“Conned the parole board, didn’t you? Well, you ain’t going to con me. Found religion, my ass.” T.J. Hughes grinned, his thin weathered face partially hidden in the shadow of his Stetson, lower lip protruding behind a knot of chaw. T.J. arcing a brown stream of tobacco juice into a waste can next to his desk. “Been one way your whole life, found the Lord in the last two months. That sound about right?” He turned his head, spit again. “What were you doing, sucking the chaplain’s cock? That get you parole consideration?”
“I think God worked a miracle for me,” Jack said. He tried to gesture with his hands, forgetting they were still cuffed to the bellychain.
“He did, huh?” T.J. grinned and spit.
“He said, ‘Jack, I need your help. I need you to turn your life around and make something of yourself.’” These were the chaplain’s preachy lines Jack had memorized and now delivered with his own inspired conviction.
“He come down from on high, appear in your cell, or’d you just hear his voice?”
“All I know is,” Jack said, “with the help of Almighty God, I can do it.”
“Well, dude, you got six months to keep your nose clean, and I don’t think you can.”
“Thanks for your support,” Jack said. “I appreciate your faith in me, Mr. Hughes.”
“You getting smart with me, boy?”
Jack furrowed his brow, gave him a look of Christian innocence. Who, me?
“God, I hope not. That would be a mistake, I guarantee it.”
He talked tough sitting behind a desk in an office building. Jack wondering how this wrinkled prune of an ex-cowboy-who must’ve been close to fifty- would handle the outlaw bikers in Central Unit. He’d like to see that. “No, sir. What I was trying to say- with the Lord’s help, I have been able to banish that evil part of me.”
“Let me tell you the way it’s going to be,” T.J. said, “so there’s no misunderstanding.”
He pushed the brim of his hat up, and for the first time Jack could see his dark, beady little eyes.
“I’m going to be checking up on you when you least expect it. I’ll want to see your pay stubs. You don’t have ’em, you’re going back to Judy.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger.
“I’m going to be asking for u-rine samples. You give me a hot UA, you’re going back to Judy. You know your warden’s a lady, right? Judy L. Frigo. Got a degree in ball busting, I understand. What tickles me, a little girl’s in charge of keeping all you hard-asses in line. That’s a good one.”
T.J. was a wiry 170-pounder in lizard-skin boots, tight Levis and a western shirt with pearl buttons and piping around the pockets.
“Eighty-two percent of you assholes revoke,” T.J. said. “What’s called recidivism, the return to crime after a criminal conviction. You going to beat the odds, Jack? It’s a real crapshoot out there.”
“The portents of doom aren’t going to deter me,” Jack said. “If that’s what you’re asking.”
T.J. got up, hooking his thumbs on the inside edges of his belt buckle, a heavy brass number with a star embossed on it. “Portents of doom, huh? Where’d you come up with that one? That’s some big words for a convict.”
Jack was a spectacle when he’d arrived an hour earlier to the parole supervision of Mr. T.J. Hughes-legs chained, making short hopping moves, getting used to how far he could step, hands cuffed to a belly chain, people staring at him as he got out of the van and was escorted into the Regional Reentry Center in Tucson after serving thirty-eight months for armed robbery at the Arizona State Penitentiary in Florence.
Under oath, in a court of law, he told the judge he didn’t know the names of his two accomplices. He said, “Your Honor, ever see the movie Reservoir Dogs?”
The judge said, “This better be relevant.”
Jack’s court-appointed attorney, Joe Mitchell, said “Your Honor, in the film, five strangers are hired by a crime broker to rob a bank. They meet for the first time and don’t know anything about each other. No names are used. Each one is given a color. Mr. Blue. Mr. Green. Mr. Brown. Like that.”
“Life imitates art, is that what you’re telling me, Counselor?”
Joe Mitchell said, “That’s right, Your Honor.” Assuming the judge got it.
“I saw the movie,” the judge said, “thought it was preposterous.”
Jack got the maximum for a class-two felony-five years. His unexpected parole, the result of befriending the prison chaplain who stopped by his cell one day and said, “Will you come and visit me? I’d like to talk to you about joining our Bible study program, part of my Prisoners of Christ ministry.”
Jack grinned ’cause it sounded funny and was about to say, “You got the wrong guy.” But paused, looking at the future, seeing eighteen more months of mind-numbing sameness, and started to panic-when a lightbulb went on in his head. Wait a minute. Maybe this was his way out.
