by M. Mabie
Break My Fall
M. Mabie
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
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A Preview of ROOTS AND WINGS
Also by M. Mabie
About M. Mabie
Copyright
Break My Fall © 2018 M. Mabie / Fifty5cent Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1724717405 ISBN-10: 1724717405
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of the material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/ publisher. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, alive or dead, is coincidental and not indented by the author.
LICENSE NOTICE. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you wish to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
DISCLAIMER. This is a work of adult fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication and use of these trademarks are not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
The author does not endorse or condone any behavior enclosed within. The subject matter is not appropriate for minors. Please note this novel contains profanity and explicit sexual situations.
Cover Design Copyright © 2018 by Jay Aheer/Simply Defined Art, Photograph by Wander Aguiar Photography of Jamie Walker, Editing by Felicia Wetzig.
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Also by M. Mabie
THE WAKE SERIES
Bait
Sail
Anchor
THE KNOT DUET
Twisted Desire
Tethered Love
STANDALONES
Fade In
All the Way
CITY LIMITS SERIES of STANDALONES
Roots and Wings
Sunshine and Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
THE BREAKING TRILOGY
Break My Fall
Break Me Down
(Coming October 16)
Break the Faith
(Coming December 3)
1
Abe
I stretched after stepping out of the Peterbilt, and the muscles in my neck burned. Mill work wasn’t the easiest, but it was honest, and my debt to the Griers was finally paid. It was my twelfth year in Fairview, and I finally owned a small patch of land.
Outright. Free and clear.
It was mine, and it didn’t take a board of pious trustees or a metal ring to get it. It only took hard work.
The next step was a storefront of my own in town. Soon, I wouldn’t have to piecemeal out my work, and I could sell all my furniture from one location. I’d always be there to help the Griers when they needed me, but I’d go full-time for myself.
Chris and the last trucks filed onto the lot as the others who’d arrived first that morning were already unloading. I headed their way to help. The sooner we got at least a few loads dropped, the sooner I’d finally get home after a long week of logging on the mountain.
“Abe,” Dori called from the open office window. “Hold up.” The Griers didn’t need to speak to me often. Few did really. They understood why I kept to myself, and I didn’t complain when people didn’t bother me with small talk.
A cloud of smoke followed the silver-haired woman out the door of the main building onto the covered porch outside, and she shot the butt of her cigarette into the dirt in front of the semi.
“Your mother’s been trying to reach you.”
My phone had died two days earlier, and I’d forgotten to bring a charger. Mom was the only person I still spoke with from Lancaster, but it was rare for her to call me, and I only reached out a few times a year.
“Say what she wanted?” I asked and slid my hands into worn leather gloves.
“Honey, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your brother passed away last night.”
Ted Grier hung back in the doorway, watching. Both of their faces wore sympathy.
“Pardon?”
“Your brother passed, Abe. You should call her back. Come on in and use the phone.”
I hadn’t spoken to my brother in years, but when I left home with no plans to return, I just assumed things would stay how I left them. They’d cling to their Bibles and bands and keep living in their own warped version of reality. They’d stay tucked under the strict thumb of the Legacies and God, or at least the way they interpreted him, and I’d live my life in the woods, free of their judgment and rules.
Alone and how I liked it.
They lived how they wanted, and I did the same.
I squinted in the mid-day sun, and the tension in my neck pinched even tighter.
“Jacob died?”
Ted limped to the stoop, tapped a Camel from his pack and lit it. “Son, you wanna come inside for a minute? Call your family?”
I did not. Calling them was the last thing I wanted.
It was almost noon, and I still had more than half day’s work to finish. The tobacco in the air was thick as I pulled it into my chest. “I’ll call when I get home.”
It was supposed to rain for the next four days in the hills, and there was work that needed to be done. Calling in the middle of the day wasn’t going to do anything but put me behind, and my brother would still be dead that evening.
All I could figure was everyone from my past, my family included, lived their lives by their interpretation of The Word, wanted their rings, and then planned to die and go to Heaven. That was their goal. So as much as I could conclude, they’d only be upset beca
use Jacob had beat them to it.
Since I wasn’t a man who was burdened by those notions, I did my work, pulled my weight, and when my cell phone was charged to capacity later that evening, I turned it on and returned my mother’s call.
