Jeff Posey's Blog, page 10

“Gold Fever?” Excerpt 10 from “The G.O.D. Journal,” by Jeff Posey

Chapter 4, Part 1, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold , a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

Elby sat at the café waiting for Uncle Marsh. Each time the front door jingled she looked up, but only tourists came through. No locals. She wrapped her hands around a warm mug of coffee and people-watched out the picture window. A sullen teenage girl walked with her hands in her pockets behind her parents. Elby smiled and remembered her first time coming to Pagosa.

After her parents died in the wreck, Uncle Marsh left his university job and promptly moved here with Elby. She hated it and did everything she could to make life miserable for him. She ran away and hid in the woods all night. Tried hanging out with Hispanic guys who blared Mexican music from their car speakers. She saved her money and bought push-up bras with short-shorts and high-heel shoes. Her parents would have died if they hadn’t already been dead.

But Uncle Marsh did things in an infuriatingly different way. After the overnight runaway, he bought her a better parka so, he said, she would be warmer next time. When she began wearing outrageous teen fashion, he found catalogs of even more outrageous clothes and told her to buy what she wanted. She quickly spent $150, then tired of the whole thing and went back to blue jeans.

One time she threatened to get a tattoo, so he asked around and found the best tattoo artist at a shop in Farmington. Elby called Uncle Marsh’s bluff and rode all the way there with him, stood in line, watched a girl get started on a tattoo, and then freaked out and changed her mind. She wanted to scream because Uncle Marsh didn’t say a word. Until they drove back past Chimney Rock and then he started talking and wouldn’t shut up. He had just become a tour guide there, and he loved making up and telling Anasazi stories.

That had been almost twenty years ago. She realized he hadn’t told any Anasazi stories lately. He’d become more quiet and tired. And depressed? Had he become a sad old man?

After her rebellion, she settled down and made peace with Uncle Marsh, became friends. Because he always treated her like an equal, she came out of childhood with relative ease, considering what had happened to her. She developed a layer of grace over a heart of anger and uncertainty. Uncle Marsh had done as much as he could.

When she saw his lanky frame coming up the river walk toward the

café, she smiled. How could a man who walks with exuberance like that be depressed? She sometimes tried to categorize her feelings for Uncle Marsh, but he sprawled over several: beloved grandfather, best friend, crazy old man, infuriating psychologist, Zen master, professor. The perfect man? Hardly. He’d never married. Never seriously been involved with a woman (or a man, she thought with a tiny involuntary snort of laughter), which made him all the more alluring in her mind. Kind of a neuter, like herself. If she could find a younger version of Uncle Marsh, she would take his arm and hold on.

“There you are,” said Uncle Marsh.

Elby beamed at him.

Marshall Garvin signaled the waitress for coffee, but she already had it in hand, coming toward him.

“Elby’s a cup ahead of you,” said the waitress with a wide smile for Uncle Marsh.

“Well then, you drink slow and I’ll drink fast,” he said to Elby. “And you don’t let the well run dry, young woman,” he said to the waitress with a wink.

“Oh, I know all about you heavy afternoon drinkers,” the waitress said with a laugh.

Elby made a “yikes!” face. The waitress’s husband was one of the town’s most notorious drunks (and a taxidermist, which Elby found not only disgusting, but possibly immoral).

“Got news,” Marshall said when the waitress left.

Elby focused her attention on him, her hands still wrapped around her warm mug.

“New fellow in town. Baxter. Know that name?”

Elby wrinkled her forehead. She said it sounded familiar.

“Old-timers recognize it in a snap. Anyway, this fellow’s great-great-granddaddy was one of the founders of this town. Jedediah Aberdene Baxter.” Garvin took a few gulps of coffee, compared his level with Elby’s, and gulped some more. “Dammit! That’s too hot to drink fast.” He puffed through his mouth. Elby shook her head at him. “That’s why I never married me a woman like that waitress there. Not even thoughtful enough to let it cool a bit before serving it to a man. If this were a McDonald’s, I’d sue.”

Elby smiled and chuckled at his old-crotchety-man routine. She learned long ago his favored form of humor involved parody and sarcasm, delivered in a dry white-trash accent.

“So what about this Baxter fellow?” she prompted.

“Says there’s an Anasazi rock art symbol up beyond Fourmile. I told him he’s crazy. Nothing has ever been documented up there. But he says he’s got a journal from this Jedediah Aberdene Baxter that says so, though he wouldn’t show it to me.”

“He came to our house?”

“Yesterday right after lunch. You were out. Melba at the association pointed him to me. He went up to Chimney Rock looking for a rock art expert.”

“Melba said you’re a rock art expert?” She liked to tease him.

“Well I am and you know it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

Garvin shifted his eyes around the room. “Had to think on it.” What he had to think on was how to keep Elby from wanting to tag along. He hadn’t come up with any good argument except that he didn’t trust Baxter.

 

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

“Trump Card,” Excerpt 9 from “The G.O.D. Journal,” by Jeff Posey

Chapter 3, Part 3, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold , a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

“Sounds like a wild goose chase to me,” Garvin said.

“It may be.”

“So you’re offering me half?”

Baxter grinned. “Maybe. That’s all I’ve got to work with.” Now to play his trump card. “And that Anasazi sign on the cliff.”

“The what sign? Anasazi sign? Why do you call it that?”

Baxter resisted over-reacting. His grandfather had taught him not to celebrate when you’ve merely hooked the fish. “Well, the marker. It’s an ancient Indian marker. Like a carving, tapped into stone, the journal says. On a cliff. Isn’t that Anasazi?”

Garvin stood without regard to the popping in his knees and stared at Baxter. “Where?”

“Ah, it’s there in a hand-drawn map. By my great-great-grandfather. In his journal.”

“And he called it an Anasazi symbol?”

“Well, no. He just says an old Indian marker on the cliff.”

“Did he make a drawing of it?” Garvin wanted to grab Baxter and squeeze it out of him. Why didn’t he just say it? Tell him what the marker looked like.

“Yes.”

“And….”

Baxter decided to tell him. That would set the hook. “And it was sort of a spiral that went off on a zigzag line and standing on it was an animal. With branching horns.”

