Before by J. Kilburn

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About the author:

J. Kilburn's narrative style has been compared to those of Joyce Carol Oates, Virginia Wolfe, D.H. Lawrence, Hunter S. Thompson, and Nell Zink. His subjects and almost cinematic descriptions of setting have earned his work comparison to movies and television shows like Sons of Anarchy, Tin Star, Twin Peaks, and Thelma and Louise. Prior to Heaven's Door, a Novel and BEFORE, Kilburn's other published work was a feature-length investigative news article that got the whole page in his community newspaper.

Kilburn lives a quiet and private life on the shore of America's sixth Great Lake. He has lived and worked in Vermont, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Minnesota. During these travels, Kilburn has dabbled in law enforcement, private security, emergency medicine, truck driving, and horse-logging. Other occupations have included at-risk youth mentor, big-city process server, park ranger, and industrial wastewater treatment operator. Along the way, he's pedaled to 14,000 feet above sea-level in a major bicycle race, been marooned overnight on a deserted island, ridden a motorcycle from Chicago to Thunder Bay, and hiked Vermont's highest peaks to watch sunsets on both the longest and coldest days of the year. He currently maintains plastics processing machinery for a major manufacturing company. When not at work he and his wife enjoy life around a little urban farm complete with greenhouse, garden, and mini-barn. Their current flock is composed of four chickens and a cat named Sierra Feral.

What inspired you to write your book?

The series was originally inspired by weathered bones found in a hasty unmarked road-side grave not too very far from where I write. The man's fate just stuck with me…. I did some research and then I began imagining his end, the events that brought him to that horrible last day. Later, I imagined his beginning: family, friends, eventually Loved Ones. As I was doing Character Development, I realized I had a complete novel right there – everything that happened before. I'd found my title! Then, as I was writing, the characters introduced some friends, drama, and romance of their own making… I sat back in shock as a story emerged, but not the one I'd been writing. I built the stage, but in the end it was my characters who wrote the play – it's quite a story. I've enjoyed it. I think you will, too.

Here is a short sample from the book:

