This is the second tale I wrote. It covers the quite different experiences of several families through an economic debacle and societal breakdown. I have been trying to learn a different aspect of what makes a good tale with each one. There are a lot of things to learn--style, plot, character development, backstory development, dialogue, setting, timeline, and getting all those coordinated without going nuts in the process. About the time I get concentrated on a couple those things, some of the others don't come out so good. Hope it is still enjoyable.
FROM THE BOTTOM UP
CHAPTER 1
So, for the first time in my life, I bought a nickel bag of pot. And I got caught. Dumbest thing I ever did. How was I to know the guy selling it was a cop? Then, they trumped up the charges to distribution, with two lying cops swearing on a stack of Bibles that I had said I was going to sell it, not smoke it. I was so broke at the time that I ended up with a public defender for a lawyer, and all she knew was for me to cop a plea. It was easier for her because she didn't have to prepare a court case. After a few weeks in the county jail with all the city drunks, wife beaters, and druggies, I was getting nowhere with this. They had me convinced to plead guilty to low quantity drug sales and I took the deal. That was the third dumbest thing I ever did, and cost me 5 years in the State joint.
I reserve dumb thing number two spot for marrying Joanna Potter, the prettiest girl in our small town. She's the reason I was so broke. After a couple years, her spending habits were driving me nuts, and that was the reason I had decided to smoke some pot for the first time in my life. Bad idea. Nobody to blame for it all but me, though. No matter what shortcomings I have, I take a little pride in trying to be a realist, so yep, it was all my fault, the result of my own bad decisions. I listened to the AA meetings in the jail for a pastime, hearing the men admit to being alcoholics. The thought went through my head then, "My name is Wesley Hardin Blake, and I'm a jailbird". Some shame in that, but I sure didn't plan to make a career of it like the druggies and drinking guys. I would have bet anything that as soon as they could find something to drink, they'd be right back at it. That was one problem I didn't have.
The time in the county jail was the worst of it. There was absolutely nothing to do except read the religious tracts that the do-gooder missionary sorts left there, and nothing to look forward to each day but the meals, and they were nothing to write home about. I did read a lot of those tracts, but they were all geared toward getting you to 'repent and seek God's salvation'. I had already repented. What I needed was something to look forward to. My future looked pretty sucky from where I sat. My wife filed for divorce as soon as I got arrested and I signed the papers a few weeks later. That happened a lot to guys who get arrested, according to what the guys in jail said. She ended up with our car and the household goods, including that expensive china she'd had to have. She got the car payments, too, so I guess that was alright. The last I heard, she went home to live with her parents, according to my sister.
Joanna was really an all right kid to start with, just spoiled. Her dad made a lot of money and doted on her. Back then, I was fresh out of the Army, after 4 years in the Motor Pool wrenching on trucks and Humvees. That had gotten me a good job as a mechanic at the Chevy dealership. I'd managed to get a good toolbox bought and paid for, then saved some money. It was hard work, but I enjoyed it. We had a great time for the first few months after we got married in 2001. We were both 25 years old. I just couldn't make money as fast as she could spend it. Other than that, we got along fine. We'd known each other all through school, and had always gotten along, even dated a few times.
My folks did okay, but their factory jobs didn't pay all that well, and I had no interest in going to college if they could have afforded it. I did enjoy tinkering with cars, and had a job through High School at a garage. I had started buying tools back then, looking for cheap deals and learned that good quality was worth the price, in most cases. At this point in my life, my tool box and a few clothes was all I owned in the world. My big sister, God bless her, had gotten those all from my wife and had them stored at her place for me. But I had no place to live when I got out, so I figured I'd have to take the Halfway House deal they offered, where I could work at some crap job until I got enough money ahead to live on my own. That would mean living in the worst part of Indianapolis, and it would be over 100 miles from home. That would be bad, but I'd have to do it somehow.
The penitentiary was rough, but life settled into a routine. Everybody had to have a 'job' of some sort in prison. Nobody really WORKED. They borrowed the Russian saying, "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us". Most of them ended up in the kitchen, or doing housekeeping, mopping floors or whatever because they didn't know anything else. My mechanic's background got me a job in the General Maintenance Shop, which was some kind of salvation. At least the few men who worked there had a little something on the ball, and I could do something I enjoyed during the day. It was barely enough money to buy coffee, cigarettes if you used them, and some snacks from the prison store they called the Commissary. After work, it was back to the cell block and listening to the overgrown brats misbehaving, fighting over the TV channel, and yelling about whatever small issue they picked on, trying to give meaning to something in their life.
There are predators of many kinds in the prison system, but I didn't have any problem with most of them. I didn't drink, smoke, or gamble, nor was I homosexual, so those pitfalls were easy for me to avoid. I didn't have any big attitude about being a Macho Man or run my mouth, either, which were the other sources of trouble. I was basically a nice guy, and some of the cons did try to take advantage of that, but I dealt with that as best I could.
I learned quick that no matter what happened in there, I didn't see or hear anything. Some guys got stabbed over gambling debts, or other peeves, but you just walk your own way and if asked, you say, "There was a body on the floor? I didn't see a body". It saved all kinds of trouble, and maybe saved your neck. Ratting out another con was a fast way to die.
Most of the time, I could ignore the fence and the razor wire around the joint, the guard towers with their automatic weapons, and the nonsense of the people inside all that. After work, I could go to the library and find something to read, and my sister sent me a book now and then. I began to ask for her to send Haynes car repair manuals that she could get at the local Auto Zone store. She also subscribed me to The Mother Earth News magazine. It wasn't as good as it used to be, but it helped give me some idea about what things cost, and some ideas for cheap ways to live when I got out. May God bless my sister Gloria until the end of her days, and then take her home to heaven! Man, was I grateful. Gloria was 4 years older, and had always looked after her baby brother. I was really bummed with women after Joanna, but if I ever found one like my sister, I'd marry her in a heartbeat and do whatever it took to keep her happy.