“Elk, yes. Yes! I know those symbols.” He knew them very well, and not just from books and his own explorations in the classic Anasazi rock art country. Pagosa Springs nestled in the northeasternmost corner of Anasazi territory, and a few years ago Garvin found a petroglyph the archaeologists hadn’t even noticed yet out near the Chimney Rock ruins. What he really remembered that charged through him now like a bolt of lightning was a night long ago, fifteen or twenty years past, when he hiked alone up beyond Upper Fourmile Lake, across the drainage divide and dropped down into Deadman Canyon. In a hurry to get to the Piedra River trail, he misjudged daylight. Darkness stranded him, so he sat and waited. Soon a glorious nearly full moon pulled up over the mountains and lit things almost as bright as day, and he searching for a way out. At one point, he missed the trail and got confused, stumbled off onto a game trail that faded into no trail at all. He climbed back toward the trail higher up, but a three-sided box of rocks stopped him, a strange cleft in the cliff the size of a small house. In the moonlight, angled to make shadows in the pits on the face of the cliff, he saw a faint design—a spiral going to a zigzag with a well-antlered elk hovering over a straight line.

Garvin swallowed and looked at Baxter.

Baxter saw it in his eyes. “That means something to you, doesn’t it? You know where it is,” said Baxter. “You’ve seen it!”

Garvin nodded. “Maybe. Long time ago. I’m not sure of the exact place. But yeah, I’ve seen something like it. Up in the mountains.”

Baxter leaned back. He’d almost landed the fish. Garvin wanted that Anasazi marker more than he wanted gold. Baxter noticed his heart racing. He felt almost faint. His body realized it before his brain. Garvin had confirmed that the marker existed. Which meant the gold, the family treasure, must be real.

Baxter stuck out his hand for Garvin to shake. “You can claim the Anasazi marker, and I’ll claim the family treasure. If there’s gold in it, I’ll give you ten percent. Deal?”

Garvin stopped pacing, his mind churning. He should bargain for more. “I thought we agreed to fifty-fifty?”

“You want that Anasazi marker more than you want anything else. I’ll let you have all the glory for that in exchange for ninety percent of my family treasure.”

“You bargain strangely. Maybe I won’t do it for less than half. I already know to go up and search for that lost petroglyph.”

Dammit, Baxter thought. He took a deep breath. It didn’t matter. Garvin wanted the Anasazi marker, Baxter wanted to hide. Any family treasure was pure bonus. He nodded. Put out his hand and they shook, a single vigorous bounce of their clasped hands.

“Fifty-fifty,” Garvin said.

“Fifty-fifty,” Baxter repeated. “Start tomorrow?”

“No. Day after. Thursday morning, daybreak,” Garvin said. “You have equipment?”

Baxter shook his head.

Garvin nodded. “Go downtown. Goodman’s. Ask for Joe Sample. Oriental guy, so that’s not his real name, but it’s what he goes by. I always mean to ask his real name, but I never remember. Anyway, he knows my setup. Tell him to start there, and then you can change anything you want. That’ll make it easier.”

“Thanks,” said Baxter.

“You got money, I hope. Good stuff’s not cheap, and cheap stuff’s not worth it.”

“I got money.”

“Five-thirty. Can you be here that early?”

Baxter nodded.

“We’ll put that ugly truck of yours in my garage and take my ugly truck up to the trailhead.”

Baxter liked that. Get it out of sight. Perfect.

“It’d go faster if you let me study the journal,” said Garvin. He took a step toward Baxter, his eyes four inches higher. Baxter didn’t like being intimidated, especially by a tall old guy with creaky knees.

“It would,” Baxter said. “But we’re not in that big a hurry. You can figure it out on the trail.” He wasn’t about to relinquish control of the journal. Not until the two of them were way out in the woods.

Garvin backed down. He didn’t blame the guy. He wouldn’t give it up so easily either.

 

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

“Trump Card,” Excerpt 8 from “The G.O.D. Journal,” by Jeff Posey

Chapter 3, Part 2, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold , a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

“And if this secret thing you’ve found is accurate, or maybe if I can help you decode it—no, if I can help you find this thing on a cliff you’re looking for, will it lead you to your cache of gold?”

Baxter chewed a tiny string of flesh inside his cheek, then released it. He let the air out of his lungs. “Something like that,” he said, worried Garvin already knew too much.

“Hmmmph,” said Garvin. “Let’s go outside. Gold hunting makes me want fresh air.” He went to the sliding-glass door that led to a covered deck with a view to snow-capped mountains north and east. The early afternoon sun shined warm, but a chill clung to the shade. Garvin sat in an over-stuffed outdoor chair that moved on springs, and he began rocking.

“All right, then. Spit it out. What is it you want from me?”

Baxter felt like pacing, but decided that would be too much like an anxious caged animal. He most certainly was not that, and would never become one. He sat in a chair that matched Garvin’s and bounced back and forth more than he wanted. “There’s a marker,” he said. “I think you can help me find it.”

“What kind of marker?”

“I have a drawing of it. From my great-great-grandfather. And directions on how to find it. I’ll show you once we have an agreement.”

“What’s it look like? The marker.” Garvin wanted to see how much he could squeeze out of Baxter. But more than that, he wanted to know more about this marker. Sounded interesting. Something down toward New Mexico, he assumed.

Baxter said nothing. Stared ahead. Didn’t look at Garvin. If he told him what it looked like, he could search for it on his own. Get other people to help him look. They might find it. For his purposes of hiding, it might work as well. Maybe better. But it had become more. The gold. Hidden treasure. His family’s hidden treasure. He wanted it. In payment for what happened to him, what the last Baxter patriarch had done to him. Besides, his grandfather wanted him to find the journal, which means he wanted him to look for the treasure or gold or whatever it was.

“First, the agreement. Then I’ll show you.”

So he’ll divulge nothing, thought Garvin. He shrugged. “Say I help you find a stash of gold somewhere. What then?”

“Ten percent,” offered Baxter, willing to go to a quarter. Negotiation took him back to familiar business ground. He’d been good at it.

“Seventy-five,” Garvin countered. He didn’t give a damn about any split. But he wouldn’t be beat in a negotiation. When he played poker, which he enjoyed, he liked to bluff extravagantly, often without even looking at his cards. On rare occasions, he’d taken some big pots that way. His opponents never knew what to make of him, and he liked that.

