NOVELLA
The Trial Of Summary James — Chapter Four
A great African nation has risen in North America. But something is… wrong: Chapter 4 of 20 in the novella.
Check out the links at the end of this story under “Notes” for additional chapters.
Chapter Four
We met on the mainland for coffee on the outskirts of Campeche. She was wearing a flamboyant gown like the boubou she had worn when I had first met her, only this one was solid purple with long gilded stripes along the middle. Her hair was bedecked in such an assortment of shells and beads that I could have spent several days trying to determine how it was pieced together. Two long thin braids straddled each side of her face. I tapped my watch to see if there was an EKG alert, surprised that it hadn’t set off an alarm. I tapped it again to be sure.
“Everything okay?” she asked as we found seats and a table.
“I think my watch is broken,” I said as I sat down and watched her spread out her roll-up. She motioned for me to sit next to her. I didn’t think that was a good idea, but I followed her instructions anyway. She was a tall, statuesque woman, but I was much taller, and I could easily view the top of her hair arrangement as I sat next to her.
I had assumed that her hair’s complexity would dissipate at its peak, but the weaves and patterns instead gained an even more mysterious geometry. She tapped a few icons on the roll-up and a map appeared with a symbol and label. “This is called the Drunken Dance Congregation,” she said, her finger on the roll-up. A three-dimensional hologram popped off the roll-up. “The congregation isn’t commissioned by the Synod. I doubt it ever will be. Now, check this out.”
When her fingers danced across the roll-up, a complex of bright lines lit up its surface. “These are container routes from Campeche Port to Tangier, Morocco. They originate from these loading zones, let’s see,” she pulled up more information, “Ezekiel 35 through 40, it looks like.”
“You’re very charming even when you’re reporting on tiny congregations with silly names,” I said, noticing for the first time just how adroitly her eyes hid the shape of almonds under their magisterial lashes.
She shook her head. “Be serious. Now, check this out.” A more faded set of lines appeared after she swiped her fingers over the map and tapped a couple of symbols at the edge of the roll-up. The lines were sets of dashes thinner than the other lines. “These represent trucking routes from Drunken Dance to the Ezekiel zones I just showed you.”
“A jaunt from Houston to Seminole City, then Campeche. A little weird, but I’m still wondering what I’m looking at.”
“When you told me about your vision, and the argument between James and Williams, the emotions from Williams didn’t compute for me. I looked it up. His congregation’s finances really were a mess. James was an acquiring angel. And Williams was not the progenitor of the financial problems at Texas Light. His predecessor was. In fact,” and she swiped her fingers around the roll-up and a hologram popped up showing some impressive financial credentials on the part of Sonoma Williams in a role at another congregation, “His reputation as a financial leader was not at stake.”
“Isn’t it unusual to bring someone in from the outside? That kind of hiring practice is usually the stuff of European and Asian corporations.”
She shrugged. “Anyway, so why would he resist this angel of mercy? Especially in light of how every congregation in the Union is trying not to be Joshua Brand’s next acquisition.”
“Damn, girl, you smart.” She swiped at my forearm, which made me want to end the conversation now and begin our own merger negotiations. “Why didn’t Williams point this out during their argument?”
“Maybe he did. How perfect are your visions? Besides, maybe you didn’t catch all of the conversation?”
“Oh, most definitely not. I don’t know. I mean, about the accuracy of what I relayed to you. Like I said, these visions? They’re very dreamlike, and I sometimes struggle with details. I can say unequivocally that the two ended their conversation on a very civil note. But what’s with the Tangier stuff?”
“I’m getting to that. Truth is, I don’t know yet. Exactly. But remember when I said that this little congregation, Drunken Dance, would not be getting commissioned anytime soon by the Synod?”
I nodded. I remembered everything she said and did to an almost frightening extent.
“Well I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that I did some digging.”
“No doubt.”
“They have two churches on the north side of Houston. Just the two. Both empty. I mean, no services at either of them for three years. It’s one of those peyote-based Christian congregations, too. That by itself doesn’t mean anything, I guess. I mean, I’m not intolerant or anything. God that sounded awful didn’t it.”
“We all have our biases.”
“No please I’m really not like that.” She put her hand on my forearm. Her skin was just a slight shade lighter than mine. I thought the two shades blended quite well together.
“We all are,” I said. “I mean, it’s normal for, say, a Presbyterian or Episcopalian or Roman Catholic to look at some of the First Settler churches and say, ‘Peyote? Really?’ It’s not an insult to them to reflect on that. It’s just, you know, they’re different. I find it fascinating in most respects, but it’s not for me. Or you, right?”
“I guess that’s right. Okay, anyway, it’s a crappy thing for me to point out because it’s simply not relevant to the discussion. The bottom line is that they seem to have only one asset, one business, no churches, no… congregation!” She laughed at that. “I can’t even find any tribune or other clergy associated with it.”
“Interesting. Not legal, either. And what is the business?”
“Trucking. All automated, all electric, but they have a staff of loaders or something like that in north Houston that seems to head down to Campeche Island to do some work at the docks.”
