By Phil Oakley
This is a brief excerpt from Runners, a new novel from Stoney Creek Publishing. “This gripping historical saga continues—a powerful story of resilience, family, and the price of ambition. Perfect for fans of epic generational tales and action-packed historical fiction.
Walter Oakley and his wife, Ada, used the westward expansion of America to establish themselves as model citizens in the town of Telegraph, Texas. Now, they watch in despair as their children lurch from one crisis to another—rum running, train-hopping outlaws, shattered dreams. With one child dead and another on the wrong side of the law, Walter and Ada struggle to keep their younger children on the straight and narrow. But trouble and temptation beckon as Prohibition and the Great Depression give way to the horrors of World War II. Will hope survive the chaos?”
Chapter 1 excerpt:
There’s not much fall in Telegraph, Texas. The heat and dust don’t give up easily. But when September came, five-year-old Ray Oakley tagged along with his brother Brooks for the first day of school. Ray, thirteen months younger than Brooks, wasn’t old enough to start school, but the amused teacher agreed to let him try first grade almost two years early.
That’s the way Ray was—restless and in a hurry. He couldn’t stand to wait, and Ray could never admit that Brooks, or anyone else, could do something better than he could. Better to let him get engaged in school, the teacher reasoned, lest he wind up like his older brothers.
Glenn was dead, and Ralph was who knows where. The rumors around town were that he was running liquor in Louisiana. And then there were the sisters, who already seemed headed for trouble. Everyone in town knew the Oakleys, and out of respect for Walter and Ada, no one spoke openly of how the children had gone astray. The teacher could only imagine the heartbreak that Ada had endured. So if young Ray wanted to come to school a year early, she was happy to help him find the straight and narrow.
But the youngest Oakley brother also became bored quickly. After three days tagging along with Brooks to first grade, Ray announced that school was boring, and he didn’t want to go anymore. No one objected. Competing in sports, whether on the schoolyard or anywhere else, was another matter altogether.
For years, the two Oakley boys played with a beat-up old football on the rocky ground in Telegraph. The loose, and not so loose, limestone surface was veined with traces of black dirt. But there was no denying that their games took place on a brutal field of play. Conditions like the ones the Oakleys grew up with along the South Llano River, those things were just normal aspects of Hill Country football. Teeth were knocked out. And several times, Walter, their father, had to take one or both boys to Junction to have gashes to their heads sewn up by the doctor. Nearly always, the cause of injury would be falling on a rocky playing surface. But the bruises, cuts, and knocks never dimmed Brooks’ dream. He was absolutely determined to run the foot- ball for the University of Texas Longhorns. The name Brooks Oakley was going to be in record books in Austin, no matter what it took, or how much he had to sacrifice.
When Ray restarted his education the next year, every hour spent in a classroom seemed like it would drag on forever. School was so boring. But as soon as the last bell rang, the boys flocked to the school playground, where the endless football games lasted until it was too dark to see the ball. There was never enough time for football. That part of the Oakley brothers’ life seemed to have zipped past at the speed of light; and in a flash, Brooks would become a high school running back sensation, turning heads across the state of Texas. It was a full school year before Ray could claim his spot on the roster of the Junction Eagles. Ray was on top of the world in high school so long as he was playing football. But when the season was over and the holidays were past, Ray gave in to boredom.
It was oppressing tedium that compelled Ray to boost himself into an empty box car on a Southern Pacific freight train parked on a siding in Junction. That freight would take Ray east to San Antonio, where he planned to catch a northbound MK&T freight train to Temple. From there he would sneak onto a Santa Fe freight train headed west to California.