Baxter stopped rocking. “Why do you think your help is worth that much?” He didn’t want to make a counter-offer just yet.

“Without me, you’ve got a worthless clue.”

“It rightfully belongs to my family.”

“It rightfully belongs to whoever finds it.”

Baxter didn’t know how to play this. Garvin seemed to have the upper hand. Had nothing to lose. Baxter, on the other hand, wanted the cover of the chase and to find the treasure. Two things to lose. He figured he had one trump card to play. He didn’t want to play it just yet, though. It needed a little more setup.

“What’s fair, then?” asked Baxter.

“Half.”

“Or nothing?”

“Or nothing.”

He hated losing half. Didn’t know if he would agree to that or not. “If we shake on it, does that constitute a binding agreement to you?” asked Baxter. He suspected the answer. Garvin was probably the kind of man whose word meant more to him than a legally binding document.

“Hell yes. Before I moved to this little paradise here, I spent my entire life in Texas. A handshake is a signed contract.”

“You won’t tell anybody what we’re up to?”

Garvin paused and cocked his head to the side. “We’re not up to anything yet. And if we come to some kind of understanding, it might be useful to tell a few folks. We might need a little help.”

“I’d rather you not tell anyone anything.” Is that true? A frenzy of people looking for some fabled long-lost gold might actually help him hide better. But it had stopped being about that. He could hide without the ruse of a gold rush in his family name. It had become more about his birthright. Whatever his great-great-grandfather had hidden, he wanted. And that made him want to keep his quest secret.

“They’ll figure it out anyway,” said Garvin. “Guy named Baxter stomping around up in the wilderness, looking for something. Me with you. People know what I do. That’s how you found me. They’ll figure it out before we even utter a word.”

“Not if they don’t know the guy you’re stomping around with up there is a Baxter. I’ve kept that quiet. You’re the only one who knows.”

Hmmm, Garvin thought. This boy is a shrewd one. He seemed to think this Baxter’s gold story had truth in it. And maybe it did. What would half of the Baxter treasure be? The legend, if he remembered it right, said as much as two mules could carry. What would that be? Four or five hundred pounds of gold? If Baxter truly believed a family treasure that big was hidden somewhere up there, he wouldn’t so easily part with half. Would he?

 

 

 

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

“Trump Card,” Excerpt 7 from “The G.O.D. Journal,” by Jeff Posey

Chapter 3, Part 1, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold , a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

Marshall Garvin had his hands in dishwater when the doorbell rang. He took a dish towel as he went to the front door.

“Professor Garvin?”

“You the fellow on the phone?”

“Yes, sir.”

Garvin pushed the door wide and beckoned the man inside. He tried not to pass snap judgments on people, but, of course, did. Especially when a shaved-headed stranger arrived in a beat-to-crap blue GM pickup truck at his house wearing no hat. Lots of men went hatless in Pagosa, he noticed, but he judged them fools for exposing their heads to the unfiltered high-altitude sunlight. This man he ushered into his house was therefore a fool.

“Just finishing up my lunch dishes,” Garvin said. “You stand there and talk while I wash, then I’ll get us something to drink and we can sit out back.” He plunged his hands into the dishwater.

“Well, I want to ask you a few questions about rock formations, cliffs and rock art and such around here, and Melba up at Chimney Rock said I should talk to you. She gave me your number.”

“I’ll have to talk to her about that. Keep going.” Garvin scrubbed a soup bowl.

“Well, my name is Baxter….”

“Full name?”

“Uh, Jedediah Aberdene Baxter.”

“Never heard the name Aberdene before. You go by Jed, I imagine. I sure as hell would.”

“Just Baxter.”

Garvin nodded and laughed. “Me too. Just Garvin. None of that professor/doctor crap.” He finished the last dish and drained the sudsy water. “I’m making tea for me. Some kind of herbal crap that’s supposed to be good for my innards. My niece makes me drink it. You want that or water? Or a beer.” Garvin stood and looked at Baxter foot to head for the first time. Not a tall guy. Couple of inches shy of six feet. Four inches shorter than Garvin. He liked being tall. Most people naturally deferred to tall people. Garvin accepted their deference as divine right.

“Water,” Baxter said. “Don’t bother with ice.”

“I usually don’t.” Garvin turned on the gas jets beneath a teapot. He noticed Baxter stood with legs apart, hands hanging loose. Like a fighter waiting for first contact. Nervous energy. Suspiciously wary. “Why the cliff fetish?” Garvin asked.

Baxter smiled and did a double-take flicker of his eyes. Garvin liked that. Kept people off balance, even if only by surprising word choices. He figured he did folks a favor. Made them more aware of being alive.

“I’m looking for something on a cliff, and I thought you might know where it is.” Baxter felt the animalistic need to crouch in Garvin’s presence. Keep his balance. Be ready to move. As if Garvin were a threat. But how could he be? Grey-haired guy in his sixties or early seventies. Tall. Looked strong. Face darkened by sun. Exactly what you would expect of a man who used to run geological expeditions and now studied Anasazi rock art. Garvin radiated a sense of power. But even so, Baxter knew he could best the man in any fair fight. No reason to be afraid. Not yet.

“Have to do with your family gold?” asked Garvin.

Baxter took a step back as if from a blow. His eyes widened. His nostrils flared. How did he know?

“Oh, hell, everybody around here knows the story of Baxter’s gold,” said Garvin with a chuckle. “Even had some treasure-hunters come through a time or two, though it’s been a couple decades since the last ones. But you’re the first Baxter I know of coming back to look for it.”

Of course, Baxter thought. Of course he would know. The history museum freely told the story. People would know. Especially people like Garvin.

“Did you ever have to sign a non-disclosure agreement at the university?” asked Baxter.

Now it was Garvin’s turn to step back from an unexpected comment. He usually saw where people were going. But he didn’t see this.

“Maybe.”

“But you had agreements, maybe between people sharing research secrets.”

Garvin nodded. “Yeah. So.”

“I need an agreement with you.”

The tea kettle started whistling. Garvin used it to give him time to think. Agreements had to be negotiated. Baxter would have to tell him what he wanted in order to negotiate it. He made his tea, and as he stirred, he thought about what Baxter must have worth keeping secret.

