The Dickerson Pondit has not been at all faithful to his blog. Shame on him! It is not that he has abandoned the pen and paper or more truthfully the keyboard and Microsoft Word. While traveling across the northern US of A this past June and July, the Pondit decided he would spend some time writing stories. In the past six weeks he has written two short stories and started his first novel. The two stories are fully finished in draft form and he has asked some friends to help him with editing the stories. The novel is still in construction mode but he has made significant progress. The plot line is developing nicely, at least the Pondit believes it is, but with the transition from short stories to a full blown novel, there will need to be a great deal of follow-up work to do a better job in developing the characters in the book. For reasons unknown to anyone including the Pondit, the novel is set in Key West Florida. Perhaps he has a fixation on Hemmingway or he just isn't as clever as he should be.
His first story is set in Valeria, the home of Dickerson Pond. This is place well known to the Pondit and made the writing of the story a little easier. He did not have to spend hours using Google Maps to find names for locations and try to fathom what was north, south east or west from the point of action in the story. The second story is part of a proposed trilogy on technology. The technology in the second story is texting. It is fairly short and raises some concerns about privacy in this new world of instant communications. The Pondit is hoping that he can get some of his work published. The Pondit also heads out when he sees a rainbow to try and find the pot of gold that the leprechauns hide at the end of the colored arc.
I am going to share chapter one of the novel, The Briefcase, with my blog followers. Feedback from the highly intelligent readers of the Dickerson Pondit is as always, gratefully accepted. So far the novelist has penned thirty-one chapters of his first book.
The Briefcase
Chapter 1
Chet Harte woke up suddenly. He had his dream once again.
He is walking barefooted along an isolated stretch of a quiet beach. Small waves are lapping the shore in their regular pattern. He stops occasionally to pick up an interesting shell or a half buried sand dollar. Those he carefully places in his empty 7-11 paper coffee cup. Up ahead bobbing just six feet off shore is a briefcase. He wades in and retrieves the case. It is locked and fairly heavy. Chet cuts his walk short and heads back to his car. Once back home he opens the garage and enters. He closes the large garage door and carries the still dripping case to his workbench area. He forces open the case and his jaw drops: inside is money, lots and lots of money.
Last April, Chet turned fifty. He was in good shape and has spent the past six years working and living in Key West. Chet is a contractor for the US Navy and lives in a small cottage with his wife Anna on Sugarloaf Key just about eight miles east of the Naval Air Station outside the city of Key West. Anna is five years his junior. She is a free spirit and currently teaches fourth grade at a parochial school on Key West. Chet and Anna have two grown children one son who is a lawyer in the Boston area and the other in the Santa Inez Valley that owns and operates a small boutique vineyard. Life has and is good for the Hartes. Life is easy in Key West. There is little to complicate the routine, save the occasional seasonal hurricane or when a cruise ship is in the harbor – there is one too many Jimmy Buffet wannabees.
Chet is an early riser. Anna wakes a little later than Chet, but covets her morning time for spiritual reflection. The couple usually spends the first few hours of each day on singular activities. This Tuesday morning Chet was up and out by five forty-five in the morning. He decided to drive up to nearby Bahia Honda State Park to do some beach walking and possible add to his collection of exotic seashells. Chet knows an area on the northwest part of the key that he will almost certainly have to himself at this time of the day. The drive in his red Miata took almost twenty minutes including his customary stop at the local 7/11 store for a cup of coffee and a Boston Crème donut. After parking the car in the empty lot, he headed out on this walk. Bahia Honda Key has a land locked lagoon and the west beach ran out on a narrow spit of land between the Gulf and the lagoon. Chet had the early sun coming over his right shoulder and could easily scan the Gulf with the sun off to his back. About a half mile into his walk he noticed some debris out in the water and a few hundred feet further he noticed some jagged plastic boat parts washed onto the shore. There were also two deck cushions and a rubber buoy along the shore. He then saw one very large, long piece of plastic hull bobbing about twenty feet offshore. To Chet, it looked like a part of the hull of a cigarette boat. Chet scanned the sky to see if there were any search/rescue planes in the area as he had seen no boating activity at any time during his walk. There were no sign of any people in the area, either on shore or out on the calm Gulf.
Just before the beach turned northeast toward nearby Ohio Key, Chet spotted it. There it was just bobbing in the water not more than twenty feet off shore. Chet's stomach tightened and his breathing quickened. It was a black leather briefcase. He looked up and down the beach to see if he was alone. There was not a soul in sight. Chet thought, "Is it time for me to wake up?" This was not a dream. Chet placed his cup of shells on the beach and waded into the water. He was up to his waist when he reached the briefcase. It was large for an attaché case, and fairly heavy. Chet was surprised it was floating. Grabbing the leather handle, he towed the briefcase to the beach. As was the case in all his dreams, the case was locked. Water was draining from the seams, but the briefcase and its contents were still quite heavy. Chet knew exactly what to do. In twenty minutes he was back at his car in the still empty parking lot. He opened the trunk and deposited the briefcase and his 7/11 cup. It was low tide and Chet was counting on the incoming tide to wash away any sign of his presence on the beach before the next human approached the wreckage area. It was only after he was half way home that he gave any thought of the persons who might have been on the boat.
