sorts while sitting in jail.  Men love to build things and pass them on to their sons.  With his son Randall missing, probably dead, Raymond could easily want his wealth to wind up in grandson Ryan’s hands.  Thus, Ryan could have simply been carrying out granddad’s orders, or doing some plotting on his own, independent of granddad.

On the other hand, there was Cynthia.  The famous quote came to mind, ‘Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned.’  I had long known this wasn’t from Shakespeare but was taken from the play ‘Love for Love,’ by an English poet/playwright by the name of William Congreve in 1695.  The actual words were: “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”  I recalled a conversation or two I had with Darla when I was maybe 15 or so.  She had told me how for the first few years with Raymond she feared Cynthia.  “She lost everything and hated Raymond with a passion, hated me even more.”  Two questions were rolling around in my head when Cullie called me to supper.  Had Cynthia known about Raymond and Darla’s prenuptial agreement?  And, had she held on to her hatred for Darla, for her stealing Raymond and her cushy life, for nearly half a century?

The Marginalian: Ursula K. Le Guin on Growing Older and What Beauty Really Means

Here’s the link to this article.

BY MARIA POPOVA

“A Dog is, on the whole, what you would call a simple soul,” T.S. Eliot simpered in his beloved 1930s poem “The Ad-dressing of Cats,” proclaiming that “Cats are much like you and me.” Indeed, cats have a long history of being anthropomorphized in dissecting the human condition — but, then again, so do dogs. We’ve always used our feline and canine companions to better understand ourselves, but nowhere have Cat and Dog served a more poignant metaphorical purpose than in the 1992 essay “Dogs, Cats, and Dancers: Thoughts about Beauty” by Ursula K. Le Guin (b. October 21, 1929), found in the altogether spectacular volume The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (public library), which also gave us Le Guin, at her finest and sharpest, on being a man.

Le Guin contrasts the archetypal temperaments of our favorite pets:

Dogs don’t know what they look like. Dogs don’t even know what size they are. No doubt it’s our fault, for breeding them into such weird shapes and sizes. My brother’s dachshund, standing tall at eight inches, would attack a Great Dane in the full conviction that she could tear it apart. When a little dog is assaulting its ankles the big dog often stands there looking confused — “Should I eat it? Will it eat me? I am bigger than it, aren’t I?” But then the Great Dane will come and try to sit in your lap and mash you flat, under the impression that it is a Peke-a-poo.

Artwork by Mark Ulriksen from ‘The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs.’ Click image for more.

Cats, on the other hand, have a wholly different scope of self-awareness:

Cats know exactly where they begin and end. When they walk slowly out the door that you are holding open for them, and pause, leaving their tail just an inch or two inside the door, they know it. They know you have to keep holding the door open. That is why their tail is there. It is a cat’s way of maintaining a relationship.

Housecats know that they are small, and that it matters. When a cat meets a threatening dog and can’t make either a horizontal or a vertical escape, it’ll suddenly triple its size, inflating itself into a sort of weird fur blowfish, and it may work, because the dog gets confused again — “I thought that was a cat. Aren’t I bigger than cats? Will it eat me?”

Illustration by Wendy MacNaughton based on Gay Talese’s taxonomy of cats. Click image for details.

More than that, Le Guin notes, cats are aesthetes, vain and manipulative in their vanity. In a passage that takes on whole new layers of meaning twenty years later, in the heyday of the photographic cat meme, she writes:

Cats have a sense of appearance. Even when they’re sitting doing the wash in that silly position with one leg behind the other ear, they know what you’re sniggering at. They simply choose not to notice. I knew a pair of Persian cats once; the black one always reclined on a white cushion on the couch, and the white one on the black cushion next to it. It wasn’t just that they wanted to leave cat hair where it showed up best, though cats are always thoughtful about that. They knew where they looked best. The lady who provided their pillows called them her Decorator Cats.

Artwork by Ronald Searle from ‘The Big New Yorker Book of Cats.’ Click image for more.