“You found a clue, didn’t you? Something from the family attic. The bottom of an old trunk.” Garvin laughed. “The source of all family secrets! And you think it means something. That it?”

Baxter felt off-balance, pushed back again. The old man’s brain still ticked, no doubt about that.

“Well, maybe. But I can’t tell you without an agreement.”

 

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

“Mr. Tequila,” Excerpt 6 from “The G.O.D. Journal,” by Jeff Posey

Chapter 2, Part 3, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold , a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

From across the room Elby knew they must look like high school friends meeting after a long time apart, unsure of each other but attentive. Such a tenuous relationship it could break forever without anyone noticing. And she had every intention of getting up at any moment and doing just that. Break it. End it before it started. She knew the ending before the beginning even happened. Men wanted one thing and one thing only, and she had no interest at all in that.

But she didn’t pull herself away. She could have, but she felt a desire to stay. To talk to this man. Her whole life, she had so little interest in men she accepted herself as a sort of neuter. But this guy had a frequency about him that lit her up. Kept her glued to her seat. Preposterous, she told herself. She knew nothing of the man.

Elizabeth—a.k.a. Elby—Elder stood at an uncomfortable crossroad in her life. At thirty-two and teaching basic literature to undergraduates at Fort Lewis College in Durango, she had lost her way. She stopped reading for pleasure, hadn’t taken a long hike in the mountains for a couple years, and hadn’t done any art projects for even longer. The world felt grey and uninteresting to her.

Her uncle, the one who started calling her Elby as a baby, suggested she volunteer as a tour guide for a summer, like he did, and plant a garden, like he did. At a deep level, she knew those were his ways of avoiding the same kind of depression she allowed herself to experience. At a deeper level, she knew her uncle represented a family-male influence that Elby could barely tolerate. Her father taught her that lesson. But her uncle saved her. After her parents died in a car wreck, he took early retirement and moved Elby to Pagosa Springs. He was a good family-male who, for the most part, knew where he should not step and did not step there.

Now, with this stranger at the bar, every time she thought she could dismiss him, he became more interesting. Family secret, he said. Lost treasure. She had the former, but not the latter.

“Ahh, and you’re off for the chase,” she said. “With lots of big horses and big guns. Hunt the family secret down and kill it. Bring it back. Carry it around like a trophy.” She mimed carrying a slab of meat on her shoulder. Where did this flamboyance come from? It felt good. Maybe she’d had too much to drink.

Baxter couldn’t tell if she made fun of him or if this was her style of humor. He decided to play along. “Yeah, me heap big bwana man.”

She laughed and took a quick swig of beer. “Ah, that’s rich. Offensive dumbass white-boy slang for two cultures on different continents mixed into a single comment that proves the intractable stupidity of men. Bravo.” That’s it, she thought. That’s her bitter self she knew so well. She told herself not to attack this guy merely for being male. That’s my hang-up. Keep that to self.

“You don’t like men, do you, bwana woman?”

She pressed her lips together and used willpower alone to force them into a weak smile. “Not usually.”

“Why not? Tell me lies, tell me truth, just make it interesting.”

She smiled again, genuinely this time. How could this man do that to her? Men didn’t make her smile. They made her smolder in anger. In fact, this one, she lectured herself, must be playing her. Just acting interested to get her into the sack. What all men wanted. That thought melted her smile.

“Oh, just your usual lost virtues,” she said. “A very nasty, very dark, very deep family secret. But unfortunately, not a shred of lost treasure.” She wanted to bite his head off. But maybe not until after he got his hands on her. The intrusive thought offended her, surprised her. Where had that come from? She never, ever wanted a man’s hands on her again. Push that thought away, away, she told herself. Away.

Baxter finished the last of his tequila—Mr. Tequila, he thought with an inner flash smile—and began drinking the Guinness, finally warmed to the right temperature. He smacked his lips. The thick beer felt good coating his mouth. He needed to push away from this woman. He couldn’t afford entanglement, no matter how useful she might be. He would find someone else to help him. Not this girl. She would trip him up. He’d lose his camouflage. Worse, get distracted from his goal. Whatever that was. His mind fluttered a moment in indecision. Then he remembered. Hide. Find the family treasure. In that order. He breathed deeply.

“Seems we’re at an impasse,” he said. “Grounded on the rocks of our own family secrets. In celebration of that, you should drink your tequila.”

“Sometimes you sound like a hick and sometimes like a professor of literature or something,” she said, trying to keep her self-protective anger smoldering.

“I am a hick, but I’m not a professor of literature.” He took another long pull of the beer. Part of his disengagement strategy: drink fast.

She laughed in spite of herself. Dammit if she didn’t like the conversational ability of this guy. “Well, I am a professor of literature and I’m thinking about becoming a hick.”

“Are you really?”

She nodded.

“So, what’s your favorite story from literature?” he asked. Bells went off in his head. Klaxon sounds. He asked for a story in direct contradiction of his decision to disengage.

She looked at him while reaching back into her brain. Which story should she cite? The answer appeared in her head as suddenly as the old artistic insights she used to have and she brightened and sat up straight. “Arabian Nights,” she said.

“Ah, yes. One of my favorites, too. Keeping a herd of women around until they no longer please you, and then put them to death. I can see why you like it.”

Bastard, she thought. But she thought it admiringly. She liked how sharply he turned it.

“No,” she said, “not that part. What I liked were all the eunuchs that guarded the women. Seems the highest and best use of men to me.”

Ouch, he thought. Skewered along with all of mankind. He swigged deeply from his beer. Two more swallows, then he would be gone. But he couldn’t shut his bloody mouth. He wanted a parting shot for this woman. This man-hater. If she weren’t a woman, he would punch her, a quick jab.

“Ah. You know, I think I’ve finally figured out your type.”

“My type,” she said. She did not like being a type. Her entire being sank into a sour place. She prepared herself to finally put this man where she wanted him, as worthless as all men, a dog turd on the sidewalk of life.

“You’re only attracted to emasculated men. Ones who don’t probe you. Who don’t want to get inside.” His tongue turned acid. A jab with the mouth.

