The Juke (Changes Book 2) Page 5

  He was tangled in his thoughts and drove reactively. He didn’t even realize where he was driving. He was on the freeway. Then he was off. He found himself pulling into the parking lot of the Providence Memorial Assisted Living Center. He parked in visitor parking and walked into the sprawling building, past the newly planted trees.

  “Hi, Mr. Joseph, we weren’t expecting you. Are you here to visit?”

  “Yes, I guess.” He hadn’t been sure until that moment.

  “Your mother is just finishing breakfast. She slept in this morning. I’ll have her cleaned up and ready for you in just a minute.”

  He was waiting outside for her as she was wheeled out to the small patio behind the center. His face was in his hands. He wiped the tears quickly and stood up as she was rolled out to him.

  “And here’s your son, Mrs. Joseph.” The nurse put on a happy voice, as if his mother were a child seeing her birthday cake.

  She didn’t look up. She looked ahead, eyes vacuous. As blank as the stare Trent had given him. Wispy cotton-candy hair thinner than the last time he had seen her. A million miles away, also seeking a path she would never find, lost in a forest that was consuming her.

  “How has she been?” he asked the nurse.

  “She has been…fine…” and her hesitation told him everything. He knew she could be combative; Alzheimer’s patients often grew frustrated and angry as their minds worked hard to try to put together missing pieces. Work across plaqued-over brain tissue. Over the last year, she had lost so much and was now nearly a clean slate. A newborn, with only biological needs making her a person.

  “Okay, thank you,” he said, letting her off the hook.

  He dragged a cast-iron chair next to her wheelchair and sat.

  “Hi, Mom, how are you?” he asked her. She didn’t turn to his voice and maintained her distant stare. “How are you feeling?” He hated that he always spoke too loudly to her, as if her issues started with hearing. No response, only looking forward.

  “I need you now, Mom. I wish you could understand me.”

  For a moment he sat, eyes tangential to hers, both gazing into the distance. Both trying to sort out the fragments of their lives. Both missing pieces they could never fill. Both wishing for better days. They were both living the same surreality of that moment.

  “I’m in trouble, Mom. I just lost my job….” and now tears were rolling down his cheeks. “I lost my job, and now I don’t know how I can take care of my family. Take care of you.” Voice trembling now. “I don’t have enough saved to cover everything. We have a big note on our house. I gave everything I could to help the church.” The tears were hot now. “I don’t know how long I can keep you here, Mom. I don’t know how long I can afford anything.”

  He put his face back into his hands. The hard cast smelled, but he still pressed it against his face. Tears ran down his palm and down his wrist. His tears wet the plaster. He spoke through it.

  “I have all the rest of my money tied up in court. The union is representing the deputy sheriff that beat me, and now he’s suing me…claiming I attacked him. I don’t know what to do, Mom. I think I’m going to run out of money before I run out of things to be sued for.”

  And then he openly wept. Hard. He wept as the small child did to the woman who sat beside him. He wept the way he had when he had fallen off his red Schwinn and tore the skin off his hands and knees. She had held him then, softly cooing and shushing. He cried the way he had when his father, her husband, had died; and then they had cried together. He cried the way he had when his high school girlfriend dumped him when she went off to college, and while he had wept she had gently assured him he would find another love someday.

  He cried hot tears. Loud cries of pain. All that he had held in him came out. He shuddered from deep within his soul. This was a loss he wasn’t sure he would or even could ever recover from.

  He hadn’t noticed that the cold, soft hand was touching his. It stirred in the back of his mind. His sobbing stopped, and he pulled his hands from his face. His mother’s cold, liver-spotted hand touched his. He took her hand, and he held it. She turned her distant gray eyes to him. He didn’t even think she could see him or perhaps even comprehend him. But her hand felt comforting on his.

  How that hand had consoled him, nurtured him through the years of his life. How those hands had washed him, changed him, wiped his tears, cleaned scrapes and cuts, ironed his clothes. Those hands had been the connection between him and his mother. Her touch had joined mother to son. Her touch was life and love to him. Her touch had raised him, from boy to man.

  Now their hands held each other’s.

  And he saw it. Ever so slightly. He thought he saw a flicker of recognition in her fading vision, though perhaps he just wished it to be there.

  VI

  Her gray-blue eyes were earnest and imploring. Frank knew she felt vulnerable, more than she ever had in her life. It was new to her. It was new to them. Everything she had known about her life felt balanced on a knife’s edge. Her voice was as sharp as that blade, and it cut him to the quick.

  “How are we going to take care of the kids?”

  “Don’t worry, everything will be okay.” He was doing his best to project confidence, but he wasn’t optimistic. He could feel it, off in the distance. He knew the storm was coming. His brave face hid many cracks. Pretense crumbling.

  “How can you know that, Frank? How can you say that?” She looked away from him, cheeks angry red.

  “God will see us through this, Shelly. We’ll make it through this tough time. We have to pull together and support each other.”

  “I think this is getting worse, not better.” She crossed her arms, appearing authoritarian as she leveled her gaze at him. He saw judgment.

  “It’s a tough challenge…it definitely is…” He couldn’t hold her gaze, and his eyes fell.