The chaplain was a tall thin hawk-faced man named Ulrich Jonen. His prison ministry program was called New Beginnings.
“What’s done is done,” Uli said. “You cannot change your past transgressions, but you can start anew and you can do it today. God enables us to have a second chance, and more, if necessary. We’re all human beings and human beings make mistakes.”
Jack could relate. Jesus, nobody’s perfect.
Jack told the chaplain what he wanted to hear and even let the chaplain hug him on occasion, Uli displaying some homo tendencies, but it never got out of hand.
After two months of studying scripture, Uli referred Jack to the parole board as a man, he felt, really wanted to make a change. “I see goodness in Jack Curran.” Uli urged the “board” to at least meet him. “What’s the harm in that? If you don’t believe as I do, he’s a changed man, he stays and maxes out his sentence.”
The parole board interviewed Jack and agreed with the chaplain, giving him early conditional release-what they called discretionary parole, with a list of rules he had to follow.
As he was leaving the penitentiary, Uli said, “Jack, have faith, son. The next few weeks are going to be a critical time. There’s going to be a lot of chaos in your world. My advice: ‘Press on. Nothing in this life can take the place of persistence.’ Know who authored those words?”
Jack said, “You?”
“Mr. Ray Kroc, who started a little fast-food franchise called McDonald’s.”
T.J. unlocked the cuffs and chains in his office and said, “I got the authority to detain you, arrest you and send you back if I have cause. Boy, I get even an inkling you’re violating parole, you’re going to be in a whole heap lot of trouble.”
Jack rubbed his wrists. There were red marks from the handcuffs. He looked across the desk at T.J. and said, “I could use a little time to find my footing.”
“Is that right? Well, you got ten working days to get a permanent job, and I expect you to work labor to meet expenses.”
“How am I going to find a job if I’m working all day?”
“Talk to your buddy, Jesus, now that you’re on a first-name basis-ask him. They’re going to charge you $105 a week for rent at the house. And another $200 for an alcohol-and drug-counseling program.”
Jack reminded T.J. he’d been arrested for armed robbery, not booze or drugs.
T.J. said, “I’m just looking out for you, buddy,” and grinned. “But on the plus side, you don’t have any restitution fees or back child-support payments.”
What pissed Jack off, what seemed like pure bureaucratic lunacy, he had to have a phone location where he could be reached at all times. No cell phones. That eliminated a lot of better-paying jobs right off the bat. They really stacked the deck against you.
There were framed photographs of T.J. on the wall from another time: T.J. the rodeo honcho, roping a calf in one, riding a bull in another one.
“You were in the rodeo, huh? What was it like to be on the back of a two-thousand-pound Brahma bull?”
“It beat the hell out of keeping track of losers like you,” he said, holding Jack in his gaze.
It took Jack a while to get used to life on the outside. The world seemed big at first, after spending eighteen hours a day in a six-by-ten-foot cell with no windows. It was also tough being around people, thinking everyone who came toward him wanted to kill him, walking with his back toward the shelves in a grocery store, seeing suburban moms and old folks and realizing he was overreacting, the survival instincts he learned in prison difficult to let go. He didn’t need his “prison face” now. He didn’t have to look mad and bad.
The clothes he was wearing on February 28, 2002, the day he went in, no longer fit, so he bought gray khaki pants and a shirt from the prison store, first deducting it from his hundred dollars of release money, leaving him fifty-two dollars till he could find a job. He thought he looked like a janitor in his new khaki outfit, but it was stylish compared to the red jumpsuit he’d worn for three and a half years.
Jack had read that most cons who were released were scared ’cause they didn’t want to make a mistake but were too dumb or too unprepared to make it outside and got arrested and sent back after a couple weeks. T.J. said it was due to “gate fever,” a malady that caused fear, anxiety and grouchiness in the hapless convict.
A lot of guys Jack met inside actually liked the “life.” Three squares a day, no worries about getting a job and paying bills, no responsibilities at all. And they liked their prison friends better than their friends back home.
Jack lived on baked beans and canned spaghetti the first couple weeks in the halfway house, spicing up both with salt, pepper and Tabasco in the small kitchen, while he tried to find a job, interviewing at construction sites and trying to preserve his capital-now down to eight dollars and seventy-three cents.
Nobody was hiring ex-cons on parole and he was close to desperate, thinking he’d have to revert to crime to make ends meet, when he saw a want ad and got a job at a place in South Tucson, building modular homes. The company was Eldorado Estates. A sign in the warehouse said: “Making the American Dream a Reality.” Jack wondering who in their right mind thought living in a trailer was attaining the American dream.
