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Davd B. Seaburn
David B. Seaburn
Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
ISBN-10: 168433764X
Type: Fiction
Pages: 261
Copyright: September 22, 2021
ISBN-13: 9781684337644
Price: $6.99 (eBook)
Eddy has lost his job and Gayle has cancer. Unemployment, failed chemotherapy, and no insurance bring them to the edge of life’s precipice. Eddy turns to a local preacher and a statue called Jesus the Consoler, seeking a miracle; Gayle dives deep into a secret scheme devised years earlier when her husband lost his first job. Can anything save them?
In Broken Pieces of God David B. Seaburn returns to the domestic arena to explore the decidedly complex and extraordinary lives of an average American couple, Eddy and Gayle Kimes. Eddy, a supervisor for a cable company, is laid off again, this time with no possible return to work. Gayle, a tax accountant, is recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Unemployment, failed chemotherapy, and no insurance bring them to the edge of life’s precipice. Can anything save them? Eddy turns to a local preacher and a statue called Jesus the Consoler, seeking a miracle; Gayle dives deep into a secret scheme devised years earlier when her husband lost his first job.
In the meantime, their adult son, Rich, and daughter, Sandy, grapple with the aftershock of an incident from their youth that has shadowed their lives ever since, making them avoid their home until tragedy is close at hand.
After months away from treatment, Gayle decides to re-enter immunotherapy. On the heels of this decision, their lives are changed forever. They are unable to answer the questions most dear to them---What happened and why?---yet they move forward with life, step by step, together.
Excerpt
FROM Chapter 2
“Do you have everything together that you want to take?”
“I think so.” Gayle pulled open her backpack and peered inside.
“A good book?”
“Yes.”
“Word search?”
She shook her head as her husband continued to chatter.
“Blanket in case you get chilled? You know what they said.”
“Yes.” Gayle piled a pillow on top of the backpack. Just as Eddy headed for the pantry, she said, “Let me get some snacks.” She grabbed cheez-its, granola bars and three bottles of water. “Do you want anything?”
“Sure, add a couple more granola bars, the peanut butter ones.”
Tax season was winding down. In recent years her business had exploded. Originally, she mainly did personal taxes. But then small business owners discovered her and began coming in droves, feeling in over their heads when it came to managing accounts. They entrusted their businesses to her, their lives to her, in fact, and she took their confidence seriously. “You’re a life saver,” was the consensus.
Sometimes it baffled her, how others, strangers really, could give her that amount of influence over their financial affairs. In twenty-eight years, she never had a single complaint and had cleared every audit. “Cross the t’s and dot the i’s,” she’d say, whenever anyone asked her how she managed to have such a spotless record. She was relieved to have accumulated a large portfolio of loyal accounts. It was insurance against the ever-changing tides of Eddy’s work.
She headed to the bathroom one last time. Eddy’s time off had gone from eight to twelve weeks. No end in sight. Scope didn’t dare use the L-word for what was going on. “No one is being laid off,” they’d announce with every new round of layoffs. “We’re just reshuffling the deck.” She marveled at Eddy’s patience and was infuriated by Scope’s attempts at normalizing the abnormal: “In every transition there are rough spots before things not only smooth out but take off!” The latest move was a “re-examination of health insurance” which amounted to presenting graphs and papers arguing that the company’s health was at risk. “We don’t want to put local operations in jeopardy so we will be exploring insurance options. At every turn we will make the welfare of our corporate family JOB #1.”
Eddy had been going to all the meetings. Except in the last few weeks. “I can find out what I need to know from the guys.” He sat every morning staring at the newspaper, never turning the pages. “It’s all going to work out.”
Gayle felt cranky when she came back down the stairs; navigating her feelings was getting harder.
Eddy met her at the bottom. “How you doing?”
“I don’t know. Let’s just get going. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can come home.”
She opened the front closet, searching for a hoodie.
“Wait a minute,” said Eddy. “I got something.” He went to the back closet by the kitchen to get a plastic bag. “Okay, close your eyes.”
“Eddy—”
“No, really, just do it.”
Gayle frowned but closed her eyes.
“Okay, open.”
Gayle grinned, then smiled and laughed, her hands going up and then slapping her thighs. Eddy was holding up a pink T-shirt that said, ‘Hey Cancer, Eat Chemo and Die!’
“That should do it, don’t you think?” He pulled a second shirt from the bag. “I got one for both of us.”
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