The Juke (Changes Book 2) Read online

  THE JUKE

  Book II of Changes

  Ted Persinger

  KINDLE EDITION

  © 2015 by Ted Persinger

  All Rights Reserved

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine, or journal.

  The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 10: 0986252158

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9862521-5-0

  Formatting by Mayhem Cover Creations

  Editing by Lisa Aurello

  Cover art and design: Monark Design Services

  Published by Farfalla Press

  ALSO FROM TED PERSINGER

  Literary Fiction:

  Changes Series: The One Way, Book I

  Erotic Romance:

  Farfalla Series: Follow You Down, Book I

  DEDICATION

  This novel is dedicated to my two grandsons:

  Kurt Mitchell Persinger

  and

  Lucian James Persinger

  I don’t see you nearly enough, but I love you both so much

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PART I : PRIDE COMES

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  PART II : THE FALL

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  PART III: THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  PART IV: PHOENIX

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  PART V: CINDERS AND SEEDLINGS

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD: A NOTE TO FRIENDS

  ALSO FROM TED PERSINGER

  “For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?

  Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown,

  Would with the scepter straight be strucken down?”

  ― William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece

  PART I: PRIDE COMES

  I

  The bars rattled and scraped, clanking steady after a sudden, jerking start. He sat bolt upright, eyes locked on the entrance. His hand found the shank he had wedged in the grating under his cot. When nobody entered his cell his hand relaxed, though his eyes stayed narrowed. Ready. He remained physically tense, but then again he was always physically tense. Lately, he had been focused on trying to do good time, but staying alive was always the first order of business.

  “Joseph!” He heard the shout down the block.

  He turned, feet to the cement floor, then stood up slowly. Time, after all, moved unhurriedly here. Agonizing boredom punctuated with terrifying violence. He looked in the reflective plastic mirror and smoothed his thinning gray hair. He saw his own dangerous eyes glaring back at him with gray steel. His heart was a stone. His wit was a keen blade, sharper than his shank. He was ready to respond to any situation, with deadly violence if required. Hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups in his small cell made his body hard. He pumped weights on the yard when his privileges weren’t suspended. His mind and heart were hard as well, crafted from years of brutality. Honed. Shaped. Though older, not a person on his cell block was stupid enough to challenge him. He had earned respect the hard way…the only way you earn respect in prison.

  “Joseph! Hurry the fuck up!” The voice was commanding now. That didn’t concern him. He knew the game.

  He took slow strides as he moved out, turning left and down the long corridor. This was the pace of his life. This was his world. This was his house. Now. He was a creature of the moment. He had adapted to it as surely as he had adapted to other worlds and other houses in his life. Many lives. Many deaths. He was Kali: life, death, rebirth…both creating and destroying.

  “Got a visitor. Get downstairs,” the blue-suited CO shouted to him from the overlook.

  “Yeah.”

  Down the grated stairs. Slow steps. He heard the shouts as he moved past cells. A few called out to him. A few just called out. He nodded to a few friends. He glowered at a few enemies. He had to keep the veneer. The frightful visage. The iron mask. Weakness here was blood in the water, and vicious sharks swam all about him. Face of a killer. Eyes cold, dead. The disguise had to be on at all times. Keep the wooden presence but be coiled and ready to strike when needed. He had to interpret every sound and every movement through a lens of violence. Let your guard down, and it was stitches in the infirmary, filthy blade ripping holes in your skin. Or the last ride out, buried in the yard—the backdoor parole. Nobody would claim his corpse, he knew.

  She would have, but she was gone.

  He moved to the visitation corridor and knocked twice. The guard inside turned. He pressed his ID to the glass. The bull called out, and a buzz unlocked the door.

  Inside, he turned and faced the wall. Though he had few visits, he knew the routine. The CO called out steps he knew without being told.

  “Shoes off…strip…hands on the wall…bend over…cough…” He complied—no smoke. Resist an officer out here, away from the observation cameras, and the resultant attitude adjustment could be permanent.

  Strips had humiliated him once, so long ago. The violation of his most personal space. Now, it was barely a flicker of indignation as he coughed to open his anus for inspection. He put his clothes back on casually. The guard tapped the cuffs of the shackles against his own wrist impatiently. A tsk escaped him, watching the prisoner taking his time of the process.

  The longer a prisoner was inside, the fewer his visits. At first, family and friends would come often, though sometimes just to say they did. Clear their conscience. Tell their friends that they were visiting their husband, brother, uncle, son. But each year the frequency decreased, as their own lives took hold of their hours. As their incarcerated relative became more institutionalized: new prison tats, darker attitude, more distant, angrier. Masque de la mort. Visage horribles. He could no longer remember his last visit, but he remembered it being uncomfortable for both parties. He wasn’t the man who walked into this prison, not by a long stretch.

