Joshua's Harvest Volume 1

What Others are Saying about Joshua’s Harvest - Volume I The Opus

I read this novel and couldn’t put it down. Joshua’s Harvest will definitely be a series on my network next season!

Joseph Collins, President and CEO

PUNCH Television Network

The Burstons and their colleagues are the only MovieBook writers I’ve ever heard of! Get Thee Behind Me I and II is a play, a film, and now a TV series. I can’t wait to see the Joshua’s Harvest TV series.

Dr. Mona Scott, Creative Director

The Black Repertory Theater of Berkeley

Joshua’s Harvest feels so real!

Heidi Mulligan, Author

I Am a Ghost: A Spectral Exchange

Wow … I couldn’t believe what transpired near the end of this book. I can’t wait for Volume 2!

Dr. Barbara Willis

Professor of Philosophy

This is a vampire novel that transmits an inspirational message!

Rev. Dr. William Bennett

As a senior citizen, this book took me back to a different era, a different time, and a different space. All it needed was Elvis Presley music playing in the background!

Arguster Daniels, Executive Producer

Joshua’s Harvest: The TV Series

Joshua’s Harvest: Volume 1

The Opus

By Betty Collier Burston

Story by Sid Burston and Maxie D. Collier

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 FalkonQwest/PorchReed Publishing

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Joshua’s Harvest

Chapter 1: Begin the Beginning

June, 1959

Troy, Alabama

The boogie-woogie blues of a Saturday night flowed outwards and into the veins of the pulpwoods workers and the Monday-to-Friday maids who were the patrons of the T-Bird, a backwoods juke joint that had captured the fancy of Troy, Alabama’s young and fast crowd. Tethered to low-paying jobs that suffused their minds and spirits in shame, the night life that could be had called upon its patrons to don bought-on-credit zoot suits and twice-handed down silk and satin dresses that sparkled in radiance against the silky brown, yellow, and black skin of its wearers.

Jed McCleod, tall, muscular, midnight dark with a smile that shone like a noonday’s sun in those rare moments when he chose to use it, sat perched upon a stool at the end of a plank/on/barrels that paraded as a bar. Arthur, his physically and temperamentally different cohort, chattered as usual about his favorite topic-women. Jed, a non-drinker and a non-pursuer of those of the opposite sex, faded Arthur’s remarks into the background with the other voices that mingled with the syncopated sounds of the music.

You-u-u…know I love you, Baby. Though I’m..walking…out the door-r-r. Oh-h-h you know I need-d-d you, Sugar, but-t-t I don’t love you anymore, sang Willy Lee Peacock as he used the strings of his guitar to strum the emotions of the crowd. And Willy was, indeed, accomplishing his goal. Lit by a bare, low wattage electric bulb, the sheen of the sweat-filled brows of men seeking near entry to their partners love portals despite the double barriers of fabric, the room spoke of lust and love and unspent emotion. But Jed McCleod was unmoved by the music and barely moved by the breasts of the peach-colored woman who shoved her softness against the hardness of his upper arms.

Ain’t seen you in a long time, Serena whispered, the moist heat of her breath seeking to enter the pores of Jed’s cheeks. Only been a week, Jed responded in a tone that clearly transmitted the unimportance of Serena’s tantalizing love within the overall scheme of his life.

As-s-s I said, Serena purred, it’s been…a…long, long time. Not one to settle for less than any man’s full attention, Serena’s large, full buttocks rolling under the tightness of her red satin dress and her red, strappy heels, crossed in front of Jed and strolled to the other side of the room.

At least ten men, captivated by the smallness of her waist and the flowing softness of her store bought hair, rushed to ask her for a dance.

They going after your woman, Arthur, always the provocateur, remarked.

Good, I’m not a greedy man, Jed answered.

Besides, she’s not my woman.

That’s not what she tells all of the other women who like themselves some Jed.

Oh? So what does she tell the men? Jed, still far away from the T-Bird and its going-ons, asked.

Arthur laughed. Last time I tried she told me the same thing.

Willy Lee, finished with his last song, decided to slow things down a bit. In doing so, his elongated whole notes in the key of ‘C’ brought even more couples to the dance floor.

Jed, not usually a smoker, pulled out a tin of Prince Albert’s tobacco and quickly rolled himself a cigarette.

