Seduced: A Novel

By Freddie R. Burnett

Award-winning author Freddie R. Burnett pens a masterpiece of endearment, mystery, adventure, and love. He delves into a sensitive subject with finesse and compassion. The childhood cruelty of his main character, Michael Fly, is the plot of the story. Exiled and disgraced and badly beaten, from his hospital bed his story begins while he suffers amnesia from a terrible beating. His elusive past haunts him, and his present situation of being a murder suspect besets him, but his future is paved with gold. Sibling rivalry damages his manhood. His mother writes a degrading letter about him to the family that terrifies him. His father hates his son that doesnt measure up to his expectation. When there is no one to protect him, he learns about Jesus Christ, and he comes to his rescue every time. His world is a bitter mixture of confusion, betrayal, and deception. He perseveres in his dream of being a marine and receiving his inheritance on his twenty-first birthday. He begins his recovery in Chicago where his Uncle Isaac Fly brings him to mend. He is in search of love, himself, and his manhood. The fast-paced city life offers excitement, but he is soon to become a prize for his double-crossing Uncle Isaac and the call girl he falls in love with and marries. She brings him to the end of himself and his confusion. He has to learn the lessons of what it means to love and to forgive. He learns what true freedom means. He triumphs through the twists and turns of his broken world with the courage necessary to face and free himself from his past. He gives us a truer meaning of seduced. He has inspired us all with a work of courage, revelation, and love. It will seduce you with love.

It shines a ray of light on the dark side of humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524536039

Freddie R. Burnett

Freddie R. Burnett grew up around Humboldt, Tennessee. However, he graduated from Central High School in Alamo, Tennessee. He served in the US Navy for four years during the Vietnam War. He has a master of arts degree in secondary education from San Francisco State University. He is a retired junior high school teacher. He was awarded an Emancipation Award for his novel The Black Deal. The Navy awarded him the National Defense Service Medal and the Vietnam Campaign Medal (with two bronze stars). His picture is hung in the Stigall Cultural and Fine Arts Museum in his home town Humboldt, Tennessee. He enjoys reading and writing fiction, playing tennis, and serving God. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

Book preview

1

The Old Man

Chicago, Illinois, 1966.

I t had been two years ago when I had been found badly beaten and lying unconscious on the floor of a burning house in Salem, Tennessee. The police had arrested me for attempted murder and arson, even before my family had pressed charges against me for the attempted murder of my older brother, Milton. Two years later in Chicago, I was still recovering from my concussion that I couldn’t remember how I had gotten. I had no memory of anything or of any one that I had known in Tennessee. My mind had been a total blank when I had come here to Chicago to live with my Uncle Isaac Fly. I had moved to Chicago, Illinois, after I had left Salem, Tennessee, two years ago. I had been in a mysterious condition during those past two years. I had suffered a serious concussion, but my burns had not been very serious. I couldn’t remember any thing at all about how I had gotten my concussion, or even remember my name until six months ago. Still, I was enjoying my life for the first time, since a longtime I knew that somehow. It was like I knew things, but I didn’t know how I knew them. Also, I had forgotten things that I didn’t want to ever remember again.

My Uncle Isaac Fly had been the first person that I had seen when I had regained consciousness in the hospital in Salem, Tennessee, two years ago. The Chief of Police, J.W. Woods of Salem, Tennessee, stood beside him at my bedside. They wanted to know, why I had remained in the condemned house that the fire department had planned to dynamite that morning at six o’clock?

Michael Fly, that is your name, isn’t it?

I can’t remember my name, but he seems to think that my name is Michael Fly, I said, nodding my head toward the man that had identified himself as my Uncle Isaac Fly from Chicago, Illinois.

You mean you don’t remember him, either? asked the Chief of Police.

He is Michael Fly, I had come down here for his high school graduation two weeks ago, but I had found him lying in the front yard beside his family burnt down house, Uncle Isaac injected. His mind had been blank and he had had a bad head injury, and then I had brought him here to the hospital. He continued, He didn’t remember either his Mother, China Fly, or his Father, Sam Fly, or his Brother, Milton Fly.

Had you planned to kill your brother, Milton, that morning of the fire? Had that been the reason you had been in that house that morning of the fire? Hadn’t you been told by the fire department the previous day to be out of there by six o’clock that next morning, Michael Fly? asked Chief of Police, J.W. Woods. He continued, I had heard plenty gossip about you and how you had been a freak that made trouble for your family.

I had a feeling that he had known very well who I had been, and he already had known the answers to the questions that he had asked me. I can’t remember anything about what had happened to me that morning of the fire. I can’t remember anything about my brother that you think I wanted to kill, either, I said.

No one told you that the fire department had planned to dynamite that condemned house that morning at six o’clock? You didn’t know that everyone else in your family had moved out the day before, but you?

