• About
  • Contact Tanara

Tanara McCauley

~ Love Knows Color

Tanara McCauley

Tag Archives: true

The Atheists, The Agnostic, and The Not Even Sunday Christian – Truth or Fiction Story 3

16 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by tanaramccauley in Short Stories, Songs, and Poetry, Writing and Pursuing Publication

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

agnostic, atheist, author, bar, Christian fiction, faith, giveaway, short story, spirituality, true, truth, vote, writers, writing

It’s Truth or Fiction Tuesday! To be eligible to win the $25 Amazon gift card remember to cast your vote using the comments box. For detailed instructions click here.

We sat there–bellied up to the bar no less–debating about the Bible.

The modest pub was a sectioned-off box connected to a restaurant, and it was ours for the night. Different motives led us there. Mine was to ire the date who’d tried to stand me up, despite him being a good guy with a good reason. The two middle-aged Africans were new to the area and checking out the nightlife (or lack thereof), and Alan was working. Everyone else who entered took one look at the empty scene and left without a greeting.

My new friends and I were equally matched in passion, secondhand information, and a steady supply of rhetorical comebacks. The lot of us Bible experts–though none of us had read it.

“But if you look at the scientific proof of evolution…” It was how Brooke started all of his sentences. His voice was like honey. I was tempted more than once to ask him to sing a tribal ditty; but he’d dip into his bag of Darwin, whip out redundant theories and throw in big words no inebriated mind should hear, and I’d lose my train of thought.

He was an enigma to me. I wasn’t raised Christian–or any other religious affiliation for that matter–but I’d certainly never met a black atheist before. I probably would’ve marveled over him all night if not for Johan, the other South African.

Despite all I’d heard about apartheid, the heart of which was racial inequality, it had never occurred to me until then that a South African could be a tall, pale blonde who spoke in an almost Australian accent.

The new knowledge was distracting–and a bit of a blow to what I thought was my intelligent mind–but not so much that I couldn’t hold my own in our verbal scuffle.

“Don’t get me started about carbon dating,” I said. “Oh yeah? And where did that come from?…Okay, so where did that come from?…Say something new, Brooke, say something new.”

I rolled my eyes and took occasional swats at the smoke from Johan’s chain of cigarettes. We all ducked in and out of heated words and bouts of laughter, and they took turns buying drinks while I silenced my phone every time my no-show called.

Johan detoured from our contest of biased facts and popular verses. “Tell me what makes you so certain of your beliefs,” he said through a cloud. He pulled a stack of large bills from his pocket to buy the next round, moving as calm and slow as he talked. I sipped on my Apple Martini and thought hard for an answer.

I didn’t have one.

There was never a time I had not believed God existed. It was something I just always…knew. My faith in Christ, however, still in its infant stages, was sparked by something I couldn’t explain with the same logic that had run our conversation around the same track all night.

And though time had diminished the initial urgency I’d felt for Christ, I was all of a sudden very aware of it.

And very aware of Him.

I lowered my drink and shut my mouth while Johan looked on with a curious expression.

Alan broke the silence. “You don’t really believe in evolution do you? Look dude…” Whenever he said dude he pulled half his mouth up in an actor’s smile. “A house has a designer. Four walls and a roof, man. As basic as it gets, and it still has a designer. You mean to tell me you honestly believe that this whole workup we’ve got going here–galaxies, orbiting planets, gravity, seasons–all this order, and it just happened on its own?”

He wiped the clean spot in front of him with a rag, moved some glasses around, and kept talking. “I’m not gonna go so far as you,” his smile told me he was sorry for not committing to my camp, “and say there’s a god or anything.” He looked back at Brooke, “I just think if you look at it logically, dude, you have to accept that we have a designer out there somewhere.”

He’d said something pretty profound, but he still didn’t get it.

“If that ‘designer’ isn’t God,” I asked Alan after a moment, “then who is he?” He looked like I’d felt when I discovered black atheists and white South Africans.

My phone rang again. This time I answered it. I was no longer interested in a battle of wits and cunning debate. I didn’t know much after all, except that I had never fully committed to Whom I knew to be true.

“I have to go,” I said when I hung up. And so our religious debate ended without ceremony.

“You’ll come back next week?” Brooke stood. “Bring the lucky guy with you.”

I smiled without answering.

We parted with the lingering hugs of people who’ve known each other forever.

“You won’t be back will you?” Johan said in my ear when I embraced him last. “I have a feeling I’ll never see you again.”