Who’s he? he asked motioning towards a tall, thin stranger who pulled Serena into his arms.

Why you wanna know if she ain’t your woman? Ignoring the remark, Jed continued smoking and observing. Made nervous by his silence, Arthur sought to answer the question.

Don’t know. Never seen that city slicker before. In his curiosity, Arthur stood straighter and twisted towards the dance floor.

Thought you know everything that happen in Troy and everybody who come through the county, Jed replied.

I do. At least most of the time I do. Let’s see who he’s with. Maybe he got kinsfolk down in these parts. Arthur’s voice, normally baritone was made tenor by his curiosity.

He’s not with anybody. I’ve been watching him all evening and he hasn’t spoken to anybody and nobody’s spoken to him, Jed answered.

Well, he’s certainly speaking to somebody and that somebody’s speaking right back to him. Arthur peered towards Jed as he spoke hoping to catch a flitting view of jealousy. Arthur had known Jed since first grade as a boy and as a man, Jed had always kept himself way above ordinary human emotions. Even now as he watched Jed watching Serena smiling coquettishly at the stranger, Jed’s face revealed only curiosity.

Before Jed could complete his observations, Ginger, short, round and curvy, sauntered over. One of Serena’s many competitors for Jed’s affections, she was now joyous that someone appeared to finally be competing with Jed for Serena’s affections.

Hey Jed, Arthur. Did you and Serena break-up? she asked in a voice that was annoyingly gruff and manlike.

How you doing tonight, Ginger? Arthur asked You look gorgeous in that tight yellow dress.

Why thank you, Arthur. I made it myself. Ginger answered preening for Arthur.

But, then, you look good in everything you wear. You could put on a cloaker sack and still look pretty, Arthur continued. Watering Ginger’s oscillating self-esteem had become a habit with Arthur whenever Ginger came around. Although he knew that Ginger, like all women ages 3-100 in the county favored Jed, his own closeness to Jed made him their likely choice when it became clear that Jed was going to pay them no never-mind.

Still ignoring Ginger and having exhausted his interest in whom Serena did or did not dance with, Jed returned his mind to the theme that had consumed his thoughts for most of his adult life – how to get out of Troy, Alabama and create a more inspired existence for himself elsewhere.

Oh, Troy, Alabama had been good to him and his family. With roots that extended into the area for more than a century, a farm of more than 500 fertile acres that provided well for his extended family, and preacher father and teacher mother, Jed McCleod lived upon a pedestal within the cloistered confines of his rural community. But Jed’s dreams fell beyond the boundaries of Troy, Alabama and the life experiences that its sparsely populated community could offer him. He had had a taste of that world as an undergraduate at Morehouse College in Atlanta and as a medical student at Howard University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., but feelings of honor and duty had driven him to establish a much-needed medical practice in the area of his birth. But, he was dying a rapid, agonizing death that could not be averted by the sweetness of Serena’s thighs nor the glimmer of love that shone in her eyes. Indeed, Serena’s adoration, the intensity of her attachment, her cloying desire to assume ownership of him, reinvigorated the urgency of his need to be gone from the culture and substance of his homestead.

But, the web that held him captive had tightened. His now aging parents needed him, their only son, their only child to care for them as their bodies decayed into aches and pains. Even more compelling, his father’s recent diagnosis of dementia had sentenced him to a lifetime as a resident of Troy, Alabama.

Jed-d-d-d? Are you sleeping or somethin’? Arthur had stared at Jed for more than ten minutes. The blankness of his eyes, the despair that Jed’s unguarded moment had made visible, had shaken the laughter and light-heartedness out of Arthur’s spirit.

Go dance wid some of these sweet mamas in this place. This is a party not a funeral. As if to demonstrate the gaiety that ought, by right, to have belonged to both he and Jed, Arthur walked across the floor, extended his hand to Ginger, and pulled her onto the dance floor. Shrugging and deciding to follow suit, Jed extended his hand to Judy, a slim, trim chocolate girl who was a distant cousin by marriage. The best female dancer in the area, Judy was pleased to take to the dance floor with Jed, the second best dancer in a seven county radius. Only his friend Arthur could deliver a better performance and he did so on this night.

