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 19
Saturday morning, I awoke to Sandi’s ear-licking. She never jumps up on my bed unless I oversleep. I grabbed my iPhone from the night stand. 7:30 a.m. I’m normally an early riser. It’s a hold-over habit from my 35 years at the White House. Then, I would be up reading by 4:30 a.m., usually a novel, then take a walk around 5:45. At 6:30, I was back at my town-house for breakfast and a shower. By 8:00 a.m. sharp, I was at my desk in the Eisenhower Building reviewing my latest pending transcript.
Sandi and I stayed in bed until 8:00. I was lucky she could still jump up on the bed. She was the fourth Golden Retriever I had had since Mom and Dad had bought me the original Sandy, a male, the day before I was to start junior high school. Their action was a bribe, pure and simple. I was refusing to go, arguing that I wanted to stay home. I think I even told them I wanted to be home-schooled, which was a nonexistent term and possibility at the time, as far as I knew. Vann Elkins, good old Vann, had, all during the previous summer, shared with me, the horrors of Boaz Junior High. Gym class was the worst, “you had to walk naked, single-file, back and forth across the basketball court, six times, on the first day. It was some sort of tradition. He knew this because his older brother, Vernon, then a rising ninth grader, had told him. My willingness to believe Vann’s stories and to refuse to step foot in Boaz Junior High, ended two days before ‘D’ Day when Dad came home with Sandy, only six weeks old.
It was like Sandy knew he had a job to do. And, he did it well. Seven years later I completed high school. The afternoon after our graduation ceremony, I found Sandy dead in the hall of the barn. An autopsy revealed that he had been poisoned. This case was never solved, but I always believed it was an intentional act by a neighbor who had a reputation of hating dogs and cats and about everything else. Other than my first year at the University of Virginia, I had never been without a Golden Retriever. Based on my experience, I knew that around age nine or ten they begin to lose the strength, and ability, but not the desire, to jump.
After breakfast, Sandi and I took a walk around the pond and ended up at the backside of the barn. I climbed up into a hay-less loft and found the two ladder-back chairs still leaning against the front wall, probably right where Regina and I had left them the last time we were here. It was the night I told her I was engaged, I guess what Jennifer and I had agreed on (more her father’s conniving) was best termed an engagement. I moved my chair, the darker colored one, over in front of the big double-doors, turned the simple but effective wooden latch, and pushed-open the door.
Sitting in my chair and gazing toward the back porch had always been my favorite spot for reminiscing and contemplating. I had hoped to wake up this morning with Regina by my side. Between the two of us I was the only one, as far as I know, who had contemplated such a fast-paced turn of events. Ever since seeing Regina in her black dress on that Tuesday and not to mention our hug when I was about to leave. What if she had not stopped me from putting my hand on her hip? It wasn’t a surprise that she had. But, that hadn’t stopped me from thinking about her for the past three days. I had fantasized that after dinner Friday night we would retire to the den and listen to some of the old eight-track cassettes I still had, the ones we used to listen to nearly a half-century ago. I could see her smile and hear her burst-out loud when I played Floyd Cramer. But, then, we would start to dance. And, unlike every time before, this time, she would allow me to undress her.
It had been a long time since I had felt a woman’s body lying next to mine. Five years ago, I had succumbed to the mighty hand of temptation (a hang-over from my Bible and church days) and started an affair with a 35-year-old brunette recently hired in the White House’s communications department. I met her in the Eisenhower Building’s cafeteria. That day, it was extremely crowded. A table opened as we both exited the check-out lane. We looked at each other and didn’t say anything, both just shrugged our shoulders and walked over. It was the first of many lunches over the next month. Within a month we were dating, love-making, and seriously discussing her, Charlette, moving in with me since I had the bigger place. She was tall and had the perfect figure, well, what most men would call the perfect figure. Big, but not over-sized boobs, a nice derriere, what every Southern neck referred to as ‘ass.’ Everything seemed to go well until Tad Goldstein slithered up one day in the cafeteria and shared a table with Charlette and me. Tad was one of my team-mates in the Stenographic Department and one, I always believed, played a tad of a role in getting me fired. Less than a week later, Charlette told me, without words, that her and Tad were now a couple. She had been the only naked body I had touched since Jennifer died in 1980.
I had planned a romantic dinner after she accepted my invitation on Thursday. But, thanks to Frankie Olinger, our plans were thwarted. He had been arrested late Thursday afternoon and it would seem a stretch for this to have interfered with our Friday night plans. If Olinger had been Regina’s father, that would have been different. Regina called me at 4:30 yesterday afternoon just as I was getting serious in the kitchen. She had said Belinda had called and asked her to go with her to Guntersville to visit Frankie. Regina said Belinda was a basket-case. I hated that term. Aren’t we all? However, I did respect Regina’s decision to support her sister. They had a fragile relationship at best and hopefully being together last night tilted the positive side of the scale.
My mind stirred up a vision of what Regina would have looked like last night while we stood and listened to Floyd Cramer play Gentle on My Mind, when her black dress hit the floor. Then, my iPhone vibrated. I stood and pulled it out of my pocket. It was Ginger Crumbly. I was glad I had entered her information into my Contacts.
“Hello.”
“Walt, this is Ginger from Rains & Associates. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
I almost started to tell her it was perfect timing, since I was thinking about beautiful naked girls. I decided differently. “No, not at all.”
“I know this is a little faster than I had thought, but I have you an assignment. Can you be in Huntsville Monday morning?”
“Sure, I guess. You’re right, this is more sudden than I thought it would be.”
“Attorney Kyle Daniel of Huntsville is taking the deposition of the defendant in a civil assault and battery case. Be at the law offices of Maynard Cooper & Gale at 9:00 a.m. I’ll email you the address and the relevant details. “
“Is that the same Maynard Cooper that you are neighbors with in
Birmingham?”
“It is. We get a lot of work from them. They also have an office in Huntsville. Hey, I got to run. Bailey, you know. Let me know if you have any questions. I check my email every few hours on the weekend.” “Tell Bailey, Sandi says hello. She’s my Golden Retriever.” “I will, thanks.”
I sat back down wishing Regina were here to talk. I needed a mind other than my own to convince me I had made a right decision taking the Rains’ part-time job. I was nearly nauseous as I climbed down the wooden ladder from the loft and walked to the back porch.
The Pencil Driven Life 