Finding Twigs--the first two chapters

Below are the first two chapters of my next novel, Finding Twigs, the sequel to Floating Twigs, which will be released in late summer 2021. I hope you enjoy it and it prompts you to buy the book when it is released. If you have not read my acclaimed novel Floating Twigs, you may purchase it by clicking “BOOKS” at the top of this page and scrolling down a bit to click on the “PURCHASE” button. Thank you!

Chapter One
April 7, 1969

Private First Class Rick Turner trudged through the mud about a hundred kilometers west of Hue, South Vietnam, wishing he was anywhere but there. He’d joined the Marines mostly to get away from a bad home life, leaving his parents and his only brother, Jack, for what he hoped was a life of adventure. While he’d hoped he wouldn’t be sent to Vietnam to fight in a war he considered senseless, this is what the U.S. government paid him to do, so he had to do it. Besides, not fighting would lead to certain death. Killing was a matter of self-defense now.

It had rained the night before. March wasn’t part of the monsoon season there, but it wasn’t as if no rainfall existed outside of the mid-autumn months when rain was nearly constant. Now, he and the platoon of men he fought beside were on their way to a bridge the U.S. military had decided was important enough to sacrifice lives to hold.

Still, he’d been thankful he hadn't arrived during the Tet Offensive, which some of the other Marines said was much worse than what they endured now. Still, the effects could be seen everywhere. What remained of many buildings in Hue still dotted the landscape like dinosaur bones. The citizens there had the hollow-eyed look of people used to death and destruction. Rick hoped he would never have that look.

The rain had stopped, and the sun now beat on Rick with the same fierce determination of the Viet Cong during Tet. The muck slowed their progress, so instead of reaching their destination that morning as originally expected, they would arrive sometime in the early afternoon.

What they were doing now was dangerous but necessary. They had come upon a treeless field that stretched a mile in each direction. They would need to cross it, exposed, to reach the bridge six kilometers ahead. Sergeant Lennon, the platoon commander, had chosen this route because of a lack of roads and, presumably, a lack of the Viet Cong, or “Charlies,” as they called the soldiers in the North Vietnamese Army. The name came from “Victor Charlie,” the phonetic alphabet for “V.C.” They were strictly on foot, so Lennon chose this middle-of-nowhere route to avoid roads.

Rick was nervous about crossing this emptiness. No trees grew where they marched, just some brush that lay close to the ground. This lack was either from napalm’s assault or just the whims of nature, so there would be no cover if they were attacked. A stand of trees several hundred yards wide and about the same distance from where they now slogged through the mud and brush would be the first cover available to them since leaving the cover of the trees, which were now about a hundred yards behind them.

Their position would be easy pickings for a sniper, Rick thought.

As if signaled by that thought, Darwell, one of the young men in front of him, keeled over as if his bones had suddenly been removed, followed almost simultaneously by the distant thunder of the sniper’s shot from behind.

“Everyone down!” Lennon shouted, as the men fell face forward into the mud, holding their weapons up to prevent them from being swathed with the thick muck.

Rick swiveled to face the stand of trees they’d left a few moments before and stared at them, hoping to see a flash if the sniper fired again. Minutes dragged by until Sergeant Lennon said, “Alright, we need to belly crawl the rest of the way across this godforsaken field! A to M forward first, N to Z covering.”

Rick understood this to mean that everyone whose last name began with A through M would crawl for about twenty yards or so and turn to cover those with last names beginning with N to Z while they moved to a point about twenty yards beyond the A to M’s. They would more or less leapfrog each other until they reached the tree line they had been marching toward.

One of the Marines stopped to check on Darwell and called out, “He’s dead, Sarge!” They would radio their position to allow a chopper to retrieve the body later.

When the shout of “N to Z’s forward!” came, Rick turned to crawl through the mud to a new position beyond the first wave.

A sudden blow to his body felt like a dozen horses had stomped on him. He screamed out in pain and shock. He was hit. His right hip felt as though it had exploded.

