Novel Treatments / Lincoln's birth (Analysis)
“Test, one two…everybody out there can hear me okay? Great. Well, I’d like to thank all of you for your prompt attendance this afternoon. Today is a momentous occasion for St. Louis Prep Academy, for Lake City, and for this young man seated to my right. Since joining us just a short two years ago, Lincoln Baker has been a model student and athlete. It’s going to be tough next season without him but, he’s moving on to bigger and better things…”
Lincoln tried hard not to gawk at his principal who hadn’t spoken more than two words to him in two years. Moses’ warnings rang in Lincoln’s head, “Watch out for leeches, son. You can’t walk through the woods without catching a few.”
“…Coach Holmes, assistant coach for our mighty Crusaders, is here on behalf of the athletic department…”
Panic descended over Lincoln the closer it got to his turn to speak. All of the saliva in his mouth had dried up, and he kept rubbing his dripping palms on the new Docker slacks Lois bought him for the occasion. His clip on tie was choking him, and he could feel sweat building up in his armpits.
“Lincoln? Son?”
Lincoln looked over at Principal Jefferson’s clown-like face. He needed to say something, but he needed water more. Then, he remembered the speech he and Moses wrote together the night before. He hurriedly pulled the well folded piece of notebook paper out of his right pants pocket.
“Good—,” the microphone squawked loud feedback, and Lincoln pushed back from the table involuntarily. “Good afternoon everybody,” he said, after a moment.
“I’m kinda nervous, but here goes. This season was one of the best fuh me. Winnin states an everything. Plus, the education an support I’ve received from St. Louis has been great. I ‘preciate everything everybody has done fuh me. An it’s time fuh me to give back. I’ve decided to test my character by skipping college an going straight to the NBA. I wanna play against the best an learn from the best an give back to my fam’ly. That’s all…”
Thirty minutes later, Lincoln was behind the wheel of Moses’ Cadillac, rushing to get over to Simmons Park to pick up Brandon. Long gone were the cold sweats, dry mouth, and other symptoms of anxiety. He felt great. In a few months he’d be in the league and everything would change.
Moses would quit his job and move in with Lincoln wherever he got drafted. He’d have more money than he would know what to do with. No more drug dealing, robbing, banging, and struggling just to get by. He’d have to get used to being an overnight celebrity, but he thought it was something he could handle, especially after all of the shit he’d been through. Anything was possible on a day like today.
There were four or five entrances into the Village from Highway 14. In the interest of time, Lincoln took the shortest route, turning right after the new Shoney’s that hadn’t yet opened. It was a straight shot to Simmons Park from there. He hoped his adoptive brother Brandon would be on the lookout for him, so he wouldn’t have to get out of the car.
The kids always swarmed him whenever he came by. Not to mention Old Mr. Diaz, who acted as if Lincoln owed him something, just because he learned his game on the Simmons Park courts. Lincoln didn’t like Brandon being around Diaz; there was just something wrong about the man.
There was a stop sign on the corner of Simmons Way and General Bradley and a police cruiser was stopped there before him. The cop was just sitting there. Lincoln considered honking at him, but thought better of it. He didn’t need trouble with the “po-po” today. There was a small forest to his right Moses had once told him was planted to separate the neighborhood from the highway. While he looked, he thought he saw movement in the woods. He stared as hard as he could and finally made out several figures making their way to the outer edge.
A tap on the driver’s side window broke up his focus. He looked up into the face of a white police officer with his baton out. He signaled for Lincoln to roll down his window and Lincoln quickly complied.
“How you, Officer?”
“License and registration.” Lincoln dug out his wallet and gave the officer his driver’s license, and, as he moved to get the registration out of the glove compartment, the officer yelled for him to stop moving and to get out of the car.
“Okay. Okay. You see those guys over there?” Lincoln said, trying to take the pressure of himself.
“I don’t want to see anything but you getting out of the car. Are you armed? Been drinking?”
“No way!” Lincoln replied defiantly. He needed to see what was going on with those guys behind him. He slightly opened the car door and then, the cop threw the door completely open and snatched Lincoln out of the car. Then he slammed Lincoln back against the car.
“What the fuck I do?”
“Shut the fuck up superstar.” The cop continued anxiously looking over Lincoln’s shoulder at the park. Lincoln knew he’d been spotted. And, he knew the type: Napoleon complex. Another white boy jealous a black man was going to make a come up. He’s trying to teach me a lesson, Lincoln thought. Sudden shouting came from the park as another police cruiser pulled up behind Moses’ Cadillac, boxing Lincoln in.
“What we got here, Smitty?”
Lincoln watched the other cop approaching when he clearly heard someone scream from the Park, “You…put the gun away!” Some very bad shit was happening right behind him and these cops were more concerned with fucking with him than stopping whatever was going down over there. Brandon was in danger.
