Death of The President: a historical fiction short story

Status: finished, edited, available to a good journal.

“Death of The President,” a historical fiction short story.

When freshly commissioned U.S. Army Second Lieutenant Jonathan Francis calls upon his Great-Uncle Boone Davis, in 1968, he does not imagine what the great old man will give him.

A burden of history.

Over brandy and cigars, Old Man Davis, once financial planner to a president and other rich and powerful people, tells the young officer a story of terrible deception and conspiracy, one that surely changed the course of the nation, if not the world.

“Death of The President” runs just under 5,000 words.

Excerpt:

“It was spring, 1945,” the old man said. Once he started, he took on a rhythm, as if this talk were rehearsed, waiting for this audience. “We were winning the war in Europe. The war in the Pacific was less encouraging. America was fatigued by war. The President’s party still had full control of Congress, but many members were revolting against him. The country was changing quickly. Unions. Civil Rights. A great shift in the economic balance. The President’s world was receding. He had just returned from Yalta, where Stalin had outmaneuvered him, and The President knew it. He was tired and ill.

“After he won his last reelection, The President asked me to restructure his private financial holdings and trusts, as if securing them for transference. His request was pretty comprehensive,” Davis said. “I was, in no uncertain terms, putting The President’s affairs in order.

“You see, on top of everything else, The President knew he was dying,” Davis said.

Francis dug in, rapt now.

“When I’d finished, he summoned me to the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia, where he had gone for therapy and rest. I was to show him what was done,” Davis said. “The President was sixty-three. This would be the last time any of us ever saw him.

“I was sixty-five then,” Davis said. “Jonathan, you need to know, I divide my life, my outlook on humanity, all that I once admired, all I trusted was true and real, on what happened next. For me, there was a before, and there is an after those days in Warm Springs.”