Just released, A Flynn City Christmas. A place where gifts are the last thing on the list.
The second book in the series of The Flynn City Egg Man is another romp through Appalachia. This time it is Christmas, 1971. An eccentric peddler, a reluctant hero, and the rest of the gang meet up again in a town that is short on holiday magic.
Christmas is coming to Flynn City, and it seems everyone needs a miracle. Especially, the Flynn City Egg Man. His investment in the “Claser,” results in all of his assets seized and he finds himself broke. Angry, he takes it out on an iguana, in a town that worships the reptile. Now, he finds himself in a Mexican jail.
Sandy True, the local drama queen who orchestrated her own kidnapping back in Easter 1969 in the first book in the series is pregnant now, and her boyfriend Tyler Armstrong is about to be released from jail. Cuffy Landers returns back to Flynn City from college to spend winter break in the coal patch with his father, and to keep out of Tyler’s way. After all, can you really forgive someone who tried to kill you?
A major snowstorm strikes the area, and it will take more than one Christmas miracle to save a town already on the verge of dying. Will there be enough of them to go around?
Jenkins paints a holiday landscape of hope, inspiration, and a coming of age journey promising to take you back to a place in time that offers up Christmas in a brand new light. Recommended for adult and young adult reading.
Excerpt
Cyrus Flannery, otherwise known as, “The Flynn City Egg Man,” might just as well have been broke. All of the money from the auction of the antique cupboard at Sotheby’s was inaccessible to him. He found himself worse off now, than when he peddled his holiday goods back in Flynn City in Easter 1969. So much had changed since he left Flynn City. They froze his accounts, they held his assets hostage, and there was not a thing that he could do about it. He scoffed at a worn brochure on the table in front of him.
The late November sun beat down from the blue sky above him, and he wondered what the weather was like back in Pennsylvania. Today, more than ever, he wished he were there instead of Mexico. Now, he found himself stuck in this Mexican border town just south of Texas without a plan, and low on pesos.
He cursed the investment company silently from his rickety metal chair in front of the small cafe, and looked down at his worn red sneakers. He shook his head, and picked up the brochure from the table. Studying the old prospectus sheet sent to him by the company offering investors to hop on board, his sad eyes behind the lens of his black-rimmed glasses turned angry at his stupidity.
An oversized yellow sombrero perched on his sunburned balding head leaned slightly to the left. A bright and festive colored poncho draped his shoulders and covered his back like a cape. His hand crumpled the pamphlet into a ball, and he squeezed it imagining his chubby hands wrapped around the throat of the company CEO. The once smiling face on the front cover peered back at him crushed and wrinkled now.
Everything was seized, his condominium in Acapulco, the sailboat, and the money set aside for Cuffy Lander’s education. All he had left now was his red Cadillac parked around the corner in the narrow cobblestone alleyway to the side of the café. He only managed to keep it by being mobile, and moving around at night to hide it in different locations.
He slumped back in the chair, and remembered how the firm assured him that he couldn’t go wrong to invest his money in the new invention touted to the public as the “Claser Knife.” Even he… thought that it was a clever play on words, and combining the new-fangled technology of a laser beam on the tip of a carving knife to create, the “Claser,” sounded like a foolproof investment. It was tried and tested in their laboratories according to the pamphlet. It was gonna be huge, they promised. They even invited curious investors to Mexico City for a demonstration.
The thing worked flawless. It sliced through turkey, roast, and a ham the size of a basketball, all the while sealing in the juices with the hot, red, slender, beam of a laser. The greatest thing was it was cordless, and created enough energy to slice up a good-sized family ham in one charging.
A line of drool formed at the corner of his mouth just thinking about the ham slices so finely carved that day. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that the last thing he had to eat was a day old burrito, and that was yesterday just before he went to sleep in the backseat of his Cadillac. Being the car was the last thing he owned of any value, except for the house and old panel truck back in Flynn City, he stood up for a moment and glanced around the corner and down the alleyway to make sure it was safe and sound. Satisfied, he sat back down in the chair, and found himself once again thinking of his bad investment, and everything that transpired because of it.
“Thank God,” he muttered, the lawyers never found out about those two things back in Pennsylvania, surely the moneygrubbers would have taken those possessions too.
Now he knew why there were so many lawyer jokes, and every time he had the chance, he would ask people why rattlesnakes never bit lawyers. He’d wait, then smile, and then reply, “Common courtesy.”