Arthur danced and danced and danced. He danced with every woman whose loneliness had brought her into the T-Bird on that humid, June, Saturday night. Arthur, like his longtime friend, Jed, was not a drinker. And so he drowned his worry about his dear friend Jed in feet that tapped and cakewalked, and arms and legs that flew his many partners around the room dizzying each with the adrenaline of action. When things slowed down a bit, he pulled woman after woman into his arms forcefully pushing his convexity into their concavity.

From the moment that Jed had joined him on the dance floor, Arthur had been transported back to their past life, their younger life of roaming the hallways of their high schools, playing football and basketball against rivaling high schools, kissing their classmates on hayrides, and dancing their first dances under the watchful eyes of Mr. Hopkins, their math teacher, and Mrs. McIver, their school counselor. Those were, indeed, the good ole days when no life decisions had to be made and food grew in the dark, manured lawns of their father’s fields and was seasoned and placed on the tables by the loving hands of their mothers and grandmothers. Arthur longed for those days. He thirsted for the Monday night, family nights around a twenty-one inch television set with his family laughing in collective chuckles at the antics of Lucy Ricardo and her sidekick, Ethel.

Arthur’s dancing legs kicked up memories of Friday fish fries and Saturday nights beneath polished moons at open-air drive-ins.

Why do things have to change? Arthur thought as he danced himself into breathlessness.

Why do things have to change? Arthur pondered as he allowed his resentments of his pulpwood worker status to rise to the surface marring and scarring the texture of his continued friendship with Jed, Doctor, pulpwood worker, Doctor, pulpwood worker, was the rhythm his legs and feet tapped as the melody of his thought superimposed itself upon the rata-tat-tat beats of the drum.

Arthur, Arthur, take it easy, man. The T-Bird’s gonna still be here tomorrow. Jed whispered as he pushed and pulled Arthur from the floor.

Arthur, grateful for the intrusion, thankful for the unasked-for signal that stated, I care, smiled.

I kinda got carried away, he mumbled.

That’s okay. We both probably needed the exercise. Ma bakes a pie or cake every single day and I don’t have sense enough to say no. Hey, it’s pretty late. We had both better get home. I’ll give you a ride, Jed offered.

Naw man. I ain’t that far. I’ll walk. With all of these pretty mamas out here tonight, I just might be able to finish off the night with the type of explosion I need right about now. Jed reached out his arm and shook Arthur’s hand.

As the crowd began pouring out of the door to cars, bikes, and even wagons, Jed, always curious about the lives of musicians, entered into conversation with various members of the band. In his enthusiasm to discuss current, future, and past trends with musicians who, unlike himself, had found the courage to follow their hearts’ calling, Jed forgot to extend to Serena and her friends the courtesy of a ride to their respective abodes.

Serena, already angry that Jed had spent the evening dancing with others but not with her, stood in the doorway of the nearly-empty T-Bird observing Jed engage in highly animated conversation with his would-be peers. She resented that their gifts could bring forth a liveliness to Jed’s face that her unique talents could not. She resented that her beauty, her sensuality, her sultriness, her womanly skills had not the power to sustain Jed’s interest beyond a night.

An animosity so intense and so complete that it bubbled up from her intestines yielding a bile that soured the sweetness of her breath transformed her face as she turned and walked out of the door leaving behind the scent of her departure. Ginger and Judy, her friends who both loved and hated her, for that brief moment, permitted her pain and sense of rejection to join their own and sought to shelter her as part of the sisterhood of the rejected.

Forget Jed McCleod. We’ll walk home, Ginger, her love for Jed hidden and subdued for the moment, said.

Let’s go, Serena. The night air will do us good, Judy added.

They turned, walked into the fullness of the honeysuckled evening, and began the trek down the dusty, red-dirt road. Shaded in the day by pecan trees and oak trees and pine trees and other trees from which hung the grayness of moss, the very vegetation that lent oxygenated beauty in the day, created shadows and shapes of the unusual at night. Because they had waited, unnoticed by Jed for so very long, not only those who traveled by motorcars and/or beasts had gone, but those others whose only mode of transportation was tired feet and strong legs were now too distant along the road to be noticed.