I don’t know what had happened in that condemned house that morning of the fire, and everything is cloudy in my head, I said, trying to collect my thoughts on my back in my bed in the hospital. Why would I have wanted to kill my brother, Milton? I can’t remember anything about either him or my mother or my father or me.

Everyone knew about how your family, and your brother in particular, had tormented you, and that had been your reason for wanting to kill him or to kill all of your family that morning of the fire. Also, you had planned to use the five gallons of gasoline that we had found in the yard to burn down the house to cover-up your crime of murder.

Where are you getting all this information about what I had planned to do to my brother and parents that morning of the fire, because I feel like someone had tried to murder me that morning? I continued dispiritedly, Had I supposed to have tried to murder my brother and my family and then set the house on fire before I slugged myself in the head or afterward? I had managed to put a complex thought together.

Your family told me that they believed you tried to kill your brother, Milton, that morning of the fire, because you hated him because of what he had done to you. He continued, The word had been out that you wanted to murder your brother, Milton. No matter what things look like to me, I have to believe what your family said about you.

I feel like it is just the opposite of what they had said, but I can’t remember anything at all.

The Chief of Police, J.W. Woods, and my Uncle Isaac Fly, and a few members of the hospital’s staff had observed me; as if, I had been an alien. I had felt like a lynch mob had been chasing me. Still, the concussion that I had suffered couldn’t be explained using the theory that I had been in the condemned house that morning of the fire to kill Milton. The Chief of Police, J.W. Woods, had to release me for lack of evidence. However, the case was still under investigation, and my proof of either guilty or innocent was pending. My immediate family members had already found me guilty as charged, and they had vowed never to speak to me ever again. I couldn’t remember anything before that morning of the fire, but my thoughts of the condemned house that the fire department had burned down left an eerie feeling in my bones.

I had resided with my Uncle Isaac Fly for the past two years in his two-bedroom apartment on Stony Island Boulevard on the south side of Chicago. He believed that I was innocent of all charges. He seemed more concerned about what had happened to me, and the attempt on my life that had been completely ignored by every one in Salem. He said that sometimes your own people would rather see you dead than doing better than them. He was a bachelor, and he had given me a small room that didn’t have any heat in it. He had lived in Chicago for many years, and he had worked in highway-construction crews all those years. He wanted me to work with him, but I had refused him. His work was seasonal and unpredictable. He knew that construction work didn’t require brains and just a strong back to use a pickax and shovel. I wanted to work inside on a regular job. I had told him that I didn’t want to work as a laborer in a highway-construction crew. Construction work was too much like farm work; besides, I didn’t like dirt on me. I couldn’t remember living on a farm in Tennessee, but the sense and feeling of it came through my subconscious at times. I liked dressing nice everyday and keeping my hands clean. It seemed odd how I still knew my condition and understood my environment, but my mind couldn’t hold onto my memories. I could function as a pawn employee and I rode the city buses to and from work weekdays. Still, my head injury that I had suffered had left me mildly mentally and emotionally handicapped. However, my intellect and emotions were healing faster now.

I was working two part time jobs one as a busboy, and a second one at a car wash to maintain my livelihood. I felt bigotry of a different kind from the foreign white people at the restaurant. You think that you are too good to get dirty? The lady manager had snarled at me many times. She wanted me to do everything from busing tables, bringing in coal for the furnace in the basement, mopping floors, and cleaning toilets. There was only turned up noses at my pretty hairdo and my fancy attire for all my effort to fit in with the waitresses. They wanted me to wear work clothes, like farmer John’s, but I wore my pressed gabardine trousers and fancy polyester sweaters to work. As I thought about my well-dressed attire and the white people on my job, I didn’t fit their image of a black man on the job for them. I neither would sing nor dance nor could I throw a ball fifty yards nor did I snitch on my people, I thought bitterly. I was in the North now and brave as an angry lion, but I was struggling with the same complaints black people had about the South. Uncle Isaac seemed to have known the northern white people, as well as he had known the southern white people. It was all about blending in and being accepted as one of them or as one of theirs, he had told me with a giggle. It was a colorless analogy, and it was the essence of a person that was accepted or rejected by an established order both black and white. I hadn’t cloaked my rebellious nature from the white folk or concealed my fear among the black folk. Unquestionably, I hadn’t blended in either in the South or in the North, neither with whites nor blacks. I wanted to go west to California and join the Marine Corps. Definitely, I had to find my niche somewhere else.

Uncle Isaac enjoyed his job, but I thought he was too old to be working construction. He had told me plenty stories every evening about his experiences as a highway-construction worker. He earned good pay at five dollars per hour. I had sat in my chair every evening surrounded by coal smoke within the gray walls of the living room. The coal-burning potbellied stove was as life and death, as it gave us its precious heat, but too, it filled our lungs with the black coal smoke. I had listened to every word that he spoke to me. His five dollars per hour construction job made him somebody special among his associates and in the community. I respected him too.

