Welcome to Franklin, a city in full.
Grace and pettiness, ambition, despair. Threats. Hunger. Heroism. Six sorts of love. More children every day. The NFL’s Franklin Federals — Go Feds! The roaring Shawnee, which never floods Franklin Heights but routinely devastates the Falls side.
You’ve passed through before, reader. Now come a bit farther off the interstate.
A note from Jeff:
Mostly I write thrillers, but the drama of the everyday has always been an interest of mine. A glance on a bus, that teammate nobody understood, the infuriating joys of entertaining kids on a lazy Saturday — Franklin is my attempt to tell stories that don’t necessarily focus on crimes or betrayal or catacylsmic world events, but are riveting in their own right.
In addition to novels and shorts, I’m writing vignettes that touch on aspects of Franklinite life that may or may not become full-blown storylines in later works. These vignettes are freely available here and on social media @FranklinVignettes (FB, IG) and @FVignettes (Twitter).
Shorts
Be advised, Marie #Knox has placed Platypus Products worksheets in Google Classroom, along with a spreadsheet for tracking student performance. Three minutes of math each day after breakfast is a small price to pay for continued mastery of multiplication facts.
Ben #Gillespie has an update on the school supply fight, and suggests his kindergartners put down their Lunchables and juice boxes to listen because it's WILD!
When he peeked into the classroom today, the crayons were attacking! Green Crayon, with staples stuck in her paper wrapper and triangle head, was advancing over the carpet, waving the other crayons forward. Orange and Brown and Magenta struggled to follow, rolling and cartwheeling and ducking the stapler's fire.
"Knock out his spring!" called Yellow, the smartest crayon by far. "Staplers can't fire without springs!"
Green finished crossing the carpet and looked up to Stapler, who was firing from on top the teachers desk. She felt ecstatic to be this close, but stopping the attack on her friends was still no cinch.
*How was she supposed to get that spring?*
Marie #Knox asks her 4th graders to please check Google Classroom — she's uploaded a parts of speech worksheet. Be mindful of gerunds, which appear like verbs but function as nouns.
Ben #Gillespie has shocking news for his Roosevelt Elementary kindergartners watching this feed on their parent's phone. He visited the classroom today — which was weird and sad, not seeing all your faces — and the school supplies were having a giant fight!!! More tomorrow...
Marie #Knox is reminding her 4th graders to maintain neat penmanship in their journals over this indeterminate break. Flat loops, lazy connections, vertical drift — the easiest habit to break is the one that's never formed.
Read the first Franklin short story, THE CLEANER: amazon.com/gp/product/B07PSNFVNK/
Coming in 2020, TWO TEACHERS portrays the lifelong relationship between Marie Knox and Ben Gillespie. Read the synopsis: www.jeffbondbooks.com/two_teachers/
Beyond, the mystery SIMP and the domestic drama THE PARENT WAR.
With the NFL combine in full swing, Franklin is buzzing with draft talk. Will the Feds look for an heir apparent to QB #jamalHaap? Co-offensive coordinators Gina and Bill Kincaid are said to covet Justin Herbert's size and arm talent.
Said Haap, "I like it. We're too ugly off walking off the bus."
#goFeds
The NFL does not allow players to have cellphones on the sidelines. Magner Paine has the Federals’ equipment manager hold his while he’s on the field.
Today he came off after the first series, got the phone from Deidre, the equipment manager, and checked Twitter.
@FedsNation537 had tagged him in a tweet. “sitting @FedsField, section D-132, just saw MagPaine LIT UP on 22 yard Packers TD catch. $16 mil a year for that????”
Magner felt rage pulsing through his biceps. He slammed his helmet to the Feds Field turf.
“I released him!” he said. “We were in three-zone-under, I left him for the safety.”
Deidre shrugged.
During the next series, Coach Thogge — who ran the defense himself — called three-zone-under again on a third and twelve play. Magner audibled to press man coverage on the outside.
“Why’re we jamming at the line?” asked Laroyce Weeks, the other cornerback. “They need twelve yards and we ain’t blitzing.”