And so the women, young but not too young, so luscious and so beautiful, and differing only in the knowledge of their own power, walked in silence along the long, dark road, each clothed in the patterns of their own thoughts. Even when the urge to speak entered one of them, it was denied because somehow the silence of night willed them to not shatter its essence with useless chatter. Legs aching from the overly high heels, hearts aching from their mutual aloneness, lives aching from the routines of repetitive work that drifted in and out of repetitive days, the three women trekked down the barren road. Suddenly, they stopped.

Who is that? Serena whispered.

Could be a h’aint, Ginger replied as her arms rippled into goosebumps at the mention of the ghosts and spirits that supposedly made their way along the backroads of Alabama during the witching hour.

You think it’s a Klansman? Judy said in a voice that was a bit too loud for the time and the occasion. The women inhaled. While the officials of the city denied the presence of an order of men who were committed to the preservation of a state of being that they felt was Godmade, the three women knew that the Klansmen, the nightriders, still patrolled the area and had been known to enter their seeds into the wombs of many unwilling women who dared to travel these lonely roads. Suddenly, laughter disavowed them of the notion that nightriders were about to quench the desire that the music and the men had stirred.

No, my dears, I…am not a Klansman come to claim your bodies. Serena, recognizing the voice of the stranger who had been her chosen entertainer for the evening, smiled.

Al? Is that you? she asked already shifting back into siren mode.

It is I, the voice replied.

Boy, you almost scared us to death, Ginger, who had been introduced to Al by Serena, responded.

Who in the world…is Al? Judy whispered.

That stranger, the really harmless guy that Serena danced with all night, Ginger whispered back. Al laughed.

Why thank you for the compliment, he answered as he walked towards the three women.

It’s a little late for the three most beautiful women in southern Alabama to be lingering on these backroads, he said in a velvety soft, bass, woman-enticing voice.

Could be dangerous for a tall, good-looking stranger to run into three local women who know their town, Ginger said in a flirty voice.

Touché, the stranger, Al, responded taking a brief bow that added to his mystery.

You never did tell me how and why you came to our little community, Serena asked as she moved forward leaving behind her friends.

No, I guess I didn’t, Al answered.

Not to be outdone by Serena with every single male that entered their lives, Ginger, quickly stepped forward. The reddish tones of her hair sparkled in the moonlight lending even more vibrancy to the lightness of her eyes.

So,..Al, why is you here? Ginger asked.

To have this meeting with the three of you, Al answered, the levity of his past words now transformed into seriousness.

What? Judy also within arm’s length of Al, asked.

You don’t know us, Judy continued. Or, at least you didn’t until tonight.

Oh, but I do know each of you, Al said, a touch of lightness re-entering his voice.

I’ve been searching for the three of you for more than five years. Or, I should say, I’ve been searching for three women like the three of you for some years now, he answered.

And what are we ‘like’? Judy, the most reflective of the three, asked.

You’re each beautiful, intelligent, and strong, Al answered.

We look alright, but since the three of us barely finished high school, I don’t know how we can claim to be too smart, Ginger answered in an embarrassed voice.

Intelligence isn’t based on education, Al answered.

That’s true, Serena agreed, but, let’s get back to why you’ve been looking for us. Tell us why? Suddenly, another man magically appeared next to Al, a slightly older man.

My name is Joshua and Al has been in search of the three of you on my behalf, Joshua, a very tall man of 45 years of age, continued. Draped in the clothing of a late 19th century gentleman and speaking in an accent so soft as to deny its presence, Joshua walked up to each lady, bowed, and kissed her hand.

I…have…a business proposition for each of you, Joshua said without hesitancy.

Business? Ginger said, I don’t know what you’re thinking but we’re not that type of girls.

No, I would never dishonor the three of you by assuming that you’re anything other than normal young ladies, Joshua quietly added.

Then, what kind of business proposal do you have for us? Serena, both curious and offended, offered.

I…would like…for each one of you to bear a child for me. Joshua stood tall and regal as he made his request.

What? Judy yelled.

Please, just listen, Al interjected.

And why would we want to have a child by you? Ginger asked in voice filled with outrage.

Because I will gift each of you with $1 million, beautiful homes, and a loving husband if you will each bear my child and rear my children until the age of twenty-one years. At that time, I will return and gather my heirs to me. As Joshua spoke, he staggered, falling onto the road. Al quickly fell to his knees and began ministering to his friend and mentor.

Joshua, your injuries have worsened. Joshua quickly walked him away as