At evening mail call, I got letters from Gloria about once a week, and one from my mother maybe every couple months, with check inside for a $100 that went into my Commissary account. That meant I could buy instant coffee, snack foods, shampoo and a few other things the prison did not provide, like thong sandals to keep from getting athlete's foot in the communal showers.
Mom and Dad just couldn't accept that one of their kids was in jail. But Mom said she felt guilty if she didn't do something for me. There was no chance of my parents ever coming to visit me, although Gloria came a few times when she could convince her husband, Bob Stowe, that there was no way he could talk her out of it. She made it a couple times a year, and that helped keep me grounded in reality about the world outside the fence. Bob never came. He wasn't a bad guy, but he always looked down on anyone that worked with their hands for a living, so he didn't think much of me to begin with. When I got locked up, I was anathema to his niche in society. Gloria gave him the blues about that, from what I could tell.
I got locked up in the spring of 2003, and had a 5 year 'bit' to do. I was focused on getting out. Unlike the professional and petty criminals around me, I had a real life to go back to, as little as it was. The men around me saw that, and pretty much left me alone, except for trying to get me do something for them. The penitentiary was not air condiditoned, and in summer the all masonry structure turned into an oven. They sold electric fans in the Commissary, but few had money to buy them. Old ones kept getting traded around as guys finished their time and got out.
I had a good side business going patching up the old fans, repairing eyeglass frames, and fixing radio headphones that had broken wires. I made not telling how many of those things to heat water for instant coffee, or instant soups they sold in the Commisary. It was just any old electric cord cut off of some junked appliance, then a couple pieces of metal with an insulating spacer between them. You just put the metal electrodes in the cup of water and then plug it in until the water was steaming. If you touched the cup or anything close to it while it was plugged in, you would be electrocuted. Nobody died from them, but a few got a lesson in electrical safety.
The cons took to calling me "MacGyver", and said I could fix anything. I got paid in coffee and snacks, and sometimes a favor, such as doing my laundry for the week, or bringing me a some fruit or a good sandwich stolen from the kitchen. The cops all knew about this sort of trade going on and generally ignored it. They couldn't stop it anyway. Their general take on it was that as long as we were messing around with this sort of thing, we weren't killing each other, or them. It meant that my Commissary account was steadily building up a balance of savings. At roughly $120 a month, my pay didn't amount to much, but I didn't spend much, either, after I bought a fan and a radio. I figured that by the time my out date rolled around, I should have at least $1,500 in there, and they paid that out to you in cash when you got out.
There were two cops who ran the General Maintenance shop. Bill Gibbons was pretty cool, for a cop. He was the senior cop there, and that was good, because the other one, Gary Pate, was a punk and aggravated everybody, especially Bill. Gary had a juvenile attitude and caused no end of grief for Bill by keeping his crew upset. He said things to deamean the inmates at every opportunity, probably to assuage his own poor ego. Bill was close enough to retirement that he didn't want anybody rocking his boat, and he had responsibilities to fulfill, so he tried to keep the peace.
Our shop took care of the kitchen equipment that kept everybody fed, a lot of the office equipment, the elevators, some stuff in the ancient steam heating system, and the vehicles. That included the 3 prison transport buses they used to shuffle inmates around between county jails for court dates, and between state prisons if they needed to break up a gang or something. They also had 4 pickup trucks, 2 of them equipped with snowplows for winter use, and there was a motor pool of cars for general staff use. By working on all these, I managed to stay somewhat up to date on mechanical knowledge. It beat the heck out of baking bread or making other food for 1200 men a day in the kitchen with a bunch of total idiots.
In the Fall of 2005, my parents were killed in an auto accident. According to witnesses, some idiot tried to pass them without enough room and took a header into an oncoming garbage truck. They died in the resulting pileup. Bob was good at administrative things, being the business manager at an investment firm. He got a law suit filed on our behalf for wrongful death against the guilty driver. His insurance finally paid off, after a long delayed court battle. To his credit, Bob had stuck with it and kept it moving. He knew that Gloria would benefit by half of it, so he was motivated. He couldn't have cared less about me.
When all was said and done, and the lawyers got their half of the settlement, the remainder did pay off the mortgage on Mom and Dad's old house, and a little left over. Gloria said the place needed some work, so they had a new roof put on it and got the plumbing fixed up. Bob didn't want to sell the house then because real estate values were going up fast. They had it rented out when the real estate bubble popped. Again, to Bob's credit, he tried his best to sell it, to no avail. It was too far out of town, it was an old ranch style built in the 70's, and there were thousands on the market when the real estate market began to run out of buyers with good credit. They kept it rented, but they had to drop the rate. Three months before I got out, they lost their renter and decided that I could live there and pay them rent at half rate, since it was half mine. It was the best thing I had going for me at the time.
I wrote to my old employer at the Chevy dealership about a job, but got turned down. I was pretty despondent over that, but Gloria convinced me to write to a private repair garage across town and that guy agreed to hire me on a straight commission basis. If I didn't produce, it was no skin off his nose, because I would be paid the "flat rate" commission based on what work I actually got done. There was no base salary and there were no fringe benefits. Whatever, it was a job.
Since I had a place to live, some money in my account, and a job lined up, I wasn't required to go to the Halfway House. I breathed a sigh of relief at that. Too many things went on in those places that got guys busted and sent right back to prison. They were full of drugs, and a lot of other things.
Eventually, my release date came around. Seemed like forever to me, but with a sense of something like disbelief, I found myself getting measured up for a pair of cheap jeans and a shirt, a pair of shoes, and a windbreaker to wear when I walked out the gate. A couple of sleepless nights later, I had one day to go.
I had never liked that Gary Pate. I knew better than to say anything to him, let alone give him what he had coming. If you are in prison and ever plan on getting out, you don't cross the cops. Still, he was a typical wannabe who never amounted to much until he got this job as a prison guard. Then he got enough money together for a down payment on that decked out pickup and mortgaged his soul to the finance company to buy it. He brought it into the prison maintenance shop to keep it tuned up and have the guys wash and wax it for him every couple weeks. After we got off work, he used the shop to change his oil and do a lube job on it. From what he said, it was a girl magnet. But he lied a lot.