The investment gave all the appearances of making him a very wealthy man until several users around the country on the first Thanksgiving of the Clasers new release ran into some major problems. There was the elderly gentleman in Vinegar Bend, Alabama whose shaking hand sent the laser beam whizzing above the hairline of his elderly wife. He nearly scalped her, and the incident led to him running off into the hills to live alone in an old teepee.
There were multiple reports of tables igniting when holiday cheer in the form of alcohol mixed with the Claser’s use. Christmas brought even more trouble for the investors when poorly aimed Clasers shot from dining tables and reflected off sparkling china only to strike decorated trees. Soon, the lawsuits began. Everyone who invested in the product became a target for the lawyers, and assets were frozen. They pulled it off the market, but it was too late.
He despised everything about Mexico now, and decided he would go back to Flynn City. Maybe he could peddle some Christmas goods from the back of his panel truck or sell Christmas trees. The Flynn City folks loved holidays, and especially Christmas. He figured that if he left today, he could be in Flynn City in four or five days at the most. He was thankful; he hid three hundred dollars under the carpet in the trunk of the Cadillac before the leeching lawyers entered the picture. That would get him home if he were frugal. His round face grew red thinking about his losses.
An iguana scurried out from some bushes near the sidewalk, and paused near him. The green and brown scales covering it reflected and shimmered in the sunlight. It moved closer to him, and appeared to enjoy the warm sun on its back. It spotted a small piece of an orange slice near the Egg Man’s red sneaker, and quickly moved to get it.
He directed an angry kick at the iguana. The animal hissed with an open mouth and then it scurried toward the safety of a green bush. The lizard poked his scaly head out from the green leaves and watched from behind the leaves. Plastered on the iguana’s face was a fixed permanent smile and it angered the Egg Man even more. He threw the rolled up ball of a pamphlet toward the reptile, and yelled loudly, “Beat it.” His loud voice caught the attention of two slow moving policemen walking the beat in the ramshackle barrio.
They strolled toward him and stopped in front of his table. The Egg Man watched as the two men spoke in quick Spanish to each other. The smaller one with a drooping mustache appeared to nod in agreement with what was said by the rotund taller man. The Egg Man figured the big guy for the boss.
They looked at him, and then, the bigger man pointed at a sign posted on the wall of the café. Painted in red letters on a beaten piece of plywood with a white background, the bold words shimmered in the Mexican heat, “No Moleste Iguanas.” The Egg Man looked at the sign, and shrugged expressing his ignorance without contempt. He smiled at the cops.
After being in Mexico for some time, he still knew little of the language. He held up his finger to motion for the men to give him a moment, and he slid a dog-eared copy of a pocket-sized Spanish/English dictionary from the front pocket of his loose fitting jeans. He nervously turned the pages, and struggled to find a response after quickly looking up the sign’s meaning. In English, the sign translated into, “Do not bother the iguanas.”
His lips moved in silent practice and his fingers hurried through several pages. He believed he had found the right words to express his ignorance of the law, and to offer up some form of apology to the men. He adjusted the glasses on his round, red, perspiring face, and cleared his throat. One thing for sure, he had heard enough war stories about Mexican jails back in Acapulco from the beach bum gringos, that he wasn’t about to make these guys angry.
Smiling wider, he looked up into the brown weathered faces of the two men, and blurted out, “Yo quiero que la iguana caiga en la trampa!” The two cops looked at each other with angry frowns. Unknown to the Egg Man, he had just proclaimed, “I want the iguana to fall into a trap.”
The bigger police officer squinted from under his dusty gray uniform cap and in broken English said, “Senor, here in Viejo Calcetines, the iguana is honored and revered much like an ancient King.”
“Honored?” The Egg Man forced a smile, adding nervously, “I didn’t know that.” His face took on a wondering frown. Who would honor a lizard? The Egg Man questioned the craziness of the custom, and found it amusing.
“Yes, Senor, it is true, and it is also against the law to litter our streets,” the police officer nodded in the direction of the balled up pamphlet setting near the smiling iguana.
The Egg Man swallowed, it felt as if his Adam’s apple stuck in his dry throat like a walnut. The smaller cop eyed him up, and then said something to his taller partner in Spanish. They giggled.
The big cop put his meaty hands on the table in front of the Egg Man, and leaned down saying slowly, “Senor, if you pick up your litter, and apologize to the iguana, we will let you off with just a warning.” He straightened up from the table, and fingered the scarred wooden handle of an ancient .38 pistol sticking out of a holster that might have been a surplus left over from World War One.