She snapped. It even felt like a snap to her. Or maybe a whoosh, like an ignited pile of gasoline-soaked rags. She grabbed her tequila glass and threw the liquid into his face. She stood, knocking over her chair. People at nearby tables looked. She burned inside and her ears roared, making her deaf. She so wanted a snappy, pain-inducing comment, but nothing came to her and she merely glared at him, then stomped away.

Baxter reacted slowly. Licked his lips. Blinked his eyes. Tequila leaked in and burned them. They watered. He closed his eyelids, patted the table until he found a napkin and wiped his face.

“Waste of good tequila,” he said loud enough to satisfy the onlookers, most of whom laughed and nodded and turned back to their lives. All but one man, who raised his cell phone and casually took a photo of Baxter.

 

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

“Mr. Tequila,” Excerpt 5 from “The G.O.D. Journal,” by Jeff Posey

Chapter 2, Part 2, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold , a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

“So,” she asked, “you normally drink a lot or are you celebrating?”

“Celebrating,” he said. He had to be careful. The rules of hiding were simple and clear: Camouflage and keep quiet.

“Just another Friday night?” she asked.

They sat. He smiled, feeling warm from the tequila and full from the burger. He thought of his grandfather. Fishing from the back yard. Reeling one in all the way to the lawn.

“Oh, much bigger than that,” he said.

“Well, tell me the truth or tell me a lie, but make it interesting.”

He smiled, liking her immediately. “Buy you another beer?”

Her eyes sparkled. They were black, her eyebrows perfectly arched over them. She rested her chin on her hand, studying him. The panic fluttered back. He hadn’t checked the post office or the television lately. His picture wasn’t out there, was it? But again, he calmed himself. Of course not. She’s just a girl, man.

“Sure,” she said. “But don’t you be thinking it’ll buy you any favors.”

He grinned. She’d brought up and dismissed the elephant in the room: sex. That meant, he decided, she wanted it. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman. Years. His trophy wife, younger by eighteen years, cut him off shortly after their wedding night. He never understood the woman. Or why he married her. Her father introduced them, and he knew she did it more for him than Baxter. He motioned for the waitress, who took his order for two more shots of tequila and a Coors Light.

“So what are you celebrating so big, Mr. Tequila?”

Whoa! He liked that. Mr. Tequila. Why didn’t he think of that? He could become something with a name like that. He chuckled.

“Oh, some things about my family fell into place today. Seems the bastards weren’t as poor as they made out.” Shut up! he told himself. But he grinned. Felt euphoric. Make it interesting. That’s what she said.

She smiled and he felt it in his chest. Damn, he hated that. Someone wiggling into his heart. Especially so quickly. Even his wife, his dead wife, never did that. She only wiggled out. Already this woman made him feel exposed, compromised. He thought he could play her like a suave man on the prowl, have some laughs, maybe even get lucky, but he realized he couldn’t. He’d never been that kind of man, even as Tom Oley. From afar, he might imagine it. But in the flesh, close up, her looking into his eyes, leaning toward him, she seemed both desirable and radioactive. He leaned back. What the hell was going on? He didn’t want anything like this. The tequila made him brave. But in reality, he was a fragile coward in his new-old identity.

“So are you going to hire a lawyer and legal them out of it? Or is your way a different way?” She put the fresh Coors Light to her lips and swallowed. Baxter watched her throat, unsure what to do, to think.

“Here, this stuff will wash that awful taste out of your mouth,” Baxter said, sliding a shot glass to her.

She took it and played with it but didn’t raise it to her lips. “I don’t think people who lawyer-up celebrate with tequila,” she said.

“What are you, a liquor psychologist?”

She laughed. The first time. He smiled and felt it again. Not the tequila. That other thing. That pang. Longing spiked with fear. It spooked him. Made his heart race and his breath shallow. If she knew about him…but she couldn’t. She can’t. She won’t. But that was only part of what jacked up his heart rate.

“Land?” she asked. “Cattle? Money?”

He grinned, masking his panic. He couldn’t possibly tell her anything. But she had asked him to make it interesting. He breathed deeply and swallowed. Calm yourself, he said. Just play with her. Don’t reel her in. Just practice the cast.

“Oh, just your usual lost treasure,” he said. “An old family secret.” His mind had started turning, logic coming back. This girl must be local. Yeah. A conduit to the community—he liked the sound of the alliteration in his tequila-addled head. He might need that. She could help him find a guide, someone who knew the backcountry. He sipped the tequila and leaned forward, smiling his best smile.

 

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

“Mr. Tequila,” Excerpt 4 from “The G.O.D. Journal,” by Jeff Posey

Chapter 2, Part 1, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold , a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

Two nights later, a Friday, he celebrated. He found a clue in the history museum that put the JAB journal into a new light. The first Baxter in southern Colorado, his great-great-grandfather, made a fortune in gold. Not by digging for it, but by mysterious means—had the man been a thief? A gambler? A loan shark? However he’d done it, he made a pile, mostly in Silverton, then as a founding father of Pagosa Springs he lived well in that house on Hermosa Street, but not filthy rich.

For decades, people speculated about what happened to his money and made up stories about it. Some even searched for it. A legend grew, then died about the same time as Baxter’s grandfather. The journal, cryptic though it was, seemed to confirm that the original JAB had hidden a treasure somewhere near a cliff. The man must have stashed it away before he morphed into a respectable man of Pagosa. Or maybe the temptation was too much for him and he had to get it away from his immediate grasp.

Regardless of the old man’s intent, it could serve Baxter now. If the authorities were still looking for him, and he had no reason to believe they would stop, it gave him an effective cover. There’s no better way to hide than in the wilderness searching for lost gold. Especially when he had every right to it. But he would need a little help. A guide. Someone who would recognize the landmarks mentioned in the journal. The two lakes, one above the other, and the Indian mark on the cliff. Surely someone around here would know where to start looking based on that. He didn’t expect it to be easy. It had stumped his grandfather.

He walked to a bar up on the main drag not far from the old Baxter house. A bluegrass band played. Seemed out of place. Hillbilly music in the Rocky Mountains. But they were good. He sat at a table for two and ordered a burger, fries, Guinness on tap, and two shots of Patron añejo tequila. He watched people. That’s what he wanted. Stop feeling hunted and just be a normal man with a normal tequila buzz watching normal people.