A master of bridging the playful and the poignant, Le Guin returns to the human condition:

A lot of us humans are like dogs: we really don’t know what size we are, how we’re shaped, what we look like. The most extreme example of this ignorance must be the people who design the seats on airplanes. At the other extreme, the people who have the most accurate, vivid sense of their own appearance may be dancers. What dancers look like is, after all, what they do.

Echoing legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham’s contemplation of dance as “the human body moving in time-space,” Le Guin considers the dancers she knows and their extraordinary lack of “illusions or confusions about what space they occupy.” Recounting the anecdote of one young dancer who upon scraping his ankle exclaimed, “I have an owie on my almost perfect body!” Le Guin writes:

It was endearingly funny, but it was also simply true: his body is almost perfect. He knows it is, and knows where it isn’t. He keeps it as nearly perfect as he can, because his body is his instrument, his medium, how he makes a living, and what he makes art with. He inhabits his body as fully as a child does, but much more knowingly. And he’s happy about it.

Photograph from Helen Keller’s life-changing visit to Martha Graham’s dance studio. Click image for details.

What dance does, above all, is offer the promise of precisely such bodily happiness — not of perfection, but of satisfaction. Dancers, Le Guin argues, are “so much happier than dieters and exercisers.” She considers the impossible ideals of the latter, which cripple them in the same way that perfectionism cripples creativity in writing and art:

Perfection is “lean” and “taut” and “hard” — like a boy athlete of twenty, a girl gymnast of twelve. What kind of body is that for a man of fifty or a woman of any age? “Perfect”? What’s perfect? A black cat on a white cushion, a white cat on a black one . . . A soft brown woman in a flowery dress . . . There are a whole lot of ways to be perfect, and not one of them is attained through punishment.

Photograph by Zed Nelson from his project ‘Love Me.’ Click image for more.

And just like that, Le Guin pirouettes, elegantly but imperceptibly, from the lighthearted to the serious. Reflecting on various cultures’ impossible and often painful ideals of human beauty, “especially of female beauty,” she writes:

I think of when I was in high school in the 1940s: the white girls got their hair crinkled up by chemicals and heat so it would curl, and the black girls got their hair mashed flat by chemicals and heat so it wouldn’t curl. Home perms hadn’t been invented yet, and a lot of kids couldn’t afford these expensive treatments, so they were wretched because they couldn’t follow the rules, the rules of beauty.

Beauty always has rules. It’s a game. I resent the beauty game when I see it controlled by people who grab fortunes from it and don’t care who they hurt. I hate it when I see it making people so self-dissatisfied that they starve and deform and poison themselves. Most of the time I just play the game myself in a very small way, buying a new lipstick, feeling happy about a pretty new silk shirt.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Le Guin, who writes about aging with more grace, humor, and dignity than any other writer I’ve read, turns to the particularly stifling ideal of eternal youth:

One rule of the game, in most times and places, is that it’s the young who are beautiful. The beauty ideal is always a youthful one. This is partly simple realism. The young are beautiful. The whole lot of ’em. The older I get, the more clearly I see that and enjoy it.

[…]

And yet I look at men and women my age and older, and their scalps and knuckles and spots and bulges, though various and interesting, don’t affect what I think of them. Some of these people I consider to be very beautiful, and others I don’t. For old people, beauty doesn’t come free with the hormones, the way it does for the young. It has to do with bones. It has to do with who the person is. More and more clearly it has to do with what shines through those gnarly faces and bodies.

But what makes the transformations of aging so anguishing, Le Guin poignantly observes, isn’t the loss of beauty — it’s the loss of identity, a frustratingly elusive phenomenon to begin with. She writes:

I know what worries me most when I look in the mirror and see the old woman with no waist. It’s not that I’ve lost my beauty — I never had enough to carry on about. It’s that that woman doesn’t look like me. She isn’t who I thought I was.

[…]

We’re like dogs, maybe: we don’t really know where we begin and end. In space, yes; but in time, no.

[…]

A child’s body is very easy to live in. An adult body isn’t. The change is hard. And it’s such a tremendous change that it’s no wonder a lot of adolescents don’t know who they are. They look in the mirror — that is me? Who’s me?

And then it happens again, when you’re sixty or seventy.