His last job had been driving a bread truck and he had gotten fired when he wrecked it. Gary fancied himself a ladies man, having curly blond hair and looking a little bit like Alan Jackson, the country singer. He cultivated that look with a mustache to match, and wore cowboy duds when he was off duty. He generally made life miserable for us convicts with his attitude as a guard. Most of the guys said he wanted to be a cop, as we called the guards, because some little girl stole his lunch money in the 3rd grade and he wanted to get back at the world. "Too lazy to work and too scared to steal", was the general assessment that convicts applied to people who took a job as a prison guard.
I had one day left on my bit and I was going home. Nobody really believes that day will ever come when they are locked up, but it does, eventually. I had one more day to work in the maintenance shop, so I decided to make it count. There had been a lot of windy days that Spring, and it blew a lot of dust in from the sand pile they kept around for winter use on sidewalks and the occassional masonry repair job. We had been told to clean up the shop that day, so I swept off the window sills into a dust pan and dumped some of that gritty dust into an empty plastic oil bottle. I refilled it from the bulk barrel with 30 weight and cleaned the bottle thoroughly, then sat it back on the shelf with the full ones, in front.
Gary had me wash and wax his pride and joy one last time and ragged me about it, knowing I was getting out. I smiled at him and said, "Glad to do it one last time, for old times' sake!" The next morning, my sister picked me up at the gate at 7:00 AM in her nearly new Volvo, and off we went.
The next evening after work hours, Gary used the oil in the Maintenance Shop to do a change in his big Cummins diesel engine. I didn't know it, but Gary never made it home the next night. His 3 year old, out-of-warranty truck blew 3 connecting rods on the Interstate about 8 miles from the prison. His boss, Bill Gibbons, couldn't prove anything, but he had a pretty good idea what had happened. He chuckled to himself when Gary wasn't around. Prisons breed some hard characters, convicts and cops alike.
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CHAPTER 2
It was June 1st when Gloria took me home to southern Indiana. They still had the gas and electric turned on, and she had moved my clothes over to our parents' old house. She had saved their kitchen utensils, and most of their lawn and garden stuff, and a lot of junk. It was all still in the old detached garage in the back. The house had an attached garage, so they just locked up the old building and left the stuff in there, not being accessible to their past renters. All I needed was some groceries and I would be moved in. We attended to that, and she took me to the branch office to get my driver's license. I opened a checking account with $1,200 of what I'd saved in prison, which left $643 in my pocket. That went pretty fast, buying a few new clothes, a wrist watch, getting a decent haircut, and paying for the groceries. I was amazed at how much things cost now.
Being in my home town was blessing. Salem had it's warts and pimples, but it's a friendly country town, and being the county seat, it's just big enough to have most anything you might need. Retail prices are sometimes a little higher than at the Wal Mart in the city, but you can find a lot of good deals right here at home. It's not hard to get around because it's small, about 6,000 people, and that means most businesses cover several kinds of things. One hardware store has garden stuff and caters to the Amish crowd, while the other one has a big line of tools and a rental center.
Some things had changed in 5 years. There were banks everywhere and way more restaurants than I remembered. There was a new mini mall where the handle factory used to be. The handle factory and the furniture plant had been heavily damaged in a major flood, and both had closed down. But the people were pretty much the same. There was still a crowd at the tiny diner on Main Street in the morning, mostly farmers jawing about crops and the weather. Everybody still knew a lot about everyone else's business, and probably knew your family for a couple generations back. That was good and bad. It meant there was no such thing as privacy like in a big city, but it also meant that you automatically had a network of folks to hook you up with what you needed. I grew up here and I was comfortable with all that.
Wednesday morning of the next week, Gloria drove me to town so I could report to my parole officer as required. I told him I already had a job and I had been working for two days the past week. I would have to submit to drug testing, he would check on me at my job, and come see me at my home. I'd have to tell him ahead of time if I was going to be out of town overnight. Whatever. I signed some papers and left. I knew the guy slightly, and didn't expect any trouble out of him. We were getting along, and that was good. He had read my file from the prison, and didn't expect me to be a problem for him, either. He probably knew how I got shafted on the whole deal, too.
The $1,200 got spent that day. I couldn't have my sister running me around forever, so I hunted up a ride. I saw an ad in the paper and bought a 1978 Chevy 1/2 ton pickup that barely ran for $1,000 cash. It was not pretty. There was cardboard in the seat over some busted springs, and a back fender that waved in the breeze if I got it over 30 MPH. License, 3 months liability insurance, a tag, and a tank of gas had me nearly broke.
What the heck, I thought, it was a ride, and it was mine. I did have a couple hundred left in my pocket. That was good thing, because the battery died the next day. I was amazed that it cost me nearly 100 bucks for a battery and one new cable. I did what was needed to keep it legal, because even a small traffic infraction could land a parolee back in jail. I was bug-eyed scared about that, and took to turning off into a store or something if there was a cop behind me.
Work went pretty well after the first week of mostly doing oil changes and tuneups. The boss decided to let me try some better paying, more complicated jobs and I began to make money. I went to sleep at night reading repair manuals, because I still had some catching up to do on the newer cars.
I didn't really have any friends to speak of now, most of them having married, moved, or something since I got out of high school. Being pretty fresh out of prison, I was paranoid for a while about how people would treat me. It took months before I lost the feeling that I had "convict" tattoed on my forehead, or something. The fact was, only a rare few even knew who I was, and nobody put me down about it. It still took years to gain any self confidence. Having a job, relatives, and the people I worked with helped a lot to make me feel like part of real life again. The bottom line is, it's about how you treat other people that decides how they see you.
I did run into Barry Klein, our class nerd, when I dropped into the computer store one day to look about finding a used one. He was helpful and said the thing to do was look online at Craigslist. I said I can't do that without a computer.
He said, "Oh. Yeah. Well, let me look here for a minute."
He did his tappity- tap thing and said, "Here's one. It's an Acer laptop, and it's cheap. They want $100 for it. Here's the number."
He wrote it on a scrap of paper and handed it to me.
