Test Chapter 2 Whitfield’s Boots

Working Title 1: The Book of the Preacher's Boots?

Working Title 2: Whitfield’s Boots?
Chapter 1

Draft 2

By: Chase L. Currie

 

I met a witch when I was seven. I should’ve known right then and there that my life would be different, that God had obtuse plans for me.

 

Whitfield Inkk grew up in King, North Caroline, one of the poorest places in the whole state where the country life was normal, and meth could easily be found in the woods. But the Inkks loved their home, and the seven-year-old Whitfield thought the country he was playing in was Heaven. There was no other place better than his wood outback.

                He didn’t understand how his mother and father and his three siblings, two brothers, and a baby sister, had little in this world. All he understood was the woods were his, his uncle - on his dad’s side - his grandparents all lived on the same land where Whitfield played in all the time.

                His mother’s people were from the big city of Charlotte, and Whitfield hated going to their place. Not because his cousins down there called him white trash or that his grandparents were super-rich in his eyes.

It was the only time Whitfield felt poor was on Christmas at his mother's parents’ big house. But the real reason he hated the city was he couldn’t play in his woods.

Every Sunday, his family would pack up the car, all of them in it, and go to church together if they didn’t head Charlotte for the day.

Whitfield loved church almost as much as he loved his woods. He would sit there listening to the Preacher man speak of God and the Holy Words in pure awe of it all. He never went to Sunday school because he wanted to hear the Preacher man.

“Mommy,” Whitfield said one Sunday after church as they headed into Winston-Salem for lunch like they did most Sundays. “How do you become a preacher?”

“You got to go to school for it,” she said, “but most all, you must be called by God to help folks.”

“How do you if you’ve been called?” Whitfield asked, holding Raven’s hand, his baby sister.

“You’ll know, son,” His hard and loving father said, smiling at him in the mirror,” you’ll know if you been called.”

He didn’t know then, but there was a pull on his heart that the calling would come soon. If he knew what it meant to be called by the Lord for a task, he might’ve run the other way. To follow the path of one’s calling by God, well, picked up the Bible and looked at what happened to His Son. It's not an easy path. Your wants have been put aside while everyone would come into the doors of the Holy place comes first. Something Whitfield would learn.

If he knew his life would be like Job, he might’ve stayed in bed forever.

On the last Sunday of Whitfield's life, where things didn’t go array, he came flying into their old house, changing into his play clothes to spend the day in his woods. He tied his old work shoes tight around his feet as his mother ordered him,” Be home before dinnertime.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, which he knew was code to be home before dark. They were only two weeks from Halloween and the days welcome the night into her bed early than Whitfield liked, but he couldn’t change the will of the season. It ticked on like the horrible way a candle burns itself out.

From the moment the flame is lit, there is only one fate for it.

The grave is in a pool of hot wax. All the flame could help for - God, maybe, it’s all we can hope for - is to share a bit of light in the malevolent darkness of our existent before the bitter gasp of death.

Whitfield ran toward the death of his childhood that cloudy Fall day. He carried with him a BB gun from last Christmas, but he had been around firearms all his life, even went hunting once with his old man, but he wasn’t allowed to carry a gun.

A real firearm was a tool for killing like a hammer was for nailing, and you didn’t carry a hammer around for fun.

Whitfield raced between the dying trees painting the last days in a colorful hue of an Autumn fire. The colors God wanted the world to see before the blanket of winter fell over everything. The tree's brunt was bright trying to keep winter at bay; they failed, they always lost the fight, but losing wasn’t the point. It was fighting that matter.

He dreamed in those woods he was a soldier on a mission to save his unit while the enemy, sometimes Nazis from the stories his grandpa told him, other times aliens from all the cartoons he watched on Saturday, were hiding in the woods of his dreams.

To him, it didn’t matter who the foe was; all that matter was he could run, and they were his woods to play in. He had to get to his people to save them from the horrors of his made-up world.

Whitfield smashed against a tree breathing hard and heavy with a fire in his legs. He held the gun to his chest like all the men in the comic books did when they were resting. He closed his eyes, listening to the crashing boots, dogs, and tanks coming from the childish world in his mind. A place all boys lived in where war was nothing but a game. The terror and fear of true war are far off in a dream, one in which blood and death will destroy it.

The smile bloomed on his lips as he opens his eyes, dropping to one knee about to fire on the alien Nazi, but suddenly he stopped.