Artwork by Mark Ulriksen from ‘The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs.’ Click image for more.

In a sentiment that calls Rilke to mind — “I am not one of those who neglect the body in order to make of it a sacrificial offering for the soul,” he memorably wrote, “since my soul would thoroughly dislike being served in such a fashion.” — Le Guin admonishes against our impulse to intellectualize out of the body, away from it:

Who I am is certainly part of how I look and vice versa. I want to know where I begin and end, what size I am, and what suits me… I am not “in” this body, I am this body. Waist or no waist.

But all the same, there’s something about me that doesn’t change, hasn’t changed, through all the remarkable, exciting, alarming, and disappointing transformations my body has gone through. There is a person there who isn’t only what she looks like, and to find her and know her I have to look through, look in, look deep. Not only in space, but in time.

[…]

There’s the ideal beauty of youth and health, which never really changes, and is always true. There’s the ideal beauty of movie stars and advertising models, the beauty-game ideal, which changes its rules all the time and from place to place, and is never entirely true. And there’s an ideal beauty that is harder to define or understand, because it occurs not just in the body but where the body and the spirit meet and define each other.

And yet for all the ideals we impose on our earthy embodiments, Le Guin argues in her most poignant but, strangely, most liberating point, it is death that ultimately illuminates the full spectrum of our beauty — death, the ultimate equalizer of time and space; death, the great clarifier that makes us see that, as Rebecca Goldstein put it, “a person whom one loves is a world, just as one knows oneself to be a world.” With this long-view lens, Le Guin remembers her own mother and the many dimensions of her beauty:

My mother died at eighty-three, of cancer, in pain, her spleen enlarged so that her body was misshapen. Is that the person I see when I think of her? Sometimes. I wish it were not. It is a true image, yet it blurs, it clouds, a truer image. It is one memory among fifty years of memories of my mother. It is the last in time. Beneath it, behind it is a deeper, complex, ever-changing image, made from imagination, hearsay, photographs, memories. I see a little red-haired child in the mountains of Colorado, a sad-faced, delicate college girl, a kind, smiling young mother, a brilliantly intellectual woman, a peerless flirt, a serious artist, a splendid cook—I see her rocking, weeding, writing, laughing — I see the turquoise bracelets on her delicate, freckled arm — I see, for a moment, all that at once, I glimpse what no mirror can reflect, the spirit flashing out across the years, beautiful.

That must be what the great artists see and paint. That must be why the tired, aged faces in Rembrandt’s portraits give us such delight: they show us beauty not skin-deep but life-deep.

The Wave in the Mind remains the kind of book that stays with you for life — the kind of book that is life.

Novel Excerpts–The Boaz Schoolteacher, Chapter 23

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 23 (sorry for formatting issue)

The school week after Labor Day was the longest of the year so far, even though it was only four days.  Time spent in my classes and in office visits with students was what I lived for, other than Cullie and Nanny of course.  Almost that time or stay after school.  Cullie made the choice for me.  By 3:00 immediately after announcing the Real Justice novel project, I had little choice but to share my thirty-minute lunch break from 11:25 to 11:55. It was either answer questions from inquisitive team leaders during p.m. every day, she was ready to go home to Nanny, and the barn loft.  The true reason the week slowed more and more as each day passed was what happened during my 10:30 to 11:25 break and planning period.

Cindy, before her declaration late Labor Day night that she had been raped, normally popped into my room a few minutes before lunch.  Beginning Tuesday, she was waiting for me in my classroom when I returned at 10:30 from my twelfth-grade English class in the Auditorium.  The only thing she wanted to talk about was her Six Red Apples project that she kept assuming I had agreed to help her construct and execute.  If by Friday this wasn’t bad enough, Cindy’s lunchtime prayer (before students arrived) was causing similar discomfort.  I didn’t know why.  A quick ‘thank-you for our food’ might be okay, even nice, but a multi-minute exploration of the problem of evil, God the mysterious, and a too-long final verbal paragraph confessing ‘your will, not mine,’ was teasing out my long-abandoned condescending attitude.  I had developed it in college because of a dorm roommate’s continuous and arrogant assertions she knew the mind of God.  I had been pleased that the wonderful and dedicated, not to mention, humble, Catholic nuns and teachers at Marymount Catholic High School in Los Angeles had dissuaded me from believing all Christians were like my sweet-from-a-distance dorm-mate.  By the end of today’s prayer, Cindy’s ‘your-will’ phrase sparked the unwanted memory and unhealthy regret, I had agreed to go with her to the Sunday School Department’s quarterly social at church on Saturday night.

