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FREE PREVIEW "THE ROAD WILD"

Introduction

A small fire of Juniper and Cedar illuminate these pages as I write. The fire is small, but very hot. The wood almost sublimes upon contact. Wisps of smoke curl around the wood. It blows in my face. I choke and flap my hand in front of my face but it doesn’t help. I move my chair over a few feet instead. In less than 4 seconds the smoke has found me again. I move my chair a few feet in the opposite direction. The fire licks out in bothdirections at the same time. I quickly retreat to the van amid a cloud of smoke and slam the sliding side door. I wave away the last bit of smoke that has slipped into the van with me and sit down. I watch the fire through the window.

I think about my first road trip: Pennsylvania to the North Carolina shore in a brand new 1969 Volkswagen bus painted this sort of obnoxious yellow-green color that worked for the Volkswagen but would have looked horrible on anything else. I was 12 years old. It was the middle of July. I lay full length in the third seat – something few cars had at the time – and let the wind from the open window buffet my face as my hair went everywhere. It smelled like summer. The sun spilled in with a comforting warmth. One single sunbeam fell on my closed eyes. I smiled. Up front my father played the harmonica as earnestly as he could but for my older brother and sister who were both in their teens, it was just something else to make fun of.

Later in the waning afternoon, we pulled over at a wayside picnic table somewhere in southern Virginia and cut up a watermelon. All the trees had hanging moss reaching for the ground. I had never seen that before. I watched in fascination as clumps of the Spanish moss, looking more like long, un-groomed beards, waved in the breeze.

We stopped for the night in Nag’s Head, North Carolina. It was after 9 PM and we still hadn’t eaten dinner. We had been driving forever it seemed. We ate at a roadside shrimp shack that was just about to close. I sat at the empty counter, my feet barely reaching halfway to the floor, happily swiveling back and forth. The rest of my family sat in a booth. A guy in the back put some shrimp into the fryer. I heard the hot oil sizzle and spit loudly. Best shrimp I ever had. Afterwards, we walked on the beach before going to our motel. I could have stayed down there for hours, recklessly and carelessly dodging between the waves in my bare feet and my rolled-up dungarees. I had never seen the ocean before either.

The next day we took a ferry from Cape Hatteras to Ocracoke Island, one of the remotest islands in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We rented a cottage on the beach and I swam in the blue water all day long with my brother and my sister while my mother and father went netting for blue crab. Each night, sunburned and dripping wet, I’d stand on the front porch, a long, thick towel wrapped around me and look between my fingers through the kitchen window as my mother took the crabs out of the plastic bag they had put them in, and plopped them, one by one, into a big pot of boiling water. I never watched this part. It made me sick. I cringed with each PLOP! but my brother and sister loved every moment of it. They rolled around on the living room floor, providing loud, sarcastic screams for the doomed crustaceans as they splashed helplessly in the steaming water.

I passed that summer one minute at a time against the backdrop of the bright wash of the sun, the gentle crash of the ocean waves, and the flowery, tropical smell of suntan lotion. Life became condensed into simple things. Time seemed to move more slowly. I would spend an entire afternoon lying on my back in the warm sand and just watch one particular cloud that I would pick out as it made its way from one edge of the sky to the other. Or I would patiently sit in the sand beside a Fiddler Crab hole and wait for the crab to show its face. Or I would race the sandpipers down the beach and only stop when I caught up with them – which I almost did one time – or until I was out of breath.

The summer seemed to last forever. Of course, it didn’t.

A glint of bright light catches my eye and I roll the van window down and take a closer look at the star-filled sky. I think I can actually make out the cluster that comprises the Milky Way Galaxy. It’s like a long trail of high cirrus clouds stretching from one end of the horizon to the other. On other nights I have seen Mars and what I believe to be Jupiter. Jupiter or Venus. Venus tended to be whiter than Jupiter’s yellowish shade so it was fairly easy to tell them apart.

This is how I have decided to live my life; or conversely, this is how life has chosen for me to live. My van is my home and I wander pretty much unencumbered from road to road and place to place, just so I canstare at the stars during the night and watch the strange and eerie shadows that the Juniper and Saguaro cactus make on the desert floor. Or so I can lie anonymously in a small stream in a hidden canyon the entireday, completely complacent, while little water falls rush over my shoulders and the sun beats my skin from white to red to brown. Or so I can drive to a mountaintop in Colorado or Oregon, alive with spring snowmelt and budding wild flowers, and sing with the Aspens and Douglass Fir as they whisper their windy song.

