The Singer: Come Walk By Me Softly

By Roger Himes

Scott Bailey is a burned-out lawyer in a midlife crisis who wants to become… 'THE SINGER.' When he convinces his family to relocate to the mountains, he embarks on a life-changing musical journey of easy listening acoustical music. At first, his family loves the change of pace and enjoys their newfound peace, happiness, and family closeness in their lifestyle. But then while singing in a nightclub, Scott meets Christy and they become friends. When their friendship evolves into adultery, things get messy with their marriage seemingly headed for divorce.

A story like no other, this novel tells a tale of forgiveness, healing, and restoration of the human spirit. Dive into this story today and follow along with a lawyer who changes everything in life to become a singer. Filled with plenty of practical and spiritual lessons, coupled with substantial humor, this is a great story for all age groups. This includes teens because Megan, The Singer's teen daughter, plays a vital role in confronting her dad's hypocrisy and adultery while he urges her to remain chaste.

This book is unique in that it comes with a 12 song music soundtrack that follows the storyline of the book, adding to the emotional and personal impact of the story. The songs are composed and sung by the author. The lyrics of the songs can be read, and also listened to being sung.

Three lines from a popular modern song show why a book with a music soundtrack that follows the storyline of the book is a great idea:
"Music speaks louder than words
It's the only thing the whole world listens to
When you sing, people understand."

This presentation creates a one-of-a-kind book that truly connects with the heart.

PERSONALLY SPEAKING:
Roger Himes and his wife Eileen reside in what singer John Denver calls 'Colorado Rocky Mountain High' -- the state of Colorado, USA. This was after relocation from Houston, Texas many years ago. This was after Roger grew up in Minneapolis and Hibbing Minnesota -- Oakland, California – Salt Lake City, Utah – and Butte, Montana, as he followed his dad and mom around as their job transferred them.

Roger and Eileen have two grown daughters, Lisa and Shawn, and four grandkids. They owned a wedding venue in the mountains of Colorado for years. Roger liked saying, "I used to get people divorced. Now I get them married. It's a much better deal, and I know God likes it better too." Now they own a lodge, Mountain Peaks Inn, Hill City, South Dakota USA, which is close to Mount Rushmore.

Roger built his law practice singing in nightclubs at night and passing out business cards at the breaks. What better place to meet people who need an attorney, right? Newspapers must have thought a lawyer singing in bars was newsworthy. They wrote articles about him: "The Singing Attorney" and "The Court Jester." He composes and sings the songs in this book. In addition to songs, he writes spiritual and inspirational books that are free on his site mentioned in the book.

He enjoys playing the guitar and singing and reading books, especially on the subject of the gospel, which is also what he mostly writes about. He likes lots of outdoor activities in Colorado.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667829586

Book preview

ONE:

The Courtroom

It had been a long night, but not unlike many other nights.

Scott hadn’t slept well. He’d tossed and turned a lot. He was up three times, and he was wide awake before the alarm.

He wasn’t worried about the day. He got more and more agitated in his trial work, but it wasn’t because the courtroom worried him. He’d been in law practice now for over 10 years, and he was averaging at least two multi-day trials a month.

No, it wasn’t the trials themselves that bothered him. Instead, it was the whole legal business that bothered him, all the way from A to Z.

Did anybody really like lawyers? Or were lawyers just tools folks used to get what they wanted, whether they deserved it or not?

He thought of the line to a song he’d written recently: ‘Fighting hard for selfish justice.’ There was really no such thing, but people often thought there was and pretended like it.

As he thought about things, it sure seemed to fit. He thought about this song a lot because each line described an element of our social system in much of modern society, and in the United States particularly.

He thought of the famous poet Shakespeare’s comment about lawyers in one of his plays: The first order of business should be to kill all the lawyers.

Laughing, he recalled the words of Pogo – the cartoon philosopher: Perhaps we should just shorten their legal pads. Scott thought this was a much better idea!

Showering, he was amused by what he’d heard about the law being a lot like practicing prostitution. Both lawyers and prostitutes suffer from the same reality. This is the fact that with both, the value of services rendered drastically declines once those services have been performed.

The jokes were countless, but many of them were accurate.

Scott was thinking about the trial he had this morning. He wasn’t worried about this trial. He was pretty sure he had this one in the bag, although he had been wrong before at times. He remembered one time when the opposing lawyer proved his client was lying. The situation had not only been embarrassing, but he also lost the case.

Driving to the courthouse, he thought about one verse of a song he wrote that convicted him the most. Each line described people he knew.

America! Land of opportunity!

Money is our hidden treasure

Wealth becomes the standard measure

As we seek our fleeting pleasures

Pride without humility.

Great concern but no compassion

Fighting hard for selfish justice

Becoming slaves in all dimensions

While striving hard to be set free.

Seeking answers while avoiding issues

Learning facts but never knowing

Seeking knowledge, seldom wisdom

Intellectual security.

It was actually strange how this song was written. Most songs he writes take a lot of butt-burning work. You sit for hours and get little inspiration. But this wasn’t true with this song. Scott recalled he was actually singing another song when the lyrics to this song started forming in his mind.