“Turner?!” Corporal Rodenberg, or Roddie, one of his buddies, called out from his right. “You hit?”

“Yeah,” he managed.

“How bad?”

“Don’t know.”

“Where were you hit? Body? Legs?”

“My right hip.”

Silence followed as the pain radiated out from his lower back until another shot and another scream rang out.

For a moment, Rick wondered if Roddie had been hit, but he heard his buddy shout again. “You still there, Turner?”

“Yeah.” Rick said, though no longer able to shout. He wondered vaguely if Roddie could hear him.

“Hang on, Buddy!”

Rick could hear Roddie moving through the muck and the stubby brush toward him. The last thing to cross his mind before losing consciousness was a memory of throwing a football with his little brother, Jack, who had turned thirteen the previous October, and the thought he would never see him again.

Chapter Two
March 18, 1992

Jack Turner sat in his new office, wondering if the move home to Denton, Florida, from New Orleans was the best decision. He had inherited the house where the man who had been a surrogate father, Hank Moreland, had lived until his death eighteen months ago, and after spending the time since wondering why he wasn’t living there, he had decided to return. He had made the move nearly two months ago, in late January, after the calendar turned over to 1992.

Of course, frequent letters from Mrs. Dawson, the eccentric woman who had also helped raise him, had contributed to his decision, but he had left a fairly busy law practice to set up shop here. He wanted clients, but his name was not well-known in legal circles, at least not yet.

His bank balance was still more than healthy, the result of his inheritance and his hard work as a criminal defense attorney in New Orleans, but he was eager to work. His sense of self, like that of most adults, was tied to his view of how his work contributed to the world.

He had become a member of the Florida bar, and he hoped to at least receive some work through the Public Defenders’ Office.

Looking down at his latest canine companion, he said, “How about you, Brinkley? Been arrested lately?”

Brinkley wagged his tail, raising it from the floor where he lay with his head resting on his paws, letting it thump twice against the thin carpet before he went back to snoozing since his human’s unenthusiastic voice told him that was all that was expected.

Being back in Denton, which had grown from a small village to a bustling tourist town since his childhood, had brought back the memories of that time, just as it had when he’d returned after many years to attend Hank’s funeral.

Now, however, the memories tended to center on his brother, Rick, who had joined the Marines when Jack was twelve and hadn’t been heard from since.

Mostly, he wondered if Rick was alive. Jack knew he’d been sent to Vietnam, but beyond that, he knew nothing. He didn’t know if he died over there, if he’d moved to another country entirely, or if he’d returned to the states and settled somewhere else.

Their parents had not been the best, though certainly not the worst. They had been alcoholics who were more interested in their drinks than their sons, and Rick had decided never to return home after joining the Marines. Jack had received one letter from him when he was shipping off to ‘Nam, but nothing since.

The thought had been gnawing at him to search for Rick. Jack wanted to know what had become of him, and if he was now the only survivor from his family. He had no children and had never been married. He was happy with just himself and whichever dog who served as his companion, or at least that’s what he told himself.

Jack had owned a dog since finding his first dog, Bones, on a deserted stretch of beach. He had mourned Bones’s death and hadn’t owned another until finishing his undergraduate degree. After graduation he adopted another dog after realizing he didn’t feel complete without one.

Brinkley, a hound-shepherd mix, was the third dog he’d owned since Bones had died. Speckles, a hound mix who’d been covered in small spots like freckles, had died of cancer after three years, followed by Rocky, a German shepherd mix that he’d had for eight years. Brinkley had been with him for a little over three years now. Jack adopted all his dogs from shelters, and Brinkley was still a puppy when Jack brought him home, no more than four months old.

His dogs had been one reason Jack never wanted to work for a firm again. Firms rarely allowed their attorneys to bring a dog to work, and Jack would not go to work without his dog.