Sitting on the edge of his barrel was a big bee with a mighty butt. It was too cold for a bee to be flying in the day, and it would soon die from the chill laughing between the trees. He lifted the barrel slowly to his face, and the bee waggled its massive butt at him. As if the yellow and black thing was trying to smile at him or wave.

“Are you lost, little guy?” Whitfield asked the bee.

It hummed its wings together to say something he couldn’t understand, and then the bee took to the air flying around the tree.

When Whitfield didn’t follow the bee, it came back swimming in the air around his face. He tried to make it go away, but he kept coming back to face Whitfield.

 “You want me to follow you?” Whitfield asked, and the bee seems to nod in agreement with his question.

Whitfield followed the bee slowly into the woods, almost glancing back to make sure he was following. With each step he took, more bees seem to fall in around him, staying on the edge of his sight but leading him somewhere into the depths of the woods.

Soon the bees dashed forward to the hums of a sweet woman. She was singing a song to herself as if all of the worlds could hear her.

Whitfield listened to the tune, unsure of the song, but he got low to the ground and hid behind a tree, making his way to the singer. He got behind the oldest dogwood on the land. A tree he knew well and one he had come to love in his short years greatly. The dogwood died when his grandfather passed away, and Whitfield knew the land was no longer home then.

Finding a steaming pool of water, he stuck his head around the tree, and a tall nude woman kneeled beside it. She was watching her clothes in the hot waters. Whitfield gulp; he had never seen a naked woman before in his life. His older cousin had shown him some sex tapes, and his oldest female cousin had come out of the shower naked once, scaring them both.

He understood then with his cousins that he was meant to like those things, and he did like it on some primal level. Sin was a joyful act that all souls knew they could enjoy. Seven or seventy-seven, it didn’t matter to the sin of our souls.

But Whitfield knew those things with his cousins were wrong. He knew he shouldn’t like them, but the gals in those videos didn’t seem to enjoy the deeds being done to them all too much, either. There was hopelessness to their alluring eyes. He didn’t like it.

He turned away from the videos.

He couldn’t turn away from this woman in her beauty as if she was Eve herself. Perfect. Complete.

Her skin was a shade darker than sand, and her hair was long and black like the serpent Eve kissed in Eden. The tips of the midnight tone burn with a bright red as if flames had been set to it. She hummed a song to herself, slowly cleaning her clothes with care while wearing long sandals twisting up her leg and down to her toes painted to match her hair. A devil went red for all the weakest children of the world.

And yet, it wasn’t the red that held Whitfield’s gaze on her nude anatomy. The beauty of this woman was something he would be chasing for the rest of his life.

He couldn’t look away due to the artwork hammer into her sand skin. Dragons, ravens, black cats, and even a smiling devil were all on her body. There were countless tattoos on every inch of her canvas. Some reached up to touch her neck and behind her ear. One even ran from the bottom of her lip into the maze of the design on her chest; that line ran to her groin.

One of the bees, with a storm around her, kissed her ear, whispering about her eyes. She shot her apple jack eyes right into Whitfield's soul.

He gasps, jumping back, spinning to rush away from those eyes of the devil. He got to his feet about to run when she stepped out from behind a tree in his path. Whitfield flew back against a tree, almost crying for help, but no one was around to hear those tears.

“You’re a pervert, boy?” She roared.

“No, ma’am,” Whitfield shouted, making his eyes look upwards. “No.”

“Look at me,” she snapped.

Whitfield shook his head no.

“Do it, boy, or I’ll turn you into a toad.”

He lowers his eyes to her exposed gallery of all the different artist hands which had touched her.

“You like what you see, pervert,” she snarled.

All Whitfield could do was cry. He wept for the enjoyment of the wins of this coveted lust. He dropped down, covering his face crying into his hands. “I’m sorry,” was all he could utter, but he didn’t know how it was too; himself, the woman, or God. Maybe, all three.

“Oh, child,” she said sweetly now. The chaste tone of a lone kindness from her voice made Whitfield’s heart smile. She reached out, taking his hands from his face and making him look at her. She was fully clothed with bees dancing all around her. She smelt of honey.

“It is okay,” she said, pulling him close to her. “It is okay. I know you didn’t mean any harm.”

“No, ma’am, I’m sorry.”

“What’s your name?”

“Whitfield Inkk,” he said, “with two Ks, ma’am.”

She smiled at him. “I’m Amira Belfast.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“You too, Whitfield.”

Whitfield left the woods that day with two new facts in his life. He had befriended the witch Amira Belfast of the Bees and a jar of honey which was the best his family had ever tasted before in their lives. But Whitfield couldn’t tell them where he got the jar from, and he never did, never told a soul.