Brittany and Tabitha were doing Tuesday evening homework on the kitchen table at the farmhouse as an early-Fall snow gently swirled down outside. The sudden change of weather was surprising every time it happened, but normal. Sometimes snow came down even before all the leaves were gone from the trees. This year the weather had been hot as all Hades right up 'til Halloween, then the Arctic had descended on them. Grandma Wendell had made them a warm and filling wintertime supper of Shepard’s Pie and then the girls had helped clean up the kitchen and went out to the shed to split some firewood. Now they were hitting the books by the warm wood-fired cookstove while Hattie put up a new batch of gingerbread cookies. Good to be available nearby for taste-testing on an evening like that….
Hattie Wendell held a kitchen curtain aside, looking out the window at the growing storm. “It's picking up out there, Tabitha. They don’t take very good care of this road at night, you know…”
Brittany looked up from a textbook. “I’m not even sure they have the PLOWS on yet.” She was referring to the town road trucks. Last she knew, the large, detachable wing-plows were all lined up in a row down at the municipal garage, awaiting colder days. Sometimes they went on before Halloween, sometimes they went on the first of December.
Hattie Wendell let the curtain drop. “Well, colder days seem to have arrived!”
Brittany chuckled ruefully. Not bicycling weather anymore! Shit….
A voice came out of the mop of red hair bent close over an anthology of literature: “Just a few more sections, Grandma Wendell. Then I should probably go…” She didn’t yet have snow tires on that big boat of a car her father let her use. The snow probably wouldn’t amount to much, but the road down to the village WAS curvy and she didn’t want to chance slippery corners. At the same time, the Wendell kitchen was a cozy place to do homework, with a ready supply of coffee or tea and snacks such as the cookies that were just coming out of the oven built into the side of the ancient woodstove. There was also the side benefit of ready access to her pretty, if no-longer available lab partner. Tabitha felt comfy here, and was loathe to leave.
Hattie Wendell wondered what Tabitha’s kitchen was like. Was it hard being a school-aged lesbian in her home? Were her parents angry? Supportive? Disappointed? Worried about grandchildren someday? Unaware? Are there other reasons why she's up here so much? Hattie didn’t really know Tabitha’s people. She decided to ask around at the next Blue Line club… No. That might expose secrets.
“Tabitha?”
The girls kept doing their homework. Tabitha answered distractedly: “Yeup?”
“Is your home safe for you? To be… yourself in, I mean?”
Both girls put down their homework.
“You mean, do my parents know I like girls? Yes. They can’t figure out whether it's cute or gross, but they’re glad I’m not going to be getting pregnant on a date. They think it will pass when I meet the Right Boy, later.”
“Will it?”
“I don’t think so. Mom and Dad will probably have a bit of a fit when they realize that. But yes, I’m safe. I’m lucky, I guess. There’s another… Someone else in town who is grounded, literally locked in her bedroom, until they find a boy in there with her.”
“Oh dear.”
While Hattie sat in her rocker by the wood-fired range and thought about that, the girls went back to doing homework. The clock in the parlor tick-tocked, pencils and highlighters scratched, chairs creaked, the fire in the range popped. The lights flickered a couple of times, as they often do on rural electrical services.
A little later, Brittany's grandmother had more questions. “May I pry?”
Tabitha winced a little, preparing. She expected a question about “what’s it like,” or “what do you do,” or something voyeuristic like that. She nodded, and steeled herself.
Hattie Wendell unfortunately knew EXACTLY what THOSE TWO did, or at least far more about it than she wanted to. She'd just been to the doctor in the village and gotten her own prescription for various cardiac medicines related to that little incident. “You’re up here an awful lot. That’s why I wondered. Are you two… a couple?”
Tabitha colored a little. She smiled, but she looked pained. Brittany looked at her friend expectantly.
Tabitha took a deep breath and kept her eyes carefully on Grandma Wendell as she answered. “It's a nice place to do homework. But I could do homework at my house. I love her. Brittany. LOVE her. She won’t give me the time of day anymore, and I know that, but I still want to be around her. Every minute of every day. So we have this instead. Homework. It's enough.” She turned towards Brittany. “It's nice, actually. Uncomplicated. In a complicated sort of way. I’m hoping for a miracle, though. You already knew that.”
Brittany took Tabitha’s hand. “Sorry, girlfriend. Boys are just WHERE IT'S AT for me. If I didn’t like chest hair and beard stubble and penises (Grandma you didn’t hear that), then you’d be the first one to know, I think. But we still wouldn’t date. Not like that. I’m not that kind of girl. Coupled, I mean.”
A horrified Hattie Wendell was suddenly very sorry she had brought the matter up. Tabitha was sad, and Brittany had just given both of them much more information than maybe they wanted to have. She wondered if Tabitha already knew all that.
Tabitha smiled at her friend. “I know.” She sighed, and started gathering up her things. “I think it's time to go.”
Tabitha was in the middle of stuffing her backpack – hurriedly – when Brittany stopped her and took the backpack away to set it in a chair so she could give her friend a long hug, then a kiss on the cheek. She stepped back, held Tabitha at arm’s length, and said, “You’re just smitten with me ‘cause I’m HOT. The next pretty girl comes along, you’ll forget all about me and I’ll be doing homework alone up here ever after.”
Tabitha replied, high-pitched and tight-voiced, “Probably!” She giggled, even as she wiped a single tear out of the corner of an eye. She put on her coat and grabbed her backpack, gave Grandma Wendell a brief hug and then sprinted to the kitchen door, where she stopped short with her hand on the doorknob. “Oh SHIT!”
Tabitha’s car lay half-buried in the yard, a wind-blown drift piled up high against the driver’s door and hood.
Tabitha turned her head back to the kitchen with wide eyes. “It's a frigg… erated BLIZZARD out there!”