His first job in New Orleans was with an old firm there. One of the partners, Mr. Rayburn, had stopped in his office one day, supposedly to chat about how things were coming along but really to talk about Speckles.

“It’s not a seeing-eye dog. You aren’t blind, right?”

“Of course not.”

“Didn’t think so. If you were, you wouldn’t be working here. We don’t hire blind lawyers.”

“So, you’re saying I can’t bring my dog to work? She doesn’t bother anyone. She’s house broken.”

“I don’t care if she can file and type. I see the dog here again, and I will personally wrap a rope around her neck and toss her carcass in the dumpster.”

Jack had resigned on his way out the door that afternoon and opened his own office. A risky thing for a rookie lawyer, but he’d made ends meet by working with the Public Defenders’ office, taking on indigent clients who couldn’t afford attorneys. The state paid him a modest sum as a state-appointed attorney, barely enough to qualify as minimum wage when the hours working on the cases were considered, sometimes not that much, but it was pay, and he took it gladly.

Now, he was in a position to do whatever he wanted. Hank had left him more than comfortable, and because the home he had inherited was paid for, he had little in the way of expenses.

As he sat there, thinking of Rick, he wondered if he might take some time off soon to see if he could find him. He could begin with a Department of Defense inquiry to see if he died or was M.I.A. If he’d survived the war, perhaps Jack could find him.

Of course, he could afford a private detective to search for Rick, but Jack felt the need to invest the time himself. After all, assuming he was still alive, Rick was his only living relative. If he had returned and died later, at least Jack could visit his grave.

Jack made a kissing sound and patted his knee. Brinkley stood, wagging his tail and offering his head for a good scratching behind the ears, closing his eyes at the pleasure of it.

“What d’ya say, boy? Are you up for a trip this summer? Don’t know where we might go. Depends on where the trail leads, but I have to find my brother.”

Jack took Brinkley’s silence as a yes. “Great, boy. It’ll be a new adventure.”

At that moment, his office phone rang. The new caller I.D. system on his phone read, “Public Defender.”

“Well, maybe I’ll have some work to do while we wait to start that adventure, huh, boy?”

He answered, “Jack Turner.”

“Mr. Turner, this is Jenny Walton with the Public Defender’s Office. How are you today?”

“Looking for work. Do you have some?”

“Yes. Judge Shelton has assigned you to take a case.” Jack smiled. Judge Shelton was Trisha Shelton, who had been an attorney for Hank when he was accused of molesting Jack as a boy. The reasons the authorities hadn’t believed Jack when he insisted nothing happened ranged from simply not believing a child to downright prejudice. Chuck Shelton, her husband, still practiced law in the county, but his cases were never heard before his wife to avoid any possibility of a conflict of interest. Recusal wasn’t required, but Trisha always made sure Chuck did not appear before her in a case.

“What the public doesn’t understand is that I’d probably be harder on him, not easier,” she had said with a laugh when they had invited Jack to dinner a few weeks after he’d arrived in Denton.

Denton and Wharton, the larger town about six miles to the east of Denton, were large enough to be able to avoid Chuck being on Trisha’s docket, but the fact was the judges and lawyers all knew each other, some rather well. It wasn’t unusual for an attorney to present a case before a judge all week and go fishing or play golf with the judge after the case was settled.

Still, Trisha set a boundary on family members arguing before her. She was a stickler about appearances.

“Look at you and Hank,” she’d said. “You were just spending time with him, talking, and how’d that turn out? Appearances are everything to people. It’s reality that gets the short end of the stick.”

“Mostly because reality isn’t as interesting,” Chuck had said.

Jack continued the conversation with Jenny. “What’s the case?”

“It’s a big one. Armed robbery.”

“That’s pretty big.”

“Yeah. She chose you for the case. I hear the defendant wasn’t too happy about it, though.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“He must know you.”

“What’s his name?”

“Thomas Gordon.”

