J.C. Ransom sipped a cup of hot coffee as he pulled into town. Although he appeared to be man quickly approaching marrying age, he retained a somewhat boyish, intelligent look about him. Ransom believed it was his “inner geek” that kept him looking so young and fresh.
The town itself was dotted with images of the rural South. Ransom turned off the mysterious Beethoven which ushered him to this place and put the rental in park, neatly folding up the map which he needed far too many times over the last hour. Only a few buildings lined the town's main street.
“Salt of the earth,” Ransom mused as he took in his surroundings.
The young reporter lamented being here. For that matter, he lamented the job itself… spending countless days tracking down bizarre stories to splash across headlines designed to capture bored patrons standing in the lines of supermarkets. It was the lowest common denominator of writing, and Ransom despised it.
He glanced over toward an overweight man getting up from his seat on an old park bench covered in peeling paint. The man looked exactly like he had imagined… Mayor Barton, a self-described ‘middle-ager’ with an unmistakable former football player look about him. Barton was at least well dressed, though noticeably out of fashion by New York’s standards.
Ransom shouldered a beautiful Nikon 35mm camera, his only source of entertainment throughout his five-year career at Unconventional Wisdom. The lens of the camera itself had become an extension of his soul, as steady as an eleventh finger pointing out toward scenes he would bring to life with a quick wit and an even quicker pen.
Bethlehem, Alabama. Only here could the benign become cancerous, the ordinary shift into the extraordinary; and only here would a few scribbles from an imaginative pen craft a righteous, holy whole.
A novel, presented in chapters.
A small town high school football team has gone largely unrecognized after forty years of consecutive wins and a young, ambitious reporter uncovers a stunning secret—behind the small town values and string of impressive athletic victories hides a bizarre pre-game ritual: each player must rub the bulging tumor of their school janitor for good luck. As the janitor's health begins to fade, the town unites around the local body politic to push for the world's first ever tumor transplant in a crazed attempt to save their winning streak. The transplant fails, creating even more fevered desperation to win at least one more game. The town’s proposed solution is both as sickening as it is outrageous: players will consume the tumor during a special called Eucharist served up by the town minister, thereby demonstrating just how far a group will go to stay on top in the ‘dog eat dog’ world of high school athletics.
This book is in no way meant to make light of the terrible disease of cancer, which took my grandfather and many others I have loved. It's a metaphor for a different kind of illness.
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