"Can I buy you lunch or something? You didn't make anything on this."
"Nah. Come in when you want to get internet service and we'll fix you up. The boss will be happy with that."
I thanked him and left. I called the guy and when I showed him $80 cash, he took it. A week later I had some money ahead and got wireless internet service. The package came with internet based phone service, for $70 a month and included unlimited long distance calls. Sounded good to me.
The computer would crash if I tried to watch videos on it. I finally figured out it was getting hot. Four pop bottle caps under it allowed more air to get through the mini cooling fan and the problem went away. Maybe that was why I got it so cheap, or maybe it was just because it was a couple years old. Computers depreciate really fast, I had learned. I spent some time learning how it worked, and with a tip now and then from Barry, I fumbled my way through learning how to use the internet. Prison really puts you out of touch with life.
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Mom and Dad's house had a two car garage on it, so I used that to work on my old truck some at night. In a few weeks I had found a better seat at the junkyard and gotten the brakes fixed. Donny Whitson was the old man who owned the junkyard. He remembered me from my high school days when I bought parts from him. He treated me right on the old parts I needed. The engine burned oil, but it started and ran pretty good. I had put some cheap new spark plugs in it and new plug wires. That got it running smooth again. I wired the fender down where a brace had rusted off, then put some STP in the engine and the oil pressure came up to something near normal. If I babied this thing, it would probably run for quite a while. The front tires were pretty bald, so I found a couple off a wreck at the junk dealer's for 20 bucks apiece and got them bubble balanced for another $10. They ran smooth enough if I kept it under 50 MPH.
I gave the thing a good bath and cleaned out the cab, then went over the inside with a scrub brush and some soapy water. When I put the better seat back in and added a cheap seat cover, it began to look better. The old 350 V8 was a gas hog, but at least it was a stick shift, so I was getting better than ten MPG around town. I could live with that no more than I drove. My boss came up with some old snow tires for the back, and I saved one of the old ones for a spare. It was August now, and things were looking a little better for me. I even had almost $1,000 in my checking account again, but I had learned how fast that could disappear with the high prices now.
As soon as I could after getting settled in the job and got my truck in shape, I had used Dad's old tiller to dig up their small garden spot. I had set out some tomato plants and put in lettuce, radishes, green beans, and two short rows of sweet corn. We had grown up with his gardening, and it just didn't seem right to not have it going. I even put in two rows of late potatoes. Groceries were getting more expensive, so it made sense to me. I didn't have any idea about canning food, but I could eat cheaper all summer, then put potatoes in the basement and leftover sweet corn in the freezer.
I began to think about paying Gloria and Bob for their half of the place so I could do what I wanted to with it, but I didn't have the money and my credit was shot. I felt like I was living somewhat at their mercy, and I didn't care for that with Bob in the picture. He liked to think he was a smart money man, and I knew he had wanted to sell the place and invest the proceeds. That would be all right with me, if I had some notice, but we needed to talk about that.
I was still having to tinker with the old truck regularly to keep it going, and that took some money. Sometimes I had to walk the mile and a half to work because the truck had problems. The shifter linkage, a throwout bearing, headlights, hoses, and belts all went bad, but I was gaining on it. I put a rebuilt alternator on it, and patched up some wiring. The floorboard had a couple holes that I patched with junk sheet metal and some self tapping screws. The cancer in the truck bed was too much, so I gave $200 for a used bed from Donny, and he had the guys help me get it put on with their big front loader. I gave the whole works a coat of Wal Mart's finest dark blue spray paint, over the rust and all. At least it was all the same color now.
When my Parole Officer came by the house to check on me one afternoon, I was picking green beans.
He asked, "Did you get a different truck?"
"No, I just got a used bed and some spray paint."
"Well, it looks a lot better. You doing all right?"
"Yeah. The job is making more money. Seems like a lot of people are getting their cars fixed now, instead of trading them in. We're busy. I put in almost 60 hours last week."
"Look, the reason I came out is, I'm going to cut you loose from parole early. You are established here, and have a good job, no problem with drug tests. I feel confident you will be fine, so I put in the reccommendation. Stay out of trouble until the end of August next week, and you'll be finished. I brought the paperwork."
He handed me my copy and we shook hands. "Thanks! I guess I'm a citizen again."
"I don't need to waste time on guys like you. There are a lot of people getting released from prison early because of State budget constraints, and I have a big case load. Most of them are problem children. You aren't."
"I guess that's a compliment."
"Yes, it's a compliment. Keep up the good work."
I thanked him again as he left. He wasn't a bad guy. I suppose we had been as near to friends as you ever could be with a parole officer.
When he was gone, I thought about what had happened to me and although I liked women as much as any young man, I had no interest in getting married again. I could run my life just fine without that. And a lot of girls my age were really selfish. They were just out for what they could get. I had been listening to stories from our customers and it did not bode well for anybody dating now. So far, since I had got out of prison I hadn't dated anyone. I wasn't sure I wanted to start.
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I took a bread sack full of green beans and some nice ripe tomatoes over to Gloria. I knew she didn't have a garden, because Bob was NOT going to till up his acre and a half of grass. He probably spent more on that lawn than it cost me to live each month. My old truck did not complement the neighborhood very well, so I hadn't gone there often, but Gloria was my sister and I wanted to do what I could for her. She came out the back door and smiled at me, followed by her beautiful Golden Retriever. They didn't have any kids, so she mothered the dog.
"Hi Wes! How're you doing? Sandy, let him alone."
Sandy, the dog, was giving me a slurpy dog kiss.
"I'm fine. I brought you some veggies."
"Come in and we'll get something to drink."
"You all doing okay?"
"We're fine. Bob's business is falling off. With all the credit problems in the banks, people are scared to invest in anything and it has cut into our income. Things are getting tight. I wish we'd never bought this big house. Bob doesn't want kids, and we don't need 4 bedrooms. But he had it bought before we got married, and now it probably isn't worth what we owe on it. He was going to flip it and make a ton of money, but that isn't going to happen now."
"Are you going to be all right?"
