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 26
When I got back to the house Regina was sitting at the kitchen bar with her water and a bottle of Coor’s Lite beside my plate. Sunday’s had become somewhat of a routine. We either went together to church, normally First Baptist Church of Christ, although, sometimes we visited a different one, or we just hung out here at Shepherd’s Cove.
“Shoot me if I ever drink another beer.”
“I take it you woke up with a splitting headache. Any nausea?” Regina asked, going over to the refrigerator and pouring me a glass of tea.
“No, thank goodness.”
“Are you okay after last night?”
“I’m fine and I don’t want to talk about it right now. I have something else on my mind. It’s kind of personal. Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, and don’t ever ask me that question again. You can always ask me. Anything.” Regina said putting a slice of pizza on my plate.
“Okay, thanks, here goes. I took a large bite of our Supreme, the best pizza in Boaz. “What are you doing?”
“Is that your question? Uh, I think I’m sitting here with you eating pizza.”
“No, silly. With me. What are you doing here with me?”
“You’re normally better at asking questions. Let me frame it for you, assuming I’m understanding where you are trying to go. How do I view our relationship? Are we just friends, pals, or are we boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“That helps a lot.”
“Now that we have the question on the table, or bar, I think I’ll just eat this wonderful pizza.” Regina said glancing over at me out of the corner of her eye.
“So, we are, as the old saying goes, ‘just friends’?
“Walt Shepherd, I didn’t say that. Do you need your steno machine?”
“Funny. It is great pizza.”
With a mouthful, Regina said, “You lamebrain, I have loved you since high school. You broke my heart when you chose Jennifer over me. My heart stayed broke until just a few months ago. Maybe, it is still broken, but I feel like it is healing some, because of our time together.” She took a big gulp of water.
“Here’s the question I really want to ask, but just needed a little encouragement. Regina Gillan, will you go steady with me.” There, I finally said it.
“Are you serious? Are we in high school? Wait, don’t answer that. I love it. That was beautiful. So simple, so safe, yet so exciting.
The answer is yes. But, let’s hash out that little question of yours.”
“Okay. What do you need to know?”
“For you to explain what you mean, when you say, ‘go steady.’”
“Okay. I do need to give some background to frame the proper context. I tried to put you out of my mind when I married Jennifer. My reasoning was, I’ve made my bed, so I might as well lie in it. Really, I never forgot you. It wasn’t every day but there were times I thought of you, of us, doing the kinds of goofy things we loved to do: walking in the rain, hiking, writing and sharing little poems, making love in the barn loft.”
“What?”
“Just seeing if you were listening. Strike the sex, but, in truth, we did make love. Every time I held your hand, every time I kissed your sweet lips, every time we shared popcorn at a movie, we were making love.”
“It’s all coming back to me now. Isn’t that a song? Walt, you are doing a great job reminding me of a few of the reasons I fell in love with you as a fifteen-year-old girl. Please continue.”
“After Jennifer died, not the next day, but soon after, I started to call you. Yes, I knew where you were. I had kept up with you. I always knew where you were, where you lived and worked, you know. But, I didn’t call. I concluded that I would just cause you more pain. For reasons I’m sure I don’t even know, when I was sitting in the Chief of Staff’s office at the White House, waiting to go in to see the President, I thought of you, and I was sweating.”
“I did always make you sweat.” Regina chimed in.
“Yes, like right now. During those short minutes waiting, I thought how it was time to do two right things. One, stand up and be bold with the President, and the second thing was to come home and try to reconcile with you.”
“That doesn’t make a lot of sense. I was in Chicago.”
“I had already learned, just a few days earlier, that you had quit the Tribune and were moving back to Boaz. I think I knew, at least subconsciously, right before I walked into the Oval Office, that my D.C. days were over, that that chapter of my life had ended. I only hoped that you had left the door to your heart cracked open just a little bit for me.” I said, standing up and pulling out my wallet and laying on the countertop.
“That’s right, pull out the money. You’ll need a check too. Cashier’s only Mr. Shepherd.” Regina said without exposing any hint of a smile.
“So, you’ll go steady with me if I buy the rights.”
“Absolutely, I learned a valuable lesson the last time you walked out on me. This time, I’ll need a huge deposit to secure my heart real estate. We’ll call it a dower.”
“I think you’re confused. Wasn’t that what a man paid his girlfriend’s family to secure her hand in marriage?” I asked digging in my wallet.
“Forget that, I don’t care. I just want everything you’ve got and everything you can borrow.” Regina now was revealing her gorgeous smile.
“Here, look at this.” I said pulling out an old tattered photo of me and Regina at the fair.
“You still have our favorite photo.”
“It’s been in my wallet ever since that night, the summer of 1971, two weeks before the start of our senior year. It’s not the same billfold but it’s the same photo. Look at the back.” I said handing it over to Regina.
“August 1, 1971. Me and my future wife.” Regina said reading the writing I had scrawled over fifty years ago. “Now, I may be a little confused. Is this a wedding proposal or are we just going steady?”
“You are so adorable, well, most of the time. Don’t read too much into the photo. No, I’m not asking you to marry me, not yet anyway. I showed you the photo to let you know that you have always been the most important girl in my life.”
“Not important enough to propose to me right now?” Regina said. She could be so exhausting at times.
“Quite the opposite. You are so important to me that I am not, yet, proposing we marry. You are so important that I want to do this right. I don’t want to do anything to every lose you. I want to prove my love to you. That will take a few more days, weeks, months. I hope not years. Does this make any sense?” I said, now standing across the bar from Regina, taking her right hand in both of mine.
“It does, totally. I was just pushing your buttons a little. Regina said, again smiling.
“Which I love. Please never stop pushing my buttons.” I said leaning over to kiss her forehead.
“Baby, come around here.” Regina stood and kept clutching my hand as I walked around the bar and pulled her body into mine. Before we kissed she took my face and said, “Walt, look at me, just look at me.”
I leaned my head back and stared into a blue ocean, of mystery, of the strongest woman in the world, one who certainly could be boisterous but one who knew how to gently wave me towards a calm harbor. After a couple of minutes, lost in her trance, she said, “I will go steady with you if you want me, as long as we keep our hearts right where they are right now. Can you do that?”
“Yes, double yes.” As we tilted our heads to kiss, we both said at the same time, “I love you.”
The Pencil-Driven Life 