About Comfort Me

Written by Louis Flint Ceci

Print Information:
308 pages / 78000 words / 5x8 trade paperback
ISBN: 978-1-60370-554-7, 1-60370-554-6

eBook Information:
197 pages / 78000 words
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc
ISBN: 978-1-60370-584-4, 1-60370-584-8

Genre: Historical - United States 1960s

Age Range: 16 and up.

Fifteen years after his mother left town in disgrace, Malachi "Mally" Jacobs returns to Croy, Oklahoma to take care of his ailing grandfather. Outcast and abandoned, he knows nothing about his father, or why he and his mother left Croy shortly after he was born.

Mally is taunted by the older boys and shunned by his classmates. But after a few false starts, he forms an unlikely alliance with Randy, a football player with dysfunctional parents, and Joanie, an intellectually curious and courageous girl who cannot face the truth about her own family.

The three kids find a haven in each other that takes the place of their fractured families. But it’s a refuge that has its costs. Randy’s best friend, Red, harbors a jealousy that goes deeper than the loss of a football buddy, leading to ever more violent bullying of Mally. Randy’s abrasive run-ins with Joanie blossom into romance, even as he uncovers the betrayals that underlie her seemingly perfect family, and Joanie’s efforts to bring  Mally out of his shell seem on a collision course with her hopes for a steady boyfriend.

Ultimately, Joanie, Mally, and Randy must face the truth about themselves and each other, and take comfort in the bonds of true friendship.

Sample

Andy applied the brakes gently, bringing the car to a slow stop, and turned off the ignition. Then he just sat there, staring out the windshield.

“Why are we stopping here?” Susan asked.

He turned to look at her. Already, he could feel the rhythmic rumble, feel it more than hear it as it beat upon the water of the White Horse, reverberating on the long slow river like a drum. He didn’t say anything.

“Andy, it isn’t safe here,” she said.

“I want to know why,” he said.

She sighed. “It wouldn’t work. You know it wouldn’t.”

“No, I don’t know it wouldn’t,” he insisted. “Can’t we at least try?”

She turned to him. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing these past three months?”

He could see over her shoulder, could see the light moving among the cottonwoods, coming closer. “I know I wasn’t...” he started. Even now, he could barely get the words out. “I wasn’t all I should have been. But it was— I’d never done it before, is all.”

“No,” she said. “It’s more than that. I knew it the moment I saw the look on your face. I shouldn’t have...” She dropped her eyes. “It was wrong.”

“I can’t go back,” he said. He couldn’t keep the desperation from his voice. “I can’t face them, face your father, the whole town. Not with everybody knowing.”

“They don’t know. They don’t know anything.”

“With what they’re thinking, then.”

She looked up fiercely at him. “Who gives a damn what they think? There’s more to life than this small-minded little town and its drunks and gossips.”

“But don’t you see? It’s my job. I don’t know what else to do with my life without church, without the music.”

“Andy, you’re talented. You could make a living anywhere. Get out of here. Go to Dallas or Los Angeles or somewhere.”

“Your father—”

“To hell with my father.”

“If you loved me—”

She closed her eyes in exasperation. “Oh, Andy, don’t you see? I do love you. That’s why I can’t—”

The blast from the train whistle cut off her excuses and drove every other thought from her head. “Andy!” she screamed. “The car!”

“Marry me, Susan,” he said.

“Start the car!”

“Marry me.”

The whistle blew again. Her eyes went wide with panic. She twisted back and forth, looking at the on-coming train, looking at him. The train’s headlight framed her hair, making it glow from within like a halo. She screamed at him, but he was calm now, certain. “I’m not leaving here until you say you will,” he said.

“Are you crazy?” Her hand fumbled for the door latch, found it, flung it open. “Get out, Andy!” she yelled. “Get out!”

The whistle was blowing almost constantly now. The engineer must have seen them because a great metallic screech began to fill the night. “I’m not leaving here without you,” he said.

She dashed out of the car and ran as fast as she could a hundred feet or more, then spun around. “Andy!” she yelled. She could see him still inside the car, slowly shaking his head. She must have been yelling, but she couldn’t hear her own voice. The night was full of desperate blasts from the train whistle, the throbbing diesel engines, the scream of steel on steel.

And then the full force of the train hit him, glass exploding from the car as it was flipped on its side, pinned to the cab of the engine and dragged down the tracks, spraying white sparks and burning red cinders deep into the heart of the sleeping town. Susan collapsed in the ditch where she stood.

They said it was a miracle, that she had been thrown from the car and saved, and that God must have been watching over her for her father’s sake. She was too numb to speak. Then, when she began to show, they said it was a shame, and how maybe it had been a judgment after all, and what a cross it was for her father to bear. The lies were too thick by then for her to say anything. But when, one Sunday afternoon, she overheard them talking and laughing outside the hall and one of them said, “I guess we were wrong about that boy after all,” and the other one said, “Still, it’s a good thing her mother isn’t here to see it,” her anger found its voice. She told them all what she thought of their Christian charity and their high moral values, and she swore she would leave their God-forsaken town and neither she nor her child would ever set foot in it again.

It was a promise she kept longer than any other, nearly fifteen years.