Uncle Isaac was a self-made man. He was a man’s man in his direct approach to life. He had been waiting for me, as I arrived home despondent the last day on my job at the car wash. He greeted me, Michael, why are you so unhappy today? he asked me with a kind face. He was sitting in his overstuffed chair facing the stove. He had always given me all of his attention when he had been talking with me. Michael, are you injured? he asked.

No, I am not injured in a physical way. I am unable to endure this cold weather any longer, though. My hands and feet had felt frozen today at work, I said, as I walked into the warm apartment. I had to get use to the smell of burning coal, and its smoke and soot clouding the air in the living room during the winter months. I sat down in my favorite chair on the opposite side of the stove from him. I still wore my black parka. I considered my situation at work quickly. I had dried the car windows with a cloth towel. The damp towel and the ten degrees temperature had made my hands very cold that day at work. Gloves had been useless and awkward for my work. I had slammed a car door shut on my middle finger on my left hand earlier that day. I thought it was best not to tell him about my injured finger. The manager had fired me because I had to come home because of my injury. My job as a busboy had played out too when a waitress had accused me of pocketing her tip. I’ll be okay, Uncle Isaac; it’s just that things are very confusing up north, I said. I was soaking in the heat from the stove.

The car wash isn’t a good place to work in the month of December in Chicago, he said. He spoke in a calmer voice from before when he had greeted me. How are they treating you at the restaurant where you work as a busboy?

The head waitress had accused me of stealing her tip.

Had she told the truth; I mean had you stolen her tip?

Yes, she had setup me like I had been a fool. I had played it off like the three quarters had fallen off the table into the seat. I had put her seventy-five cents tip back onto the table after I had pretended to find six bits in the seat, but it had never been the same after then. Still, I had supposed to have gotten fifteen percent of the waitresses’ tips, but they never had given me a penny.

I have the newspaper, and I see where there are a few companies hiring laborers, he said with a quick glance into my eyes.

They’ll tell me that I lack experience, but I can’t earn any experience without a good job, I griped. I believe they ask for experience to prevent any one like I am from getting a good job. I don’t believe that every person that they hire has experience. I felt discriminated against because of my amnesia. I felt that my high school diploma wasn’t helping me to get a good job. Still, I was glad to have received it. I hadn’t marched with my graduating class, but I had received it in the mail afterwards. I was already tired of civilian life, and I wanted to join the Marine Corps. Now, I had an undecided court case for further investigation of attempted murder and arson. I couldn’t remember very much about what had happened to me. It had been a very strange incident that had left me with a blank mind. The Chief of Police in Salem, Tennessee, had suggested some outrageous theories about what I had planned to do to my brother, Milton. I knew that I couldn’t have done any of those terrible things to my brother that he had suggested. Still, I wouldn’t be going into the Marine Corps until after the matter had been settled in court. It was obvious that he neither believed that I had wanted to murder my brother and then hide his body in the house and start my own fire, before the fire department had burned the house down to conceal the crime, nor that I was guilty of any other crime. It all sounded more and more ridiculous, since my memory had started returning more rapidly.

You’ll find a good job, Michael, he said, bringing my mind back to the present moment. You have your high school diploma, and most employers are asking for a high school diploma now.

I don’t want to work at a car wash another day, and a job as a busboy isn’t for me.

Michael, are you going to give up, already? His face was compassionate, and his gray eyes were anemic in the dim light of the smoky living room. He stood and then walked across the living room floor to a corner where a hatbox sat on a wall-mounted mantel. It had not been used for its original purpose to store a hat in many years. Behind him was an inelegant marriage of African ceramic objects, and two bamboo-cane chairs made by craftsmen with great knowledge of twine, cane, and tapestry grabbed my eyes. These pieces of furniture and ceramic objects were mixed in with a couple of pieces of modern French furniture but I had no idea what they were. His antique early American china cabinet was a collectable. Then he stared at the large picture of Jesus Christ that sat on an antique early American chest of drawers with a tall, fancy mirror near him at his right side. He took a quick glance at some photographs of our deceased family members arranged tastefully on a very old three-legged stand. I was intrigued while looking at my distant deceased relatives. There were more photographs carefully placed on the round top of an old-fashioned coffee table. It looked as a family memorial in the north corner of the hazy room embellished by pictures of past generations of ex-slaves. Everything in the living room had a coating of coal soot on it. I hated his living room and his apartment and Chicago. Life had to have more to offer than what I had received here. Everything was dead like winter itself, and the people that I had met had been hustlers, gangsters, and violent people.