With the first sip of tequila still warming his mouth, he saw her. Not a top-flight beauty by the usual standards, but she struck him. Dark, wavy hair draped to the middle of her back. She tied it halfway with a single strand of orange yarn. Thirty, maybe, he guessed. Legs hidden in loose blue jeans. Narrow waist that swelled nicely both up and down. A bit too broad in the beam. Front teeth a little too prominent. Wide mouth and dark eyebrows. She stood and moved alone to the music, swaying back and forth, holding a Coors Light loosely by its long neck.

He made up stories about her as he nursed his tequila, letting his beer warm from the too-cold most American places poured it. School teacher. Maybe even assistant principle. Hiked a lot. Did some kind of art. Pottery, he decided. Busted up with her boyfriend a year ago. Hadn’t found a good man since. Just starting again to be ready for a little love.

She looked at him, seemingly by accident, and he nodded, raised his glass. She halfheartedly raised her longneck in his direction and then turned her attention back to the band.

He watched her, though he tried to hide it by glancing at the musicians, swinging around to inspect the rest of the crowd, picking at his remaining fries. The alcohol softened him. He longed for a little companionship.

When the band stopped and the quiet crushed the place, she turned and scanned the room. Baxter stood and indicated the empty chair at his table.

“Care to join me? Take a load off for a few minutes?”

Lame, he thought. The suave he’d had as Tom Oley left him, and he was back to not-good-enough Baxter, damn his old aunt.

“You don’t live here,” she said, as if that rendered him unworthy.

“Not anymore,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes, accentuating the crow’s feet at the corners. Her teeth made her upper lip overhang the lower by half its width.

“You used to?” she asked.

“Long time ago.”

“And now you’re back.”

“For a while, anyway.”

She came to his table and inspected it before she sat: the beer, two tequila shot glasses, remnants of the burger and fries. He had a jolt of panic that she might be a forensic psychologist somehow reading him, tracing him back to the scene of the crime, seeing through him. But he forced away the paranoia. No way. She’s just a girl, man. Settle down.

 

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

“Murder?” Excerpt 3 from “The G.O.D. Journal,” a novel by Jeff Posey

Chapter 1, Part 3, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold , a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

From [St. Louis] he spent four slow days hitchhiking back to Dallas wondering how close the police were to his tail. But he figured hitchhiking made him far less visible than buying tickets for any kind of public transportation, or renting a car. And nobody would suspect he would go back to Dallas. He hoped. Once there, he needed wheels, so he got mildly drunk in a bar and bought an old pickup truck from a Mexican laborer. The man handed Baxter the signed title, the buyer information empty. Baxter gave him $700 cash. Made the man so happy, Baxter thought he would pass out. He drove the truck straight to a mechanic he knew by reputation on the south side of the river. Bad part of town.

“What do you want?” the mechanic asked, avoiding eye contact, wiping his hands with a greasy rag.

“I want it to look just like it does now. But I want all the mechanical parts to be in top shape.”

The mechanic nodded. “So you want it to look like crap on the outside but not be crap on the inside.”

“Exactly,” Baxter said.

“How much money you got?”

Baxter didn’t know how much to spend. Didn’t care. He just wanted transportation that wouldn’t attract attention and wouldn’t break down. “Two grand?” he asked.

The mechanic shrugged. He examined the truck for ten minutes then shook his head. “Four or five grand. It needs a lot.” He cited a long list.

Baxter nodded without listening. He felt awful. Strung out from the road, from drinking at the bar, from replaying over and over in his mind what happened with his wife. Constantly worried about the cops. He refused to be caught. Baxter interrupted the mechanic. “Just do it,” he said, giving him a thousand as down payment. He just wanted to drive away. Back to JAB. Back to Pagosa Springs.

As the mechanic did his magic, Baxter crashed in a nearby no-tell motel. He bought newspapers and watched local television news, but he didn’t see anything. No mention of Pam’s death. Or any manhunt for Tom Oley. Had they stopped looking for him? Or was it so routine it didn’t warrant making the news? It didn’t matter. He left evidence all over what appeared to be a murder scene. No way they would let him go without a chase. He had no choice. He had to evaporate.

Three nerve-wracking days later and another four thousand dollars poorer, he drove his mechanically sound but still ugly blue GM pickup truck across the staked plains of Texas and the northeast corner of New Mexico into Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Beyond exhausted, his mind as sour as his mouth and armpits, he turned left just across the river and coasted down Hermosa Street. To the big house on a triple lot, the river sluicing through the back yard. The old Baxter house, a historical marker out front that said so. He remembered it with a sudden shiver. The memory of his grandfather still filled it. And an old woman. His grandmother? That didn’t seem right. Great-aunt, maybe. They weren’t mean to him, though she was a stern, unhappy woman and he never felt good enough around her. But the old man laughed a lot. Let Baxter play in the river. Caught trout big enough to feed them all. Said that’s how you measure a rich man—the fish you can catch from your own back yard.

But the old man died. He remembered the funeral. The graveyard not far from town. And the old woman, she couldn’t deal with Baxter as a boy and made him stay in his room. Then his father came back. Without his mother, who he never knew. His father yelled a lot. Drank a lot. Locked Baxter in the basement a lot. Visited Baxter with his leather belt doubled in his hand a lot. Baxter did everything he could think of to get out of that basement and away from his father, from Pagosa Springs, from his life. Spent hours gouging a hole through concrete. Wore the nails off his fingers. Made mud of the dust with his blood. He hated being trapped. That’s why he wouldn’t stay and face the police after his wife’s death. He would never be trapped like that again. He thought he would die alone in that basement. After the authorities showed up, he spent the rest of his life as a Baxter in foster homes, never good ones, just run-down people living in run-down houses who needed the foster money.

The only thing that saved him were daydreams of becoming someone else. Graveyards and obituaries fascinated him. He would read them and imagine he became the people who had died, only he would keep living for them. Take their lives and leave his miserable life behind. Bury Baxter and everything about it in a deep, dark basement and never let it out again.

