Cry and the Blessed Shall Sing – Sample Chapter

This is chapter one of my new book Cry and the Blessed Shall Sing, which is the sequel to Dream with Little Angels. This chapter takes place seventeen years after a short prologue where a preacher walks into a farmhouse and accidentally kills a young boy while threatening the boy’s father over a land dispute. I really like the juxtaposition in tone between the prologue (which is very dark and powerful) to this, which is very light and funny with characters that anyone who has read the first book will be familiar with.

Cry and the Blessed Shall Sing
Chapter 1

Seventeen Years Later

        ”Dewey,” I said, “If I say it was blue, it was blue. Why the heck would I say it was blue if it was some other color? It’s not like the important part of the story has anything to do with it bein’ blue.”

        ”I just ain’t never seen one that’s blue,” Dewey said. “That’s all, Abe.”

        ”You ever seen one any other color?” I asked.

        ”What do you mean?”

        ”I mean, have you ever even seen one at all? Blue or not? This one was the first one I’d ever seen. I mean other than in movies and on TV and all that. It’s not like you see ‘em every day.”

        This question seemed to stump Dewey for a bit as he thought it over. Least, I think he was thinking about it. He may have been pondering the aluminum foil he was unrolling onto my mother’s living room floor. “Not sure,” he said. “Not that I can remember.”

        ”I think that’s enough aluminum foil, don’t you?” I asked. “How much is in a roll?”

        He read the side of the box. “Fifty feet.”

        ”And you had four boxes? That’s two hundred feet, Dewey.”

        ”I know, but when I paced off your livin’ room, it was ten by twelve. Right there we have a hundred and twenty feet. And it ain’t like the foil’s goin’ to be laid down flat. And I reckon for this to work, Abe, we’re gonna need to go into your dinin’ room too.”

        ”Well there ain’t no more foil,” I said. “My mom’s already gonna be mad we used up two brand new rolls.”

        ”I took two from my house, too,” he said. “At least we’re sharin’ responsibility.”

        ”But the difference is that you reckon this is gonna work. I don’t.”

        ”It’ll work.”

        I sighed.

        ”We need two more rolls,” he said.

        ”We ain’t got two more rolls, Dewey. I reckon if two hundred feet don’t do it, two thousand feet ain’t gonna make no difference.”

        He thought this over. “You might have a point. At the very least we should see some indication of it workin’. Then we can show your mom and she’ll gladly buy us two more rolls.”

        ”My mom ain’t gonna want aluminum foil runnin’ around the inside of her house, Dewey.”

        ”She is when she sees what it does for her television reception,” he said. “Think of how much money we’re savin’ her.”

        ”How do you figure?” I asked.

        ”On a satellite dish.”

        ”She ain’t buyin’ no satellite dish.”

        ”Exactly.”

        ”Why aren’t we doing this at your place?” I asked him.

        ”Abe, my mom’s home. It’s hard enough to do anythin’ at my place when my mom’s not home,” he said. “You’re lucky that your mom works all day shootin’ people.”

        ”She don’t shoot people all day,” I said. “I don’t reckon she’s ever actually shot anyone.” My mother was the only detective the Alvin Police Department had and if she had shot anyone, she certainly hadn’t told me about it, and it seemed like the sort of thing that she’d probably mention.

        ”I reckon she has.”

        ”She hasn’t,” I assured him.

        ”I bet she thinks about it, though,” Dewey said. “A lot.”

        ”Can we just get this finished so I can have it cleaned up before she gets home?” I asked him.

        Dewey was taking the aluminum foil and rolling it into a sort of shiny rope. He made sure all the new pieces fit tightly against the old ones, making one solid snake that ran around the inside of my living room, starting and ending at the back of the television set.

        ”So was they all blue?” Dewey asked. “Or were there other colors too? I mean they can’t all be on the same side. Be awful confusin’ if they was all blue.”

        ”The other ones were red. I saw one of them later.”

        ”Which ones were the good guys?” Dewey asked.

        ”How do you mean?”

        ”There’s always a good side and a bad side, Abe. Were the blue ones the good ones or the bad ones? These colors make it hard to know. Usually they use somethin’ obvious like black and white. Then you know who you should be rootin’ for.”

        ”Do you root for the good guys or the bad guys?” I asked.

        Dewey stopped laying down his aluminum foil pipeline and considered this. “That depends on when in my life you had asked me. When I was little I always wanted the good guys to win. Then I went through a phase where I secretly hoped for the bad guys.”

        ”And?” I asked. “What about now?”

        ”Now I guess I just want to see a fair fight,” he said. “Did the blues and the reds both have swords?”

