The Man from
Sweet Loaf by G.Franklin Prue
456 pages
Published:
March 9, 2013
Format:
Paperback
Synopsis
I am hoping that crazy people run and sane people
hide as they read my novel The Man from Sweet Loaf . The story is about
Sam Murphy. He is a truck driver. He is a Vietnam era Veteran. He has PTSD,
but he can only see his father as a winged Gargoyle. This is related to war
veterans in every war. He falls in love with a Haitian woman, she belongs to a
powerful Colonel Labossier in the Ton-Ton Macoute; Sam Murphy has to fight this
man and his bodyguards. He enlists his brother who is a cop, Ray. However, with
Myrthe this woman is involved in the culture of Voodoo.
Sam Murphy in a major section, As the Gargoyle
sings to thee….this section deals with the relationship of his delusional
view of his father. Thus, this dialogue shows us Sam’s fear towards him.
Sam Murphy, finds the Colonel dead, and his Myrthe
free to be with him. But more definition to Sam and his past shows up on his
door. Petey-Pete comes back to the Eastern shores, and visits his old truck
driver partner. He is a major drug dealer from Florida, he is now a Rastafarian.
Petey-Pete is a symbol, he a Christ like figure for
our image of the crucifixion. Sam’s brother, Ray is searching for this major
drug lord. He is determined to get him. Sam has no idea of Petey-Pete being a
major drug dealer, thus on a Sunday, Sam takes his family to church, Petey-Pete
also attends. Ray spots Petey-Pete, shoots him dead on the church steps.
Sam goes to his dying friend, pulls out a book of
poems; dedicate to their life on the road. Sam takes his daughter and wife and
takes them away from this trauma, and leaves his past behind.
Excerpt:
The Man from Sweet
Loaf
A Novel By
G. Franklin Prue
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART ONE: Earth, Wind,
Fire 1
PART TWO: The Lady from Haiti 143
PART THREE: As the Gargoyle Sings to
Thee 276
PART FOUR: Crocker’s
Landing 391
PART ONE
Earth, Wind, Fire
1
The eagle never lost so much time as when he
submitted to learn of the crow.
–Blake, Proverbs of
Hell
Sunday, 22 August 1985. A kiss
and a noble ending was not meant for them as they awake in each other’s arms.
Mabel Friday, with brown rainbow sun hair, was just a child of jazz from the
sixties. A cool chocolate popsicle. Sassy woman. With a high heel walk that
would make you melt in five minutes. She rode out the sticky hot summer season
with her boyfriend Sam, who drove a dented-up red truck. He carried carpets to
new office buildings from a dusty-quiet city on the Eastern
Maryland shores, Sweet Loaf. He made his runs through the I-95
Beltway: D.C., Maryland and Virginia. They met like other children in
the past. On the street. Years after a war and the death of his soul in a Viet
Cong raid. Sam came out in broken pieces of a no-nonsense selfish man. He even
had the sailor nerve to paint on the side of his truck: EL, ZORRO.
Sam Murphy was a womanizer. A street gambler,
common sense, drinking man. She would do almost anything for this man of many
puzzling qualities. He was a hard man about living. Who wasn’t around most of
the time, which made their screwing just a Sunday handshake. Now his other
women didn’t make her mad and damn sure didn’t make her sad. Mabel knew she was
a good woman for any man. But with Sam, she was on this road a long time. A
long time. Cuddling, bouncing up in the back woods to the Sweet Loaf Carnival.
They both drank up a lot of gin with the radio turned up to James Brown;
begging for love on WKSL-AM Soul station. As they move behind the purple valley
city and white corner moon.
Folks forgave Sweet Sam Murphy,
you see; he had put it all in. He was one of the living dead who chain-smoked
from a face of a dark storm wind coming to the shore’s edge. Most of the time
he wore a greasy, pale blue golf cap on his head. Over wide brown, soft eyes
that took in the yellow-green day and sometimes another man’s wife.
Mabel gave him that lullaby
stare: Drugs, money or love over on the side of the road? Naw! She wanted
something else as she rolled her moon-shaped butt on the black vinyl seats of
the truck.
“Baby, what you want?” Sam
pleads. “Tell me! But don’t just sit there like a fly on a elephant’s ass.”
“I need another cigarette,” Mabel
said, scooting over closer to his ear. “Daddy.”
“Mabel, I just bought you some,”
he said. “Darlin’, you got’s to be supportin’ your own habits!” Sam got real
cruel. “Dey be cutting your tits off one of these days.”
