Last Train to Clarkdale

By Deirdre O'Dare

For Clay, always a misfit and bullied at school, contact with the railroad and railroaders in the small town where he grew up was a lifeline. He has gone on to a career in the industry, though not out on the track. Now an odd compulsion draws him back to his long departed home despite the painful memories he has of the place.

A chance meeting with Jon, a famous world-traveling scenic and wildlife photographer, results from Clay’s impulse, and the men end up sharing an afternoon’s tourist rail trip. Clay develops an instant crush on the beefy man, but what can a geeky clerical-type rail-buff offer a hunk like Jon, a self-professed and footloose lone wolf? Can Clay be satisfied with a brief, hot vacation fling? Or can mutual interest in trains and photography provide enough common ground to form something more between them?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Jun 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781634864169

Deirdre O'Dare

Deirdre writes gay romance channeling a prior life’s gay male twin she calls Danny. Fascinated by love’s diverse shades and guises, she explores and experiences a range of attachments. She still believes in happily ever after, that Love is the One True Thing and genuine Love is never wrong. For more information, visit deirdredares.blogspot.com.

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Last Train to Clarkdale

By Deirdre O’Dare

Published by JMS Books LLC at Smashwords

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2017 Deirdre O’Dare

ISBN 9781634864169

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Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

All rights reserved.

WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted.

No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission from the publisher, with the exception of excerpts used for the purposes of review.

This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

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This one is for Charlie—actually two Charlies. One is my brother who isn't gay but is a lifelong rail fan and career railroader who began that course much as Clay did. He's my tech advisor on all things about trains. The other is my first love, long gone but never forgotten, a one-time Santa Fe man…and someone without whom I probably would not be here today to write this and my other stories. Thank you for saving my life, dearest Dusty. Part of it will always be yours.

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Last Train to Clarkdale

By Deirdre O’Dare

Chapter 1

Late May

Central Arizona

Gliding down the gentle curves of I-17 from Flagstaff, Clay Cartwright almost drove on autopilot, watching the once familiar landscape unfold before him. They said you can’t go home again. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to, yet something seemed to be drawing him back. The drag of it felt as relentless as one of those tractor beams they spoke of in old science fiction tales. How many years had it been?

More than ten and nearer twenty…He had to be bloody fucking insane to go back and relive a minute of it. The memories that filled the oldest suitcase in his mental baggage were all ugly, weren’t they? And yet what he felt right now seemed mostly vague, gentle nostalgia, instead of the bitterness he thought would be there.

As he turned north toward the Verde Valley towns, he decided maybe that was partly because nothing was the same. Oh, there were the same ragged old hills, the unbelievably blue sky, some of the old run-down buildings mixed among the new ones…yet it still felt different.

Would he run into any of the guys he’d known in school, the ones who’d taunted him as Gay-Clay and made his life miserable? Or some of the older folks who’d known his parents and been as appalled as they’d been when he came out at sixteen? Still, he had to take that risk. He only knew he had to go back and come to terms with it all.

The old grade school looked derelict and decaying. They had new schools now, consolidated to serve the several small area communities, instead of the low-budget old ones for each locale. The middle school was gone—only a concrete foundation left. The old high school held some offices and a small shop or two.

He made a U-turn and headed down another road, the one that led to a favorite old hangout. The railroad station had never been much, a small frame building painted a dull mustardy yellow, but for him, it was paradise. He loved trains, always had. For several years, the high points of his week were the days when the local arrived, a Santa Fe manifest freight bringing in a variety of commodities to serve the somewhat isolated area, a few villages in a river valley edged by rugged mountains.

Smelling the diesel fumes, hearing the powerful rumble of those GP-9 locomotives and sometimes daring to talk to some of the train crew took him out of his misfit status. When a work train came in with crews to maintain the tracks or repair the bridges over the many arroyos that tended to wash out during the summer monsoon rains, he would hang out and watch, listen and learn. Those experiences had ultimately turned him to the career he followed to this day, a life inexplicably bound to the railroad industry.

He pulled into the parking lot, a much larger and better-maintained one than he recalled and looked around in amazement.