  “Okay, hands out,” came the next order but they were already extended. Handcuffs, chain around the waist, cuffs on ankles. The last tug and jerk he gave simply for his inconvenience. But Joseph never let out a sound. Just a taut jerk with his wrists.

  “Open door two-oh-three!” the guard shouted out. An unseen hand pressed the button, and another loud buzz sounded. The guard yanked the door open, and he pushed his ward through.

  The hack walked quickly, and the short steps the manacles required had to come fast. It was a trot. He was as a geisha, bound feet following his master. Each clinking jerk rasped the metal against his chafed bone and tendons. He knew he wouldn’t dare move slowly now; down this corridor, it was just him and the CO, and he was in manacles. A quick strike from the baton to the unprotected solar plexus and he’d be on his knees sucking air.

  The corridor to the visitation room was long and had two turns. He knew the way. His small world was fully
mapped out in his mind. He knew every spot in the tile. He knew every entry door and side room. He could visualize every inch he had walked here. His mind was bent to the task of analyzing his environs. Every rat, after all, seeks to escape its maze. Every mole knows the roots above its head. He took it all in and looked for changes from his last visit. He would cross talk with his friends later and share anything new he had seen. Someone was always trying to find a way to escape, though it never really happened. He guessed it was sport. Yes, sport. Something had to keep them mentally occupied, and dreams of freedom topped the hit parade.

  As he reached the final steps, the door opened in front of him. He was pushed by the bull behind him, one last hard jerk of his leg cuffs. He would remember that. If he ever caught him alone, he might just even the score. Inmates earn cred inside by attacking guards. One was as good as another, but it was special to exact a tiny amount of revenge on a CO that fucked with you. He would tell his row, He had it coming…I owed him one. That would earn him a toast of pruno and more wary respect.

  In the anteroom, two COs stood regarding him. As the door clacked shut behind him, he held out his fisted hands, wrists up. A rough grip and a hard thumb to the joint of his pinky finger and then a turn. A submission grip. He felt the hard twist, but surrendered to it. He had no choice anyway. The buzz and snap of the cuffs. First one, then the other loosened, then off. As one officer bent down to unlock his leg irons, the other held his baton with a menacing glare, showing him the response to any action. He only smiled back at him, the cool smile of a dangerous man. Batons didn’t scare him…anymore.

  Once the shackles were off and the waist chain unwrapped, he turned to face the wall. He was patted down one final time. He looked through the glass in the door to his right to see if he could recognize his visitor. No face caught his attention, and there were too many facing in different directions.

  “Visitation ends in two hours, Joseph.” He flicked his head in acknowledgment.

  He stepped through the door and felt the whoosh as it closed tight behind him.

  Snack and drink machines lined the wall to his left. Lightweight tables with even lighter orange chairs were spread around them. At several of the tables sat prisoners in their matching denim shirts and trousers. Around each sat family and friends. He scanned them. Nobody he knew. No trouble here. No beefs to be had. Bulls in each corner of the room.

  One man sat at a table alone. He was slender. A light-skinned black man. Hair trimmed short and neat, razored along the edges. He wore gray slacks, expensive leather shoes, and a navy sport coat, obviously tailored. Bright gold buttons. White shirt, no tie. He saw the young man stand up and smile at him. Reflexively he smiled back, though no kindness was contained within. He could play the part, but couldn’t really make himself feel any longer. Instead he was sizing him up. Measuring. It was a habit now. It would never leave him, he knew.

  His mind, though, considered the face, and he compared it to his mental library. He scanned pictures of the faces he knew but couldn’t find a match.

  The young man stepped forward, hand out in front of him.

  “Hi, Frank. It has been a long time…” he said, and their hands met. The voice. The gait. The smile.

  Remembrance came roaring like a prairie fire.

  II

  He lost everything that night. In seconds. He lost all he had to give. Isn’t that always how it is? The shit-show started with little fanfare. A small tremor before an earthquake. A few drops of rain before a hurricane. Frank expected challenges in his life. He prayed for them, in fact, as trials turn to gold, or so his pastor told him. He knew challenges come to everybody, and learning to handle them was part of maturing, both in life and in the path of a good Christian’s walk with God.

  But it was the overwhelming force of that change that surprised him. Change hit him like a fully loaded semi, unrelenting and unstoppable. No screaming brakes. No last-second swerve. Pedal to the floorboard. Needle pegged red. Change crushed him under its massive spinning wheels and left him broken. A smashed, twisted ruin. Squeezed out. Lifeless. It happened so suddenly and forcefully that all his structure and preparations for his life turned to vapor. The cackling Fates changed everything in the twist of a knot, a snip of the shears. Frank was left in the smoldering remains, wondering what happened.

  And why.

