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 77
Initially, we had planned on spending Friday night in Atlanta and using Saturday to unwind and focus on each other and our relationship. After leaving Glenn Memorial Auditorium, a few minutes after laying down in bed, Regina asked if it would be okay if we checked out of the hotel and drove home. She said she had something important to tell me and that I probably would rather be home when she was finished. I felt I didn’t have any choice but to trust her judgment.
After we filled my truck with gas in Villa Rica and bought two large cups of coffee, we settled in for the drive west on I-20. For several minutes we sat in silence, so long that I needed to hear something, anyone’s voice, so I turned on the radio.
“I know that’s my signal that I need to start talking.” Regina said shifting in her seat.
I turned the radio off and said, “you’ve learned to read me, haven’t you?”
“I sure hope so.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Walt, I don’t deserve you. You are honest to a fault. You don’t deserve me either. You deserve someone so much better. I must tell you the full truth. I hate to admit that I’m unsure whether I would do this if I didn’t believe you were in danger, at least from having your heart broken.
“I’m going to try to just sit here and listen.” I said.
“I’ve been such a fool but now I believe our lives are about to get more complicated. It’s all my fault for getting back involved with Thaddeus and the Constitution Foundation. I have allowed my love for this country and my hatred of what harm right wing evangelicals are doing to motivate me to do things that will likely destroy us.”
“Regina, tell me what you’ve done. But first, let me say, I’m feeling like I’m about to become the world’s biggest fool but so be it. The one thing I know for sure is that I fell in love with you when we were teenagers and I have never stopped loving you. It just took me nearly half a century to have the courage to tell you, to show you. Please know that whatever you have done, it will never change the fact you hold my heart.”
“I love you too Walt, please, please know that. It’s because of our love for each other that I must clear the air. Oh, how I wish it was as simple as saying, ‘I lied to you about Ginger and Zell,’ or that ‘I hated you when you dumped me so that’s why I went along with Thaddeus’ scheme to manipulate you.’ But, what I’ve done is so much worse.”
“I’m realizing this is nearly impossible for you. I give you permission to tell me the truth. I promise I will respond, well, responsibly.” I said.
“Walt, I murdered Kip Brewer and I manipulated you into assisting Sergei Ivankov to escape from Tifton, Georgia, after he murdered Kyle Turner.”
I will never know why I reached over and turned on the radio. Maybe it was an involuntary reaction to the shock I had just received. Something my deep subconscious screamed at me to do, to prevent me from dying or exploding with anger that I didn’t know I possessed. I kept driving without saying a word. I listened to the song Without You, by Faith Hill that talked about what would I do if you walked away. I think I would have driven all the way back home, silently and internally crying my heart out if Regina hadn’t spoken.
“I’m so sorry.” Regina’s words were like a hammer pounding against my frozen ears.
“What can I do to help save you? To save us?” Again, where had my words come from? In an instant, I became a willing criminal. Or, probably better put, in an instant, I discovered I wasn’t the person I thought I was. Now, with these new facts, I could hear an attorney, a good attorney like Micaden Tanner say, things are different.
“The smartest thing for you to do is run to the hills away from me, leaving me to fend for myself.” Regina said, her voice clearly broken.
“I know you are upset, really hurting, but please don’t get stupid and insulting with me. Okay? I’m not your assistant at work.”
I was gaining confidence, so I didn’t stop. “To be clear, that’s exactly what I would do if I didn’t love you with all my heart. I guess that makes me stupid since it’s the opposite of what the smart man would think and do.” I said throwing my empty coffee cup out the window, something I had never done. Funny, how easy it was now to become a law breaker.
“Are you saying you would keep this a secret to protect me and our relationship?”
“Damn right I would.” I said.
“Let’s just ponder something. What if some way we could get by with it, find ourselves someday having escaped from the possibility my secrets, my crimes, could be exposed? How do you think we would be?
Do you see us, our relationship, at its very best?” Regina asked.
“That’s a little difficult to answer. I suspect our love is now forever changed. It will never go back to, let me put it like this, to that night we first made love. I know what I felt like the next morning. I think I can say you felt the same way. I hope I’m not being too presumptuous.”
“You’re not. It was the most beautiful thing ever.”