He began planning a way out during his freshman year in high school. Studied everything having to do with legal identity and how to change it. Found the name of a boy born on his birthday who died young in a dwindling family line of rich Texas merchants and the day after he graduated from high school he took the boy’s name, Tom Oley, and with it a scholarship to any Texas university. He never looked back. Almost never. Sometimes he would think about the journal and want to go back for it. Before someone else found it. But his father lived in the house for a decade after he disappeared into the ghost of Tom Oley. He started doing well in business and met Pam’s father who pressured them into marriage. He became trapped in a more subtle way. And never went back to look for the journal.

Now he sat idling outside the big abandoned house, looming brown and weather-stained behind tall blue spruce trees, a weather-beaten for-sale sign leaning in the front yard. He’d looked it up a year ago, thought about buying the place, but the owners were shockingly proud of it: $3.5 million. Laughable. That’s why it stood derelict. It made him grin, though. His father had sold it for a mere $72,000 before he died, the same amount of cash Baxter had to reenter his old identity.

At the moment, he couldn’t do anything. Too early. People walked the street. And he was beat. After a few hours’ sleep, he would come back. Take a look inside. See if he could find that secret place behind the boards in the attic. Maybe his grandfather had left the JAB journal there. Maybe he could piece something together from it and find the original JAB’s secret, his family treasure. Visit the history museum. Maybe the graveyard. Anything, he thought, to reconstruct himself. His original self. To find something real he could hold onto. Everything about Tom Oley had been a lie. He had built for himself a different kind of basement. It was time to claw his way out again.

He took a room at the old San Juan Motel east of the river and tried to sleep, but his grainy eyes kept opening and staring at the ceiling. After midnight he took a flashlight and a few tools—hammer, big flat-head screwdriver, his knife—and walked to Hermosa Street. It seemed quiet. So he ducked to the back of the old house and leaned his shoulder into the back door, bile creeping up his throat from his stomach. The roots of the place haunted him, a feeling of dread emanated from the basement.

Breaking in was easy. Too easy. Others had obviously been first. He shined the flashlight around, taking care not to cross windows in case a stray set of eyeballs became suspicious and reported him. He crept through every room except the basement. He would not go down there. Imagined filling it with dirt and rocks, or concrete. Or burning the house, embers and ashes caving into the hole. He hated that basement.

His grandfather’s room still had the faint smell of cigars, and he flashed a memory of his grandfather smoking on the back porch, grinning over a platter with a single gutted trout on it. He made his way to the attic, which baffled him. He didn’t remember it well. The slanting walls, the wooden slates. It had been cleaned out. Nothing but decaying, empty cardboard boxes. He tried various places that looked vaguely as he remembered where his grandfather slid away a board and hid the journal. But nothing.

After a while, he calmed himself and sat in the darkness, dim moonlight spilling in through dirt-filmed windows and he remembered. His grandfather reaching into a black opening, a window to his left. There were three windows. Baxter tried the first two. Nothing. Then on the third, the wood sounded different when he rapped his knuckles against it. He tapped it with his hammer. Found a crack and put in his flathead screwdriver, then hammered it like a chisel. A board fell away with a clatter that made his heart leap into his acid-burned throat. Behind the board he saw a small opening. He shined the light and craned his head, and there at the bottom it sat. He reached in and pulled it out. JAB burned black on the cracked leather. The pages as brittle as his birth certificate, but intact. Behind the front cover, he found a hand-scrawled note. “Glad you found it, Jabber.” That’s what his grandfather called him. He’d forgotten. Jabber. That’s me.

For the first time in decades, he smiled as a Baxter.

 

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

“Murder?” Excerpt 2 from “The G.O.D. Journal,” a novel by Jeff Posey

Chapter 1, Part 2, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold , a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

He directed the driver to a different bank in downtown Dallas where he kept a safety deposit box secured with a password, no key. From it, he took everything left from his original life: birth certificate, a few photos, a folder stuffed with legal documents.

He hailed a different taxi to a bustling truck stop on Interstate 20, paid the driver, tipped him a twenty.

Inside, he went into the men’s locker room, full of steam from showering truckers, and shed himself of the last vestiges of Tom Oley. In a stall, he used the clippers to cut his hair as close to the scalp as he could, saving the clippings in a plastic bag, along with his identification cut into tiny bits with a nail snip. They wouldn’t know he’d cut his hair and they would never find the hair clippings or his ID remnants, pitched out along whatever route he was about to take. He counted his cash: $373. That would get him there, wherever there turned out to be. He opened his birth certificate. The paper seemed faded and brittle, but it opened without cracking. Jedediah Aberdene Baxter. JAB. That’s me.

Born in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, in the old family house on Hermosa Street. He’d never known his mother. And his father only those two last miserable years in that house. But he remembered his grandfather. Also JAB. All the way back to his great-great-grandfather. A line of JABs with the same ludicrous first and middle names. What did that make him? The fifth? His mind drifted back to the house. Before his grandfather died and his father arrived. Before things became unbearable.

He remembered a room. With unfinished walls. Must have been the attic. And a leather book with JAB burned black into the cover. His grandfather, smiling to him, showing him where it stayed hidden behind a board that looked like every other board. As a child he searched for it but never found it. His grandfather said it contained a family secret, a treasure he called it, but the clues made no sense and he couldn’t figure it out. No one in the family had been able to figure it out.

Maybe it’s time to go back, he thought. Put his old skin back on. Look for that leather journal. Figure out the riddle. Maybe it would tell him who he really was. Maybe it would save him and hide him until the death of Tom Oley’s wife blew over. But before he could disappear into his own abandoned past, he had to clear the seventy-two grand.

He bought shaving cream and disposable blades at the truck stop store and lathered his face and head in front of a mirror. He wanted to be cleanly shaven. It amazed him how unlike himself it made him look. His scalp pale against his tanned face. Like a chemotherapy patient.

A burly fellow with a towel around his waist joined him to shave.

“Missed your eyebrows,” the man said.

Baxter grinned. “I leave that kind of detailed work to the girlie men.”

The man scowled. “You’re not one of those, are you?”

“I don’t think they let heteros into the club. Unless they hold you down.”

“They better not try that with me.”

“Where you headed?”

“Cincinnati. Straight shot, not stopping.”

“Conversation keep you awake or put you to sleep?”

In the mirror, the burly man looked him in the eyes. “What’re you running from?”