 

The only thing I ever wanted to be late to was my funeral.  Tonight, there was a close second vying for the number one spot.  It was the Sunday School social.  And I was late.  On our way to our cars yesterday afternoon after the last bell rang, Cindy reminded me to be in the church’s Fellowship Hall no later than 6:20 p.m.  She had said that Lane McRae, the Department Head, was a stickler for promptness.  Cindy said these events were always crowded and Lane had a peculiar way of assigning seats.

At 5:55 p.m., Saturday evening, just as I was walking out the back door to the garage to leave, I heard Sammie scream, “Nanny’s gone. I can’t find her.”  I raced inside and down the hallway to where Sammie stood semi-frozen and screaming.  “Calm down, when did you last see her?”  I asked.

“Two minutes ago, three at the most.  She was brushing her teeth in her bathroom.  I had to go myself, so I ran to the half-bath beside the kitchen.  When I returned to her room, she was gone.”

“Grab the flashlight from the pantry and go outside.  I’ll fetch Cullie upstairs and join you.”  I said, almost ashamed of myself for thinking this would be a good excuse not to attend the social.

Cullie wasn’t in her room.  I descended the stairs three steps at a time.  As soon as I was beyond the garage, I saw a light at the front of the barn.  It was two lights.  I walked the fifty yards or so and saw Sammie and Nanny shining their lights into the opened hayloft door where Cullie was sitting with her feet dangling, with her eyes closed.  Fear and trepidation sprouted for two seconds until I noticed her ear buds and the white cables to her iPhone in her left hand.  She was simply listening to her music and was in what she called, ‘the zone.’

By the time I got Cullie’s attention with the toss of two pea-sized gravels and learned that Nanny had told Sammie she had come out to check on Cullie, my own iPhone vibrated in my pocket.  It was Cindy.  “Where are you.  We’re about to start.”

“Nanny caused a stir.  I’m on my way.”  I said but did not say.  It must have been Cindy’s praying that prompted me to create such an orderly arrangement of words.  Otherwise, I would have stayed at home.

I was glad that when I arrived, Robert Miller, the youth pastor, was standing at the entrance to the Fellowship Hall.  He led me to Cindy’s table.  to I sat beside her.  She leaned over and whispered to me, “so glad you came.  Lane’s still introducing visitors.  You’ve not missed anything.  We’re about eat.” 

After Lane led a rather short prayer of thanksgiving, mainly for the food, Cindy introduced me to Tiffany Tillman (Pastor Tillman’s wife), and Karla Radford (Ryan Radford’s wife).  I knew both enough when I saw them but had never been formally introduced.

When the four of us returned to our table after going through the food-laden buffet, I noticed the empty chair beside Cindy and the absence of Steve.  “Where’s Steve?”  I whispered to Cindy as Tiffany and Karla were critiquing a green-bean casserole.

“He’s at the front, see?”  She pointed towards the head table along the outside wall of the Hall behind the podium and where Lane had stood earlier.  “Tonight, is Steve’s turn.”  Cindy wasn’t making any sense.

“Turn?  For what?”  I asked.

“Lane rotates through the four Outreach Directors in our Department.  There are four Sunday School classes.  It’s Steve’s turn.”  Cindy said using her fingers to pull apart the largest fried chicken breast I’d ever seen.

“Once again, Steve’s turn for what?”  Cindy was normally much clearer in her language.

“Oh sorry.  He shares what he and his outreach team have been doing and the results of this past quarter’s visitations.  He will introduce anyone who is here because of outreach efforts.  He also must, it’s kind of a tradition, share a personal story about his own home life.  Listen carefully, you may hear how a real husband treats his woman.  I hope he doesn’t get too intimate.”