Magner, the defensive captain, yelled, “Because can’t nobody shake me! If you’re scared, cool.” He grabbed his safety and nickel back by their jersey fronts. “You two zone up behind Laroyce. I’ll take seventeen all by myself.”
He dismissed the huddle with a booming clap, then trotted out wide to line up across from Davante Adams, number seventeen for the Packers.
“I’m about to put you on your back, kid,” he said. “On your back! You better be blocking, this better be a screen. You run a route, I’m about to blow you up.”
The receiver licked his lips behind his facemask, then went in motion on the quarterback’s first hut. Magner followed him as far as the tight end, then released him to weak-side coverage per Coach Thogge’s scheme. A moment later, the #2 wide receiver split out Magner’s way.
“Okay, alright.” Magner said, chewing his mouthpiece. “Fresh meat.”
At the snap, Magner jacked the smaller man in the neck. The receiver staggered to one knee, then rose and began his route.
The route was a skinny post. Magner jogged alongside the receiver at two-thirds’ his top speed.
“Where we headed this afternoon?” he asked conversationally. “This is nice. Relaxing.”
Fifteen yards into the route, the receiver stopped running. Magner was close enough to feel the breath of his sigh as he gave up trying to get free.
Magner Paine was a freak, the type of athlete scouts write about in all capital letters. Six-foot-four and sculpted like a linebacker. He ran a 4.29 forty and switched direction like a hummingbird. The only reason the Federals had been able to get him, drafting in the mid-to-late first round as they had been the last several years, was that dead antelope incident at the combine.
The Packers quarterback threw underneath to Davante Adams on the play, a nine-yard pass that ended the drive. The punt team ran onto the field.
“Gimme this, I got it!” Magner yelled, waving at the regular returner to stay on the sideline.
But Thogge and the special teams coach both shook their heads and insisted Magner come off. As a rookie, Magner had set the Federals’ single-season record with seven kick returns for touchdowns, but he’d pissed away the gig since. He refused to fair catch. He ran away from his wedge, and lost yards half the time running sideways — trying to force fireworks on every chance.
Thogge occasionally sent Magner out to return in a touchdown-or-bust situation, but the game was only in the second quarter now, the score tied.
On the sideline, Deidre didn’t want to give him the phone.
“You don’t wanna look,” she said. “People on social media, all they do is—”
Magner snatched the phone out of her hand and opened Twitter.
@FedsNation537 had tweeted, “isn’t MagPaine supposed to be a ‘lockdown’ cornerback for $220mil? not locking up Davante Adams much.”
Magner almost pulverized the phone in his fist.
“It’s the scheme, the scheme!” he said. “I released weak-side, bruh. I released…”
He broke off, scanning the stands, looking for section D-132. He found it around the forty-yard line.
“Hold my phone, D,” he said.
The equipment manager lurched to stop him, but gave up when the phone came flying and banged her forehead.
Anyway—Magner was already sprinting, at the twenty yard line, now at the third, now at the forty, hurtling into the stands with his helmet still on.
#storytelling #fiction #magnerPaine #goFeds
On her first day as a fourth-grade teacher, Marie Knox walked into room 114 and found a man.
“Excuse me,” she said, laying her bag inside the door. “Are you in the wrong place, perhaps?”
The man, in his early twenties like Marie, had been bent over her desk, peering at her computer mouse. Now he was upright but still held the mouse.
“No — I, uh … heard a noise,” he said.
She nodded to his hand. “From the mouse?”
He squinted at first, seeming to think she meant a real mouse.
Then he said, “Right, yes. I mean no. Not from the mouse.”
They looked at each other. The tails of his chunky flannel shirt had come untucked, and already — it was just now 7:00 a.m. — his broad, friendly face shone with sweat.
Marie knew exactly who this was: Ben Gillespie, the new kindergarten teacher. In preparatory meetings, her fourth-grade colleagues had mentioned Roosevelt had just two other male teachers, neither young.
She asked, “Is something wrong with my computer?”
He turned the device around in his hand. The corners of his mouth stretched and rose and fell like he was deciding between embellishments.
Finally he admitted, “It was going to be a prank. A first-day-of-school prank, you know?”
Marie carried her bag to the desk and began unpacking supplies from home—name tags, extra folders, an icebreaker game she’d made last night with animal cartoons.
“I’m familiar with pranks,” she said. “But I can’t say I know of any involving a computer mouse.”
“Yeah, I don’t think it’s super popular.”
Ben explained he’d just gotten it off his phone. You stick part of a Post-It note on the underside of the mouse (which must be wireless) and it stops working.
Marie listened patiently. “Then what?”
Ben’s eyes went wide and wacky. “I dunno, you have to call tech support? It’s funny?”
As pranks went, it wasn’t especially imaginative — and for some reason, watching Ben Gillespie’s weight shift now from foot to foot, Marie didn’t think he would go sneaking into her classroom early, on the first day of both their teaching careers, with an unimaginative prank.
Then she noticed the jello.
#knox #gillespie
Onstage they’re the Nailstrippers. On a job, Kormville Roofing and Paint.
Tick was lean and lanky, a pen behind his ear. “Mrs. Calvert, we’re thinking four full days. Two on the upstairs bedrooms, one each on the kitchen and study."
The homeowner, some vice president at EffCorp, said, “And you’ll be careful of the crown molding?”
Tick held his painter’s cap two-handed at the waist. “Certainly.”
With that, she left for work. Tick headed out to the van, where Arndt and Luke were smoking and eating breakfast. Pammie in the office had made those egg and pepper burritos.
Arndt asked, “They still have the vase out?”
Tick ignored this, gathering brushes and finding the first cans of *repose gray*.
Arndt said, “I can make one outta plain glass, they’ll never know the difference. Her or the husband.”
Tick continued to ignore the group’s second guitarist, and first troublemaker. Arndt couldn’t replicate a crystal vase out of glass — not the one the Calverts had anyway.
“I told her four days,” Tick said. “If we can get Vitter out here a couple shifts, we can finish in three and have Thursday to rehearse.”
They were playing Franklin’s Riverdays Friday night, the cleanup slot of eight o’clock.
Luke said Vitter was fishing.
“I know he’s fishing,” Tick said. “In the absence of something to do, Vitter fishes.”
Luke shrugged. He was the Nailstrippers’ drummer.
Tick knew they’d finish the job, and well. The Calverts would be happy with the work. Paul Calvert thought he was fleecing them. After the contract was signed, he’d threatened to back out unless they lowered the labor estimate. (Tick was just having Travis at Sherwin-Williams invoice him the extra $900 in paint, passing it straight through.)
But *how* they’d get there, to finished — that was the headache. Who knew what Tick would have to pull. If they couldn’t get Vitter off the lake. If Arndt, who wouldn’t be in the crew or band if it wasn’t for Pammie, tried something dumb.
Tick had thirty numbers in his phone to call. But if he went past about twelve, he’d be repainting trim all week.
“Well. It’s about time to prep,” Tick said, standing. “I don’t suppose anybody left me half a burrito.”
Arndt and Luke stopped chewing, their mouths full. In their laps was nothing but foil and napkins.
#nailstrippers
The largest employer in Franklin, EffCorp, was getting larger — and CEO Janna Boutros was determined to bring ZenSense seamlessly, and happily, into the corporate fold.
It was no slam-dunk. Relocating the Boston robotics/AI firm to Franklin was requiring plenty of carrots. Green office space in the trendy Roque district. Industry-best health and wellness plans. Financing for a new wing of the Vorschheim, which already housed the best modern art collection in the States excepting New York.
To pull it off, Janna had needed all her wiles and finesse.
And she’d need still more to appease Hank Potts.
“Hundred percent reciprocity,” he said now, standing in her office in a canvas bib. “Factory workers deserve the same perks these Harvard eggheads are getting.”
Janna looked over the top of her glasses. “Eggheads? These are your new coworkers.”
The union leader shrugged. “It’s a term of endearment.”
During the ZenSense negotiations, she’d known this would be a problem — jealousy from the existing workforce, which was by and large blue collar. Her primary goal in these first years of stewardship was to transition EffCorp from the manufacturing titan it’d been into a modern organization capable of creating, and keeping, jobs into the next century.
The task was fraught with pitfalls. Economic, logistical, cultural. Any change Janna made might boomerang back and blindside her.
Now she said, “We have a plan for transforming factory operations. We’re retraining. We’re offering education grants and career counsel—”
“How about building more cable?” Hank cut in.
In its heyday, EffCorp had produced forty percent of the world’s coaxial supply.
“We build more cable, we’ll have to build warehouses to store it in, too,” Janna said. “Because our customers sure aren’t buying it.”
She and Hank Potts looked at each other. Janna liked Hank. There’d been plenty of pushback among the union rank-and-file about hiring a female Muslim CEO, but when she’d addressed them on the factory floor or at the old Anderson Metals site, she’d never heard an off word. That, she knew, came from the leadership.
“Look,” she said. “ZenSense isn’t the competition. We *need* them to transform your people’s jobs into enduring, high leverage positions.”
Hank stuck his hands in his bib pockets.
She continued, “And they need you to make all their…” She crossed her eyes and waved her hands awkwardly. “…high-tech gadgets relevant to actual customers. To the 95 percent of the country that buys all the stuff.”
Hank chuckled at her pantomime. “Okay, Mrs. Boutros. I hear ya.”
They shook hands.
At the door, Hank turned. “I’m giving it a year, fifteen months at the outside. Then we’re gonna expect some dividends out of this deal.”
Janna smiled. Of course — it was the bane of every CEO’s existence.
Expectations.
#franklin #effCorp
Ben Gillespie, a male kindergarten teacher at Roosevelt Elementary, didn’t generally compete in the realm of classroom decorations.
But Halloween.
Halloween was Mr. Gillespie’s thing.
On October 1, per custom, he drove to Roosevelt with the life-size skeleton riding shotgun. He carried the skeleton over his shoulder to his kindergarten classroom, then suspended it from the ceiling using eye-hooks he’d screwed in years ago and twine loops from the supply closet.
He knotted the bandanna around its skull. He applied the eye patch. He took five minutes perfecting the skeleton’s angle of descent and its articulation of joints — the evil clutching of fingers, realistic knee angles, et cetera.
Then Charlie Maldonado walked in.
“Ahh, Mr. Gillespie!” he cried, dropping his backpack. “That thing! That bony person’s *flying!*”
Ben grinned and slipped off the eye patch and fake-blood-streaked bandanna, which were admittedly — for six year olds — a lot.
“Mr. Scallywag T. Plast-a-bones?” he said. “He’s only a decoration, Charlie. That’s all.”
Charlie’s knuckles were white around his jacket cuffs.
Ben breathed and peacefully closed his eyes. With time, he knew, the boy would match his pose.
“You see, Mr. Plast-a-bones used to teach kindergarten in this very classroom,” Ben said, “years and years before I got to Roosevelt, before I was even born…”
Ava Hodge and Jayce McClain entered the classroom and drifted over to listen beside Charlie.
“…the thing was, he didn’t like kindergarten. He thought kindergartners smelled weird. They always talked at lunch instead of eating. He wanted to teach fourth grade instead like Ms. Knox. But the principal wouldn’t let him.”
One of the kids, maybe Ava, said, “Nuh-uh, Mr. Gillespie!”
Ben continued, “So Mr. Plast-a-bones kept on teaching kindergarten, even though he hated it. He made each student choose *one crayon* per day to do all their coloring with it. He put two glue sticks in his desk for the whole year, and if the class ran out in October? Too bad. The kids just had to hold their art projects together with their fingers…”
He wasn’t sure if the glue stick would’ve been invented. The story was never the same twice.
By the time he’d finished, all 28 students were standing on the carpet, quiet, many with their heads tipped ponderously to one side.
The bell rang.
“Up — here we go!” Ben said. He arched his back to see the calendar. “Day 23 of your kindergarten experience is officially underway.”
The students knew their post-bell routine, hanging their backpacks and depositing lunches in the purple crate.
Ben caught up with Charlie Maldonado at his table. The boy was beginning his morning journaling.
“Hey,” he whispered conspiratorially. “Would it be okay if I gave Scallywag T. Plast-a-bones back his eye patch and bandanna? He’s sad without them. He thinks the kindergartners will laugh at him, they won’t be scared enough.”
Charlie looked up at the flying skeleton with a squint. Then he glanced at Ava — what did *she* think?
They both nodded yes.
#gillespie
Marie Knox, widely considered the strictest teacher at Roosevelt Elementary, commonly runs into parents and ex-parents at the Riverside farmers market.
“Mrs. Knox,” she heard today while browsing Clem’s, an artisanal cheese stall. “My son’s in your class.”
Marie turned with a subdued smile. It was the first week of school and she hadn’t met parents, but those close-set eyes were a dead giveaway.
“Kellen’s mother,” she said. “How do you do?”
To shake, she shifted a bag of cucumbers to her off-hand.
“It’s lucky I ran into you,” the mother said. “Kellen’s father and I are social scientists by trade, and we’ve been quite convinced by the body of research against mandatory homework.”
Marie kept her smile. “You’re at Tech then?”
“Yes, Franklin Tech. Department of Anthropology.”
Teaching in an affluent area, Marie was used to hearing statistics-based arguments on all sorts of issues.
“Galloway, Connor, and Pope, you mean?” Marie said. “2013, Stanford University?”
Kellen’s mother blinked twice.
Marie continued, “It’s sound scholarship, but I still find Cooper — 2006, Review of Educational Research — to be predominant. And I’ve seen for myself, firsthand, the confidence and competence a measured homework regime can instill in a child.”
Clem finished wrapping her Emmenthaler in plastic, then handed it over along with change from a ten.
The mother said, “We just want Kellen to have a positive fourth-grade experience.”
“Absolutely,” Marie Knox said, “and I want the same. Let’s keep the lines of communication open, yes?”
Kellen’s mother nodded. Marie noticed her canvas shopping bag was empty—she’d just arrived.
“I’d hurry if I were you,” Marie said, motioning to a stall right on the banks of the Shawnee. “The Deardorffs were almost out of Chanterelles.”
#knox #riverside
Read more: www.jeffbondbooks.com/franklin-marie-knox/
www.jeffbondbooks.com/franklin-farmers-market/
With the Franklin Federals’ season starting Sunday, everyone in town was talking about quarterback Jamal Haap’s knee.
The Examiner had been reporting for weeks that the starting quarterback’s absence from preseason games was “part of the plan,” but TruFranklin.com begged to differ, quoting one Arby’s manager as saying, “We see him every day, and I’m telling you, he can barely walk.”
Coach Tim Thogge (”thaw-gee”) considered the story a big nothingburger.
“Jamal knows his body, he’ll be ready for the Saints,” Thogge said, referencing the Feds’ week one opponent.
Pool reporters, catching up with Jamal in the parking lot at Feds Field, asked the Franklin Falls native to comment on the Arby’s story.
In response, Haap stepped from his Lotus with no discernible limp, commandeered a football from a group of local kids playing pickup, and sent a spiral soaring between two banks of stadium lights into the press box.
The Examiner’s Kim Melendez, writing up a story on the continuing holdout of shutdown cornerback Magner Paine, caught the bomb on two bounces — fortunately the windows were open. Miss Melendez estimated the throw at 80 yards.
As the kids hooted (Haap later replaced their ball with an autographed one), the Fed’s five-time Pro Bowl signal caller said to the pool reporters, “Talk to me about Arby’s *now*.”
#jamalHaap #franklin #microfiction #flashfiction
Read more: bit.ly/microFranklin
A single road connects the Franklin metro area with Kormville Lake: highway 6, which drops to 25 miles per hour in Kormville proper.
Rick Glasser was going 52.
The officer looming in his mirror, larger with every stride, wore a *Sheriff* badge. It was already 11:45 a.m. The Glassers had wanted to be on the water by ten o’clock, but Reid had melted down over the doneness of his pancake, then nobody could find Ava’s life vest…
Rick spoke first. “License and registration, right?”
The sheriff looked at him like one eyeball was missing. “What’s that beast you’re pulling?”
“Wakesurfing boat,” Rick said, twisting back to look at their spanking new Moomba Mojo. “Gonna do some surfing.”
The sheriff said, “Son, you surf on the ocean. Here in Kormville we have a lake.”
Val Glasser said across her husband, unhelpfully, “I have a sales call at four so if there’s any way to truncate the Barney Fife shakedown routine and send us on our way—”
“The technology’s not all that new,” Rick said to the sheriff, explaining he’d read about the sport in Inflight magazine.
The sheriff gazed at the boat, drumming his fingers along his paunch. In the backseat, the kids ranged from scared stiff (Wyatt) to chewing their Batman action figure (Reid).
“Boy,” the sheriff said. “Leave it to you smarties up in Franklin.”
Val opened her mouth to speak—possibly to say lake surfing had been invented in the 90s and only required Google to suss out—but Rick gripped her thigh. Higher up than he’d meant to.
She raised her eyebrows.
“For sure, later,” he said. To the sheriff, “It’s a rush. We’d be thrilled to have you out some day and show you how it all works.”
Rick Glasser meant this, though he possessed only a vague understanding of the boat’s mechanics himself. “But just now, as Val mentioned—”
“Three hundred.”
The sheriff grinned. On his well-whiskered face, it was a dark, digging animal.
Rick had heard rumors about Sheriff Ruston when they’d first explored buying a lake house in Kormville. He figured this for an under-the-table fine. “I—well, I’m not sure I have that sorta cash on—”
“Not a problem.” The sheriff plugged a chip reader smartly into his phone. “I can take a card. I can take Paypal.”
Rick fished out his wallet. A moment later they were speeding along highway 6 again, lakebound, his own phone chiming with an electronic receipt for his charitable donation to the Kormville Kats, the town’s famed youth baseball team.
#glassers #sheriffruston #kormvillekats
Read more:
www.jeffbondbooks.com/franklin-glassers/
www.jeffbondbooks.com/franklin-sheriff-ruston/
www.jeffbondbooks.com/franklin-kats/
Shoe-leather politics is alive and well in Franklin.
Hope Merritt stood with her hand on the doorknob, conflicted. The man on her porch was Chad Jortlesburg. He was running for state senate in the Franklin Heights district—those teeth gleaming at her through the door glass were unquestionably the same as the ones on the yard signs.
She liked the idea of prospective civil servants engaging with the people they hoped to serve, but she and Booker had a policy: no solicitors.
The kids were watching. Lydia around the edge of *Glory Be*. Booker Junior looked up from stacking blocks—he’d mixed the nice Haupe ones with the plastic ones from his grandmother.
In a blink, Hope decided the civics value outweighed the policy.
“Hello, may I help you?” she asked.
Jortlesburg thrust out his hand. “Here to talk taxes. You have little ones, I see. I’m running to make sure your family’s hard earned wages to to fund *your* schools, instead of those all the way across the Shawnee River.”
Lydia, nine, moved her book into her lap.
Hope regretted her decision already. “We don’t really have a horse in the property tax fight. We homeschool.”
The politician’s feet stayed on the Welcome mat, but he kinked his head back like she might be contagious. “That’s fabulous. Send your kids off to public, who knows what they’ll hear? I say keep ’em home. Hold those core values dear.”
He pulled fisted hands into his chest. Booker Junior shifted one arm around in front of his block tower.
At a coffee shop or candidates’ forum, Hope would’ve explained they didn’t homeschool in spite of public options. Lydia, particularly in the sciences, had accelerated beyond what Roosevelt Elementary could accommodate. Booker was only in kindergarten. He would’ve done fine at Roosevelt, but if she was already keeping Lydia home, why not give both children this close, intensive attention now—and send him to first grade that much readier?
She wasn’t at a coffee shop or candidates’ forum, though. She was home.
“I appreciate the visit, Mr. Jortlesburg,” she said, “and we wish you the best in your campaign…”
Hope groped for an out, some brush-off both considerate to the visitor and honest in her children’s presence.
“…but I’d like to save these conversations for another day.”
Jortlesburg’s well-coiffed head tipped like a stumped dog’s. He left behind a pamphlet and moved along to the next house: Mr. Barnacle, the retired industrial parts executive.
#merritts #jortlesburgForSenate
Read more:
www.jeffbondbooks.com/franklin-merritts/
www.jeffbondbooks.com/franklin-gochadgo/