Muhammadville

By Allen R. Remaley

After a long absence from his hometown in rural Pennsylvania, and once completing his military service, achieving university degrees, earning a small fortune, and suffering the loss of a wife and children, a man, Frank Sarvey, makes an effort to renew a happiness lost. He remarries and decides to take his wife back to the little river town he left behind. In an attempt to retrace his steps and recapture a happier time, Sarvey goes back and walks into his hometown football stadium, where he played many games. There, he discovers the body of a decapitated man.
At the request of a former teammate and current chief of police, Sarvey becomes involved in the search for the murdered mans killer. But the search uncovers something unexpected. On the outskirts of this small community, there is another localityMuhammadvillea conclave of the followers of Islam, and the face of rural America is changing. Sarvey works to preserve and protect a way of life he thought lost, and his efforts take the reader on an open-book, fleshy pictorial of what is taking place in other communities across the United States unbeknownst to most Americans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504925365

Allen R. Remaley

Allen R. Remaley has written fifteen novels, collections of short stories, letters and professional articles. While most of his novels are categorized as fiction, some are bathed in actual experience. He is a four-year veteran of the United States Marine Corps, a thirty-seven -year teacher at the elementary, secondary and graduate-school levels of education. He holds a doctorate in French and in the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Dr. Remaley no longer skydives, but he does play pickle ball and strums the banjo. He lives with his wife in Saratoga Springs, NY and in Scottsdale, AZ.

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2015 Allen R. Remaley. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/28/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-2535-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-2536-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015912038

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Dedication

Prologue

Rites of Passage

The Beginning

Champagne and Caviar

The Face of Islam

Home-Grown Aliens

Back to the River

Riverside Stadium

The Reunion

The Chief’s Dilemma

The Dinner Meeting

The Chief’s Revelations

Muhammadville

Revelations

The Branding Iron Restaurant

The Offer

The Twins

The Invitation

Hog Back

The Interrogation

The Widow’s Son

The Message

The Plan of Action

The Debriefing

Midnight on the Susquehanna

Forensics

Waterboarding

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Dedication

For all the men and women who had the courage and pride to serve the United States of America and wear its military uniforms, and to the proud parents who supported their children in such an endeavor.

Prologue

What is this thing inside us which drives man like some salmon swimming upstream toward the place of its birth? What took place in the primal swamps of man’s evolution which encourages him to retrace steps to the base of his roots? Something indefinable urges us to think back on, conjure up through memory the familiar and important first steps we took, and then, when separated from such places, beckons us like some chanting siren to return to what we might have called home. Such sweet music is hard to tune out. Anthropologists have no doubt pinpointed the area of our brain which controls such emotions. But going back home to the place where we spent the precious moments of our early life is a phenomenon which cannot be denied. This story is about such a man who, for some reason, makes a trek back to his stomping grounds. This man, Frank Sarvey, will soon question why he allowed his deeply-embedded feelings to take him back to where he grew up.

Frank was raised in the coal-mining region of western Pennsylvania. Harsh working conditions and the hazards of living in a depressed area, combined with the early loss of his mother, conditioned Frank not to flinch when faced with life’s challenges. But, luck was shining down on this little boy from the other side of the tracks; Frank had a grandmother who had faced down the Great Depression and the early loss of her husband. Accepting the responsibility of raising her grandson was no burden for a woman who earned her living by taking in boarders and doing washing and ironing for those who lived on the better side of the tracks. Frank was nourished by the sweet kindness and American work ethic of a woman who had raised eight children of her own in a little town which bordered the west branch of the Susquehanna River.

Riverdale was a community of not more than five thousand inhabitants. Tannery workers, miners, brickyard employees, sweat shop mill workers and shop keepers, all of whom shared a love of their country, made Riverdale a typical mid-twentieth century American icon. Everyone knew most of their neighbors, and in the 1940’s, no one locked their doors at night…and everyone owned at least two guns used in hunting season only. It has been said that during hunting season, 700,000 armed individuals roamed the State of Pennsylvania. That small army helped cull the herds of roving deer and keep those animals off the highways.

The Susquehanna is the 17th largest river in the United States, and in Frank Sarvey’s neck of the woods, the river was only fifty yards wide. But, in the 40’s and 50’s, few townspeople had the money or the land to build swimming pools. Riverdale had something better; it had the Susquehanna. Frank and his friends lived in the river in their pre-teen years. When they got older, they were able to swim the entire width of the river underwater. They fished, caught and released big snapping turtles and avoided the water snakes. All this was part of the rites of passage to river-town boys, and confidence grew from the encounters with the wild life.

Growing up in a small town in America had its advantages. If someone had trouble with a machine, a problem in a home such as plumbing, electric or heating, a neighbor stepped in and offered a solution. The town only had three traffic lights, and speeding automobiles presented few problems for pedestrians and fellow motorists. Hitchhiking was not unknown in and around Riverdale. Those who had no automobiles were often offered rides when needed, and young high school boys made their way to and from their little town to other communities where more-interesting sites were available just by using their thumb. In school, everyone recited the Pledge of Allegiance, and the word, God was not replaced by self-righteous publicity seekers. Life was good for Frank and his friends. The more-pressing decisions of life would come later.

Frank’s early years of grade school were difficult at first. Schoolmates, if given the opportunity and if not faced down, can be nasty. The fact that he lived with his grandmother and had no living or known parent soon came to the attention of Frank’s peers, and some of them tried their skills at bullying. Ha, ha, Frank has no mommy. He lives with his grandma. Such verbal slights bought the accusers a bloody nose and black eyes. After a while, the bullies crept back into their holes like frightened, cowardly rats, and Sarvey became a popular young lad on the block. But, it was in high school where Sarvey made his mark.

Frank’s grandmother instilled her work ethic into her grandson. She saw to it that assigned chores were completed well and on time, and she tried to teach her boy that things done should bring some satisfaction, not boredom. Like Sisyphus who was condemned by Greek gods to roll a huge bolder up the side of a mountain only to have it roll to the bottom once positioned at the top, Frank was taught to try different ways to get a job done with the same result of successful completion. That training paid off in many ways.

Rites of Passage

In the late 40’s and early 50’s in Western Pennsylvania, every small town had its high school football team. Riverdale was no exception, and its reputation for smash-mouth winning football teams had been established since the game was first introduced in that part of the state in the early part of the twentieth century. In the days before other sports came into scholastic life, football was king, and it offered ways of recognition to boys who did not have the economic means to purchase musical instruments and take lessons on the piano. Such practices offered the underprivileged a head start in life.

One month before the opening of school in September, summer football practice began in Pennsylvania. The hot August sun scorched the practice fields and those on it. Wind sprints, exercises of all types got young bodies ready for the Friday and Saturday games played through October and into November. Sweat, blood and some tears were shed on dusty practice fields before any games took place. Scrimmage games were held between teams from other communities before the regular season began, and