And he never did.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

Truth or Fiction Story 1 – Eyewitness Testimony

02 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by tanaramccauley in Short Stories, Songs, and Poetry, Writing and Pursuing Publication

≈ 30 Comments

Tags

author, Christian fiction, eyewitness testimony, faith, fear, fiction, gift card, giveaway, short stories, story, testify, true, truth, vote, writing

It’s Truth or Fiction Tuesday! Just a few reminders:

  1. To be eligible to win the $25 USD Amazon gift e-card giveaway, you must comment whether you think the story is true or fiction in the REPLY/COMMENTS section. You also earn extra entries when you share the link on your Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, and note in the reply/comments section that you did.
  2. The stories, even if they are in first person, are not necessarily my experiences, so keep that in mind when you vote.
  3. And now…

Eyewitness Testimony

I should’ve kept my mouth shut. Now I’m probably going to die.

“They’re almost ready for you,” Mandy says.

She’s the D.A.’s assistant. Her attempt at an encouraging smile doesn’t fool me one bit. The truth is in her eyes. They’re bland eyes, really; like they’ve never seen anything more exciting than water boiling on the stove. And in their calm, bored way, they show she thinks I’m good as dead too.

I want to say something, but all I manage is a nod and a lift lip just as phony as hers. She goes back into the courtroom, and I twist and re-twist my fingers so hard they hurt.

I ought to get up and leave; just go straight out the door, backtrack the bus route I took to get here, stuff a bag with clothes and my most important belongings—college degree, songbook, Bible, and my Matchbox Twenty CD collection—and hightail it out of the city. I would do it too, if I didn’t feel like something else was clamping me to this plastic chair, something besides the escort assigned to usher me from the reception area to the witness stand.

I didn’t think to bring a sweater. So even though it’s pushing a hundred outside, I’m starting to tremble underneath my sleeveless blouse. My toes are freezing too. Kim, my best friend since second grade, shows her head of curls just as I’m about to give in to an onslaught of teeth chattering. Praise God she thought to bring coffee.

“You look awful,” she says. She drops her work satchel and pulls her chair close to mine. Her makeup is as fresh as if she’d just applied it, and her perfume punches away the smell of hot mochas.

I grab the cup she offers and hug it to my chest before taking a sip. “I feel worse,” I say. “I’m just ready for this to be over.”

“Having second thoughts again?”

“Uh-huh.” I look away, and for a moment I’m irritated. Her faith is stronger than mine, and even though I know it’s all in my head, I sometimes feel like she mounts a spiritual high horse when I’m in the trenches.

I’m not in the mood for any more verses or prayers or pep-talks about doing the right thing. She seems to notice, because she sits there quietly. For some reason, after several minutes, this annoys me too.

Mandy returns with my escort. “You ready?”

I’m still cold. I take a swallow of the hot coffee to warm my insides, and it scalds my tongue. I give it back to Kim and she squeezes my arm.

“Be brave,” she says, “God will help you, and I’m right behind you.”

I can only nod. My head aches. I realize my hair is tied too tight. Now that I notice it, my scalp where the pin holds my bun is screaming for relief. I guess it’s a good thing, because the distraction helps me walk the length of the courtroom without thinking too hard about the fear of seeing him.

Our eyes meet for a second as I slink past, and in that moment I see the same threat an anonymous caller gave two nights ago. Talk and I’m dead.

So much for holding it together. I’m shaking so hard I can barely suck a straight breath, and my knees don’t feel stable anymore. All of a sudden I feel like crying.

The swear-in comes and goes, and the district attorney seems to magically appear right in front of me. He could use a haircut and a new suit. His empathy seems real, but not so much that it slows his agenda. He dives right into questioning me.

“Rene, tell us how you know the defendant.”

“He’s my neighbor,” I say.

“Can you be more specific as to the proximity and the type of building?”

“We live in a triplex. That’s, um, like a duplex but with another place on top. Javi lives on top. I live on the bottom right.”

“And who lives on the bottom left?” He asks the questions as casually as if we’re talking over lunch. So far they’re easy, and I’m starting to calm a little.

“Right now it’s empty,” I say.

“And how long have you and the defendant, Javi, been neighbors?”

“He’s been there since I moved in, so about two years.”

“Two years.”

The way he says it and pauses reminds me of court cases I’ve seen on TV. It also gives me time to take in the twenty-something faces peppered about the small room.

“Two years is a long time,” he says. “Do you know Javi beyond just being neighbors?”

The question makes me look at Javi against my will, and my mouth goes dry. Even now, sitting there on trial for murder and with the threat of my life in his green eyes, he’s one of the most attractive men I’ve ever seen.

He’s Cuban, but I know that only because he told me the origin of his accent. Anyone else would think he’s just light-skinned like me. We’ve only talked in passing, and despite his notorious drug reputation he’s always been nice to me, but that doesn’t qualify as knowing each other. I manage to pull out of his stare and answer the question.

“Um…not well.”

“Let’s talk about the night of August 27th. Tell the court what you told the reporting officer.”