"I think so. If we can get Mom and Dad's house sold, it would help a lot. That would pay down some loans for us and we'd be comfortable again. He thinks he might have a prospect for it."
"I can find a place to live, so don't worry about me in the deal. I could use my half of the money, too."
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FROM THE BOTTOM UP
CHAPTER 1
So, for the first time in my life, I bought a nickel bag of pot. And I got caught. Dumbest thing I ever did. How was I to know the guy selling it was a cop? Then, they trumped up the charges to distribution, with two lying cops swearing on a stack of Bibles that I had said I was going to sell it, not smoke it. I was so broke at the time that I ended up with a public defender for a lawyer, and all she knew was for me to cop a plea. It was easier for her because she didn't have to prepare a court case. After a few weeks in the county jail with all the city drunks, wife beaters, and druggies, I was getting nowhere with this. They had me convinced to plead guilty to low quantity drug sales and I took the deal. That was the third dumbest thing I ever did, and cost me 5 years in the State joint.
I reserve dumb thing number two spot for marrying Joanna Potter, the prettiest girl in our small town. She's the reason I was so broke. After a couple years, her spending habits were driving me nuts, and that was the reason I had decided to smoke some pot for the first time in my life. Bad idea. Nobody to blame for it all but me, though. No matter what shortcomings I have, I take a little pride in trying to be a realist, so yep, it was all my fault, the result of my own bad decisions. I listened to the AA meetings in the jail for a pastime, hearing the men admit to being alcoholics. The thought went through my head then, "My name is Wesley Hardin Blake, and I'm a jailbird". Some shame in that, but I sure didn't plan to make a career of it like the druggies and drinking guys. I would have bet anything that as soon as they could find something to drink, they'd be right back at it. That was one problem I didn't have.
The time in the county jail was the worst of it. There was absolutely nothing to do except read the religious tracts that the do-gooder missionary sorts left there, and nothing to look forward to each day but the meals, and they were nothing to write home about. I did read a lot of those tracts, but they were all geared toward getting you to 'repent and seek God's salvation'. I had already repented. What I needed was something to look forward to. My future looked pretty sucky from where I sat. My wife filed for divorce as soon as I got arrested and I signed the papers a few weeks later. That happened a lot to guys who get arrested, according to what the guys in jail said. She ended up with our car and the household goods, including that expensive china she'd had to have. She got the car payments, too, so I guess that was alright. The last I heard, she went home to live with her parents, according to my sister.
Joanna was really an all right kid to start with, just spoiled. Her dad made a lot of money and doted on her. Back then, I was fresh out of the Army, after 4 years in the Motor Pool wrenching on trucks and Humvees. That had gotten me a good job as a mechanic at the Chevy dealership. I'd managed to get a good toolbox bought and paid for, then saved some money. It was hard work, but I enjoyed it. We had a great time for the first few months after we got married in 2001. We were both 25 years old. I just couldn't make money as fast as she could spend it. Other than that, we got along fine. We'd known each other all through school, and had always gotten along, even dated a few times.
My folks did okay, but their factory jobs didn't pay all that well, and I had no interest in going to college if they could have afforded it. I did enjoy tinkering with cars, and had a job through High School at a garage. I had started buying tools back then, looking for cheap deals and learned that good quality was worth the price, in most cases. At this point in my life, my tool box and a few clothes was all I owned in the world. My big sister, God bless her, had gotten those all from my wife and had them stored at her place for me. But I had no place to live when I got out, so I figured I'd have to take the Halfway House deal they offered, where I could work at some crap job until I got enough money ahead to live on my own. That would mean living in the worst part of Indianapolis, and it would be over 100 miles from home. That would be bad, but I'd have to do it somehow.
The penitentiary was rough, but life settled into a routine. Everybody had to have a 'job' of some sort in prison. Nobody really WORKED. They borrowed the Russian saying, "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us". Most of them ended up in the kitchen, or doing housekeeping, mopping floors or whatever because they didn't know anything else. My mechanic's background got me a job in the General Maintenance Shop, which was some kind of salvation. At least the few men who worked there had a little something on the ball, and I could do something I enjoyed during the day. It was barely enough money to buy coffee, cigarettes if you used them, and some snacks from the prison store they called the Commissary. After work, it was back to the cell block and listening to the overgrown brats misbehaving, fighting over the TV channel, and yelling about whatever small issue they picked on, trying to give meaning to something in their life.
There are predators of many kinds in the prison system, but I didn't have any problem with most of them. I didn't drink, smoke, or gamble, nor was I homosexual, so those pitfalls were easy for me to avoid. I didn't have any big attitude about being a Macho Man or run my mouth, either, which were the other sources of trouble. I was basically a nice guy, and some of the cons did try to take advantage of that, but I dealt with that as best I could.
I learned quick that no matter what happened in there, I didn't see or hear anything. Some guys got stabbed over gambling debts, or other peeves, but you just walk your own way and if asked, you say, "There was a body on the floor? I didn't see a body". It saved all kinds of trouble, and maybe saved your neck. Ratting out another con was a fast way to die.
Most of the time, I could ignore the fence and the razor wire around the joint, the guard towers with their automatic weapons, and the nonsense of the people inside all that. After work, I could go to the library and find something to read, and my sister sent me a book now and then. I began to ask for her to send Haynes car repair manuals that she could get at the local Auto Zone store. She also subscribed me to The Mother Earth News magazine. It wasn't as good as it used to be, but it helped give me some idea about what things cost, and some ideas for cheap ways to live when I got out. May God bless my sister Gloria until the end of her days, and then take her home to heaven! Man, was I grateful. Gloria was 4 years older, and had always looked after her baby brother. I was really bummed with women after Joanna, but if I ever found one like my sister, I'd marry her in a heartbeat and do whatever it took to keep her happy.
At evening mail call, I got letters from Gloria about once a week, and one from my mother maybe every couple months, with check inside for a $100 that went into my Commissary account. That meant I could buy instant coffee, snack foods, shampoo and a few other things the prison did not provide, like thong sandals to keep from getting athlete's foot in the communal showers.