This is a story about finding myself but it is also a story about letting go, as I seek my own refuge in the asphalt and the stone, and the forests and the deserts that lie beyond.

Carl Flamm

Colorado, 2018

1

PORTLAND, OREGON

I Buy a Van

It was early Friday evening. One of the car dealerships that I had been talking to while looking for vans rang me for the fourth time in a half-hour. I hadn’t picked up the previous three calls; I refused to let a car salesman push me around this time. I always jump too soon and never wait for the better deal. This time I was determined not to be that guy. I told myself if you get the van, you get the van. If you don’t, you don’t. But I didn’t trust myself and that was why I hadn’t answered any of the salesperson’s calls. But I picked up on the fourth call, not out of fear of losing the deal, (though I had been obsessing about it a littlebit) but because I wanted to go to bed soon and this lady was just going to keep calling so I thought I might as well deal with her now.

She seemed delighted when I answered.

“Oh, I have some wonderful news for you, Mr. Flamm! We got your car payment down to where you wanted. I told you we could work miracles! Sometimes we are in possession of special coupons that entitle us to give just enough help to good, deserving people. I was able to secure the only available voucher and I need you to come down to the dealership right now so you don’t lose this voucher.”

“Right now?” I queried.

“Well we can’t legally hold the vouchers. We have to give them to people who are ready to buy by the deadline and this voucher expires by close of business today. That why I wanted you to come down because I know how much you love that van and all your travel plans and it would just be a rottenshame if you couldn’t get it financed because you didn’t have the voucher.”

I knew that the whole coupon thing was just a ploy. And the saleslady had to know that I knew. So I decided I wasn’t going to be that guy who jumps at the mention of a bunch of bullshit either.

“Damn!” I said. “That is such a shame. I was really interested in that van.”

“I know you were!” she cried emphatically. “Why don’t you come on down and lets get this thing taken care of for you before the opportunity slips away.”

“You know that I haven’t even seen the inside of the van yet, right?” I said, “let alone driven it?”

“Well come down then and we’ll take it for a test drive,” she shot back quickly.

“It’s almost dark out,” I said. “Look I feel a lot of pressure right now and I don’t like it. I had intended to come to your dealership tomorrow and take the van for a test drive and if I liked it, then buy it. But if you have to give the voucher to someone else tonight,” I said smugly because I knew the score. “I completely understand. Maybe some other time. Have a good night,” and I ended the call.

I waited a few minutes to see if she would call back with a counter offer, but when she didn’t, I put the phone down and started to do other things. I was feeling a bit disappointed that I wasn’t going to get the van, but I was proud of myself and how I handled the situation despite my desire.

Then the phone rang.

“Are you really serious about coming in tomorrow?” she asked quietly, her tail obviously between her legs.

“Absolutely,” I said.

“What time?”

“What about the voucher?” I asked, somewhat sarcastically.

“I told my sales manager that you were coming in first thing in the morning and he said that I could hold onto the voucher until then.”

“Of course he did!” I declared. “What a great guy!" One can only take so much horse manure.

For the first time she was silent on the other end of the line.

We said our good byes, agreeing to meet promptly at ten the following morning.

As it turned out, naturally, there was no voucher. It was simply a rebate that the car company had put on certain vehicles and the rebate was available at any time, for anyone, for the next three months.

At any rate, despite my salesperson’s blunders and half truths - like when she walked by me nonchalantly while I was waiting for the final paperwork and said “Oh, by the way, we can’t give you eighteen for your trade-in. But we can give you thirteen and you still get that wonderful lowpayment!” She smiled and walked into her office. Thirteen? I fumed. But I didn’t feel like arguing. With the deal almost complete, I was not going to throw a monkey wrench into all my plans. I was still in shock that someone was willing to finance me at all at this point in my life. So I decided to buy the van. It was the make and model I wanted, had all the extras that I needed – except for navigation, which was strange – came at a decent price, and most importantly, it wasn’t white. Every big van on the road was white. It didn’t matter who manufactured it. It was like going to a Tastee Freeze, craving a chocolate cone, and all they have is vanilla and it just so happens that vanilla is your least favorite flavor. Not only is it your least favorite flavor, you actually deplorevanilla. You get the idea. My van was dark grey – actually the sticker called the color Granite– and I loved it! Now I just needed to learn how to drive it.

NEW RELEASES

"The Last Drug Addict" is taking longer to finish than I thought, but I am finally on a final draft. Look for its release on Amazon, Kindle, and iBooks sometime in the Spring of 2019.

