Abbie: historical romance

By John Blandly

In his first year of teaching at a small upstate New York college, Frankie DeFrancisco meets beautiful math professor Maisie Montcalm. One of her best friends happens to be Barry Freed. Except that's not his real name. His real name is Abbie Hoffman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AvantLifeGuard Books
• Release date: Apr 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386351375

John Blandly

John Blandly is an artist, actor, songwriter and filmmaker from upstate New York.

Book preview

ABBIE

by Jöhn Bländly

Copyright © 2018 by J.J. Brearton

AvantLifeGuard Books

All Rights Reserved

CHAPTER 1

I guess it’s safe to talk about it now. I knew Abbie Hoffman when he was hiding out in the Thousand Islands area of upstate New York. He was on top of the FBI’s most wanted list. This was at the end of the 1970’s.  Simpler times, I guess, when an anti-war activist could be in the top ten.

I was teaching at a small college in the northern Adirondacks.  It was located near the St. Lawrence River and the Thousand Islands.

Barely eking out a living, I was giddy with enthusiasm over my part-time job teaching classics in the small liberal arts program there.  I claimed I was a poet and an expert on Catullus.  Hey, anybody can be an expert on Catullus.  He only wrote about 40 short poems.

So, I was hanging by a thread even before they discovered some questionable nuances in my resume.  But until then, things were pretty good. 

I was getting coffee in the student center and deflecting some questions from another faculty member. She was very attractive.

So, where are you from? she said. We were in line at the cafeteria.

Far, far away, I responded.

Far out. 

Suddenly, I thought I had a soul mate.  I gathered my courage.

Care to join me for lunch?  I said.

She eyed me warily – squinted, in fact.

Okay, she said, cautiously.

I found a booth.

We were just getting our muffins settled when a bearded man walked by with a tray in his hand.

He stopped, looked at me and exclaimed, Francisco! Frank! Frankie, how are you?

The man was vaguely familiar.

Sorry, I said.  You must have me mixed up.

Mixed up?

The man was grinning as if he knew me.

John Blandly, Frank.  I know you’re John Blandly.  Or, you know John Blandly, he said.

Yes, I admitted.  I know John Blandly.

Well, how is he?

Good, I said.

Great, he said.  Tell him I said hello. 

He rushed off with his tray.

I was dumbstruck.  Nonplussed.  My colleague across the table hid her mouth in her hand, laughing.

Sorry, I said.  I don’t know who that guy is.

Well, I’ve got to run, she said, and in an instant she was gone.

CHAPTER 2

A few weeks later, while I was teaching a class, the man from the cafeteria walked in and sat down in the back.  At first I didn’t make the connection.  He sat quietly, fingering through a book that appeared to be the Catullus volume we were studying. He left with the rush of students at the end of the class without saying a word.  I thought he was just auditing the course, but there was something vaguely curious, not unsettling, but definitely puzzling about the whole situation. I just couldn’t figure it out.  I knew I recognized him, but from where?

The weird thing about it was that he seemed to be someone I knew from a long time ago. Grade school? College? After answering a student’s questions about the next class, I sat down in my chair for a moment to think.  The man was older, possibly not a student.  I was somewhat worried that someone from the administration was checking up on me.

My female colleague, I discovered after some investigation, was Victoria Montcalm, a math teacher.  Her nickname, I learned, was Maisie. 

Walking back from class that day, I saw her talking to the man who had sat in on  my class.  They were about a hundred feet away and didn’t seem to notice me pass by. They were taking some T-shirts out of a cardboard box and looking them over. The shirts were yellow and had the slogan Save the River on the front of each.

A few days later, I was in the library and heard a whisper.  It was a woman’s voice, trying to get someone’s attention.  Abbie! the voice said.  Abbie!

I heard a man say, Shhh. A moment later I saw Maisie and the man circling the iron stairway up from the stacks to the main floor of the library.

CHAPTER 3

As to the person who the bearded man in the cafeteria referred to, John Blandly, well, there are just some very bad circumstances associated with the nuances in my resume – which Maisie soon became aware of – that I don’t want to talk about.    Let’s face it; a person’s arrest record is his own business.

Reviews for Abbie

[Icy Rivers · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Historical fiction with romance at an upstate NY college. An instructor meets Abbie Hoffman's old girlfriend. They have a slight affair. Abbie is on the run from the FBI. Recommended.