The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.
The Boaz Stenographer, written in 2018, is my fourth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
Walt Shepherd, a 35 year veteran of the White House’s stenographic team, is fired by President Andrew Kane for refusing to lie.
Walt returns to his hometown of Boaz, Alabama and renews his relationship with Regina Gillan, his high school sweetheart, who he had ditched right before graduation to marry the daughter of a prominent local businessman. Regina has recently moved back to Boaz after forty years in Chicago working at the Tribune. She is now editor of the Sand Mountain Reporter, a local newspaper.
Walt and Regina’s relationship transforms into a once in life love at the same time they are being immersed in a growing local and national divide between Democrats and traditional Republicans, and extremist Republicans (known as Kanites) who are becoming more dogmatic about the revolution that began during President Kanes campaign.
Walt accepts two part-time jobs. One as a stenography instructor at Snead State Community College in Boaz, and one as an itinerant stenographer with Rains & Associates out of Birmingham.
Walt later learns the owner of Rains & Associates is also one of five men who created the Constitution Foundation and is involved in a sinister plot to destroy President Kane, but is using an unorthodox method to achieve its objective. The Foundation is doing everything it can to prevent President Kane from being reelected in 2020, and is scheming to initiate a civil war that will hopefully restore allegiance to the U.S. Constitution.
While Walt is writing a book, The Coming Civil War, he is, unwittingly, gathering key information for the Constitution Foundation.
Will Walt discover a connection between the Foundation and the deaths of three U.S. Congressmen in time to save his relationship with Regina, prevent President Kane from being reelected as the defacto head of a Christian theocracy, and the eruption of a civil war that could destroy the Nation ?
Chapter 3
I spent the next three days unpacking. The moving company had placed all my furniture neatly around the outer walls of the great room, study, and two bedrooms, and stacked the dozens and dozens of boxes inside the master bedroom. All the boxes, except my White House transcripts. I moved them to a safe and secure, climate-controlled, unit at Paradise Self Storage in Albertville. I toiled with this decision, but for now decided it more prudent to spend the extra money to protect the fruits of my 35 years working with five Presidents until I could have the documents scanned.
I had mixed feelings about moving back into my childhood home, what my paternal great-grandfather had dubbed, Shepherd’s Cove. Mom and Dad had deeded the home-place to DeeDee, my sister, and me in 2007. Dad died in 2012 and Mom had moved into Brookdale Assisted Living in Albertville three years ago. She was not doing well. DeeDee had listed Mom and Dad’s place with a realtor in 2015. There had been a little activity during the first few months after it was listed, but none for nearly the past two years. Since I was moving back home anyway and needed a place to live, I decided to buy the 118-year-old thrice-remodeled cabin that Stephen Parker Shepherd had built in 1899, motivated greatly by my DeeDee’s offer to buy her out at a great price.
This morning, Thursday, would be a change of my recently created routine. I had to meet with Dean Naylor at Snead State to finalize my adjunct professor duties in the business department. That meeting wasn’t until 3:30 p.m., which gave me plenty of time to waste here sitting in a padded lounging chair on the back porch, one that likely was the same one I sat in as mother and I talked when I was 15. I had been here since daylight watching three ducks swim and frolic in the pond along the edge closest to the old barn which was built shortly after the house.
At 6:50 a.m., I heard a car horn. I really didn’t want any visitors, so I stayed put, lowering the back of my chair into a sleeping position. If it’s important, the person will find me. I shut my eyes as though I was asleep.
“Walt, you can hide from your troubles all day.” Vann Elkins shouted from the porch steps. I kept my eyes closed until he walked over and shook me with both hands until I nearly fell out of my chair.
“I wasn’t hiding from my troubles. I was hiding from you. Well, I guess that’s about the same thing.”
“Good to see you Walt. I’ve been seeing activity around here for nearly a week. I just figured DeeDee had sold the place and my new neighbors were moving in.” Vann said unfolding another lounge chair.
I raised the back of my chair. “I hear you’ve retired?”
“Thought it was time to fish, hunt, garden, and gossip anytime I wanted without distraction from 250 high schoolers.” Vann said fiddling with the settings on his chair.
“I’m glad you stopped by but I’m hungry. Let’s go grab a bite and we can catch up. That good for you?” I said finding it difficult to get up out of my low-slung chair.
“Sounds great, I was headed to Grumpy’s Diner when I decided to pull in.”
I rode with Vann in his 90’s model Ford pickup and found one table available. Three men I didn’t know were just abandoning the table in the far left-hand corner. I followed Vann and stopped every time he did to greet folks at four other tables. I felt like a member of the Secret Service. He didn’t introduce me to anyone and no one even looked my way. Maybe I’m invisible. That might not be a bad thing.
After the waitress brought us coffee and took our orders, I asked Vann why he had really retired. I knew he wasn’t much of an outdoorsman, even though his wife insisted he help her in the garden. The truth is, he was a bookworm.
