The Heaviest Rock (An Ozark Mountain Series Book 3) Read online

  The Heaviest Rock

  Book Three

  An Ozark Mountain Series

  By

  Alan Black and Bernice Knight

  Books

  By

  Alan Black

  An Ozark Mountain Series with Bernice Knight

  The Friendship Stones (Book One)

  The Granite Heart (Book Two)

  The Heaviest Rock (Book Three)

  The Inconvenient Pebble (Book Four) (coming soon)

  The Jasper’s Courage (Book Five) (coming soon)

  The King’s Rock (Book Six) (coming soon)

  General Fiction

  Chasing Harpo

  Science Fiction

  Metal Boxes

  Chewing Rocks

  Steel Walls and Dirt Drops

  Titanium Texicans (coming soon)

  Larry Goes to Space (coming soon)

  A Planet with No Name (coming soon)

  Historical Action/Adventure

  Eye on the Prize (coming soon)

  Non-Fiction

  How to Start, Write and Finish Your First Novel (coming soon)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  THE HEAVIEST STONE

  Published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright @ 2014 by Alan Black

  Cover Design: Amy Black

  Cover Photo: Duann Black

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or digital form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ISBN-13: 978-1500437299

  ISBN-10: 1500437298

  Library of Congress Number: 1-1567348483

  Dedication:

  To my oldest son Steve Black, for his great support and encouragement in every phase of our writing, planning and hopes. He has always been there to cheer us on. Bernice Knight

  To my mother and co-author, without whose drive and determination this book would not exist in any form other than a story in my head and the memories of her youth in hers.

  Alan Black

  Authors note: See the glossary at the end of the book

  Acknowledgement

  Bernice Irene Hoffman Black Knight (1929 - 2014)

  Bernice Irene Hoffman was born on July 23, 1929 to Ralph and Fern Hoffman in a little farmhouse just north of Wayside, Nebraska, but they moved shortly thereafter to Lyons, Kansas.

  Like many folks growing up in the rural Midwest during the great depression, Bernice didn’t know she was growing up poor. She often said that you can’t miss what you never had. She once told me about a time when Grandpa did some day labor for a farmer, helping bring in his crop. He was paid with a truck full of watermelons. She thought they had struck it rich since she could have watermelon anytime she wanted. Even until she was in her 80s, having watermelon whenever she wanted made her feel rich.

  She was living in a small one room shack during the Kansas dust storms and watching the neighbor’s topsoil blow through the walls in your home was just the way peopled lived. If you have read her novel The Friendship Stones, you will remember the scene in the beginning of the book between LillieBeth and the rat. Bernice’s bed was under the stairs, just like her protagonist in the book, and she was woke up more than once listening to the rats, halfway to the attic, dropping potatoes back down the stairs.

  In a few years, Bernice would gain a sister, Ruth Ann Hoffman, someone she could torture and cherish at the same time as siblings often do. Ruth Goins and her husband Jim still live near their children in the Ozark Mountains.

  In 1946 Ralph Hoffman, her father traded work for lessons so that on her 16th birthday, Bernice took her first airplane solo, getting her pilots license and becoming the youngest flyer in Kansas history.

  Bernice was a pretty, but skinny girl and unable to recognize her own beauty, never coming to grips with her own appearance, not as a young girl, a mother or as a mature older woman. She once told me that she had a crush on a young man in her high school named Jim Knight, she never thought she was pretty enough to go out with him, but she would have if he had asked. Jim liked her too, but like many high school boys, he didn’t know how to go about asking her out on a date.

  About that time, she was working at Grave’s Drugstore as a soda fountain attendant. A mutual friend introduced her to a returning wounded WWII hero named Thomas Black. He was handsome and a touch wild, yet he hobbling around on wooden crutches, sporting his war wounds as a come on to any pretty girl looking his way. A date was arranged for them and a long slow courtship began.

  After high school, she went to beauty college and learned a trade that she applied for the rest of her life. She loved the personal touch and service she provided for all of her clients, then and even up until she could no longer stand to do the work.

  Still living in Lyons, Kansas, on November 21, 1949 she married Thomas Black. Steven Paul Black was born in May 1951 and Alan Lee Black (me) in June 1953. We moved from small town to small town for the next few years following Dad’s jobs. Each town brought new friends into our lives. True to Mom’s heart, she never left those friends behind even when we moved on to the next small town. Many of those people are still family friends to this day, as close as any family.

