Torn and Frayed
(Another Gabriel Church Tale)
Rodd Clark
Character Profile
Gabriel Church is 36, was born in Kentucky, and is a drifter. He’s toned and big, sexy and dangerous: the anti-hero of the series and dresses rough and casual. It is his body that attracts not the denims and flannel and t-shirts he is accustomed to wearing. But if there was one thing that anyone would remember about Gabe is his eyes: pale-blue slate and mesmerizing.
Church is a dichotomy because he appears to be a redneck illiterate from the outside, but in truth has his deep profound thoughts and belief-structure. His voice is masculine without being wordy, but his control is always sensed and displayed by the few sentences he blurts out. His speech illustrates a subtle wisdom with a serious knife-like edge, because after-all, he has seen and done it all during his lifetime.
Gabe is street smart, but even with his high school education he shows he is envious of Christian’s brain and intellect. He considers the man an enigma and struggles with the knowledge that his life could have turned out very differently had he been given the same chances at a college education. One he feels that Christian has taken for granted.
Gabriel survived only by his wits, and in a place where a bed with clean sheets is considered a luxury. He has never known wealth and comfort but sees the futility in such pursuits, namely because he has seen the others he has killed die without fanfare and without their protection of wealth or reputation. The rat race of others, as Church has called it, it something fragile and easily destroyed in his perception. He holds no interest in obtaining any financial freedom, nor does he expect to ever find it.
Gabe relies on his ability to read others and spot their weaknesses; it may be why he is so fascinated with Chris Maxwell, his polar opposite. Christian doesn’t seem to possess that skill at all, and this creates a symbiotic relationship of Gabe wanting to protect his lover from the dangers he sees so clearly.
One thing Gabe would say he was good at, if asked, was his ability to fuck, and fuck well. He would smile his twisted grin and flash his pearly whites, but in truth the reality was that he considered himself a survivor, regardless of the odds. He lives his life without assistance, makes no apologies and is very much the man’s man, counts only on his own abilities to get from point A to point B.
Church has not spoken to anyone in his family since he left as a young adult. But for him in particular, the ghosts of his childhood haunt him more regularly than he would care to admit.
Gabe finds out that his breaking point is his lover: Christian Maxwell. Or more precisely the fact that despite thinking that he can walk away from him to protect him, to simply forget the writer and equate him as the same collateral damage he thought appropriate for his mother and sister, he can’t.
Christian Maxwell is an attractive and educated man, very erudite and currently in his mid-thirties. He is living as a closeted gay man when our story begins, but finds himself desperate to connect with someone who can break him out of his destined routine.
Christian as a protagonist is trained and educated with a background that gives him the leg-up over his peers, where Church is self-taught and possesses than skill of reading people and sizing up his competition.
Christian was raised with financial comfort and due to his degree always assumed his life would run according to plan. He is the exact opposite of Gabriel Church.
He is a bit of a loner. Christian loves his family but doesn’t seem to express pride in them or their accomplishments and he can go weeks without speaking to them.
Christian has important flaws; namely his inability to walk away from such a dangerous figure as Gabriel Church. Chris allows his lover to make the decisions regarding his own personal safety.
Where Gabriel takes challenges head-on, Christian wavers with the morality issue and losing the only person he desires, regardless of his better sense of right and wrong. He knows he could be considered an accomplice to murder in the very least and may be wanted for questioning in the death of a young woman in Seattle. But it is a matter of trust for him and that faith is equally tested many times for him.
In the end he hopes to be the one to change Church. To show him the error of his ways and for Church to want to settle down with him, even if settling is to be on the run with his lover.
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Gabriel Church returns in Torn and Frayed, the sequel to the acclaimed Rubble and the Wreckage, by Rodd Clark.