“Hello.”
“It’s Abe.”
“Catherine, you’ve got a call,” my father announced, as if he wasn’t speaking to his only living child, but I’d expected the familiar greeting. In the Hathaway house—his house—he answered the phone unless she was there alone.
“Hello.” She sounded weary and tired, but that was also typical of our calls. Mind you, she’d chosen that life. They all had.
“Mrs. Grier told me Jacob died.”
“Oh, Abraham.”
I gave her a minute, hearing her quietly sob. If Dad was beside her, listening, I’m sure she was doing her best to hold it together.
“Jacob went to be with Jesus last night.” Again, she sniffled and caught her breath. “He’d been feeling sluggish and ill for some time, but we just thought it was from all the commotion with the wedding.” Another cough to conceal her feelings.
So, he’d been banded. Honestly, later than I’d expected.
Jacob and I were close as boys, but as we’d gotten older, I wasn’t able to fall in line like he had. Before I left, we’d barely even spoken, but that was mostly the will of our father who didn’t want me—and my rebellion—influencing his only other child.
“Services are Friday night and Saturday. It would make me feel so much better if you’d come home and say goodbye. You’ve missed so much, and I pray for you daily, Abraham.”
The line was muffled. Then my father cleared his throat and spoke.
“Abraham, it’s time you quit putting your selfish needs before God and your family. It is time you grow up and take care of business. I expect your mother and I will see you Friday or never again.”
The line went dead.
Another empty threat of exile, banishment, but I knew he’d never do it publicly like the Legacy Men had done to anyone else who’d left like me.
He was the Great Pastor. How would that make him look?
I put the phone down beside me on the log outside my workshop and stared off into the valley wondering what he’d imagined I’d been doing.
I believed in God. I prayed. I had morals and values that felt honorable, and I worked hard for the few things I had.
Why was it that I must have been living like a heathen just because I couldn’t conform? Did having my own opinions really make me all that evil? Truth be told, had I been left to make my own decisions about my life and how I wanted to live it, I may have chosen to stay. But for the preaching, the never-ending shame, the patriarchy, and the guilt that came along with how they fearmongered, I could never get in line with them.
The way I saw it, God gave me eyes and intelligence. He gave me a strong body and mind. Free will in a country full of opportunity. What good were those gifts if I wasn’t allowed to use them? Allowed to explore and find my way instead of following their carbon-copied cult-like lifestyle?
I didn’t live for death, and bands and Heaven weren’t my only goals.
I had one life given to me, and I refused to be imprisoned by my faith and waste my years out of fear of Hell and damnation.
Because that wasn’t living.
To me, that was Hell on Earth.
I wasn’t sure what the afterlife held, but I had this life right now. It was mine, and no one was going to tell me what I could or couldn’t do with it.
2
Myra
Dear Heavenly Father,
Please welcome Jacob into your loving arms. Thank you for your mercy, Lord. My grief is eased knowing and believing in your infinite wisdom. It is your will, and I am comforted.
Please forgive my shortcomings and lead me. I’m yours, Lord.
In Jesus’s name, Amen.
The Hathaways were such a blessing. They’d taken care of everything. Made the arrangements. Brought food. Allowed me to stay in the house to reflect and pray, which must have been working on my heart, because I wasn’t as sad as I’d expect.
Instead, I kept myself busy doing the last of Jacob’s laundry and keeping the house clean, should I have received visitors. Although, no one had come by since my sister-in-law Denise and her children that afternoon, and she hadn’t stayed long, being seven months pregnant with her fifth. Plus, she’d only stopped by to bring me a casserole, and it was almost her family’s dinner time. My brother Michael needed her at home.
Where was I needed?
After only a few weeks of marriage, I was a widow, but I wasn’t sure what that meant, because my Holy Matrimony ring was still on my right hand. We’d been married such a short time. And in those weeks, Jacob had been so ill. We hadn’t had a chance to move our wedding bands together.
Even prayer wasn’t clearing the confusion in my head.
But I’d keep praying.
And doing the laundry.
And tending to the house, until He showed me the way.