“And?”
“And that’s it for now. But doesn’t it seem a little odd?”
I nodded. “A little. So you think maybe they’re engaging in some kind of illegal trade. But how uncommon is that? There are tons of people in this country who hate the stranglehold congregations have on the economy. You know, Richard Branson wannabes,” I added, referring to the richest man in the world.
“Well, that’s its own discussion, I guess, but there’s no way to be that here. Not even through illegal trade.”
“True enough, but I bet you could get yourself a nice French villa with the right kind of illegal trade.”
“What kind would that be? I mean, the way our economy is structured, what kind? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Drugs.”
That stopped her for a moment. She looked at me and said nothing.
“Massive market in Europe and parts of South Africa, East Asia.”
“Europe,” she said.
“Tangier would be a nice port for that,” I said.
“What kind of drugs, though?” she asked. “Most everything is legal here. Making money selling contraband would be difficult.”
“Synthetics,” I quickly responded.
I pulled out my phone to send her the information from the emails Trace had sent to me so we could evaluate some of the information on her rather impressive roll-up.
After several minutes of processing and reviewing, she laughed. “This is getting almost too easy,” she said.
“How so?”
“This has got to be your guy.” She brought up a hologram of a heavily tattooed man with the square top afro that had become so familiar.
“One of the images Trace sent. Who is he?”
“Why, my dear, he’s a distribution manager for a protestant voodoo congregation in Seminole City. His name is Horse Luemba.”
“Voodoo? Now you’ve got my biases roiling.”
“Guess what one of their manufacturing interests is?”
“If you say major league baseball bats, I’m going to kiss your lips passionately.”
Once again, I was able to acquire a wonderful laugh. “Among many other things, but yes, major league baseball bats.” She raised a finger and shook it at me. “Not yet,” she said with a sly smile. “But I am serious about the bats. They have a factory in Port-au-Prince.”
“Okay, we have a couple of interesting pieces.”
“We have a smoking gun in a room with one person in it,” she quipped.
“So we need to find out what brings the fine gentleman to Campeche.”
“And why he’d bring one of his baseball bats? I mean, that’s just weird.”
“Does your magic carpet show any kind of distribution link between Campeche Port and Seminole City?”
“I would think not, right? Seminole City is a major port. Why ship stuff up to here first?” She waved her fingers around her roll-up anyway. “Nothing comes up, but this only shows registered distribution routes.”
“The Seminole are pretty hardcore about their port regulations. I wouldn’t want to try anything clandestine down there, no matter how slick my operation was.”
“So ship it up here first, where you’ve already got a nice population of agreeable convicts to help move questionable shipments around.”
“If you have the right people running things here, and I’m not talking about a lot of people, you can probably do almost anything you want.”
This all gave me a lot to think about as I waited for Trace to work on his Frankenstein project. No matter what I thought of Sonata’s potential as a romantic partner, she seemed an amazing partner in crime, or to be more precise, crime-solving. I couldn’t tell if her occasional flirts were designed for me or were just an integral part of her personality. We parted company again, but I was happy to know our detective work was going to keep us in constant contact. I wondered, as we said our goodbyes at the coffee house, if that meant I should tell her I was going to pay a visit to Seminole City. I quickly decided that it didn’t.
End of Chapter Four
You can purchase the full novella for 99 cents here:
Table of Contents (links will appear as additional chapters are published daily on Medium):
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20
NOTES
This short novella was unplanned. I wrote it under my legal name way back in 2021. Side note: The pen name Charles Bastille originated after the publisher of MagicLand convinced me my name would not be SEO-friendly — I’m no longer convinced that matters and haven’t decided yet if I should publish additional works under the Bastille pen name.
The novella takes place in an alternative North America that celebrates diversity, avoided genocide, and corrected the mistakes of slavery as a side-effect of a failed Revolutionary War. As such, although no human endeavor can avoid tragic error, it takes place on a much less dystopian continent than our current experience.
The world represented here is much larger than can be conveyed in such a short book. This world is more fully represented in a trilogy called Restive Souls, which begins in the late 18th century. It is still in final edits.
But the main character of this novella, Longman Jones, told me he wasn’t willing to wait for me to finish that novel. Maybe that is in part because he makes no appearance at all in the larger work.
But he is a restive soul, and he needed to get out of my head. So I took a couple weeks off from the main novel way back in 2021, and wrote this, in hopes he’d shut up. I never really promoted it, but I’m starting to now a bit.
If you enjoy this novella, please let your friends know that for 99 cents they can spend a couple hours with Longman in a more egalitarian world than what they may be used to. It will make him very happy if you do.
For updates on the Restive Souls series, visit https://medium.com/restive-souls. Or subscribe to my newsletter fiction here (takes you to a site off the Medium platform).
Consider this short novella a teaser for the broader work. And if enough people like it, I suspect Longman Jones will also make another appearance or three.
Thanks for reading!
This story was written by a human, not by AI or Grammarly GO (More Info).
Copyright © 2020–2023 Charles White
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Published in the United States of America
