The Great Northern Express Read Online Free

first leg of the Great American Book Tour. In the rear-view mirror, I could see Phillis waving from our front porch. Suddenly, I found myself remembering my first day of high school. We’d just moved again to the tiny, rural village of Cato, in the snow belt of central New York, where my dad had recently been appointed superintendent of schools. I was sitting in my homeroom when I looked up and noticed, coming through the door, arms laden with books, a pretty, slender strawberry blonde with the sweetest smile I’d ever seen.
    I soon learned that Phillis was the kindest, smartest, funniest girl in my new school. We began sitting next to each other in our classes, and my early adolescent attempts at fiction weresatirical portraits of our teachers written solely to amuse her. Later, when we began dating seriously, our romance had a delicious and, to us, mostly hilarious Capulet-Montague flavor, since Phillis’s mother was suing a politically controversial teacher my dad firmly supported, and our families were arch enemies. For a year or so, Phillis and I had to meet on the sly, stealing passionate kisses and laughing ourselves silly behind the walnut tree in her front yard. Today, however, these recollections threatened to derail me before I was out of sight of home. Ten seconds into my journey, I missed the light and love of my life so badly I could have burst into tears.
    â€œGet a grip on yourself, Howard Frank,” Reg said. He was sitting beside the front passenger-side door in what, from that moment on, I would think of as the catbird seat. “This was your idea, remember? A book tour is Murphy’s Law writ large. My advice is to brace yourself.”
    My uncle, the realist, was right. Over the next two weeks, during my New England “saturation tour,” I
    1. Received an e-mail in Blue Hill, Maine, from my publisher, informing me that the first national review of my new book had trashed it as a prime example of “storytelling run amok.”
    2. Learned in Boston that there’d been a good review of my novel in
Publishers Weekly
. “Too late,” said the gleeful critic in my head. “But look at it this way, Harold. Who wants to read something good about an author, anyway?”
    3. Was rebuked by a well-fed gentleman in a clerical collar in Northhampton, Massachusetts, for “contributing to the addictions of panhandlers,” because I slipped a buck to a young man with a cardboard sign reading HOMELESS AND HUNGRY . That same day the gas tank fell off the Loser Cruiser in Portland, and I had to bum a ride to my downtown event in a commercial bread truck.
    All in all, the Great American Book Tour was off to a shaky start.

9

More Woes of a Touring Writer
    The chain bookstore, not far from Boston, was located in a large mall, the sort where you can buy everything under the sun and nothing that any sensible member of our species could conceivably need or might actually want. I could find only one vacant parking space—right in front of the bookstore, as it happened. And glory be, as I heaved down upon it in the clanking old Loser Cruiser, hunkered behind the steering wheel in my ancient Red Sox jacket and cap, the once red “B” above the bill long since faded to the same rusty hue as my car, right in the middle of the parking slot I spotted a stand-alone sign: AUTHOR’S EVENT TODAY. THIS SPACE RESERVED FOR HOWARD FRANK MOSHER .
    Leaving the Cruiser running—the remnants of the wired-on exhaust system sounded as loud as a jet engine through the crevasse in the floor under the brake pedal—I got out to move the sign.
    Out from the big-box store, at a purposeful clip, came a young gentleman in a black suit, black necktie, and highly polished black shoes. Around his neck hung an ID badge proclaiming him to be the manager. Good Jesus! The guy was a dead ringer for a painting I’d seen recently of Genghis Khan in his twenties.
    â€œHey!” he