  “You made a choice that night…you went to the bar instead of taking care of your family. You weren’t being responsible. Now we all have to suffer for your mistake…”

  “We’ve been over this. I’m sorry. I wish I could go back, but I can’t.”

  “I have to think about me and the kids.” She was looking past him now. “I have to do what’s right for us. You don’t know how vulnerable I feel right now.”

  “Don’t I? I’m the one with the court date.”

  “I’m worried about my children, Frank. Our children. You’re worried about yourself. If you go to jail, how will we afford this house? How will we eat?”

  “Haven’t I always taken care of you? Haven’t I?” She was still looking afar. “I’ve always handled things. Trust me to handle this.”

  Shelly looked back at him, then down to his hands. She stood up from the bed, straightened her blouse, and then turned. Her back was to him. He could see the few light streaks of gray in her shoulder-length hair. “Frank, you need to solve this. You need to get this fixed soon. This is embarrassing for me. My family. The kids. We have lives too. I’m not going to let you screw up all of ours. I’m not going to toss away my life because of your lapse of judgment.” Properly stated, she thought. She left the bedroom and walked to the front room.

  Frank would have been better served to have understood what she was telling him in that moment. Instead, he continued to look at his hands, assuming she was venting. His mind swirled. His thoughts collided and mashed together. He couldn’t get his thinking lined up and organized; he couldn’t find a sequence or pattern to solve. Too much. It was all too much. He was overwhelmed. Drowning in the wave that crashed down on his life. His thoughts cast shadows around the room, too quick for his eyes to follow.

  How had it come to this? he wondered. How could his perfect life collapse from under him? All he had done was stand up for his friend. They were both outnumbered, and nobody was hurt badly. Then in the county lockup, he had only asked for a phone call. How had such simple things derailed him? And Tony wasn’t returning his calls.

  What on earth is going
on?

  He had immediately sought counsel. He hired the best money could buy. His lawyer set to work immediately. Both incorrectly assumed the case would be reviewed and dismissed. They hadn’t dismissed it, though. Far from it.

  “Frank, there’s something amiss here,” Kevin Matthews, esquire, had said, fiddling with his Stanford tie. “The DA seems to be pressing this case. I don’t know why...and the judge is blocking many of my requests for information, especially about the deputy and some witnesses. Something is very odd about this case.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It seems they’re going to press this case for what happened at the lockup…they’re going to come at you hard on this one, and then when they bring the next charges, they’ll already have proven you to be a violent person. They are refusing to talk about plea bargains and want this first case to go to trial…and they want that soon. They need to move through this one, so they can get to the charges for what happened with Deputy Jensen.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, they’re planning to go all the way; the sheriff’s union is demanding you be held accountable, and since both cases are tied together, they are demanding jail time for each. Your second case should be presented to the grand jury soon. Is there anything you want to tell me? About that incident, I mean. Deputy Jensen is claiming serious injuries sustained that night. He has been out of work since then. He said he experienced physical and emotional trauma and that he may not be able to work again. What happened?”

  “I told you already. I was asking for my phone call. The officer simply opened the door and beat me with his baton. He had only just arrived…maybe ten minutes. I didn’t do anything except demand my call.” Frank was lightheaded. His fingertips were tingling. An icy sweat coated his forehead. Tightness in his throat and chest.

  “I subpoenaed the surveillance video from the lockup, but nobody can seem to find that tape. They’re saying it must’ve been accidentally erased.”

  “Erased?”

  “Yeah. Coincidence, right? Plus, the union is pressing in support of their officer…they’ve met with the mayor twice. They’re demanding the DA support Jensen with an all-out prosecution. No pleas will suffice. They keep talking about officer safety. They say you need to be made an example of, or others will do the same.” After a pause. “And now they’re holding the civil case until the criminal trial…they think it’ll increase the award of damages.”

  “What could happen to me?”

  “Assaulting a police officer is a felony…this could be some serious jail time if they don’t accept a plea deal…plus what you’re facing from the bar. Civil trial could result in a serious cash award, including levies against future earnings.”

  Frank could feel it slipping away from him. He knew this was breaking in the wrong direction. Like a Reno slot machine, every crank of the handle showed lemons. He had left his lawyer’s office in emotional rags. Since their meeting he had been home, trying to make sense of the calamitous turn his life had taken.

  He heard his children playing outside in their backyard. A thin wall of stucco, two-by-fours, and insulation were all that stood between him and them, but they felt miles away. He normally loved to hear the sound of their laughter, but tonight he had other thoughts. Dark ones. Tonight he was a defeated man. He was lost in the harsh hurricane in his heart and mind. All was tumult and despair.

  He slipped off his bed and down onto his knees, barely able to stay upright. He smoothed the white duvet and then turned his eyes up to the ceiling. He spoke his prayer aloud, voice pleading, straining with every ounce of his body to push his prayer up toward the heavens.