        I started to get excited. The swords had been the best part. “You shoulda seen the swords,” I said. “The red blades actually glowed the same color as the knights, and they were huge. They looked so big I doubt I coulda lifted one off the ground. And each sword had a different gem centered in its hilt. They actually had real swords for sale in Sleeping Beauty’s castle, but Mom refused to buy me one. She told me I’d wind up takin’ somebody’s eye out with it or somethin’”

        ”Wow,” Dewey said, looking off into the distance and seemingly speaking to himself. “A real sword. That would be somethin’. ” His attention came back to the living room and all the foil. He looked me straight in the eyes. “Especially if we both had one. We could have sword fights.”

        ”Are you even listenin’ to a word I’m sayin’?” I asked him. “These were real swords, Dewey. We couldn’t have sword fights with ‘em. We’d wind up killin’ each other.”

        ”Still, it’s fun to think about.”

        I hesitated. “You’re right. It is fun to think about.”

        I looked around the room. Dewey’s aluminum foil rope completely ran along the walls of the entire living room coming right up to the back of the television. We even pushed the sofa away from the wall so that we could make sure it was as long as possible.

“Okay,” I said, just in case Dewey had other ideas, “I think we’re done as much as we’re doin’. Now what?”

        ”Now I unhook the cable and attach the foil antenna with these alligator clips,” he said.

        ”Can I ask where you got this idea?”

        He shrugged. “While you was at DisneyWorld I started an inventor’s notebook. Turns out I’m pretty smart. I got lots of great ideas. They’re probably worth a million dollars.”

        I glanced around the room. My mother was going to have a conniption when she saw what we’d done to it, and especially that we’d used up two brand new rolls of her aluminum foil. “Probably,” I said. “You give off a glow of genius, that’s for certain.”

        The light falling in through the window above the sofa was starting to turn purple and orange, which meant it was getting late. This further meant my mother would probably be home soon–unless she wound up working late like she sometimes did. I took another look at Dewey’s tinfoil snake and hoped this was going to be a late night for her.

        Dewey hooked up the alligator clips to the screws attached to the electronic box where the cable vision wire normally attached to the television. “That should do it,” he said.

        ”So now what?” I asked.

        ”Now we turn on the TV and enjoy havin’ all the stations folks get with satellite dishes without payin’ a cent. All it cost us was the price of four rolls of aluminum foil.”

        ”It didn’t cost us nothin’,” I reminded him. “We stole the foil from our moms, remember?”

        ”Even better,” he said, rubbing his hands together. He pulled the button on the television that turned the set on. For a minute the screen stayed dark, then it slowly grew into a picture of white static.

        ”Works well,” I said, sarcastically. I snuck another glance out the window. The sky had cleared up considerably from this morning. It had been four days since we’d gotten back from DisneyWorld, and every day since we’d returned had been full of pouring rain, including the beginning of this one. This afternoon, though, the sun finally broke through the clouds and cleaned up the sky.

        Dewey changed the channel to more static. “Somethin’s wrong. We didn’t hook somethin’ up properly.”

        ”You know what’s wrong?” I asked. “You’re tryin’ to get satellite TV with aluminum foil.”

        ”Wait, this has to work. I had it all figured out.” He started rapidly switching channels. Then he came to a channel that was clear as a bell. “Look!” he said, nearly screaming it. “It works! Look how clear it is!”

        I had to admit it was clear.

        ”Told you it would work!” He went around the dial the entire way and found three more channels we could get. All tremendously clear. This seemed to satisfy him immensely.

        ”So you’re happy with your invention?” I asked.

        ”I’ll say,” he said.

        I looked at him and blinked. “I’m a little confused.”

        ”About what?”

        ”Who you will be marketin’ this to.”

        ”What do you mean?”

        ”I mean, is this for folk who can’t afford cablevision but happen to have a surplus of aluminum foil and one or two favorite channels they simply cannot live without?” I once again looked at the foil running along the edge of the floor everywhere. “Or will you try and make it some sort of home décor product? Not to mention the fact that you can’t really charge more than the price of four rolls of aluminum foil for it or people will just go out and buy their own and just set everythin’ up for themselves.”

        Dewey frowned, perplexed by my complex questions. “It’s a start, okay? I have many inventions. I’ve already filled half a notebook,” he said. “You may have been wasting time in DisneyWorld with blue and red knights, but at least I was doing somethin’ productive.”

        Nodding, I said, “Okay. Now, do you mind if we try to get all this put away and see if we can make the television work properly again before my mom gets home from work?”

        Dewey glared at me. “You just don’t know genius when you see it.”

        ”You’re probably right. I don’t. I’ve never really been much of a noticer of brilliance.”

        He unhooked the alligator clips. I began to roll up the two hundred feet of aluminum foil.

        Just then my sister Carry came into the living room. She’d been out with some friends all day and I hadn’t even heard her come home. “Abe?” I looked up into her blue eyes. Her blonde curls swayed on either side of her face. “What the hell are you two doin’?” she asked.

        ”Preparin’ ourselves for the future,” I said. “It’s comin’. And it’s full of aluminum foil.”

        ”And other inventions!” Dewey said. “Wanna see my notebook?”

        ”Mom’s gonna kill you,” Carry said.

        ”I know,” I said.