I am also working on a non-fiction account of my travels around the country in my recently converted  van/camper called "The Road Wild" which I hope to finish by Summer of 2019.

I have created links to preview both books.

If you are looking for other reading fodder for your brain while you wait, you might enjoy my "Welcome to Hell" series as well as "Higher Definition", a humorous look at social conditioning and how people view the world it colors.

Until then,

Happy Reading.

FREE PREVIEW "THE LAST DRUG ADDICT"

8:15 A.M. MONDAY, MAY 10

They came from all walks of life.

Factory workers, car salesmen, theater projectionists, sous chefs, television producers, phlebotomists, telemarketers, librarians, sanitation workers, electricians, hotel managers, website creators, exotic dancers, photographers, marriage counselors, elementary school teachers, clergyman, cab drivers, supermarket clerks, meter maids, candy stripers.

Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Roman Catholics, Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Scientologists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Mormons, Buddhists, Mennonites, Pagans, Atheists.

Male or female, six or sixty, blonde or redhead, right-handed or left-handed, college educated or uneducated, implants or no implants, intelligent or stupid, black, white, or brown, homosexual or heterosexual, short or tall, skinny or fat.

They came from places named Peoria, Illinois, Daytona Beach, Florida, Bend, Oregon, Winnemucca, Nevada, Athens, Georgia, Marshall, North Carolina, Grand Junction, Colorado, Wenatchee, Washington, Sitka, Alaska, Monroe, Louisiana, Provo, Utah, Homer City, Pennsylvania, Chickasha, Oklahoma, Corpus Christie, Texas, among a legion of others.

They shuttled to ships named The Niña, The Pinta, The Santa Maria, The Don Juan, The Charles Darwin, The Mark Twain, The Mayflower, The Bounty, The Enterprise and The Millennium Falcon.

Every country had at least one ship – more if they had a high enough population to justify it and the resources to pay for it - and if some countries couldn’t afford it, other countries helped out. They all tried to work together. The United States had ten ships, India fifteen, China twenty-two. Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan shared one ship. So did Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia. They had room to spare so they invited Thailand to join them. Russia could have built thirty but they only built twenty. The requirement rules for entry were different for each country. Apparently Russia intended to leave some people behind.

The Americans had picked We’ve Only Just Begun by The Carpenters as their voyage’s official theme song, just to help boost moral. The Americans didn’t know if any other country had also chosen an anthem for their voyage.

The journey to the ships, parked just outside the Earth’s orbit would take just short of two hours, however the trip to the final destination would take three hundred and fifty years. That was a long, long time to listen to any Carpenters song.

Of course several people were illegally and informally muscled out of going due to one political purpose or another, some people missed their scheduled shuttle take off flight for a myriad of reasons, and a few people elected to remain behind of their own volition.

8:15 A.M. WEDNESDAY, MAY 12

Big Mike, aka, Medicine Mike, aka, Mike the Man, aka, Mister Video stared at the security camera that stealthily watched over the Shop-n-Save prescription department then laughed and easily vaulted over the customer counter.

“I’m here to pick up a prescription,” he called in a cheery sing-song voice but nobody was behind the counter to hear him. “If you don’t mind I’m just going to grab a few things here and there.”

He walked down the first aisle of shelves in the room, marveling at all the different sized white bottles that filled the shelves like cans of soup and vegetables stocking the metal racks at the local Bi-Lo. Or books at a Books-a-Million, ordered alphabetically or by popularity. Bestsellers up front. Always.

His eyes wandered as he walked; top to bottom, side to side. He had no idea how these things were stored and unfortunately for him there was no one to help him find what he was looking for. But that was a good thing. If someone had been there to show him around then there would be no Video Mike Drug Shopping Spree today.

So he walked slowly, taking the time to read the label and dosages. If the label said something that he didn’t understand, fuck it. He’d take it anyway. He’d sort things out later.

No time to waste. He intended to capture a myriad of drugs on this morning’s safari:

Oxycodone, thirty milligram minimum. He wasn’t going to waste his time on fives or tens. He didn’t have to and damned if he was going to. He was Video Mike, king of this fucking pharmacy, and every other pharmacy in town, and as far as he knew, king of every fucking pharmacy in this entire country.

His eyes scanned the shelves. Morphine sulfate, Valiums, Fentanyl, Codeine, Klonopin, Xanax – yeah, he was going to need a shitload of those. But wait! What was he going to put them all in? He had forgotten a basket.