Mom and Dad just couldn't accept that one of their kids was in jail. But Mom said she felt guilty if she didn't do something for me. There was no chance of my parents ever coming to visit me, although Gloria came a few times when she could convince her husband, Bob Stowe, that there was no way he could talk her out of it. She made it a couple times a year, and that helped keep me grounded in reality about the world outside the fence. Bob never came. He wasn't a bad guy, but he always looked down on anyone that worked with their hands for a living, so he didn't think much of me to begin with. When I got locked up, I was anathema to his niche in society. Gloria gave him the blues about that, from what I could tell.
I got locked up in the spring of 2003, and had a 5 year 'bit' to do. I was focused on getting out. Unlike the professional and petty criminals around me, I had a real life to go back to, as little as it was. The men around me saw that, and pretty much left me alone, except for trying to get me do something for them. The penitentiary was not air condiditoned, and in summer the all masonry structure turned into an oven. They sold electric fans in the Commissary, but few had money to buy them. Old ones kept getting traded around as guys finished their time and got out.
I had a good side business going patching up the old fans, repairing eyeglass frames, and fixing radio headphones that had broken wires. I made not telling how many of those things to heat water for instant coffee, or instant soups they sold in the Commisary. It was just any old electric cord cut off of some junked appliance, then a couple pieces of metal with an insulating spacer between them. You just put the metal electrodes in the cup of water and then plug it in until the water was steaming. If you touched the cup or anything close to it while it was plugged in, you would be electrocuted. Nobody died from them, but a few got a lesson in electrical safety.
The cons took to calling me "MacGyver", and said I could fix anything. I got paid in coffee and snacks, and sometimes a favor, such as doing my laundry for the week, or bringing me a some fruit or a good sandwich stolen from the kitchen. The cops all knew about this sort of trade going on and generally ignored it. They couldn't stop it anyway. Their general take on it was that as long as we were messing around with this sort of thing, we weren't killing each other, or them. It meant that my Commissary account was steadily building up a balance of savings. At roughly $120 a month, my pay didn't amount to much, but I didn't spend much, either, after I bought a fan and a radio. I figured that by the time my out date rolled around, I should have at least $1,500 in there, and they paid that out to you in cash when you got out.
There were two cops who ran the General Maintenance shop. Bill Gibbons was pretty cool, for a cop. He was the senior cop there, and that was good, because the other one, Gary Pate, was a punk and aggravated everybody, especially Bill. Gary had a juvenile attitude and caused no end of grief for Bill by keeping his crew upset. He said things to deamean the inmates at every opportunity, probably to assuage his own poor ego. Bill was close enough to retirement that he didn't want anybody rocking his boat, and he had responsibilities to fulfill, so he tried to keep the peace.
Our shop took care of the kitchen equipment that kept everybody fed, a lot of the office equipment, the elevators, some stuff in the ancient steam heating system, and the vehicles. That included the 3 prison transport buses they used to shuffle inmates around between county jails for court dates, and between state prisons if they needed to break up a gang or something. They also had 4 pickup trucks, 2 of them equipped with snowplows for winter use, and there was a motor pool of cars for general staff use. By working on all these, I managed to stay somewhat up to date on mechanical knowledge. It beat the heck out of baking bread or making other food for 1200 men a day in the kitchen with a bunch of total idiots.
In the Fall of 2005, my parents were killed in an auto accident. According to witnesses, some idiot tried to pass them without enough room and took a header into an oncoming garbage truck. They died in the resulting pileup. Bob was good at administrative things, being the business manager at an investment firm. He got a law suit filed on our behalf for wrongful death against the guilty driver. His insurance finally paid off, after a long delayed court battle. To his credit, Bob had stuck with it and kept it moving. He knew that Gloria would benefit by half of it, so he was motivated. He couldn't have cared less about me.
When all was said and done, and the lawyers got their half of the settlement, the remainder did pay off the mortgage on Mom and Dad's old house, and a little left over. Gloria said the place needed some work, so they had a new roof put on it and got the plumbing fixed up. Bob didn't want to sell the house then because real estate values were going up fast. They had it rented out when the real estate bubble popped. Again, to Bob's credit, he tried his best to sell it, to no avail. It was too far out of town, it was an old ranch style built in the 70's, and there were thousands on the market when the real estate market began to run out of buyers with good credit. They kept it rented, but they had to drop the rate. Three months before I got out, they lost their renter and decided that I could live there and pay them rent at half rate, since it was half mine. It was the best thing I had going for me at the time.
I wrote to my old employer at the Chevy dealership about a job, but got turned down. I was pretty despondent over that, but Gloria convinced me to write to a private repair garage across town and that guy agreed to hire me on a straight commission basis. If I didn't produce, it was no skin off his nose, because I would be paid the "flat rate" commission based on what work I actually got done. There was no base salary and there were no fringe benefits. Whatever, it was a job.
Since I had a place to live, some money in my account, and a job lined up, I wasn't required to go to the Halfway House. I breathed a sigh of relief at that. Too many things went on in those places that got guys busted and sent right back to prison. They were full of drugs, and a lot of other things.
Eventually, my release date came around. Seemed like forever to me, but with a sense of something like disbelief, I found myself getting measured up for a pair of cheap jeans and a shirt, a pair of shoes, and a windbreaker to wear when I walked out the gate. A couple of sleepless nights later, I had one day to go.
I had never liked that Gary Pate. I knew better than to say anything to him, let alone give him what he had coming. If you are in prison and ever plan on getting out, you don't cross the cops. Still, he was a typical wannabe who never amounted to much until he got this job as a prison guard. Then he got enough money together for a down payment on that decked out pickup and mortgaged his soul to the finance company to buy it. He brought it into the prison maintenance shop to keep it tuned up and have the guys wash and wax it for him every couple weeks. After we got off work, he used the shop to change his oil and do a lube job on it. From what he said, it was a girl magnet. But he lied a lot.