3
Abe
I swallowed the last of my cold coffee and rinsed the single mug, putting it beside the sink where I had nearly every day.
Outside birds chirped to raise the sun, but all I felt was dread. Not about saying goodbye to my brother. Not about seeing my father and mother. Not about the long drive back to my hometown. I dreaded the feeling I’d reclaim, knowing I didn’t belong there.
I belonged alone. In the woods with tools in my hands. I belonged in the quiet company of trees and nature, with books, music, and my own thoughts.
That’s where I was at home. That’s where a man like me fit, without the inauthentic chatter of pleasantries and words that were spoken more for show than sincerity. The pretend smiles. The sheep-like monotony. Under the thumb of scrutiny and rules.
I was born to be free, and that’s how I’d lived for the past decade.
I wore what I wanted.
Spoke when I wanted.
Read what interested me.
My will was my own.
Yet, there I was on a work day, not dressed in tattered denim and cotton, but instead in the nicest jeans I owed and a black button-up shirt. I considered asking Chris if he had anything nicer to loan me but decided against it. I wasn’t there to impress. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure why I was going at all, but returning to Lancaster didn’t mean changing who I was.
I left my ring in the drawer where it had sat for years. I wore my long hair the same as I did every day. There was no need to shave my beard—to prove to people who I didn’t respect that I was any Godlier than the next working man. And since I couldn’t find my nicer shoes, which most likely ran off to find more attention elsewhere, I’d quickly wiped off my boots and decided they would do.
If my footwear was the only thing about me that offended the congregation before my visit was done, I’d consider that a blessing.
The Lord, Himself, knew my defiant thoughts would be plenty for them to shun me.
Still, I put the truck in drive and wasted a tank of gas traveling into the past.
Mile after mile, I had to talk myself out of turning around, but I could leave whenever I wanted—unlike before.
I was free, and that gave me power. They couldn’t control me. They couldn’t guilt me anymore. They couldn’t threaten me with Hell and damnation, because I knew different.
They lived their lives loving out of fear and obligation to The Word. I lived my life with neither love nor fear. They made choices out of pressure and blind commitment, uneducated and naïve. That wasn’t me either. I’d read more than just the Bible now and wasn’t afraid of their ridicule.
They didn’t own me. No one did. Not even God.
Had He wanted me to fall into that flock, He would have made me weaker, would have dimmed my will.
He hadn’t.
He made me strong. Independent. He gave me the tools I needed to build a life for myself where I didn’t need the
ir herding, their preaching, or their shame.
I made my own rules. Prayed how and when I chose. Worked hard and earned everything I possessed.
As I drove out of the hills, the curves in the road uncurled, and the sun blinded me through the windshield like a warning of what was up ahead.
Had it not been for the second call from my mother, one of which I doubt my father knew about, I probably wouldn’t have been making the trip. Despite how much I resented her choices, I still cared about her.
I wasn’t close with my younger brother. Not since we were children had I felt any connection to him. He’d still been moldable when I’d reached my teens, when I’d refused to wear my ring and when my father began to sort me from his flock. It always struck me as odd that for a man who preached about the Heavenly gift of children and full quivers, he’d never been blessed with more than two.
The country highway narrowed as I crept into Lancaster through the open white-washed gates a few miles out. The words at the top still read, “A City for God.” Past the lanes to the hog confinements and dairy farms, the streets of town were host to marquee signs with both scripture and daily lunch specials alike. “Jesus saves, and you can too. Buy one get one half off.” The curbs seemed polished, and each blade of grass knew to only grow to appropriate heights.
There wasn’t a knee or an ankle in sight.
What used to seem almost normal, felt even eerier upon returning.
From my limited traveling, I’d found that a courthouse was usually the center of a town, not the towering white church that every street in Lancaster was anchored to. The Banded Church of God.
Other than the new Academy I’d passed, the small community hadn’t changed much.
But I had.
I was there for a funeral, but mourning was only a trivial fraction of their ceremony. Because to die a ringed and banded man of God and find your way to the kingdom was something to celebrate. In some ways, I agreed with that, but not the way they did.
My late brother Jacob would know more on the subject than myself, but I was skeptical. Taking a wife and fathering handfuls of children wasn’t required by my God.