“My wife.”

The driver laughed. Dragged his razor over the rough stubble on his cheeks. “I’m not supposed to. But yeah, if you want to go to Cincinnati and you’ll help keep me awake.” He extended a moist hand. “Packer,” he said.

“Fitzsimmons,” said Baxter, shaking the hand. “Fitz to most.” He smiled at his joke. He liked making those who pursued him have fits.

Packer did most of the talking, and they parted like old friends. In Cincinnati Baxter took a series of taxicabs to twenty banks and cashed twenty checks. It took him all day. He bought a red-eye bus ticket to Atlanta, where he cashed thirty-three checks the next day. Another overnight bus to New York, where he converted the rest and bought a nice, well-fitting money belt. More vest than belt, it literally surrounded him with cash. He took another low-rent overnight bus to Detroit. There he saw the fragment of a TV news item: “Millionaire’s Daughter Murdered.” A picture of Pam and her father, Trevor Williams, followed by a picture of Baxter with the caption: “Wanted.” It almost unnerved him. He walked twice around the block, then zigzagged through town until he stopped at a diner, exhausted. Amazingly, he met a man willing to give him a ride to St. Louis.

 

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

“Murder?” Excerpt 1 from “The G.O.D. Journal,” a novel by Jeff Posey

Chapter 1, Part 1, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold , a novel by Jeff Posey.

Available in paperback and ebook.

He didn’t mean to kill his wife. It didn’t even feel like he killed her. Certainly didn’t feel like murder. But it looked like murder. So he ran.

He’d done it before. Not murder, but running. Long ago when he’d been his original self he ran away and changed identity. It worked. For twenty years it insulated him from a horrible past, made him wealthy even. Brought him a rich wife. Who cheated on him, pregnant by another man, his next-door neighbor. And now this.

His eyes wheeled around the room. Morning coffee steamed in their cups. The newspaper spread open. Her body on the floor, the heavy bookend in her hand. His bloody handprint on her back, both his hands dripping. So much blood so fast. He wanted to help her, but nothing he could do. Nothing anybody could do. The corner of the coffee table had killed her. All he wanted was for her to stop, and then she fell and he fell with her, the bookend finishing what the coffee table started. He stared at her. It could be him lying there. Why? He knew she didn’t love him. But why this?

Be calm and think, he told himself. He slipped out of his shoes and left them, blood spatter radiating around him, and backed away on socks. In the bathroom, he washed her blood from his hands, took a quick scalding shower. Packed a small bag with clothes and toiletries and a hair clipper for later. He kept basic identification only. A nearly clean man.

He cut through the wild greenbelt that ran behind the mini-estates of his neighborhood, remnant cow pasture grown up in maturing scrub with strands of rusty barbed wire rising weakly from the soil in places. The walk braced him and slowed his racing thoughts. He planned his escape. He couldn’t be caught. Wouldn’t be. He would rather die. But there were holes. Where would he go? Who would he become this time? Could he forget what it felt like to fall onto his wife as she died, her last breath escaping her lips, the final beat of her heart, the last twitch in her muscles? She hated him so badly she wanted to do to him what he accidentally did to her. Did she so prefer the other man? Had he become that unbearable?

At a convenience store that had been an old tumble-down country bait shop when they bought the house, he called a cab.

Twenty minutes later, after a cup of burnt coffee and a honey bun, he directed the cab driver to his bank.

“You ain’t robbin’ it are you?” asked the grizzled-hippie driver.

“No. I leave the robbing of people’s bank accounts to banks.”

The driver laughed and launched into a steady criticism of Wall Street bankers and Washington politicians.

He ignored the driver. JAB, he thought like a flashbulb. JAB like his initials used to be. Punch, stomp, JAB—that’s me! It became a mental mantra that kept him sane during the bad times. Punch, stomp, JAB, run away—that’s me. He smirked. The run is the rebirth. Should be the fun part. He sighed. He’d chosen to be reborn last time, but this time…this time he had no choice. He didn’t mean to kill her. He didn’t want to kill her. He just wanted her to stop. Then she fell. Just after he defended himself from the clubbing bookend in her hand, and he fell with her, on top of her, the blood soaking his hands. He pushed himself up and off of her. That bloody handprint. On the back of her white nightshirt.

It looked bad. He imagined a forensics team detailing the scene. They would see everything. But would they understand what happened? Would they realize what the bookend meant? Did he?

He glanced at the dashboard clock. Nearly nine o’clock. He’d be at the bank just as it opened.

What if they knew already? What if they stopped him? No. No, they hadn’t found her yet. Her boyfriend, Reeves, would find her, that neighbor of his, the sycophantic minion of Pam’s father. What time did he come to her? In the mornings? Afternoons? All day? Would he call the police? Yeah. Yeah, of course he would. Would they suspect the boyfriend? No. No, they wouldn’t. Not with the evidence he left. His shoes right there.

But what if…what if Reeves planned it with her? But why? Pam had family money. She could have divorced him. Why try to cave his head in?

The cab stopped and he asked the driver to wait. Inside the bank he was the first customer. He took most of every liquid account he could access and asked for it in cashier’s checks of one thousand dollars each made “to bearer.” The teller examined him closely against his picture identification. Her eyes showed suspicion. She would remember him.

“Surprise for my wife,” he said with a shrug. “We’re running away to the South Pacific for six months.” He attempted a smile. It’s a happy thing, he told himself. Be happy.

The woman nodded without a mirroring smile, consulted her manager who made a phone call, and then she finally began preparing seventy-two cashier’s checks.

“Thank you, Mr. Oley,” she said, handing him the checks.

“Yes, yes,” he said, taking them. Oley. Tom Oley. That’s who he had been since he turned eighteen. When he escaped JAB. As Tom Oley he’d done well. College. Business. Trophy house. Trophy wife. His company just started drilling the most expensive, deepest exploratory well in Texas history, the culmination of his life’s professional work. All gone because his stupid wife tried to bounce a bookend off his head. After nearly twenty years of being Tom Oley, he walked away with $72,000 in seed money for a new life. The shock of change hadn’t yet fully hit him.

“You richer or poorer after that?” asked the cab driver.

“Some of both,” the former Tom Oley said.

 

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.