  But is there ever a why? Instead, our numbers just come up, don’t they? We’re due. The big spinning wheel goes around, and then tick, tick, tick…stops on you. Me. Us. There’s no reason, no rhyme. It’s just our turn. Sometimes the change is small, like a car accident or slipping on ice. Sometimes, though, the change is momentous. Heavy-handed. A knockout blow. Frank found out how drastic change can be. That night. So long ago.

  A wildfire, after all, is just dramatic change. It burns and ruins all in its path. Life ends quickly and savagely. Yet in that decimation the fire breeds new life, and often that new life is stronger than the old. More resilient. The sprouts of new life are formed from the hot fire of destruction. Seeds cook hot and then burst, destroying their outer shells to push forth into their new forms. Calamity is rebirth. Black cinders transform into green nativity.

  Genesis.

  All the life we know came from ruin. Every molecule in our bodies came from an exploding star. Did that star know it was giving its life to create new, more complex life? No, it was oblivious to its role, and only knew its own destruction. Like a seed, it also cooked hot and then erupted from within, spreading new elements and creating new forms. Will our star create new yet-unforeseen life in the future? Nobody reading this will ever know.

  But we know about Frank. Frank was a fair-weather kind of man. He was prepared for a middle-class life, fully accessorized with the skills he would need. A tempest would expose the holes and cracks in his upbringing.

  Frank tipped back his head and finished his second beer. He let out an ahhh and then a stifled burp, enjoying the throat burn. He put the glass down on the bar.

  “Do you want another one?” Tony asked.

  “I’d better not. Driving.”

  “There’s still lots of time left in the game,” Tony said. He motioned the waitress over.

  It was rare for him to even have any alcohol at all, but tonight was a special night. He hadn’t seen Tony for over a year. Tony’s job had kept him traveling, and Frank missed him immensely. Monday nights were usually church evenings, but he had to see his best friend.

  “Another round, gents?” the waitress asked. Frank read the “I-Ball” logo on her blouse. She smiled at him as his eyes focused on her chest. He blushed when he realized where his eyes were, and she looked away so that he could finish his ogle.

  Tony looked at Frank. Frank nodded. “Okay, one more round,” Tony replied. The waitress left to fill their order. The I-Ball Sports Bar & Grille had terrible parking but good beer. Tony had always loved coming here for games, but Frank would have preferred to be home. He was glad he acquiesced to Tony’s requests, though, as it was a great atmosphere for a big game.

  “It’s so great to see you again,” Frank said. “I’ve missed you since you moved to LA.”

  “Yeah. I miss spending time with you, man. And my job keeps dragging me all over. Road-dogging. I’m on the road more than I’m in LA.”

  “I don’t know how you can do it…I couldn’t handle a job that made me travel that much. I’d miss my family too much.”

  “How are Michelle and the kids?” Tony smiled as the waitress approached. “Everybody doing well?”

  “Great!” They both turned and received their beers. Frank took a pull from the frosty glass, then put it down in front of him. “Shelly is homeschooling our youngest. Matt just turned fourteen…can you believe that?” He stared into the bubbles floating up inside the glass.

  “Fourteen already?”

  “Yeah. He’s a young man. He helps out at church and is even teaching a youth Bible study on Sundays.”

  “Oh, that’s great.” Frank knew Tony did
n’t share his faith, though they used to attend the same church before Tony divorced and moved south. “How about Mark and Luke?”

  “Mark and Luke are both in middle school, and Ruth just started first-grade lessons. I’m so blessed.” His wallet was out, and he handed Tony their most recent family picture. Little Ruth was in a white dress that matched his wife’s. Both had the same light blue eyes. The boys were all in white shirts and red neckties. His wife’s hand rested on the shoulder of his dark suit. Her once-playful curls were now straightened, and a few streaks of gray showed through. Her once-slender form now showed some matronly curves.

  Tony smiled at the photo. “Wow, they’re growing so fast.” He handed it back. “Beautiful family,” he added, then looked away.

  “Thanks, Tony,” and he held up his beer. They clinked glasses.

  “Next time you’re in town, please be sure to stay at our place. There’s no need for you to stay in a hotel when you have us nearby. I’m sure Shelly would love to see you again.”

  “Yeah…that would be great, Frank,” Tony said, taking a drink. “Thank you for coming out tonight. I was worried you wouldn’t get out of your church meeting.”

  “Don’t you feel special?” Frank said with a grin. “I do love Monday Fellowship meetings and leading them is such a rewarding experience.”

  “Well, it’s greatly appreciated. I don’t know when I’ll be in Sacramento again.” He was tapping two fingers on the rim of his glass.

  “I hope often, but I guess I need to take the family down to LA once in a while as well.”

  “Yes, you do, man!” Tony let out a laugh, then took a long drink. “Since the divorce, I could use the company. Hard to catch me though…I’m usually on travel.”

  “I’m just so busy with work and the church and the kids. You know how it is. Tech is busy these days, and now that I’m a deacon at church I find my evenings and weekends disappearing quickly.”