I look down at my hands and clear my throat.

“It was about six or so. I’d just come home from work and was going in when Javi and three others passed me on their way to his place.”

“Can you tell the court if this young man, Marcus, was one of the others?”

He holds a picture up to the jury then places it in front of me, and the tears I wanted to cry earlier wet my eyes again. The boy in the picture wears a baseball uniform and looks happy, like a seventeen-year-old should look. My mind erases the printed image and brings up the frightened kid I saw on his last day of life. I want to throw up.

“Yes,” I say. “He was.”

“What happened after you saw them?”

“They went their way and I went mine.”

“And then?”

“About an hour or so later I was fixing something to eat and they turned on music upstairs.”

“Did you hear anything else?”

“Some banging around…and talking…like somebody was angry. I couldn’t tell what they were saying though, the music was too loud.”

“Then?”

“Everything but the music stopped.” My hands develop a cold sweat as I rub the chipped paint from my nails. The D.A. walks back to his table and leans against it. I wish he’d stayed in front of me. Now I feel exposed.

“When did the music finally stop?” he asks.

“Maybe ten, fifteen minutes later.”

He’s silent, like he wants me to keep going. When I don’t, he waits for me to look at him, then speaks to me in a soft voice. “Tell us what happened next, Rene.”

I’m accustomed to hiding behind humor, and I want to say something light—like it’s just like me to start cooking something without making sure I have all the ingredients—before I explain what happened when I walked out on my way to the grocery store. But humor would be inappropriate. Because some of the people are crying so soft it sounds like kittens mewing.

And I’m afraid.

If I tell everything I saw and heard from the shadow of my doorway–memories to both haunt me and put Javi away for the rest of his life—I could be killed. And I don’t want to die.

It’s not too late to quit, since nothing I’ve said so far is enough for a conviction. And I’m convincing myself I’m not strong enough to do this when a verse pops in my head.

I, even I, am He who comforts you.

I look up expecting to see somebody speaking the words, and I find Kim sitting by herself near the back. Seeing her face reminds me that she was the one who quoted the verse to me last night.

Who are you, that you should be afraid of a man…and you forget the Lord your Maker?

The words come back so clearly they stun me, and Kim nods as if she knows I’m hearing them. She smiles, and I decide I will tell her later that her purple lipstick is not flattering.

“Rene?” The district attorney needs an answer.

I’m still scared out of my mind, but something else bothers me more than this. I have forgotten my Maker, haven’t I?

I let the verse play around in my head a few more times. When it settles deep enough to stop my heart from pounding, I look away from Kim, past the district attorney, and rest my gaze on Javi.

Then, I testify.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

Truth or Fiction Tuesdays, With a Giveaway on the Side

25 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by tanaramccauley in Short Stories, Songs, and Poetry, Writing and Pursuing Publication

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

author, contest, false, fiction, gift card, giveaway, literature, series, short story, true, truth, vote, win, writing

It’s almost time!!!

A couple of weeks ago I posted about upcoming fiction blogging. As promised, the first two chapters of my debut novel were posted here for little over a week, but have since been removed in order to comply with the rules of an upcoming contest I intend to enter.

But no worries. Her red-headed step-cousin is fast on her heels as a replacement.

Want that in English?

I am still going forward with my Truth or Fiction Tuesdays short story series. Beginning…next Tuesday!

That’s right. That gives you a chance to win the giveaway, a $25 Amazon gift e-card, in time for the Christmas holiday. Here’s how it works:

Each short story (1,500 words or less) posted here October 2nd – November 13th will either be fiction or based on true events.

To be eligible to win you must decide if a story is truth or fiction and cast your vote in that story’s comment box. All votes must be received by Friday, November 16th at 11:59 PM. The more you read and participate, the better your chances of winning!

To earn additional entries, share the link on your Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest account and let me know that you did so in the comments box when you vote.I will publish the results of the winner and the truth/fiction status of the stories by title the weekend following the end of the contest. The winner will then be contacted and sent the gift card via email.

Sound easy enough? Here’s the short version: read, vote, share, and you could WIN!

I am looking forward to having a lot of fun with this series, and I’d love for you to join me :-).

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

Recent Posts

  • AWOL Writer Captured!
  • Reclaimed
  • Unseen

Categories

  • Writing and Pursuing Publication
  • Short Stories, Songs, and Poetry
  • Book Reviews
  • Faith, Relationships, and Other Topics
  • Website

Facebook

Facebook

Twitter

  • Marked as to-read: Sisters of the Resistance by Christine Wells goodreads.com/review/show/37… 1 week ago
Follow @tanaramccauley

What I’m Reading

Instagram

No Instagram images were found.

Subscribe in a reader

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

American Christian Fiction Writers Association

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
%d bloggers like this: