NEW PUBLICATION
A Chestnut Point Story
The Black Jellybeans EPISODE ONE
by Jackson Tel
Historical Fiction with a Whimsical Twist
When Jim Eberton, the heir apparent to the Eberton family fortune in Baltimore, finds out that he is part-Negro he asks himself, “Who am I truly?”
Jim grew up under the thumb of his overbearing, narcissistic grandmother, Prudence Eberton, the Queen of Baltimore High Society, who acts like she owns him and tries to control every aspect of his life.
Jim has a lifelong best friend, Nelly, a burlesque actress known as the Sensational Miss Jones. Though very bright, Nelly has great difficulty with reading and writing. However, when it comes to remembering and reciting what she hears, Nelly is phenomenal. The quirky actress is a busybody, always always sticking her nose in other people’s business.
In EPISODE ONE of The Black Jellybeans, Jim is facing imminent bankruptcy if he doesn’t get rye whiskey tycoon Craig ‘Money Bags’ Bigg to sign his John Hancock on the bottom line of the investment contract that very afternoon. But events are conspiring against him.
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Excerpt One:
The report stated that a railroad switchman named Edmund Jessup found a whimpering toddler splattered with blood, sitting next to the woman’s body. Gripped in the child’s hands was a loaded pistol, which, when taken away from him by Mr. Jessup, smelled strongly of spent gunpowder, like it had just been fired. Mr. Jessup, who had served as a foot soldier on the Union side during the war, immediately recognized the weapon as a Griswold and Gunnison Confederate Army revolver, the long, lethal barrel of which he had once stared into during a battle and lived to tell about it.
‘What if I killed my own mother?’ Jim asked himself, stunned by the immediate impact this question had on the very core ot his being.
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Excerpt Two:
After helplessly watching one of his headliners single-handedly cripple the production during the very last rehearsal before opening day, Lorenz, who wore a monocle and a beret for effect, walked directly up to the stage via the orchestra pit. He was so tall that his chin came up to the deck. He beckoned Nelly over to him by crooking his long, bony index finger at her.
Obeying his directive, Nelly squinted downward through the dusty glare of the forestage lights. She was taken aback by how ghastly his seemingly disembodied head looked. “Yes, Sir?” she tremulously responded.
When the ghoulish countenance with one blinding glassy eye, the other covered by a dark patch of shadow, wrinkled up its nose, Nelly saw that it had made a bad mistake trimming its handlebar mustache. One side was sorely mismatched with the other.
She wanted to run to her dressing room to grab a pair of scissors. ’That mess has to be fixed, immediately,’ she thought.
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Read-FREE-Flipbook-1906-The Black Jellybeans PROLOGUE
Contact: jacksontelstories@gmail.com
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