His last job had been driving a bread truck and he had gotten fired when he wrecked it. Gary fancied himself a ladies man, having curly blond hair and looking a little bit like Alan Jackson, the country singer. He cultivated that look with a mustache to match, and wore cowboy duds when he was off duty. He generally made life miserable for us convicts with his attitude as a guard. Most of the guys said he wanted to be a cop, as we called the guards, because some little girl stole his lunch money in the 3rd grade and he wanted to get back at the world. "Too lazy to work and too scared to steal", was the general assessment that convicts applied to people who took a job as a prison guard.
I had one day left on my bit and I was going home. Nobody really believes that day will ever come when they are locked up, but it does, eventually. I had one more day to work in the maintenance shop, so I decided to make it count. There had been a lot of windy days that Spring, and it blew a lot of dust in from the sand pile they kept around for winter use on sidewalks and the occassional masonry repair job. We had been told to clean up the shop that day, so I swept off the window sills into a dust pan and dumped some of that gritty dust into an empty plastic oil bottle. I refilled it from the bulk barrel with 30 weight and cleaned the bottle thoroughly, then sat it back on the shelf with the full ones, in front.
Gary had me wash and wax his pride and joy one last time and ragged me about it, knowing I was getting out. I smiled at him and said, "Glad to do it one last time, for old times' sake!" The next morning, my sister picked me up at the gate at 7:00 AM in her nearly new Volvo, and off we went.
The next evening after work hours, Gary used the oil in the Maintenance Shop to do a change in his big Cummins diesel engine. I didn't know it, but Gary never made it home the next night. His 3 year old, out-of-warranty truck blew 3 connecting rods on the Interstate about 8 miles from the prison. His boss, Bill Gibbons, couldn't prove anything, but he had a pretty good idea what had happened. He chuckled to himself when Gary wasn't around. Prisons breed some hard characters, convicts and cops alike.
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CHAPTER 2
It was June 1st when Gloria took me home to southern Indiana. They still had the gas and electric turned on, and she had moved my clothes over to our parents' old house. She had saved their kitchen utensils, and most of their lawn and garden stuff, and a lot of junk. It was all still in the old detached garage in the back. The house had an attached garage, so they just locked up the old building and left the stuff in there, not being accessible to their past renters. All I needed was some groceries and I would be moved in. We attended to that, and she took me to the branch office to get my driver's license. I opened a checking account with $1,200 of what I'd saved in prison, which left $643 in my pocket. That went pretty fast, buying a few new clothes, a wrist watch, getting a decent haircut, and paying for the groceries. I was amazed at how much things cost now.
Being in my home town was blessing. Salem had it's warts and pimples, but it's a friendly country town, and being the county seat, it's just big enough to have most anything you might need. Retail prices are sometimes a little higher than at the Wal Mart in the city, but you can find a lot of good deals right here at home. It's not hard to get around because it's small, about 6,000 people, and that means most businesses cover several kinds of things. One hardware store has garden stuff and caters to the Amish crowd, while the other one has a big line of tools and a rental center.
Some things had changed in 5 years. There were banks everywhere and way more restaurants than I remembered. There was a new mini mall where the handle factory used to be. The handle factory and the furniture plant had been heavily damaged in a major flood, and both had closed down. But the people were pretty much the same. There was still a crowd at the tiny diner on Main Street in the morning, mostly farmers jawing about crops and the weather. Everybody still knew a lot about everyone else's business, and probably knew your family for a couple generations back. That was good and bad. It meant there was no such thing as privacy like in a big city, but it also meant that you automatically had a network of folks to hook you up with what you needed. I grew up here and I was comfortable with all that.
Wednesday morning of the next week, Gloria drove me to town so I could report to my parole officer as required. I told him I already had a job and I had been working for two days the past week. I would have to submit to drug testing, he would check on me at my job, and come see me at my home. I'd have to tell him ahead of time if I was going to be out of town overnight. Whatever. I signed some papers and left. I knew the guy slightly, and didn't expect any trouble out of him. We were getting along, and that was good. He had read my file from the prison, and didn't expect me to be a problem for him, either. He probably knew how I got shafted on the whole deal, too.
The $1,200 got spent that day. I couldn't have my sister running me around forever, so I hunted up a ride. I saw an ad in the paper and bought a 1978 Chevy 1/2 ton pickup that barely ran for $1,000 cash. It was not pretty. There was cardboard in the seat over some busted springs, and a back fender that waved in the breeze if I got it over 30 MPH. License, 3 months liability insurance, a tag, and a tank of gas had me nearly broke.
What the heck, I thought, it was a ride, and it was mine. I did have a couple hundred left in my pocket. That was good thing, because the battery died the next day. I was amazed that it cost me nearly 100 bucks for a battery and one new cable. I did what was needed to keep it legal, because even a small traffic infraction could land a parolee back in jail. I was bug-eyed scared about that, and took to turning off into a store or something if there was a cop behind me.
Work went pretty well after the first week of mostly doing oil changes and tuneups. The boss decided to let me try some better paying, more complicated jobs and I began to make money. I went to sleep at night reading repair manuals, because I still had some catching up to do on the newer cars.
I didn't really have any friends to speak of now, most of them having married, moved, or something since I got out of high school. Being pretty fresh out of prison, I was paranoid for a while about how people would treat me. It took months before I lost the feeling that I had "convict" tattoed on my forehead, or something. The fact was, only a rare few even knew who I was, and nobody put me down about it. It still took years to gain any self confidence. Having a job, relatives, and the people I worked with helped a lot to make me feel like part of real life again. The bottom line is, it's about how you treat other people that decides how they see you.
I did run into Barry Klein, our class nerd, when I dropped into the computer store one day to look about finding a used one. He was helpful and said the thing to do was look online at Craigslist. I said I can't do that without a computer.
He said, "Oh. Yeah. Well, let me look here for a minute."
He did his tappity- tap thing and said, "Here's one. It's an Acer laptop, and it's cheap. They want $100 for it. Here's the number."
He wrote it on a scrap of paper and handed it to me.
"Can I buy you lunch or something? You didn't make anything on this."
"Nah. Come in when you want to get internet service and we'll fix you up. The boss will be happy with that."