  We settled in Gladstone, Missouri just about the time Gordon Ray Black was born in April, 1959. Mom and Dad managing to stay put for thirteen years.

  Bernice worked hard at a wide variety of jobs: insurance sales, restaurant management, office work, and as always, her trade as a beautician, owning her own shop for a while. Yet, even in those busy years, she made time for her boys: Cub Scout den mother, Boy Scout leader, schoolroom mom, driving us to music lessons and sports activities. As always, there were more kids around the house than we could count.

  Mom and Dad separated, got back together, separated, got back together and finally divorced for good. They tried, but as most of us realize, as we get older, not everything can be fixed. Yet, they became better friends apart than they ever were together.

  Mom lived with her mother in Green Forest, Arkansas in the Ozark Mountains for a few years, then moved back to Kansas City and finally followed her oldest son Steve to make her final home in Arizona, bringing her mother with her.

  Jobs came and went as work often does, but the people in her life were in her life for good. As was her heart, she did not leave people behind, only places, things, and jobs. She managed to maintain friendships with people, whether they were new friends or old ones from small towns years ago, and always giving more than she got.

  Then from all of those years before, Jim Knight from her high school days finally got the courage to call Mom for that date. Jim and Mom were soon married. Mom again drew his grown children and grandchildren into her heart as if they were her own.

  About two years ago, Mom was diagnosed with cancer. It was a blow, but like most things like this these days, it was not the surprise that it should be. Chemotherapy and radiation treatments can be rough. Jim and Steve were determined to be there to help her with any physical needs. Steve and my wife Duann decided that we needed to help Mom by giving her a mental challenge, something to make her get up out of
bed every morning. They decided she and I would write a novel together, fictionalizing much of her life growing up poor in a poverty stricken area of the Midwest, taking her early childhood memories and using them as a model for our book’s heroine.

  When we finished The Friendship Stones, she wouldn’t let me quit. We turned the novel into an Ozark Mountain trilogy and began writing The Granite Heart. She beat the cancer halfway through book three. It was a joy writing The Heaviest Rock with her as she was cancer free because of God, the Rock of our salvation. She still would not let me quit writing with her, and we began a second Ozark Mountain trilogy, finishing The Inconvenient Pebble, book four together. The cancer came roaring back and I will finish books five and six without her.

  Bernice Irene Knight has passed. Yet, she lives in our hearts and minds, in the actions and habits of her children, in the memories of her friends and family and in the love she shared with God, His Son Jesus Christ and with all of us who know her, then and now.

  From Duann Black (Chief Editor).

  Bernice Knight was a virtuous woman. Proverbs chapter 31, lists the traits of a virtuous woman. I’d like to share verses 25 through 31 with you:

  Strength and honor are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.

  She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.

  She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.

  Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.

  Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.

  Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.

  Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.

  Bernice wasn’t just my mother-in-law for almost 37 years, she had taken on the role of my mother who had passed away before Alan and I married. The first time I spoke with Bernice was when she called my father’s home within a few short days of my own mother’s death. That one phone call comforted me in a way no other had. I am forever thankful to God that Bernice became my mother-in-law and that she in fact also became my mother.

  John 10:10 says:

  The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I [Jesus Christ] am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

  I no longer have a mother-in-law (Mom) that I can speak with, help with computer problems, share things in life with. Those days have been stolen from me and the rest of her family and friends. Though I am very sad, I rejoice in having known and loved Mom and have joy in my heart and thankfulness to God, for the Hope, as given to us in I Thessalonians 4:13 – 18:

  But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

  For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

  For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [precede] them which are asleep.

  For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

  Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

  Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

  I know, without any doubt, that Bernice Knight awaits the return of our living Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and that we shall see her again and share everlasting life with her, as fellow Believers.

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Other Books

  Dedication and Acknowledgement

  Sunday Morning

  Sunday Services

  Sunday After Services

  Monday Morning

  Monday MidMorning

  Monday Noon

  Monday Afternoon

  Monday Late Afternoon

  Monday Early Evening

  Monday Night

  Tuesday Noon

  Tuesday Afternoon

  Wednesday Morning

  Wednesday Evening

  Wednesday Night

  Thursday Evening

  Friday Dawn

  Friday Morning

  Friday Noon

  Saturday Noon

  Sunday Before Services

  Glossary

  Praise for Other Books

  About the Author

  The Heaviest Rock

  Book Three

  An Ozark Mountain Series

  By

  Alan Black and Bernice Knight

  CreateSpace

  S UNDAY – MORNING

  Grace Grissom sat on a big gray Belgian mare. Jezebel was her late husband Clayton’s horse. Sitting next to her on Delilah, Jezebel’s mirror image, was the Right Reverend David James. It felt odd sitting next to an ordained minister on a pair of horses named after such evil women from the Bible. So named or not, Clayton had loved these horses almost as much as he loved her.