The lyrics came so fast he had stop everything and write them down. In not much over an hour, he’d written the entire song – both lyrics and music. As he looked at the intensity and depth of the song, he knew this wasn’t in his own abilities alone as a song writer.

He then realized he was in some way being used as an instrument for something that wanted to be said. He didn’t fully understand. Since then, three other songs had come to him the same way. Most of his songs didn’t come so easy, but four of them had.

<+>

At the courthouse, he arrived and parked. He knew he could have driven there blindfolded, and he could find the big stately building blindfolded also. Everything was mechanical. As was the way he was dressed.

The lawyer’s uniform, at least in the courtroom, was an expensive suit and tie – and he laughed as he thought, with alligator shoes. This was the way he had to dress almost every day.

On days when he wasn’t in the courtroom, he would dress down to a degree, but he would still wear nice slacks and a nice dress shirt. You had to make an impression on people. He recalled the maxim: ‘There is no second chance for a first impression.’

Personally, he was more comfortable in blue jeans and a t-shirt of a golf shirt.

Walking to his destination, he passes a very nice looking young woman in her mid-twenties. They make eye contact, and she smiles at him sweetly, and even in a flirtatious way. He smiles back at her.

He thought, Well, Scott Bailey, even though you feel over-the-hill, run down and burned out, have just turned 40, at least there are still some people who don’t think you are worn out. Being a singer himself, he recalls two country songs he liked:

‘Baby, I May Be Used, but I Ain’t Used Up,’

and also ‘I Ain’t As Good As I Once Was, but I’m As Good Once As I Ever Was.’

They brought a smile to his lips as he walked along the street.

<+>

He arrives at the courthouse and walks up the front steps. Thirty-five long steps, to be exact. He has counted them many times before. They look like marble steps, or imitation marble.

Despite his increasing negative feelings about the law the past two or three years, he really loves this courthouse. Other courthouses he goes to are modern buildings.

This one is not. It was built about 1910. It had earned the distinction of being an historical site.

Pictures along the hall display an early 1900s historical culture that is interesting.

It has ceilings that are 25 or more feet high. It is hollow sounding when you walk down the halls. Doors to the courtroom are big, and made of impressive dark wood.

He climbs the long set of steps to the second floor of the courthouse.

He could take the elevator, but the stairs take longer, and he’s in no hurry to get to the courtroom. He wants all the time he can to focus on his never-changing thoughts.

Plus, he wants to spend as little time as possible talking about the case with his client, or the opposing counsel. He just wants to get on with things.

He enters the courtroom. Like the rest of the building, the courtrooms are also old and historical in appearance, but they are elegant and in immaculate condition. The bench for the judge, and the tables for the lawyers are made of impressive, heavy wood.

Like the halls, the ceiling is high. Even the benches for spectators are wooden. The floors are wood that produced a hollow, echoing sound as you walked on them.

Most modern courthouses are nice enough. But everything is modern, and metal, and stale. They are not impressively places. Like most offices, they are just places to work. But this courthouse is so different. If he has to practice law, at least he likes coming here to do it.

In some ways he feels like the young lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, back in the 1800s, before he became President of the United States.

Although didn’t have any political aspirations, he did have a strong fondness for history. He hadn’t had this as a kid in school. To him then, history was boring. But today he loved history. Over the last 10 years he’d become an amateur student of history. This was surely true of American history, although ancient history fascinated him too.

<+>

In the courtroom he greeted his client and the other attorney. But he had definitely timed it well this morning. He hadn’t been in the courtroom three minutes when the bailiff came out and in his bellowing voice declared, All rise! This court is in session! The honorable …

Scott rose out of reflex but he wasn’t listening.

Jury selection in this type of case is easy. It’s not like this was a capital case and his client was facing death or life imprisonment. Scott didn’t do criminal cases, but only civil ones.

Criminal cases were about criminals, while civil cases were about money: the almighty dollar.

Again he thought: ‘Money is our hidden treasure – wealth becomes the standard measure – as we seek our fleeting pleasures.’ Why do his thoughts keep reverting back to this song that he wrote?

Jury selection was done in record time and the court took a short recess.

Taking a recess reminded him of being back in grade school.

Scott wasn’t worried about this trial. He was quite self-confident in what he was doing. He was a competent lawyer. He did wish this case would simply go away, but he wasn’t worried about it.

No, Scott was just facing burn-out, in a little over 10 years. He wasn’t old enough to be facing burn out. After all, he was only 40 years old. His age didn’t really bother him, but it was becoming more of an issue to him.

<+>

His thoughts began to wander even more.

They did this so much of the time lately. At times he had a real hard time staying focused on what he should be concentrating on.

Where had the last 18 years gone since he and Sharon had gotten married? Megan was now 15, Julie was now 9, and Garvin was 8.

Where had the time gone? Doesn’t it say in the Bible that, Life is but a vapor? He was starting to believe it totally.

He loved country singer Kenny Chesney. He recalled one of his songs: ‘Don’t Blink.’ It said the same thing in a lyrical way. If you blink, you lose 10 years it seems like.