You are getting established now, and that’s the hardest time in a man’s life. His hands were probing through his personal documents inside the hatbox all the while he was speaking. You’ll get your opportunity someday, but if you are held back it won’t be because of white people or black people, it will be because of you. He removed a letter from within the hatbox, and then he walked back across the living room floor to my chair. Did you read this letter that your mother had sent here for me about you?

No, I can’t remember anything about her writing you a letter about me.

This is a strange letter for a mother to write about her son.

I was consumed by fear while I stared at the letter in his hand. My thoughts of Milton had rushed into my distressed mind. Milton had been five years older than I was and he had sexually abused me inside a stall in a barn when I had been four years old. I sat in the chair and stared at the letter in his hand in near panic. I had remembered that scandalous part of my past all of a sudden, as a result of seeing the mysterious letter that my mother had written about me two years ago. I felt like I didn’t know myself, and I was terrified of what was to come next. I was afraid that my secret would get out and I would be ruined by it, but I had not known that my secret was old news and I had been already ruined by it.

I want you to read this letter when you are ready; I will give it to you now.

I hated the letter, and I didn’t want it. It was too painful to bear the thought of what was in it. I took the letter and folded it and put it into my shirt pocket, anyway. I’ll read it later, Uncle Isaac.

You’ll know peace when you know the truth about what had happened to you, Michael, he said.

The truth about what had happened to me! I am just like everyone else is, and I like women, if that’s what you mean by truth? There is no big secret in my life, I snapped. I was becoming paranoid and defensive about my sordid past. I wondered if he knew about my sordid past with Milton? Then I had determined by his engaging facial expression that he knew. I didn’t want to remember anymore about my shameful past. Why couldn’t she let it rest, and why did the entire world have to know about my being sexually abused by my brother? It was like she was constantly pulling off the scab on my wound with the letter. I had remembered my brother, Milton, and my parents, and the pain they had caused me at that moment.

When you read this letter you’ll know the truth about yourself, and you’ll know the truth about your family; at which point, you’ll know the truth about your Creator, he said.

You mean the truth about God? I took a quick glance upward at his kind face from where I sat in my chair. I already know the truth about Him. He loves everyone no matter of his or her sexual orientation. Are you saying that He doesn’t love gays?

No! He doesn’t love sin of any kind is what I am saying. I think you have that part right. Still, there is something in our lives that will be a lifelong challenge for us. But it seems that you are still trusting in yourself to overcome your misfortune, he said troubled. I am speaking of His grace, and what He has already done for you, and what He has done for the entire world. Michael, it’s not how good you think you are or how terrible you think of yourself that will defile you or will save you; it’s what is in your heart that defiles you or saves you, he said. I too speak of the life that you want to live. I am referring to the people that are able to help you, and the people that are able to defeat you while you are on your life’s journey. He smiled at me tenderly. You must have the knowledge of good and evil, Michael, or you’ll suffer defeat by evil people, as you had suffered from your brother and parents. You have the power source in your pocket in the letter. You can keep it a secret or you can make it known to the world; it is your choice because it’s your life, and you are the person that has to live it. Whatever you decide to do, live your life to please God and yourself.

I don’t understand how a letter could have any power over my life. I guess you probably know about what Milton had done to me in the stall of a barn when I had been a child? I asked bravely, and then I took a quick glance into his all-seeing eyes. I’ll take a hot bath and go to bed early tonight, I said to change the subject before he answered me. It befuddled me that I had been unable to shed my past, and it was as a skin that had grown too tight on my body. I felt trapped by my precarious surroundings and my inescapable past. My most frightening thought of all was that I didn’t know what to expect next. My homophobic family in Tennessee that I couldn’t remember wanted me dead. My past had returned in bits and pieces of my sorrow and shame.

It doesn’t matter what I know or what anyone else knows about you; it’s what you know about yourself that’s important. You keep the letter and remember what I have told you about its power over an evil in your life, he said. Then he paused for a second, and then he watched my eyes carefully. Your mother had told me when I had been in Tennessee for your graduation about what had happened to you in a stall in a barn with your brother, Milton. She had seen Milton and you inside the stall while she had been gathering wandering hens’ eggs in the barn that day, but she had thought that your brother and you had been playing a game with each other in there. It had been just before your first year in high school she had realized what had happened to you inside that barn that day with Milton. You must not regard the letter as a source of fear, but it’s your source of truth or consequence, Michael, he said with raised eyebrows. You shouldn’t hate your family for how they had mistreated you, and don’t hold yourself responsible for their horrible deeds against you. I don’t believe that you had wanted to kill your brother that morning of the fire and then set the house on fire, as the Chief of Police in Salem had said that you had. You are a good man, and I am on your side in this matter. He thought for a moment, and then he spoke again, "They are using the queer man image of you to shape a negative public opinion of you,