“Sam, you don’t have to talk like
that to me!” Mabel lights up, gives him the pack back. “You a
thirty-two-year-old asshole!” She sucks in the smoke. Scoots away from him.
“Shit, man! As much as I give you.” She gazes out to the sights of yellow,
brown, burned summer alabaster leaves. Butchers in her dreams. “Maybe I’ll just
die before they cut dem off! Butcher bastards! Son-of-a-bitches cut my momma up
too! I ain’t never going to let them put the knife to my pretty tits!” She
grabs, and cuddles them. “Sam, feel these! Feel these!” Rolls her eyes, drags
hard on the cigarette. “Goddamn butcher men. . . that’s all the fuck they
are anyways!”
He knew it was the gin talking.
She was a sweet screw a sad, kissable, chocolate milk woman from the Sweet Loaf
woods. Sorry he put fear in her face. But people he cared about were sacred to
him, their lives a part of his life. Secure in his web. Made her think about
the knife her mother died under. Tender memories of a wife, a sister, a lover,
mother. He noticed pieces of her brownish-black hair fly behind her right ear.
Gold earrings flash. The ones he bought her for her birthday. He rubs a thumb
across her cheek to take the pain from her lips. He searches for that
blueberry-apple smile. He surrenders his love and forgiveness in the silence of
a dusty shoo-fly road. A wand over her heart. Summer madness concocted under a
hell-fire sun. A bead of sweat drips from her neck. Down her V-neck red dress.
When the truck shakes, her breasts jump, jiggle, pow, boom, wow in the dress.
He slows down over a dead squirrel. Dry red leaves crack under the tire wheels
that take up the space between their lives and the rest of the red clay, chain
gang road.
He squeezes up behind a Chevy
station wagon. Scares the hell out of a family man with his long-neck wife, two
kids and a standard size hound dog. Mabel laughs as the man’s horn curses Sam
out.
Sweet Sam became childish, high
with his Mabel. He put it all in; speeding sometimes. Crying, laughing and
flying. Smoking good dope. Sam was all mixed up with dog shit on a county road:
Route 87, to Bailey’s Cross. He sips his brown bag of gin from a paper cup. All
he cared about was the fire from a pretty woman in the middle of a lost country
road. Starve away the dream nightmares of a war. A wife, a son. He found Mabel
after. After a country lost another son…who cares? He was alive. Alive to
taste. Feel. Smell the sun, moon, stars from a woman’s panties. He had time to
hear the silence in his heart. Play the sax in the night. Kiss up an angel’s tears
that fell with the rain.
“We almost there, baby.”
“I know.” She puts his right hand
on her left breast. “And they going to stay there too.” She draws closer to
him. “I love you.”
“I’m sorry I scared you,” he
said. “You know that.”
“Yeah I know.” She teases him.
“Watch that pole.”
“I just love you . . . that’s
all.” He sticks his golf cap on his right knee. “I can’t stand somebody else
dying in my life, ’specially you.”
“You made that clear.”
Earth winds blow from east to
west.
Gas and fumes drift in their
noses. Sam looked over her eyes of blossoms and lips of red watermelon
lipstick? Yes! Yes! He wouldn’t give a fuck if he did die with her. It was
better than leaving in some war with dog-tags around your neck at nineteen. He
puts more gas on the pedal. Shifts some gears before she gets sick in the cab
of the truck. Hell! He knew she had to be tired. He didn’t look at her. He
counts to ten over and over. Before the sleeveless, tight red dress almost
makes him go right into a three hundred-year-old oak. Pleasant surroundings of
her French-blood perfume mixed in with the sun and gin. He got up the nerve to
see if she calmed down. Was she still looking for a fight? He throws an arm
over her bare shoulders. He takes one eye off the road to keep from hitting the
cows. Sneaks a passenger kiss on her cheek. He takes his arm from around her to
concentrate on the road, jazz and her rich cream thighs.
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BIO
When I was a little boy; I was sent to the library
as a punishment. My daddy use to joke with me that I was born in a library. Now
I am published author G. Franklin Prue. I was born in Washington, D.C.
I am also ex-military Vietnam
veteran. I am also teaching in Seattle
as a special educational Instructor. I have also worked as a government
Consultant for the Defense Department. I travel a lot to the Caribbean,
Central & South Americas. I have a BA in Political Science & Masters
degree in Education/Administration. My published novels are, A Year of Madness,
Mammie Doll and The Man from Sweet Loaf , all by CreateSpace/Amazon.com.
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