“Relationships mature, they change, maybe we could say they evolve. New circumstances appear, and the creature has to adjust, or he will be destroyed by the new geography or the new antagonist.”
“Beautifully put. So, if we want to survive, we have to respond.” Regina said.
“Let me ask you, what’s the likelihood Thaddeus, Ginger, and Zell will keep your secret?” I asked.
“I don’t have a doubt they will keep silent about me and my involvement. It is Sergei Ivankov who is the one who would definitely use me as a bargaining chip if he is captured.”
“If I understood you, your confession, you didn’t shoot Kyle Turner. So, he cannot honestly tie you to that. But, I assume he knows that you shot Kip Brewer. Right?”
“He knows that because he was there. I guess Thaddeus didn’t know for sure if I would pull the trigger. He sent Sergei to make sure the job got done.”
“Do you know where he is, Sergei?” I asked.
“He’s still in Boaz.”
“I bet I know where he is. Club Eden. Why in the hell did I know this?”
“You’re right. Pastor Tillman and his gang are in on this to a point. He, Club Eden, is tied to Thaddeus. But, they are not all in as they say.” Regina said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll just say Pastor Tillman, but I’m including all four members. Yes, that includes Governor Justin Adams. They are working with Thaddeus to see that President Kane is reelected. They are knee deep in working with the Russians to manipulate the 2020 presidential election. However, they do not know how Thaddeus and the Foundation is working to physically manipulate the actual candidates. In other words, Pastor isn’t involved with the killings.”
“I’ve written a book about this but after the Emory presentation and now this, I feel my writing just scratched the surface of what is really going on. Tell me, does President Kane know about all this, know about what Thaddeus and Pastor Tillman are up to?” I asked.
“Here’s the funny thing. No, he is clueless. All he knows is that Pastor Tillman has worked tirelessly to stack the deck in Congress with like-minded folks to give Kane the power to ‘drain the swamp’ as he calls it. Many people give him too much credit, that he is a genius to be able to manipulate the 2016 election to gain a victory over Hillary Clinton. Kane can’t see ten feet in front of him. He is a total non-thinker, nonplanner. He operates strictly in the moment.” Regina said.
“I’m still confused. Here’s a dumb question, what is Thaddeus and his Foundation trying to accomplish? Doesn’t seem to me like they would want him to win.”
“Actually, they do. They believe that if he wins they win.”
“How so?”
“Thaddeus wants the U.S. Constitution to mean something again. He believes that the only way for that to happen is for the country to come precipitously close to falling over the edge, into the abyss. His plan is confusing since it has been, from the beginning, a double, maybe a triple play. Thaddeus literally hates Kane but saw him as the key to taking America to the edge. He, Kane, was the man to expose the raw underbelly of the Christian right, exposing what they are truly after.”
“I think I know but tell me anyway. What are they after?”
“To rewrite the law. For America to become a theocracy.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Thaddeus believes that if Kane as President can be aligned with a Congress that is truly Kane Republicans, the truth will be exposed. These folks in power will start passing legislation that will wake up the rest of America, the ones opposed to Kane, and will precipitate a counter revolution. See, you are right in the big picture. There is a coming civil war. The means of getting to the beginning of the war might just be a little different than you thought.” Regina said.
“I feel rather stupid. Back to you and me, us. There’s a national manhunt now underway for Sergei Ivankov. I have to admit it was pretty smart to hide him in Boaz but that seems to indicate that Pastor Tillman has to know the man is a killer.” I said.
“He, Tillman doesn’t know the man is Sergei Ivankov. He thinks the man is Professor Romanov’s brother. Yes, Anatoly Romanov, the man who the Professor is supposed to meet with in Russia. The man the Professor is supposed to manipulate into revealing his election manipulation secrets.”
“I’m totally confused, is Sergei Ivankov hiding out at Club Eden? If not, where is he?” I said feeling either my mind was failing, or Regina was making all this up.
“If the man Pastor Tillman is hiding at Club Eden isn’t Sergei, where is he?”
“Please drive carefully because you are about to be in danger of committing suicide. Okay?” Regina said.
“Oh hell, why do I feel like a freight train is coming straight at me?”
“Sergei Ivankov has been hiding out in your barn ever since we returned from Tifton, Georgia.” Regina said rolling down her window to let in some cool air.
The Pencil Driven Life 