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 69
Freddie drove in behind his house on Ferndale Drive at 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning. Ever since escaping the scene Friday night at the brow of the mountain on Cox Gap Road, he had secreted himself in Room 138 at Motel 6 in Attalla. He was thankful to be home, still surprised that Vann Elkins was at Regina’s and now he was dead. Freddie was even more concerned about seeing Walt Shepherd’s truck parked outside Regina’s basement. He couldn’t help but wonder whether Walt himself had been inside the house and maybe even seen him as he was leaving.
Alonzo and Aristotle, two large Maine Coon cats greeted Freddie as he pushed his way inside the back door. The pair were litter mates he had purchased as six-week-old kittens from an old woman ten years ago at Collinsville Trade Day. Freddie placed the mystery backpack on the old oak kitchen table, and his travel bag onto a chair. He sat down and devoured the two bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits he had purchased from Hardee’s a few minutes earlier. A few sips of the hot coffee warmed him and stopped the sense of an oncoming chill even though the weather outside was unseasonably warm.
After hand-feeding two plain biscuits to Alonzo and Aristotle, Freddie walked to the kitchen sink, washed his hands, and started a pot of coffee. He returned to the table and removed two large shoe boxes and placed them on the table in front of his chair. After inspecting and pondering the contents of these boxes for hours while sitting in the hotel, he still couldn’t figure out what led Vann to select these two boxes while several others were laid open on Regina’s bed.
Freddie could still shoot himself, literally, for making such a mistake. He had always prided himself on being thoughtful, plotting and planning everything he said and everything he did outside the walls of his little home. It was his pride that flushed away all reason and caution he had always believed had arisen from all his reading and study. The core of his ego was jolted two weeks ago when Regina wrote in an editorial that whoever the killer of Sandra Donaldson and Brian Steel was, he must be brazenly stupid. There was nothing that triggered Freddie’s deep-seated anger more than being called stupid. This article seeded Freddie’s desire to show Regina who was stupid. She was the stupid one. Didn’t she remember what the two of them had done back in 1980? He would teach her a lesson. To never forget who the smart one was, the one who had recorded their conversations discussing the murder of Jennifer Ericson Shepherd.
Freddie kept telling himself that he would have found the photos if Vann hadn’t intervened. Something or someone else had also intervened. God? Fate? Freddie couldn’t get away from the thought, ‘why these two boxes?’ He couldn’t get away from the idea that Vann knew something, maybe Regina had confided in him somewhere along life’s path. Maybe he chose these two boxes to convince Regina that Freddie was too much of a risk to allow him to live. Yes, that’s what it was. Vann had to die. He was, along with Regina, out to get him. Now, Vann was gone, no longer a threat, but Regina survived, and she thought he was stupid.
The first box contained photos of Jennifer’s car both before and after the accident. He was aware of the first set of photos, of the altered brake lines he had created and installed in her car while her and Walt were home for Christmas 1980. He had forgotten about the second set of pictures, the ones he had stolen years later from the home of Franklin Ericson, Jennifer’s father. The second box didn’t interest Freddie. It contained photographs of Regina and a man he didn’t recognize. The two seemed to be a couple. The pictures were all outdoors, at what, to Freddie, looked like gun shows, and/or shooting ranges. Most of them contained others, all white men and women, many wearing tee-shirts emblazoned with slogans such as, ‘Good white, bad black,’ and ‘Constitution is right, whites are superior.’
Freddie remembered it like it was yesterday. It was Thanksgiving 1978 at Belinda & Frankie’s house, legally it was Belinda and Regina’s mother’s house, the one on the brow, off Cox Gap Road. Regina was home from Chicago for the holiday. Freddie and Regina wound up sitting on the deck while the others played cards and listened to music inside. Some way Regina discovered how intelligent and well-read Freddie was. She had noticed him reading an older copy of the Birmingham News he had grabbed from a stack beside a chair before walking out on the deck. The front-page story was about Egypt and Israel signing the Camp David Accords, which was a crucial step in bringing peace to the two warring nations. The terms of the accords were negotiated at Camp David during an important summit between the leaders of Egypt, Israel, and the United States.
Regina had made some comment about the Jews and this quickly accelerated their conversation. At some point Freddie had offered his opinion on the Jews and his hatred of America’s involvement and attempt to protect the Jews. He had said, ‘we would be better off if someone nuked Jerusalem.’ This conversation had grown into a continuing dialog between Freddie and Regina over the next two years. They had exchanged letters and ultimately discovered they had a mutual disdain for Jennifer Ericson Shepherd. Seems like she was one of the main ones who had ridiculed Freddie during a joint Senior and Junior class of American History. Freddie had never forgotten and always secretly wanted to teach her a lesson. When he discovered Regina’s mutual hatred, albeit for different reasons, the two began plotting a way for the perfect Jennifer, the one who had ridiculed Freddie and who had stolen Walt from Regina, to discover every wrong one does, seeds a future right to balance natural justice. Unfortunately, Freddie and Regina had wanted only a semi-serious fender bender for Jennifer. The brake modifications should have only weakened the ability of her car to stop. Freddie’s miscalculation instead caused the brakes to fail. She was virtually decapitated when her Chevrolet Impala ran up under the rear end of a Goldkist trailer hauling a load of chickens. As Freddie poured the last coffee from the pot he knew he had to let Regina know he would destroy her if she did anything to direct the police to investigate him. He couldn’t just call her up. That would leave a direct link back to him. Maybe the best way was to mail her one of the photos he had taken. That, along with a note, should do it. Freddie looked through the stack of photos still laying on the table. He selected two, one of Jennifer’s car sitting on the rack at Sand Mountain Tire with its wheels off, and another one showing the altered brake line after it was installed. On the back of both photos Freddie wrote, “I have many more like these. Keep quiet or you go down.”
The Pencil-Driven Life 