Oh, how he loved his family. He lived for them – at least in his mind, if not always in his time commitments.

He recalled a speech he had heard:

‘Purposes, Priorities and Practices.’

The speaker had said that all three of these need to line up in our lives. What is most important to us is where we place our priorities, and then our practices – or what we do each day – should fall in line with this.

Scott knew his practices didn’t always reflect his purposes and priorities. After all, he spent most of his weeks in trial, like now. But his thoughts and his heart were with his family.

He’d met Sharon when they were both 22 and in college. They had been married four years later, as he was finishing law school.

She was a beautiful woman physically, both facially and bodily. She had not lost any of her beauty since they were married, even though she’d had three children. She always worked to keep herself fit.

He’d noticed both women and men just didn’t seem to regard each others’ feelings as much after they got married. He was glad both he and Sharon did try to keep physically fit for each other, and also mentally and spiritually fit.

In cases he handled, he had noticed too many people didn’t do this. After they have kids, and are married for awhile, they just tend to take each other for granted. They just seem to let it all go and don’t care about their appearance much. He’d had several clients looking for what are commonly called ‘greener pastures.’

So many people didn’t understand this ‘grass is greener’ principle, and how it affects their spouse. It’s true we all get older, but some refuse to do it gracefully. And both men and women seem to be equally guilty in not taking inventory as to how they are affecting and impacting their spouse. So it was a two-way street.

Men often forget how to approach their wives with what their wives need – and not just expect their wives to give them what they want. They often lose the personal touch approach – except to grope and feel. They often lose the conversation, the closeness, the intimacy.

Most are too content to just drink beer and watch TV, or follow whatever other whim they may have. Meaningful conversation to them meant speaking 200 words during dinner, before turning the TV on.

In handling divorce cases, he’d heard so much from both men and women, and things he heard always made him think about his own marriage.

Sharon was beautiful in her soul and spirit. Scott smiled thinking about what a beautiful person she was, and how much he loved her, and was grateful for her. And he tried to tell her something like this every day. With all the divorces he saw, he wondered why more men and women didn’t do the same thing.

It wasn’t anything in particular that bugged him about law practice. It was just that everything seemed to bug him about law practice. This included hearing clients complain about their spouses.

<+>

At least he wouldn’t have to fight his client for fees in this case if he lost. He’d done that a lot – even though he won almost all of his cases. He knew how to spot the cases that looked like losers.

But he also knew how to spot the loser clients that might not pay. He’d had plenty of them in his day. After he finished fighting with the other lawyer, the witnesses, the judge, and everyone else you can think of, he would then have to fight with his client over his fees.

He had once read where lawyers were third on the list for being in a stressful position. Surgeons in the operating room were first. Policemen on the streets or in dangerous situations were second. But litigation lawyers were third. This included him, a street lawyer.

But he’d also read that lawyers were first on the list for not being paid. The value of services rendered greatly declines once those services have been rendered. He thought the guy he represented this morning would sue his mother for $100. And he would also be just as quick not to pay his lawyer bill. But he had grown wiser with age. He had collected his fee in advance.

He thought to himself, You are very cynical, Scott Bailey.

<+>

The words that came out of his mouth during opening argument were memorized from prior cases. By rote, he went into his standard presentation.

"The plaintiff will show that the defendant had absolutely no reason to breach the contract. My client did nothing to provoke such a breach, and in fact did everything possible to fulfill his end of the agreement, even when he knew that the defendant was in the process of breaking the contract.

"We will even show that my client was so diligent that he even brought in additional contract labor to make certain all deadlines were met. He also paid regular employees overtime wages to accomplish this.

We will show the defendant had absolutely no justification to breach the contract, and that this breach by the defendant was the proximate cause of all the plaintiff’s losses.

<+>

Scott sat down thinking, I’m glad that legal gobbledygook is done. His client leaned over and said how good his statement had been. He of course thanked him. The judge now asked if the defendant also had an opening statement.

Scott thought, "Of course he does, Judge. You know trials can be won or lost in opening statements, by planting thoughts in the jury’s mind early, whether those thoughts are fact or fiction.

The rule of first impression can set up and control the whole day.

The other attorney rose and began speaking. Yes we do, your honor. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury! We disagree totally with Mr. Bailey’ assessment of the facts of this case…

Scott thought to himself: You better, you idiot. It’s your job.

Continuing he said, First, the defendant will show that it was the plaintiff who originally breached the contract by not complying with paragraph 7 of the contract… … …

<+>

Scott was zoned out. He didn’t hear a word that man said. He knew he was in for a fairly long opening argument. The judge had given them 20 minutes each for opening statements. Scott had only used about 7 minutes of his allotted time. He knew that he believed in brevity, and not being boring, especially starting out in a case.

But he was sure this guy would use all 20 minutes of his allotted time.

Scott knew it would be to his advantage if this guy bored the jury. But he knew what he was going to say before he said it. He knew what he himself would say if he were representing the defendant, instead of the plaintiff.

He remembered the words of Abraham Lincoln: He is no lawyer who cannot argue both sides of a case. He loved Abe. He was one of his favorite historical figures.

He knew he could argue either side of this