Gordon Miracle in East Texas

A Very Tall Tale Inspired by an Absolutely True Story
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-4245-5883-4
Verlag: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future.   Based on the movie Miracle in East Texas, this is the story of two aging, fast-talking hucksters: Doc Boyd and Dad Everett. These hard-luck con men make their living swindling widows during the Great Depression by selling them shares in sham oil wells. The truth is that they're selling hope and more romance than the widows they swindle have ever known. Once they've sold about a thousand percent of these fraudulent shares, they declare the well a dry hole and head for greener pastures.   Then, miraculously, every lie they tell comes true. They hit not just an oil well but the richest strike in North America. They should cap the well, declare it a dry hole, and make their getaway. But then they would have to walk away from being honest oilmen for the first time in their larcenous lives. What follows is funny and poignant, romantic and inspiring. This tall tale inspired by an absolutely true story comes from a time when bums became billionaires and sinners became saints.  

Miracle in East Texas is Dan Gordon's tenth published novel. Gordon is also the screenwriter of twenty produced feature films, including The Hurricane (starring Denzel Washington, who received an Academy Award nomination), Wyatt Earp (starring Kevin Costner), and the 2017 faith-based film Let There Be Light (starring Kevin Sorbo). Gordon was also the head writer of Michael Landon's Highway to Heaven. Together, Gordon and Jerry Falwell Jr. cofounded the Zaki Gordon Cinematic Arts Center at Liberty University.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gordon, Dan

Leseproben

Chapter 1

The only thing they knew about Tanner Irving Jr. was that he was an old Black man and one of the only living people who actually remembered what had happened in Cornville, Texas, in the year of our Lord 1930.

“Is he in a home or somethin’? I mean, like, does he drool? I mean, do we even know if the guy can talk?” asked young Matt Ingersol.

Not that he actually cared. For him, there were only two important things about this school assignment. One was that, even though he had just turned sixteen and had recently gotten his license, he was actually getting to drive not the family Subaru but what seemed to him like an oddly majestic Ford Econovan, which contained all their video and sound equipment. The second thing was the fact that, since he was an AP sophomore taking a senior class in state history, he had been teamed up with Denise Waters, a stunning almost eighteen-year-old senior with a smile that could light up ten rooms. Her mother had been a former Miss Puerto Rico in the Miss Universe contest, and her father was a movie star–handsome sports commentator who had played six seasons in the NBA. She was the veritable “Girl from Ipanema”—tall and tan and young and lovely—and every boy at Marcus Hill Christian Academy had a crush on her. And he, Matt Ingersol, was the guy who got to sit beside her, cruising in the Econovan.

There were only a few slight impediments standing in the way of Matt Ingersol’s courtship of Denise Waters.

First, Matt had recently experienced two physiological changes. He had grown from five foot ten to six foot three in less than half a year. His shoe size had gone from a nine and a half to a thirteen. He was not used to the size of his new feet and, therefore, continuously tripped over them. He also tripped over furniture, electrical wires, garden hoses, and any of the other seemingly ordinary accoutrements of everyday life that, for Matt, had become the equivalent of a Navy SEAL’s obstacle course.

The second thing that had occurred was that his voice had suddenly dropped from an almost castrato-like, high-pitched teenage squeak to a Johnny Cash basso profundo, and his vocal cords had not yet become accustomed to their new and lower- pitched tuning. Thus, he would occasionally and uncontrollably emit a sound not unlike that of a duck with irritable bowel syndrome.

Put the two physiological changes together and you had a sixteen-year-old Barnum and Bailey clown in floppy shoes three sizes too big and a honker Harpo Marx would have envied, except that it was located in his throat, not attached to a squeeze bulb on his hip.

Thus, the possibility of actually impressing Denise Waters, upon whom he, like every other boy at school, had a crush, was almost nonexistent.

Unfortunately for young Matt, when he asked, “Do we even know if this guy can talk?” he honked instead of pronouncing the last word of the sentence.

“Do we even know if he can ?” Denise asked.

“Taaalk!” Matt said, honking once again.

“Talk?” Denise asked. “Were you trying to pronounce the word ?”

“Speak,” Matt said, searching for any other set of phonetics that would not produce the dreaded sound.

“Ah,” said Denise. “Do we know if he can . Well, whether he can or he can’t, my guess is he doesn’t honk.”

When they arrived at Tanner Irving’s farm, Matt navigated the long and elegant driveway leading up to the equally elegant home that sat atop a small hill, surveying the lush farmland below. It fell to Matt to manfully stride up to the front door and make the introductions.