The other cop slammed Lincoln back against the car. Lincoln tried diplomacy one last time. “I tried to tell yo’ pahtna here that somethins goin on ova at the Park!”
“You know what Boy? You’re exactly right!” Smitty pulled out his Beretta and pointed it in Lincoln’s face. “The question is Boy…what are you gonna do about it?”
“Smitty,” said the other cop, “Let’s throw him in the back of the cruiser. This shit is about to start.”
Smitty, momentarily distracted, looked over at his partner and Lincoln seized his opportunity.
As if in an out-of-body experience, he watched himself grab the barrel of the cop’s gun, twisting the cop’s arm downward, along with the weapon. The cop’s wrist snapped like a dry twig. The man howled with pain and released the gun. Lincoln raised the gun at the other cop. Then, a lone gunshot sounded off at the Park like the start of a one hundred meter dash.
He heared a scream, “Stop fighting! Can’t you see? You’re being set up! This is exactly what they want!” He recognized the voice. It sounded like his estranged best friend, Kristopher Richard.
The second cop reached for his gun in a blur of hand movement. Before he realized what he was going to do, Lincoln pulled the trigger, blowing off the left side of the cops’ head. A beat of silence and then several guns began firing as if in echo to Lincoln’s own. He ran across the street into the warzone.
For some reason, he thought it had started raining, but it was just the tears streaming from his eyes.
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The story is well done; the characters are thought out and believable, your storyline created great visuals…but…
WHERE’S THE HORROR??
Other than a super human show of strength when lincoln broke the cop’s arm, I have no idea where horror was…unless you’re talking about growing up in the urban streets, then okay, but what kind of horror story is it? I wouldn’t know…
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Revise please. Leeches live in the water. You could say, watch out for the snakes son, the woods are full of them. Please revise: “Lincoln looked over at Principal Jefferson’s clown-like face. Lincoln looked over at principal Jefferson’s face which he thought favored a clown with his round jowles and hooded eyes. Something like this because “clown” is too general. Listen, why the ghetto language? If he has been educated at a private school his vocab would sound more sophisicated. Please think of revising language. You might want to also consider that he is in a private school and he is a thug on the side. Is this really the way you want this story to go down. Then their is the white cop against the African American angle. It seems sterotypical. Look, you can still make something good out of this. Why not tell the story of a poor African American boy Who gets the chance to fufill his dream of becoming a big football star.. His parents have worked hard to put him in the academy. He wins a scholarship but then gets mixed up with thugs who promise that if he joins their group or gang he will be richer than he ever dreamed. Now the boy has a choice to make. Either he will become a thug or he will go on to school and be something his parents can be prous of. You see what i mean. I like your idea you just need to develop it okay. Please know that i am trying to be constructive. Keep me posted SANDI.
Well, when you’re opening a horror novel, at least from the ones I’ve read, there are many, many ways to do it. Here, you have a young man whose normal life has just come to a crashing end and whatever happens next is going to be a hell of a departure from what Lincoln had planned. So, this is effective. Unless you have a purpose I’m unaware of, it’s best to avoid the ebonic dialogue. It will be difficult to maintain over the course of a whole book and, though a few writers have been successful doing this, readers tend to tire of it quickly. Pretty effective use of limited description, the woods are visual as is the neighborhood and you’ve done this with an economy of words which is another good thing. But I don’t have as clear a picture of Lincoln. I know he’s black, sweaty, and plans to enter the NBA draft, but he’s also a criminal, a gang-banger, and--by the end of this section--a murderer. A question, left unanswered here, is who is Lincoln Baker? This, too, is good. I’ll invest more time in this to find out. I don’t know where your plot is going and whether or not the key character here is the real key character but you’ve done a good job of building both tension and interest in these five pages.
I love sports so I knew almost right after the first paragraoh that I was going to read it. I didn’t ave any idea it was going to take the turn it did you know with the cop thing! That happens! in real life! It could really toch nerves for some people good work!
I like the way that you get right into who Lincoln is with the principal’s speech in the opening lines. I was surprised when reading about Lincoln dwelling on his life in which he states, “He’d have more money than he would know what to do with. No more drug dealing, robbing, banging, and struggling just to get by. He’d have to get used to being an overnight celebrity, but he thought it was something he could handle, especially after all of the shit he’d been through” (2). I think this leaves some ambiguity with the reader and makes them what to know more about what exactly Lincoln has gone through. I think the ending of this piece is appropiate, for the character realizes what he has done and although he cannot go back to fix it, he wishes he can because due to this incident his success may be threatened.
I think the only thing to do for this is to proof-read, I think I saw some errors, although that may have been just for the effect of Lincoln’s character and his accent.
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