“I’ve been teaching American History at Boaz High School since 1978, two years after I graduated from the University. Time for a change. I might finally get to writing that book I’ve been dreaming about for a quarter of a century.” Vann said.
‘University,’ in these parts always referred to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. And, no other college in the world. Cross-state rivalry Auburn could never earn such a title. “How will you survive without the interaction with your students? I’ve always heard and believed that was the key to your longevity.”
“Oh, horse radishes, let’s talk about you for a while. I see where you really got your ass in a crack with old man Kane. I have one question. Did you quit or were you fired?”
“Both. I quit and got fired.”
“That makes sense.” Vann said hesitating to go on while the waitress delivered our food. “Clarify please.”
I realized for the first time since high school why Vann Elkins and I were best friends. We had always been totally transparent with each other. There was nothing, and I mean nothing, that we couldn’t ask or divulge to the other. “Before my meeting with the President I had already decided how I would respond. If he asked me to lie, then I was out of there. That’s what happened. The President let my boss, Zack Quitman, have the honors of telling me to change the transcript or hit the road.”
“You’re my hero man. The rest of the country’s also. Well, except for ninety-nine percent of the Wacko’s supporters.” Vann said.
“You’re right. Just like Kane said, ‘I could be in the street in downtown Manhattan and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose a one of my supporters.’ The man is a Presidential disgrace. But, his day is coming. I feel it in my bones.” I said noticing my voice rising as I spoke. “Not so loud my friend. Half of Kane’s’ supporters live here in Boaz. Since you’ve never been so good at math, that means most every person you will encounter in Boaz, no matter where you are, Walmart, church, here in the diner, are die-hard Kane fans.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. Surely, it’s not more than 50%.
Wouldn’t that be what it should be given the general election results?” I said.
“Kane math doesn’t work that way. For some unknown reason,
Boaz voted nearly 100% for Kane. But, that might change.”
“Vann, who’s your new friend?” The waitress, Gloria, said pressing a large and protruding hip into Vann’s shoulder.
“Some nut job liberal I found on Highway 431 broke down heading to New York City. No, sorry. Gloria Brown, this is my best friend since high school, Walt Shepherd.”
“Nice to meet you Walt, can I call you Walt?” Gloria said walking over and filling my coffee cup.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way. Nice to meet you Gloria.”
“Hot stuff, coffee please.” A sixtyish looking man sitting with three younger men halfway across the dining room shouted at Gloria.
And, she was gone.
“What did you mean before Gloria came up? You said something might change.” I said.
“Regina Gillan, your old flame, has taken over as Chief Editor at the Sand Mountain Reporter. You do know she has spent the past hundred years or so with one of the most liberal newspapers in America, the Chicago Tribune?”
“Funny you mention her. Last Friday I ran into her at Walmart. She mentioned moving back and her new job.” I said with my mouth stuffed with the best pancakes I’d eaten since my mother’s when I was a kid.
“I predict things around here are going to get interesting.
Especially since Belinda, you know, Regina’s twin sister, is married to Frankie Olinger.”
“Oh shit. When did Belinda lose her mind? You are talking about the same Frankie Olinger we went to school with?”
“Yep, and we thought he was crazy 45 years ago. He is bat-shit crazy now. He’d have to be to be head honcho with the local Kanites. I forget what they call themselves. Oh yea, Kane Tribe.” Vann said.
“I thought I was moving away from a screwed-up city. Looks like this town may be just as bad, maybe worse. I got to go.” I said cramming a whole slice of bacon in my mouth.
Gloria brought us two coffees to-go as we were walking to the checkout counter beside the front door. As we were leaving, I heard behind me, “Vann, remember Sand Mountain Tire needs your business. I thought you were coming by after our little chat at Walmart a couple of weeks ago.” It was the older man who had yelled at Gloria for coffee from across the restaurant.
“I’ve been busy.” Vann responded. “Who’s your friend?”
“Frankie, don’t you remember Walt Shepherd? We all went to school together.” Vann said.
“Oh hell no. Walt, good to see you. It’s a shame you didn’t have the balls to support our President. I read all about it.”
I wanted to kick him in the balls, but I just stood there and looked at him. Frankie was bigger than ever, a couple of inches taller than my six feet and probably weighed three hundred pounds. Even with half of it being fat, I didn’t want to wrestle a bear. I also didn’t want to smell like oil and gas for my meeting with Dean Naylor. “Nice to see you Frankie. I don’t think I’ve seen you since you quit school at the end of the eleventh grade.”
Vann gently pushed in between Frankie and me and said, “hurry up you two, there’s people waiting. Let’s go.”
Vann dropped me off at my mailbox next to the road. As he started to drive off, he stopped, leaned out his window, and said, “you better stay away from the foxy Regina. You know she’ll come with a
Frankie bonus.”
I waved him off, checked my mailbox, and walked the long and winding driveway home.
The Pencil Driven Life 