He rang the doorbell and waited for what he assumed would be a live-in caregiver to greet them and invite them in. Instead, the door opened, revealing Tanner Irving Jr. He had a corncob pipe clenched between his teeth. Mr. Irving opened the door just the tiniest bit, only seeing Matt and not Denise, who stood off to the side.

“Yes?” he asked, looking impatiently at Matt, as if the boy had come to sell him unwanted magazines or cheap chocolate for a high school fundraiser.

“Uh. Uh, Mr. Irving?” Matt said, honking on the last syllable.

“Boy, did you just honk at me?”

Matt’s face reddened. He cleared his throat. “Are you Mr. Irving?”

“That’s me,” said the cantankerous centenarian. “And who are you?”

“Um, I’m Matt Ingersol. I’m from Marcus Hill Christian Academy.”

“Not interested. Good day.” He closed the door unceremoniously in Matt’s face.

Matt looked down at his shoes as if they somehow could instruct him as to what to do next. Alas, they were just shoes and provided him no counsel. Thus abandoned by his footwear, he rang the doorbell again.

After a few moments the door opened, and Irving once again appeared, smoking his corncob pipe like an angry locomotive belching clouds into a pristine sky. Even at close to one hundred years old, he was still strikingly handsome.

“I’m Mr. Irving, and you’re from the Marcus Hill Christian Academy. We’ve established that. We’ve also established that whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying.”

“Uh, Mr. Irving,” said Matt, beginning to feel flop sweat beading up on his forehead and dripping down, staining his shirt. “I’m not selling anything.”

“Well, I already donate to the University of Texas and LSU. Those are the only scholarships that I give, and all my other charitable giving is already spoken for. So I wish you well. , Godspeed, and adios.”

He closed the door once again, for emphasis.

Matt looked at Denise.

Denise looked at Matt and, with an unmistakable expression that gave an unmistakable message, said, “Ring the doorbell again, you wuss.”

Matt rang the doorbell again.

Once again, the door opened, and Tanner Irving Jr. appeared, clouds of smoke swirling about his head like that of a sacrifice recently made to a pagan god. Mr. Irving had clearly had enough of this boy.

“Son, I’m trying to watch a ball game. Some people might admire your persistence, but I just find it annoying. Now, you ring this door one more time, and I’m coming out with a shotgun.”

So saying, Tanner Irving Jr. turned on his heel and, one might even say sprightly for a man of his advanced years, prepared to withdraw into the inner sanctum of the home he considered not only his castle but, during football season, the very sanctum sanctorum of his big-screen plasma temple to southern collegiate gridiron.

“Mr. Irving, please,” said Denise, stepping forward into Tanner Irving’s line of sight with the same honeyed charm with which she, to that day, wrapped her six-foot, six-inch former NBA star father around her finger. “My name is Denise Waters.”

She let a little more southern drip into her accent, with just the proper hint of girlish flirtation, like a subtle scent of perfume in a veritable ocean of respect. “We’re here to film the interview with you for the documentary we’re making for our Texas history class.”

Tanner Irving, if not mollified, at least slowed the tactical retreat in which he was previously engaged. With his eyebrows raised, his look was that of a man his age who was trying to mask the fact that he may have temporarily forgotten not only who you are but also what he was just about to do before you interrupted him.

Denise Waters recognized the look. It was the same expression she had seen many times on her own grandfather’s face, the one that both broke and touched her heart to know what the passing of time can do to the mental acuity of those you love the most. She decided that the only way to break through to the once razor-sharp mind of Tanner Irving Jr. was to deck it with southern charm.

“We’ve driven all the way from Dallas, sir,” she said, almost blushing with modesty.

Tanner Irving looked from her to the gawky teenage boy standing beside her.

“Your classmate’s a lot sharper than you are, son.” He looked at Denise, then shot a not-so-kindly word of advice back to Matt. “You should have let her do the talking from the get-go.”

With that, he dismissed young Matt entirely and turned to Denise, who reminded him so much of his own granddaughter.

“What documentary?” he asked, with as stern an attitude as he could muster, all the while feeling himself being wrapped, ever so subtly, around that little finger.

“It’s about Doc Boyd and Dad Everett,” said Denise, “and everything that happened out in Cornville back in the thirties.”

Those words brought a snap of electricity to the air, shattering the mist around the thoughts of a man who had outlived even his own memories. It brought Tanner Irving back in an instant, with a clarity that startled him, to his own youth, to days when no one on earth was as strong as his father or as fleet of foot as that man’s ten-year-old son running across the endless flatland for the sheer joy of running.

“Cornville? East Texas?” he said, turning back to Matt accusingly. “Why didn’t you say so? You’re late, aren’t ya? Weren’t you supposed to be out here this morning?”

Now it was Matt’s turn to be lost in the fog of the old man’s jumbled thoughts....