I thanked him and left. I called the guy and when I showed him $80 cash, he took it. A week later I had some money ahead and got wireless internet service. The package came with internet based phone service, for $70 a month and included unlimited long distance calls. Sounded good to me.
The computer would crash if I tried to watch videos on it. I finally figured out it was getting hot. Four pop bottle caps under it allowed more air to get through the mini cooling fan and the problem went away. Maybe that was why I got it so cheap, or maybe it was just because it was a couple years old. Computers depreciate really fast, I had learned. I spent some time learning how it worked, and with a tip now and then from Barry, I fumbled my way through learning how to use the internet. Prison really puts you out of touch with life.
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Mom and Dad's house had a two car garage on it, so I used that to work on my old truck some at night. In a few weeks I had found a better seat at the junkyard and gotten the brakes fixed. Donny Whitson was the old man who owned the junkyard. He remembered me from my high school days when I bought parts from him. He treated me right on the old parts I needed. The engine burned oil, but it started and ran pretty good. I had put some cheap new spark plugs in it and new plug wires. That got it running smooth again. I wired the fender down where a brace had rusted off, then put some STP in the engine and the oil pressure came up to something near normal. If I babied this thing, it would probably run for quite a while. The front tires were pretty bald, so I found a couple off a wreck at the junk dealer's for 20 bucks apiece and got them bubble balanced for another $10. They ran smooth enough if I kept it under 50 MPH.
I gave the thing a good bath and cleaned out the cab, then went over the inside with a scrub brush and some soapy water. When I put the better seat back in and added a cheap seat cover, it began to look better. The old 350 V8 was a gas hog, but at least it was a stick shift, so I was getting better than ten MPG around town. I could live with that no more than I drove. My boss came up with some old snow tires for the back, and I saved one of the old ones for a spare. It was August now, and things were looking a little better for me. I even had almost $1,000 in my checking account again, but I had learned how fast that could disappear with the high prices now.
As soon as I could after getting settled in the job and got my truck in shape, I had used Dad's old tiller to dig up their small garden spot. I had set out some tomato plants and put in lettuce, radishes, green beans, and two short rows of sweet corn. We had grown up with his gardening, and it just didn't seem right to not have it going. I even put in two rows of late potatoes. Groceries were getting more expensive, so it made sense to me. I didn't have any idea about canning food, but I could eat cheaper all summer, then put potatoes in the basement and leftover sweet corn in the freezer.
I began to think about paying Gloria and Bob for their half of the place so I could do what I wanted to with it, but I didn't have the money and my credit was shot. I felt like I was living somewhat at their mercy, and I didn't care for that with Bob in the picture. He liked to think he was a smart money man, and I knew he had wanted to sell the place and invest the proceeds. That would be all right with me, if I had some notice, but we needed to talk about that.
I was still having to tinker with the old truck regularly to keep it going, and that took some money. Sometimes I had to walk the mile and a half to work because the truck had problems. The shifter linkage, a throwout bearing, headlights, hoses, and belts all went bad, but I was gaining on it. I put a rebuilt alternator on it, and patched up some wiring. The floorboard had a couple holes that I patched with junk sheet metal and some self tapping screws. The cancer in the truck bed was too much, so I gave $200 for a used bed from Donny, and he had the guys help me get it put on with their big front loader. I gave the whole works a coat of Wal Mart's finest dark blue spray paint, over the rust and all. At least it was all the same color now.
When my Parole Officer came by the house to check on me one afternoon, I was picking green beans.
He asked, "Did you get a different truck?"
"No, I just got a used bed and some spray paint."
"Well, it looks a lot better. You doing all right?"
"Yeah. The job is making more money. Seems like a lot of people are getting their cars fixed now, instead of trading them in. We're busy. I put in almost 60 hours last week."
"Look, the reason I came out is, I'm going to cut you loose from parole early. You are established here, and have a good job, no problem with drug tests. I feel confident you will be fine, so I put in the reccommendation. Stay out of trouble until the end of August next week, and you'll be finished. I brought the paperwork."
He handed me my copy and we shook hands. "Thanks! I guess I'm a citizen again."
"I don't need to waste time on guys like you. There are a lot of people getting released from prison early because of State budget constraints, and I have a big case load. Most of them are problem children. You aren't."
"I guess that's a compliment."
"Yes, it's a compliment. Keep up the good work."
I thanked him again as he left. He wasn't a bad guy. I suppose we had been as near to friends as you ever could be with a parole officer.
When he was gone, I thought about what had happened to me and although I liked women as much as any young man, I had no interest in getting married again. I could run my life just fine without that. And a lot of girls my age were really selfish. They were just out for what they could get. I had been listening to stories from our customers and it did not bode well for anybody dating now. So far, since I had got out of prison I hadn't dated anyone. I wasn't sure I wanted to start.
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I took a bread sack full of green beans and some nice ripe tomatoes over to Gloria. I knew she didn't have a garden, because Bob was NOT going to till up his acre and a half of grass. He probably spent more on that lawn than it cost me to live each month. My old truck did not complement the neighborhood very well, so I hadn't gone there often, but Gloria was my sister and I wanted to do what I could for her. She came out the back door and smiled at me, followed by her beautiful Golden Retriever. They didn't have any kids, so she mothered the dog.
"Hi Wes! How're you doing? Sandy, let him alone."
Sandy, the dog, was giving me a slurpy dog kiss.
"I'm fine. I brought you some veggies."
"Come in and we'll get something to drink."
"You all doing okay?"
"We're fine. Bob's business is falling off. With all the credit problems in the banks, people are scared to invest in anything and it has cut into our income. Things are getting tight. I wish we'd never bought this big house. Bob doesn't want kids, and we don't need 4 bedrooms. But he had it bought before we got married, and now it probably isn't worth what we owe on it. He was going to flip it and make a ton of money, but that isn't going to happen now."
"Are you going to be all right?"
"I think so. If we can get Mom and Dad's house sold, it would help a lot. That would pay down some loans for us and we'd be comfortable again. He thinks he might have a prospect for it."
"I can find a place to live, so don't worry about me in the deal. I could use my half of the money, too."
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