The meal was excellent.  It brought memories from my youth and how Pastor Walter, Warren’s grandfather, once per year, had encouraged all young people to bring a friend or two to the annual picnic that took place at the Boaz Recreation Center and attached Park.  He always made sure there was enough food there to feed everyone in Marshall County.  My thoughts of Walter spawned thoughts of Wade, his son and Warren’s father, who was in jail awaiting trial for murder.  I simply couldn’t get my mind around the idea that Wade, also a pastor here for decades, could have murdered his wife Gina, a close friend during high school of my own mother.

Tiffany and Karla were both likable.  To an extent.  When they were not talking among themselves about the food (apparently, they both were expert chefs in their own kitchens), they were ribbing Cindy a little about what they could expect from Steve.  The three of them, from what I could gather by reading a little between the lines, had rather vigorous sex lives with their darling husbands.  The statement directed my way, the one that made me swear to not return next quarter, or the following three hundred, was Karla’s.  “Katie, we are so pleased you have returned to Boaz and are so interested in teaching our teenagers to write.  Fictionalized stories are fun to read, especially those steamy Harlequins, but having real romance at home is irreplaceable.  I hope you can find a real man here in Boaz, one who is as kind, generous, and loving as Ryan.”  If this weren’t enough, she continued, looking at Cindy and Tiffany, “oh, sorry, and for these fine ladies, Steve and Warren.”  I almost got up and left.

Steve’s talk revealed a side of him I didn’t know.  He was serious about Sunday School and Outreach.  He introduced four couples who were present, who all stood and briefly shared how irresistible Steve and his teammates had been in encouraging them to give the ‘Young but Maturing’ Sunday School Department a try.  I was glad Steve was short-winded on the personal and intimate portion of his speech.  His, “many of you know I was a hellion until I met Cindy.  I don’t blame my prior behavior on growing up on the wrong side of the tracks.  I made a lot of bad decisions as a teenager and young man.  But, I do blame the pretty lady sitting beside Katie Sims, for all of my good behavior and decisions since we had our first date in 1999.”  That was a good place to stop, even though I’m sure my face was red from the embarrassing feeling that was crawling out of my gut after Steve mentioned my name.

Just as Steve had stood at the podium after being introduced by Lane McRae, I had spotted all members of the Faking Five.  Warren had come in late and had sat at the back, over beside the main entrance.  Justin and Ryan had apparently been in the kitchen and were now putting lids on food containers all down the buffet.  Fulton and Danny were sitting with who I suspected were their wives.  The same ladies I had seen them with the Sunday’s I had attended the worship service.  I was hoping Steve was as terse as Cindy said he normally was.  I was ready to get out of here.  I needed some fresh air.

“If it weren’t for the vasectomy my beautiful Cindy made me get in 2009 we would probably have ten more kids.  I’m thankful our God instructed us to be fruitful and multiply.  Cindy, my baby, I see your smile, you know I love you a boatload more than fishing.  Thanks baby for knowing how to push my buttons.”  Steve’s little personal statement had the crowd roaring.  One thing I could give Steve, he knew how to speak directly and without confusion.  For a lineman for Marshall-Dekalb Electric Coop, he understood language.  He seemed to be a master of sex talk, the type that is absent of sex words but clearly points the mind and urges toward the bedroom.

Before I closed my eyes to deafen my ears, I looked at Cindy who was as red as our tablecloth.  Our eyes met, and she leaned over and whispered.  “See why I can never tell Steve the truth.”  I nodded as though she was referring to something as innocent as having to confess to Steve that she had surprised Patrick Wilkins in his school office when he was telling a semi off-color joke to coach Haney.  Oh, if it were only that simple. 

It was when I was walking to my car parked at the far side of a crowded parking lot that I realized I had not seen Patrick Wilkins all night.  I guess he was smarter than he appeared.  At least he had the sense to stay away on the night Steve would be talking about him and Cindy.  I drove home interested in learning more about the former Steve, the one who had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks.  My literary mind told me that Patrick Wilkins would be a dead man if Steve Barker ever found-out Wilkins had lain naked next to and inside his darling wife.