  “Dear Father, I know I have prayed that you give me trials in my life. I know I prayed for you to forge my spirit in the crucible of spiritual challenges. I realize now that I wasn’t ready. I am not strong. I’m weak. So very weak. Lord, please take this challenge away from me. I’m not strong enough to take any more. I want to stay in my walk with you. I don’t want to lose everything I have. I don’t want to see my family hurt. I have worked so hard…”

  He jerked when the phone rang. He tried to continue praying, but the ringing made him lose focus. Shelly answered, then called out from the kitchen.

  “Frank, it’s Matthews!” She had expectation in her voice.

  He stood up heavily with a great weight between his shoulders. He felt decades older than he was and was drained from all the emotions he’d had coursing through him these last weeks.

  He picked up the phone. “Hi, Kevin,” he said. He waited for Shelly to click off the line, but she didn’t. The ambient noise made his lawyer sound far away.

  “Hi, Frank. I have some news for you.”

  “Yeah, go ahead,” he said, but he knew from his tone that this was going to be bad.

  “Like we talked about, it’s not looking good. The DA is still playing hardball…no plea bargains. They feel they have a strong case. Your friend Tony has agreed to testify against you and claim you started the fight that night…”

  “He what?” Frank couldn’t contain his shout. “Tony?”

  “They’re already planning their initial prosecution against you for the bar fight and are wrapping up a second for the county jail incident. The first met the grand jury this morning, and they returned an indictment. And as I said before, the union is demanding action to support the deputy, and they hope to have that case ready in two months. I’m sorry…wish I had better news.”

  “Oh my God,” Frank said, sitting down on the bed. His elbows were on his knees. Trembling left hand rubbed his eyes and forehead. He could barely hold the phone to his ear.

  “I pressed for a plea down. Usually for these types of cases and someone without a record you can work down to probation and fines, but they’re not bargaining. I do have an offer from the DA. It’s not great, but I want you to consider it…going to trial is dangerous. I just want you to think about it. The DA is willing to accept a one-year sentence, and good time could cut that in half. Five years probation. Hundred-thousand-dollar fine, for court costs and damages.”

  He could hear Shelly’s excited breaths and movements in the kitchen.

  “Kevin, how can this be?” Frank felt the phone trembling against his ear.

  “I’m sorry, Frank. You know I pushed for no jail time, but there are forces at work here.”

  “Forces? Yeah, forces of corruption!” He felt his face flush with rage. “They beat me…”

  “Frank, I know…” he tried to interject.

  “…and then not only do they get away with it, but I’m the one looking at jail time? How on Earth is this possible?”

  “I’m sorry, Frank. You’re a citizen and they’re the authorities. They hold the strings, and from their viewpoint you hurt one of them, and they want you to pay. I’m meeting with the DA again on Monday. I’ll try to work down the jail time more. But your friend’s willingness to testify against you…that’s an ace they have in any negotiation.”

  “I can’t go to jail, Kevin. I can’t. I have a family.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Our only other option is to go to trial, but anything can happen there. You could end up with a lot more. It’s risky.”

  “How much more?”

  “They have those three charges they’ve already listed: disorderly conduct, assault, battery. Plus they could list damages to the bar…could be a lot. You could end up with two to three years, perhaps, though I imagine it would be less. We also have to consider whether they’ll file more civil charges, and guilt in a criminal court furthers that civil case.”

  “Do they understand I have no prior record? Do they know I am a deacon in the church and all that? Was…”

  “Of course I told them, Frank. Of course I did,” almost indignantly. “That’s why they’re offering this deal. At first, they weren’t bargaining at all.”

  He sat there rubbing his eyes. He was trembling uncontrollably.

  Michelle Joseph filled the momentary silence. “Kevi
n, what happens to me if these fines are levied against Frank and he goes to jail?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do I have to pay?”

  “As husband and wife, the fines would go against your family assets. Any joint funds would be levied.”

  “The house?”

  “Yes, the house. Savings. Investments.”

  “You can’t let that happen, Kevin,” she insisted. “I have to think about the children if Frank goes to jail. Who is going to take care of us?”

  “I understand, Michelle. I’ll do everything I can.”

  “Thanks, Kevin,” Frank said, resignedly. He hung up and set the phone on the bed next to him. He heard his wife continue in the kitchen. He lifted himself slowly to his feet, and then stepped into the bathroom. He opened the toilet and vomited. One single watery heave. It came out of his nose and his mouth and burned fiercely. He spit to clear his mouth, then flushed the toilet. As he cupped his hand to get water from the sink, he looked into the mirror. His eyes seemed so vacant, so distant. He felt like he was seeing himself across a divide, seeing another him…an older one. His cheeks sagged. Gone were his open smile and happy eyes.

  He walked back to the bed and sat on the edge for just a moment. He slid back to his knees. He body was nearly limp, and his hands clasped weakly.

  “Father, please help me. I can’t do this. I need you to help me. Please show me what I should do. I’m not ready for what I’m going to face. Please…” His face was shedding tears into the white duvet.

  “Dad?” Soft voice at the door.

  “Mark…what’s up, buddy?” He kept his face down.

  “Is everything okay?” His son took a tentative step forward.

  Frank looked up at him. Mark saw his father’s face and stepped back. “Yeah, everything is fine.” He tried to smile, but it just made him appear gruesome.