BOOMER LIT FRIDAY BLOG HOP - Fri 26 April 2013
The Freight Train of Love
by John Klawitter                                                        
When true love comes along, you’re just a bug on the tracks.

I am author John Klawitter, and I’m presenting my novel The Freight Train of Love on the Boomer Lit Friday Blog Hop http://boomerlitfriday.blogspot.com sponsored by the Boomer Lit Group on Goodreads.com

The hero of The Freight Train of Love, the highly successful action-thriller novelist Jack Larch, was born in the thick of WWII, but even though he is a so-called boomer baby, he doesn’t see himself that way.  Jack thinks he’s found the fountain of youth.  With three or four wives behind him, Jack’s on-again off-again girlfriend of the past ten years is understandably hesitant to commit, even though she has a growing affection for the cranky old genius.  But Jack’s wildly carefree youth is now coming back to haunt him in violent and murderous ways…spelling disaster not for Jack himself, but for anyone showing they might be falling for him.

Here are a few lines from The Freight Train of Love:

 

His small study desk was the usual mess.  I paid his bills, gathered his checks for deposit and read his letters, which were mostly fan mail except for one.  This one must have slipped behind the others, because it was dated right after New Years day, the first week in January.  It was sad, in a way, because it was from the widow of an old army buddy, informing Jack that his friend had died.  See there, how little I knew about the Jack-ster!  He’d had another actual friend beside me, and I hadn’t even known it.  I stacked the open letters in a pile with the silver letter opener on top of them.  Jack would come up later in the day, put the letter opener on the shelf where it belonged and sweep the letters into the waste can without reading them. 

Hey, I was done!  I jumped to my feet and snapped off the green shade reading lamp on his desk.  Then I bounded down the stairs, headed for the door.  Free at last!  I could practically taste the orange Jamba Juice I was going to have for breakfast.  I paused on the way out.

“Can I drive your new bird?” 

“You can drive my bird any time,” Eddie chuckled, but I pursed my lips at him.  That wiped the quick grin off his face.  Eddie’d had his shot with me, and he’d blown it. 

I gave my voice that school-girlish, pleading tone, and push my full red lips into a sexy pout, “Please, Jack.  Please, please, please, please…?”

It was a good act, but Jack was definitely not in the mood. 

“No, Clair-Bear,” he growled at me.  “Christ, my new car’s a classic.”

I tossed my honey-blonde curls. 

“Jack, don’t be such a bastard.  It’s not new and it’s not a classic.”

“Marilyn Monroe owned that car, and she hardly ever drove it.  It was her personal car.”

“Jack, a couple days ago you put my car on life support.”

There wasn’t much he could say to that.  He sighed, “If you have to go out, take the Jag.”

I looked over at Eddie.  We’d developed our own language.  He did a little sideways tilt of his head and a brief squint of his face combined with a shrug that meant Let it pass.

“No bird for you, Clair,” Jack said again for effect. 

I gave Eddie another look, this one that said I was thinking I’d like to tell Jack where to stuff his bird.  But I pulled myself back from the edge, the way I generally did with the Larch-ster.  The cream-yellow Jag was a sweet little number in its own right (Jack ran around telling everybody it was once owned by one of the stars on General Hospital), and, after all, I needed a ride, and the Jag was light-years better than a taxi. 

“Oh, all right,” I told him, giving my voice just enough push so he could figure I was not amused.  I put on a show, flouncing through the study like I’d gotten a mad on.   My real aim was to make my getaway before Jack had time to change his mind, but then I remembered the letter from his dead friend’s widow.  I paused, framed in the doorway that led from the study to the great room, a huge dining hall with a giant fireplace and a long, heavy table that could seat twenty-six people if they owned the right film credits or maybe had been nominated for an Oscar.

“You got a letter from Miami,” I told him.

“The town sent me a letter?” 

I’ve already told you; Jack can be a real bastard.  I bit my lip, struggling to keep my temper.  “No, Jack.  The girl.”

“It’s Mi-a Mi-i.  Mia My.”  He repeated the name for emphasis, then paused, thinking about it.  “Jesus, now you read my mail?”

“I’ve read your mail for years, remember?  You let it pile up.  Checks from publishers, threats from crazy people—everything.”

“Yeah, yeah.  What did Mia My say?” 

Jack wasn’t really listening.  His mind was miles and continents away.  He was in the southern hemisphere, marching along with Dunk Stingray as the heroic fellow sauntered out of the barren Andes foothills after dispatching three Bulgarian assassins.

“Her husband died,” I told him.

I have no idea how those three words will affect Jack.  I was just passing on the news from a letter he obviously hadn’t cared enough about to open, even though it had been sitting on the cluttered oak secretary desk in his bedroom for months.  He was in another of his foul moods, I had his permission to use the Jag, and all I wanted now was to get out of the study before some other bad thing happened.  But I wasn’t fast enough.

Jack stood up with a sudden jerking motion and shouted without turning around to face me.  He was half-crouched over and his sudden piercing cry was that of a man with a big spear or stage-four cancer in his guts.  The harshness in his voice startled Eddie, and it was more than enough to freeze me in my tracks. 

“What?!  NO!!  It can’t be!! How?”  Jack screamed his anguish, talking more to God or the devil than anyone in the room. “How could this happen?!”

As I’ve said, I’d been around Jack for quite a while, competing with the fast young crowd that wants to hang with ‘the new Hemingway,’ as he likes to be called.  In that moment I’m sure I looked every bit my nearly thirty-six years…and more.  My eyes darted from Jack to Eddie.  I was feeling uncertain, and even afraid—not of Jack , but for him.

“Some rich kid lost control of his daddy’s SUV,” I told him.  “From what Mi-a Mi-i wrote, I think he saved her when he pushed her out of the way.”

Jack sagged back in his chair. 

“Yeah,” he said to himself, talking in a low, defeated voice, “That’s something he would do.”

I was staring at Jack, shaking my head, the fun sucked out of my day.  Eddie looked out the window and didn’t say anything.  I walked back across the huge open area and sat next to Jack in the leopard print chair I use when I have to over-the-shoulder proofread for him, and after a while I gently ran one hand through his unruly stand up hair.

“Jack, I honestly didn’t know,” I told him.  “You never write him.”

“I send Christmas cards,” he grumbled.  He glared at me as if everything was my fault, “Go do your shopping.”

I knew him well enough to let the thoughtless, abrasive side of his personality slide on by.  It was part of survival in The House of Jack.  I didn’t move.  I could hear the antique windup clock ticking in another room as the silence lengthened between the three of us. 

“What the hell, Jackie-poo,” I said after a while.  “I’ve got more purses than I know what to do with.”

 

 

To read the reviews on The Freight Train of Love:
http://www.amazon.com/Freight-Train-Love-Michael-Klawitter/dp/0983037213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363105591&sr=1-1&keywords=john+klawitter

And for more about the author click on: www.johnklawitter.com

And please check out the other samples of Boomer Lit at http://boomerlitfriday.blogspot.com.