Jack sat back in his seat. Tommy Gordon had been Denton’s chief bully when Jack was growing up. They had had numerous run-ins, most of them ending badly. Tommy had even committed perjury as a witness at Hank’s trial to try to bring a conviction for no other reason than he hated Jack.

“Yeah, he knows me. We grew up together.”

“Really? I didn’t know you were from here,” Jenny said. “I just thought you moved here from somewhere and set up shop to be near the beach.”

“Nope. I just decided to move back home.”

“Well, I’d like to move to New York or something. The men around here are all air force. Too much machismo for my tastes.”

Jack wondered if she might be flirting. He’d seen her several times before in the Public Defender’s office located in the courthouse annex, where she worked as a clerk. He had even considered asking her out. He hadn't because he had never felt comfortable asking out women he thought would never accept a date with him. He thought of her as too pretty for a nerdy guy like him.

Once a nerd, always a nerd, Jack thought to himself. Thinking, what the heck, he said, “Not all of us are loaded with machismo.”

She actually giggled. “I guess some guys have more than they think they do.”

She was definitely flirting, he thought. She was perhaps a few years younger than he was and took care of herself. Maybe he should ask her out.

He glanced down at Brinkley, as if he could provide an answer. Deciding to put off asking for a date until he could consider the situation, he said, “Well, I don’t pay attention to guys, so I wouldn’t know.”

An awkward silence lasted a few seconds before he asked, “Is he in jail or did he make bond?”

“Who?”

“Tommy Gordon.”

“Oh!” She laughed loudly, probably out of embarrassment. “Yes, he’s in jail.” Then composing herself, she asked, “I take it you two weren’t best friends?”

“Anything but.”

“I guess Judge Shelton didn’t know that.”

“Oh, she knew alright. I’m just wondering why she put me on this case knowing what she does.”

“Well, all I know is she assigned you the case.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I should go see him.”

“You want me to fax over the basics from his file?”

“Sure.”

Another silence. “Jack?”

“Yes?”

“The jail’s across the street from here.”

“Yes, I know where the jail is.”

“I was just wondering if maybe after you see him, you might want to grab a bite of lunch somewhere?”

Stunned again, Jack was speechless for a  moment. She was asking him out instead.

“Uh, sure. Why not?”

“I take lunch at 12:30. I’ve no plans for today unless you count the ham sandwich and sliced cucumber I brought.”

“Today?”

“Well, you know what they say, ‘no time like the present.’ How about it? I mean, you really should see him today, right?”

Jack glanced at his watch. It was closing on ten. “Yes, I suppose I should, though to be honest, I’m not looking forward to seeing him. See you at 12:30,” he said.

“Okay. See you then!” she said and hung up.

He wondered why he felt like a teenager after the call ended, then decided it was because he was not used to asking women out, and he certainly wasn’t used to being asked out. Yes, it was only lunch, but she had made it clear she wouldn’t mind making it dinner and a movie one day soon.

After taking Brinkley for a quick walk, Jack put him in the small kennel he kept at the office. While Brinkley didn’t mind the kennel, he certainly didn’t love it, so Jack apologized.

“Sorry, boy. No dogs allowed at the jail, not to mention wherever I’m going for lunch.”

His fax machine hummed and began spitting out pages from Tommy’s file. When he looked at them, he found Tommy had been in prison before, which didn’t surprise him. He’d been convicted on a number of drug charges and assault, as well as burglary. This would result in his third stint if convicted, which seemed likely, based on the facts of the case he read.

As he drove to see his combination old enemy and new client, he wondered if Jenny knew where she wanted to eat, or if he should come up with a place. He decided Perry’s, a small bistro near the courthouse, would be okay if it turned out he was expected to decide. He still felt like a kid who was going on his first date ever.

Arriving at the jail, he went inside and stepped up to the counter to check in. His knowledge about the crime was scant. He wasn’t sure what he was getting into and decided to ask Trisha Shelton why he’d been handed this case. He wanted to know that more than he wanted lunch with Jenny Walton, which once he considered it, was quite a lot.