Grandma Wendell and Brittany came over to look out adjacent windows.
Brittany thought it was funny. “Oooops!”
“Oh dear. THIS wasn’t in the forecast at all…” Grandma Wendell turned to Tabitha. “I think you’d better spend the night, Tabitha. The couch, or should I make up another bedroom upstairs?”
Tabitha giggled. “The couch will be fine. Almost like old times!”
Grandma Wendell reconsidered. “Yes, I guess it better be the couch, down here where I can keep an eye on you…”
Brittany squinted over at her red-headed friend. “You PLANNED this, didn’t you?!? Well, just because you got lucky, don’t think you’re getting LUCKY!” She held out her arm primly and then she and Tabitha walked off arm-in-arm to the linen closet in the front of the house.
Grandma Wendell yelled after them: “Tabitha, don’t forget to call your folks, they’ll worry!”
The three of them had a very nice pee-jay party in the living room watching television. By mutual accord they treated it like a Saturday, instead of a school night. Hattie wasn’t even sure they’d have school tomorrow. Tabitha was already tucked in sideways on the couch, under a thick layer of wool blankets. Brittany sat on the floor in front of her, leaning up on the couch. Hattie was in a rocker pulled up by Tabitha’s head. She was sitting up with them, nursing a small glass of sherry and seeing late-night television for the first time in six or eight years. She was the one who had invited Tabitha to stay over, after all.
Sometime after ten the power went out.
Grandma Wendell was ready for that. She already had candles and matches handy. There were three glass-and-tin candle-lanterns by her chair. “Here you go, girls. That’s our signal to hit the hay! Brittany, can I have a hand up the stairs?”
A questioning look flickered across Brittany’s face and was gone. “Sure, Grandma. Give me a couple of minutes?” Brittany went to brush her teeth.
Grandma Wendell loitered by the couch for a minute. “Tabitha, do I need to protect her virtue? Make up a couple of rules?” Her voice was stern but shaky – she was quaking with laughter at the strangeness of it. But inside, she also felt genuinely bad for this nice and nearly heartbroken young girl. She didn’t want the night to get… complicated.
Tabitha thought it was embarrassment that caused the woman's voice to get all tremulous. “No, don't worry. She’s a GOOD friend and I won’t screw that up.”
“Do not ask for more before saying thankyou for what you have received. Old proverb.” Grandma Wendell went over to the darkened TV, unplugged it, and then turned off the switch at the now-dark lamp. “It’ll be nice to have you around for breakfast. I miss cooking for your appetite!” She gave the girl a pat on the shoulder through the blanket, and turned.
Brittany came back into the room, kissed Tabitha primly on the top of the head, and then helped her grandmother up the stairs to bed.
Sometime in the night Tabitha was woken up by her own smile… her mouth stretched so wide and big it hurt her cheeks. She must have been dreaming, of course. Then Brittany’s breath was close in her ear.
Brittany whispered again: “Tabitha, wake UP.”
Tabitha opened her eyes and saw a flannel nightshirt hovering in the dark above her. She came more awake and realized that Brittany was standing by the arm of the couch, bent low over her. Tabitha sat up. The house loomed dark around them. She whispered, “Am I getting lucky?”
In a low voice, Brittany replied, “I want to dance. Help me with the chairs.”
“Huh?” But Tabitha got up and helped Brittany carry the couch back from the television.
“On THREE. One, two, THREE.”
The heavy couch was hard work. It thumped and scraped a couple of times on the way across the polished hardwood floor.
“Here’s good. Let’s scoot these chairs back…”
Now they had a ten-by-ten space in front of the fireplace (which was now the TeeVee place, the chimney having been stuffed with insulation and capped years ago). Brittany went over to the old Hi-Fi record player in the corner and reached underneath for the cord. “Power’s on.” She clicked on a small lamp and searched a rack of records until she found what she was looking for.
Tabitha came up behind her to follow Brittany’s finger across the spines of the record sleeves. “Should I put on some clothes?” Having been un-prepared, her peejays for this sleep-over consisted of yesterday's bra and underwear.
“Dancing will keep us warm.” Brittany pulled a record out of its sleeve and put it on the turntable. She set both their candle-lanterns, still burning, on the high mantle, where they cast a warm orange glow through the immediate area. Brittany switched off the little lamp, and the recesses of the room faded to brown as she carefully dropped the needle of the Hi-Fi onto the spinning record. “Grandma has some really great old records.”
The music started, quiet and low and tinny. A brass big-band opening spilled onto their candle-lit dance floor. Brittany grabbed Tabitha’s hand and pulled her to the center of the room.
Tabitha tried to follow her friend’s lead to the unfamiliar music, and then suddenly the corner of her mouth went up as she recognized “Baby It's Cold Outside.” That old song by Frank Leosser…. It's a crooning duet, one about seduction – or maybe coercion – that people always sing around Christmas, for some reason. Frank Leosser. No shit. Under her breath, she muttered, “You have GOT to be KIDDING me.” But she was all smiles now.
Brittany remained silent, aloof, businesslike, apparently more interested in the music and their choreography than anything else.
They held each other and spun apart and together and twirled through the night and the candlelight and the storm.
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Copyright 2022 James K. Mossman III, Publisher / www.cerealnovel.com
Excerpted from BEFORE, a Novel by J. Kilburn
This excerpt is from a copyrighted work. This excerpt may not be copied or reproduced in any way. Thankyou for respecting the hard work of this and every author.
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THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION
Names, characters, events, and locations are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED
in this work are entirely those of the fictional characters portrayed within, and do not represent the views of the author, publisher, distributor, or seller.