Call Me Church

By Tinnean

Church Chetwood, renowned motion picture director, is given an ultimatum by his studio: film a movie with romance or else. Since this is the height of the Depression, and since Church enjoys eating, he reluctantly agrees. He finds a beautiful woman who’s willing to sail on the August Moon to the uncharted island of Iwi Po’o. While there, he makes the discovery of a lifetime, guaranteed to make them all millionaires ...

Only it doesn’t exactly turn out like that. The “discovery of a lifetime,” a saber-toothed tiger the press dubs Chetwood’s Kitty, breaks free and runs amok in Manhattan, causing death and mayhem. Months later, Church is facing indictment and a long stretch up the river and has no choice but to lie low until he can get out of town. While nursing his troubles in a saloon, he spots a young man who’s even more down on his luck than Church.

Johnny Smith has been on his own since Black Tuesday, four years earlier, and he does what he has to in order to keep body and soul -- what’s left of it -- together, even if it isn’t what he ever expected to do. He enters the saloon, hoping for a little warmth and perhaps a meal. What he finds is Church Chetwood, the director whose documentaries have fascinated him for years. Mr. Chetwood buys him that meal, and Johnny willingly goes with him to his rooming house, ready to do whatever Mr. Chetwood wants, even if Mr. Chetwood claims he isn’t “like that.” Is Johnny’s luck about to take a turn for the better? After all, Mr. Chetwood has a plan to get out of town, and if Johnny’s really lucky, maybe Church will let him come along.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Apr 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646563296

Tinnean

I’ve been writing since the 3rd grade. I was on the staff of my high school magazine, and then... I got married. There was a long interval when raising my kids took preference, although I would scribble sci fi, contemporary, or paranormal stories with very strong heroines. (This was before I discovered m/m. Don’t laugh, I led a very sheltered childhood.)It was with the advent of the family's second computer – the first intimidated everyone – that my writing took off. I discovered 1. Fanfiction; 2. m/m (yes, I know. Finally!); 3. the wonder that is copy and paste. Does anyone remember what typing up a manuscript on a manual typewriter was like? Okay then, nuff said.While I was involved in fandom, I was nominated for both Rerun and Light My Fire Awards. But even then, my original characters would come knocking, to the point I’ve left Jim and Blair, Rodney and John, and even Lyle and Mr. Taggart (Blazing Saddles) behind. I’ve been published by Nazca Plain, JMS Books, Dreamspinner, Wilde City Press, and Less Than Three Press, and now I’m taking the leap into the self-pubbing pool. My novel, Two Lips, Indifferent Red received honorable mention in the 2013 Rainbow Awards, and Home Before Sundown was a 2017 runner-up.Now I reside in SW Florida with my husband and three computers, but I’ll always be a Noo Yawk kinda gal.

Book preview

5

Chapter 1

Life during the Depression was hard. There wasn’t much to be happy about, to entertain us, so when Church ‘Chet’ Chetwood, the renowned film director, returned from the South Seas with what he claimed was the most astounding find in ten thousand years…well, everyone wanted to see it.

No one expected a throwback to the Ice Age to suddenly appear on Manhattan Island, and people stormed the box office to buy tickets.

I’d wanted so badly to go see the creature that was supposed to be extinct, but I couldn’t afford it. Well, most times I could barely afford to eat.

For once God was on my side, although so many others weren’t as fortunate. I wasn’t there when Chetwood’s Kitty somehow managed to escape from the theater where it was being exhibited.

The buildings along 42nd Street still bore splatters of dried blood from the path the giant saber-toothed tiger had taken. It had torn apart dozens of homeward-bound workers. Bodies had been disemboweled, decapitated, literally torn limb from limb. Cars had swerved to get out of the path of the infuriated creature. They’d run over pedestrians and had crashed into buildings, into the beams of the el, into buses, into one another.

A few days later, while I was scrounging in an alley, I’d come across the torso of a woman that had been somehow overlooked in the cleanup. Razor-sharp claws had shredded the shirtwaist she’d worn and the flesh beneath it, and the expression on her face revealed her pain and terror. I’d wheeled around and thrown up, although there had been little in my stomach.

The sabretooth had escaped to Central Park, and for three days the city was under martial law. That hadn’t helped the people who lived in Hooverville, in the drained reservoir. Six of them had been slaughtered before the Army had tracked down the sabretooth and fired enough rounds into it to bring it down.

I followed the story whenever I came across a discarded newspaper. The Daily News, being just a step up from a scandal sheet, had the juiciest stories. Its reporters told in gory, minute detail all the carnage that had descended upon New York City in those three days.

The survivors, as well as those who had lost loved ones, were among the many suing Church Chetwood, along with the city, the state, and the federal government, which was out to get him for bringing an unlicensed animal onto American soil.

However, no one knew where Mr. Chetwood was.

* * * *

It was a damp, drizzly evening. The street lamps had just come on, a faint glow misting like an aura around the lights, dimming them. I hadn’t eaten anything since I’d slipped out of the men’s mission early that morning, having taken advantage of the coffee and sinkers, but escaping the sermon that went with them.

Too many days with too little to eat were taking their toll, and hunger was gnawing at my gut again. All the missions were filled, and I didn’t have the thirty cents for a room for the night.

I didn’t even have a nickel for a cup of coffee and three sinkers at a hash-house.

As for the shantytown in the reservoir, no one was going there these days.

The Depression had caught me, as so many others, unaware—I’d only been sixteen in ‘29—and now, four years later…

I grabbed up a discarded newssheet and gave it a brief glance. A picture of Church Chetwood took up a quarter of the page, beside that of District Attorney Sheldon. The DA swore he would see Chetwood indicted for his part in the late disaster. I felt bad for the director. He’d been riding high before this had happened, and now—

A raindrop trickled down my neck, and I shivered. I couldn’t afford to stand here lollygagging. I folded the newssheet neatly and stuffed it into my right shoe, glad to spare pages from the Latin book the headmaster of the private school I’d attended had given me when I’d had to leave. The hole in the sole was getting larger and larger. Pretty soon I’d be walking on my uppers, and there’d be nothing I could do about it, not with winter coming on. The rain and snow would turn any makeshift patches to mush, and unless I was willing to roll a drunk—I hadn’t descended quite that far—scrounging up a decent pair of shoes was impossible; everyone was holding on to them until they were in the same condition as mine.

It had been too long since my last honest job, and I found myself doing things I would never have thought, dreamed possible.

I eyed the doubtful haven of the saloon and ran a sleeve under my nose, mopping the blood that was still seeping from it. The last place I drifted into had not welcomed me. The bartender was a bruiser of a man, and when he realized what I was willing to trade for a meal and a roof over my head for the night, I’d been lucky to make it out of there with only a flattened nose.

But I needed to get out of the November chill. My old overcoat was threadbare and missing buttons, so no matter how I hugged it to myself, I couldn’t prevent the night air from slicing through to