He leaped back over the counter and ran to the front of the store where he found a stack of baskets next to a checkout stand. He started to grab one but then realized with incredible foresight that he was going to need a buggy to get all this shit out of here. So he snatched the first cart he saw and haphazardly rammed it back down the isle toward “prescriptions” like a 747 taxiing in for a rough landing. He lifted it up, practically threw it over the counter, and then immediately followed it, head over heels. He hit the floor hard but he didn’t give a shit. Nothing was going to put a damper on Mike the Man’s drug blowout sale!

He steered the buggy back to where all the sterile white containers lined the shelves and dumped his previous inventory of valiums and such in a clamber, including the five 1000 COUNT BOTTLES OF OXYCONTIN that he found almost immediately in the front of the first shelf. Bestsellers up front. Always. Now he didn’t have to mess around with Percocet, Hydrocodone or Oxycodone, all total lightweights in comparison.

Then he thought: Okay, amphetamines. Ritalin, Metadate – oh yeah, a lot of Black Beauties for sure. Some crosses and hearts, Vitamin-R. The wheels of the cart squeaked as he inched his way down the aisle. He reached up and corralled several bottles at once with his entire arm and swept them into the cart.

When he was satisfied that he had at least enough to last him a few days, he began looking for depressives for when he was having that not so fresh feeling. And there they were, so medical looking with their clean, white bottles and precisely printed labels. Barbiturates like Phenobarbital, Ambien, and Lunesta. And then there were always the prescription strength cold medicines that weren’t sold over the counter without a prescription like cough syrup and decongestants containing dextromethorphan.

By 10:45, Video Mike’s prescription extravaganza was just about winding down.

He ducked under the counter, dragging the buggy behind him, and pushed his load to the front of the store. He sat at a checkout stand to rest for a moment. He thumbed through the checkout tabloids while he munched on a Slim Jim. The National Star said that meth and heroin were making a strong comeback. The cover of the tabloid had a big picture of some generic-looking loser shooting up. Next to it was a picture of a shuttle. There was a big red ‘X’ slashed across the addict. The message was clear to Big Mike: none of that shit allowed on board. It didn’t bother Big Mike because he wasn’t going on any shuttle and he had never touched meth, heroin, or crack before and had no desire to do the drugs now.

But no matter. If you didn’t like pears, there were still plenty of apples in the orchard.

Which reminded Mike. He had to start going through all the houses – probably the ones closest to his street first – to see what everyone had left behind. How many stashes of cocaine and ecstasy mollies were just lying around, ready for the taking? How many barrels of Marijuana bud – bud so sticky and supercharged with 25% or more THC content stuffed into Hefty garbage bags and hiding in people’s closets, under their beds, or behind their couches?

All good questions. All good questions Video Mike said to himself and he was absolutely certain as he wheeled his cart out the smashed front door that he would have all the answers he wanted in due course.

11:10 A.M. WEDNESDAY, MAY 12

Big Mike, Ballbuster Mike rammed his drug-filled shopping cart through the asphalt parking lot. He had swallowed a handful of Vicodins just before leaving the store and they were already starting to kick in in a big way. Going way too fast for his declining condition, he smashed his cart into a parking berm and almost careened into the rusted underbelly of a city bus but managed to check himself at the last second. As it was, he still half-skipped twice on one foot and swung his arms wildly trying to regain his balance. It all happened in slow motion to Video Mike and he heard himself yell as gravity slapped him to the ground like a soggy prune.

This is what Mike shouted: “NO CRACK ALLOWED! and then he was skidding on the blacktop on one knee in a kind of half-assed rock and roll power slide, ripping a patch of blue jeans away and tearing a chunk of skin and flesh away from his knee as well.

After that he just laid back in the parking lot. He heard the shopping cart bump into something and come to an abrupt stop. He reached down and touched his knee and his hand came away with some blood and dirt. After resting for a few minutes he sat up so he could get a better look at his knee. It wasn’t too bad, he thought. Not anything he couldn’t handle with a few Band-Aids and another handful of Vicodins.

Then he got dizzy and threw up.

He laid back down on the blacktop and promptly passed out. Soon he was snoring.

By the time he woke up and was ready to give it another try, three hours had passed and half the afternoon was gone. The sun hung raggedly as it slowly began to steal behind the Shop-n-Save.

Gingerly, Mike got to his feet, gagged at the smell of the vomit covering most of his shirt, then limped over to where his shopping cart had come to a rest against a car.

This hadn’t been the first time he had gotten sick and Video Mike knew that it certainly wouldn’t be the last, but he also knew the sickness of withdrawal was a nefarious beast like no other and he sure as hell wasn’t ever going to go through that again.