  The mares matched Grace’s other set of gray Belgians. Solomon and David were home in the field near Clayton’s freshly covered grave in the back pasture. Solomon and David had stood guard over their master’s resting place since she laid him there Friday morning.

  Grace was as near a match to the Belgians as any human could be. She was tall as any man in the hills and just as powerfully built. When all the young men went to fight the Kaiser in the Great War to End all Wars, Clayton took up the sheriff’s duties in nearby Oasis, Missouri. Not one to knit, quilt or sew dresses, she worked for years as a blacksmith and ferrier. The heat and pounding of metal on metal built muscle upon muscle to her already large and powerful frame. She always loved horses and with most of the young men gone, her business flourished.

  She and Clayton planned to let her business dwindle away. The young men were coming home from the war; many of them needed work to support families. But, with Clayton murdered and in the cold rocky Ozark Mountain ground, she would have to work and work hard to support herself and her property. Even the cabin they provided free to Reverend James would soon have to provide rent income.

  She glanced skyward. It was a bright blue almost clear sky. The few wisps of clouds blowing eastward were signs of another spring storm brewing. The leaves on the trees were showing their silvery underbellies and the squirrels were scurrying about finding hidey-holes to stay out of the coming rain. It definitely looked as if the storms over the headwaters of the flooding White River where working their way towards them. The air was thick and heavy. Moisture from the water-washed flood plains leeched into the air pushing the humidity up. None of which was unusual for a spring day in the Ozark Mountains.

  She shifted in her saddle and glanced at Reverend James. She hoped the weather would hold until long after church and James’ preaching as she had no desire to ride home in the rain, even if it was all downhill. Missouri weather was predictable, but only at a span equal to the distance between a chigger’s knees. It could change faster than you could say ‘God bless you’. She also hoped James would keep his preaching short. More than the rains, she had heard him preach enough over Clayton’s gravesite to last her a while.

  No words passed between the two since Clayton’s burial. She did not even offer him the use of Delilah to get to church, just showed up at the door to his small cabin early Sunday morning with Jezebel already saddled for him. She knew why she saddled Jezebel and Delilah. They had been more Clayton’s horses just as David and Solomon were hers. Somehow sitting on Jezebel made her feel closer to her lost love.

  Reverend James was new to the Ozarks, new to their church and new to his ministry. Even in his newness, he already did damage to her friend Susanne Harbowe. She knew either he would fix his mistake or he would pay the price. She would see to th
at whatever it took. Nevertheless, he was a man of God and as such, she was willing to give him the benefit of time to fix his mistake, then and only then would she forgive him.

  She had no forgiveness in her heart nor any intention of growing, nurturing, and harvesting any forgiveness toward Trance and Dangle Braunawall, the two animals who murdered her Clayton. Time would not heal her heart, it could only be healed by the cold core of revenge. It might be revenge wrapped in the acceptable blanket of justice, but it was revenge nonetheless.

  Everyone from Galena to Branson knew Clayton arrested Thomas Ransom and Daniel Glen Braunawall for murder. The two young men shot and killed Fletcher Hoffman in cold blood, in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day and in the middle of a crowd of witnesses. Hoffman was a hermit whose only friend was LillieBeth Hazkit and most people were more upset about the Braunawalls shooting Hoffman’s old mule and his three-legged dog than they were about killing the old man. But, murder was murder.

  Clayton and Art Hazkit were transporting the Braunawalls to jail to be bound over for trial. God and the jury willing, they would hang. Halfway to the county seat in Galena a group of men, dressed as Ku Klux Klansmen broke Trance and Dangle free, gave them guns, and watched as the two brothers murdered her husband, shooting him with his own gun. Grace swore the Braunawalls would pay and so would any man who helped them kill Clayton. She did not know who the other men were. The only witness was LillieBeth’s father. The same men shot Art Hazkit and left him for dead by the side of a country road. Art said the men hid behind their Klan masks and he could not name them. She would learn who they were. She would track them down and bring them to justice if she had to unmask every Klansman in the Ozarks.