And this time he wouldn’t have to.

2:00 P.M. WEDNESDAY, MAY 12

Back before everyone had left, Mike had worked in a video store, renting out Disney classics to twelve year olds and porn to all the old guys who would hobble in around seven. Apparently seven was the masturbation hour for these guys and while all the little kiddies were at home, snuggled with their fluffy pillows on the rug, watching flying dragons or talking ants on wide-screen televisions with their brothers and sisters, all these old guys were pounding one out in front of their old CRT 19” Zeniths to women with ridiculous names and sagging, worn-out bodies.

Occasionally, on some days, Video Mike would get a visit from a film aficionado or at least someone who fancied himself or herself as one, and they would get in some decent discussions about direction and cinematography. Mike adored days like that.

Mike knew a lot about movies. They didn’t call him Mister Video for nothing.

Mike had gone to the Full Sail Film School in Orlando, Florida to learn how to be a film director. He had wanted to attend the American Film Institute in Los Angeles but since he already lived in Florida, Full Sail it was. He would have finished too and gotten a degree and made contacts within the industry and had been told by his instructors that if he got in with the right people, he could ride that ticket all the way to heaven. But then there were the drugs and alcohol that followed, even more heavily than they had before. He blew his chances. Everyone of them.

But then some say Jesus came to them in a dream, or Buddha, or Mohammad, or their God of understanding, each different for each person, squawking louder than Chicken Little himself, saying that the Mark Twain or the Charles Darwin or the Mayflower were our only saviors and how the Earth was going to burn in a fiery hell storm and no one would be spared. Mike never once had this Jesus dream but he went to bed so heavily sedated every night that he doubted that he even had one R.E.M. cycle while he slept. It didn’t surprise him that he didn’t dream. Soon it became a kind of mass hysteria and then not long after, NASA scientists actually backed them up and confirmed this. They never quite said whether it would be a asteroid collision or not. They just said that it was true and that we all needed to leave now and that was all we needed to know. And there was room, they said. There was more than enough room. For everyone. Every country had built generation ships, some more than others, and the Mark Twain was one of theirs.

Then they all left. Just like that. Preparations had been made far in advance, Big Mike suspected for it appeared that the powers that be had known for quite some time about this future incident. Years. Maybe decades. They had been prepared.

Video Mike decided to stay. He knew that he couldn’t get high where they were going and he didn’t want to go anywhere that he couldn’t get high and besides if everyone else was going anyway, that left an awful lot of cheddar lying around for him to pluck like a Thanksgiving day turkey. He supposed some others had made the same decision, maybe even for the same reasons, or had missed the boat because they had been too fucked up to make it, but so far he had seen no one else.

At least not in his town.

"THE LAST DRUG ADDICT" STILL ON TRACK

Just wanted to give you a quick update that I am hard at work finishing the first draft. I am taking extra time with this one because I feel this story really deserves the best I can give.

Please be patient.

It will probably be ready for publication by summer 2018 if all goes smoothly.

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TLDA - BACK ONBOARD

After shooting blanks for three months, I am finally back onboard with "TLDA."

Can't tell you when it will be done but in my humble opinion it's good and it's getting better.

I think this one is definitely worth waiting for.

If you are fan, thanks - I haven't forgotten about you.

Please hold on a bit longer.

CF

IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

I have been struggling to get "The Last Drug Addict" done because I have two future book ideas jostling about in my head like a bag of unattended marbles.

That's good and bad:

Good because it means that I won't be running out of ideas any time soon and that really is a good thing because a person can think of a thousand stories but how many of them are stories that you guys want to read? Some times this stuff just comes easily to a writer. Other times they have to work their butts off to come up with an entertaining yet meaningful story.

But it's bad because I am am using head drive space on these new stories when I really need to put all my energy into the book at hand.

And i really love the story behind TLDA and have so enjoyed writing it so far. Its been one of those books that's been a blessing and a curse (as most books are) because so far it has told me everywhere that it needed to go, but i got soft as a result and now i have to scratch a bit harder to make those words, sentences, and pages appear.

But there is definitely light at the end off the tunnel...

A FEW BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok.

My Name is Asher Lev is a wonderful story and study of religious traditions and how far a young man will go to pursue his art while remaining respectful to those traditions. It is very well written and heartwarming.

There is a sequel titled The Gift of Asher Lev which is also very well done.

I would also recommend The Chosen and The Promise, also by Chaim Potok, another look at religious traditions and how different people choose to communicate within the parameters and confines of that religion and its personal ramifications.