Hank Bain, one of the owners, told Jack the job paid ten dollars an hour, but when he found out Jack was on parole, offered him seven, Hank saying, “You don’t like it, come over here, I’ve got a little spot on my ass you can kiss.”
Jack cleared $205 a week after taxes and, after paying for his room at the halfway house, had a hundred dollars for food and entertainment. A line on the bottom of his paycheck said: “Eldorado Estates, built on family values of trust and loyalty.” Jack liked that. Everything was a lie.
Hank’s son Donny was the crew chief, a skinny effeminate heroin addict who was trying to kick the habit and trying to get by on weed. Donny’d twist one on the way to lunch and offer it to Jack, Jack saying, “I’m on parole, man, I give ’em a hot urinalysis, they’re going to send me right back.”
Donny said, “Fuck ’em, they can’t do that.”
Jack said, “They can do anything they want.”
And did, T.J. stopping by at the factory checking up on him while he installed windows in prefab walls, rousting him in his room in the middle of the night, waking him up and making him piss in a plastic bottle. Standing behind him while he did it. Jack saying it’s hard “to go” when someone’s watching you.
“Come on, wake up, sleepyhead,” T.J.’ d say. “Let’s find out what kind of fun you’ve been having.”
But Jack beat the odds, got through parole without screwing up and six months later was on a bus back to Detroit with a fresh outlook and the intent of staying out of prison. T.J. said he had to have a forwarding address and Jack gave him his sister Jodie’s.
From the Greyhound station downtown, he took a cab to Sterling Heights, hoping Jodie would be there. He knocked on her front door, his only sister, he hadn’t seen in four years. She opened it, looking at him through the screen and said, “Oh… my… God.” Stretching it out like it was one word. “I do not believe it. What’d you do, escape?”
Jack said, “I found Jesus.”
“Yeah, right.”
Jack said, “The parole board believes I am a changed man.”
She grinned. “Well, they obviously don’t know you very well.”
He and Jodie had always gotten along, had always been close, closer after the death of their parents twelve years earlier when a fire broke out in their East Detroit home.
Jack said, “Can I stay with you for a few days?”
“I don’t know that I’d be comfortable living in the same house with a criminal.” She smiled now to show him she was kidding and opened the door.
Jack stepped over the threshold and she put her arms around him, hugged him and held on. She kissed his cheek and said, “Jackie, it’s so good to see you. You can stay as long as you like. You’re welcome anytime, you know that.”
She was a thirty-two-year-old divorcée with short spiked hair, dyed red and long fingernails that were light blue with flecks of color on them.
“When’d you change your hair?” Last time he saw Jodie, she was blond.
“Couple weeks ago. It’s an Emo style.”
“Emo, huh?”
“Stands for emotional punk movement.”
“I can see it,” Jack said.
“Listen, I’m in the business-I have to look the look. Did you know coloring your hair dates back to the ancient Romans?”
“I guess it’s okay then,” Jack said.
They went in the kitchen and Jodie made them each a vodka and tonic.
She said, “I’ll bet you’d like a home-cooked meal after all that time being incarcerated. I could whip us up some tuna noodle hot dish.”
It was a joke between them. Hot dish was a casserole their mother from Minnesota used to make. She’d start with a can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and put in tuna and noodles or ham and lima beans, whatever she had handy.
They had another drink and Jodie made hamburgers on a gas grill and they ate on TV tables in the living room, watching Jeopardy.
At one point Jack said, “You still selling cosmetics?” Jodie had worked for Revlon and made good money, selling to high-end stores in malls around Detroit.
She smiled and said, “No, I’m a nail technologist.”
Jack said, “Why are you doing that? You had a good job.” He regretted it as soon as he said it.
“You ought to talk.” She gave him a dirty look. “What did you say your current occupation was?”
He tried to smooth things over by asking a couple questions. “What do you like about your job?”
Jodie perked up a little. “You really want to know?”
Jack said, “You bet I do.” Trying to put a little enthusiasm behind it.
“Well, for one thing, it gives me a chance to be creative. I design decorative, colorful little things for fingernails and toenails. My favorites are gorgeous flowers made out of pink and green rhinestones and beautiful butterflies and ladybugs made out of crystal-clear teardrop rhinestones and pink round rhinestones.”
Jodie was grinning. She couldn’t help herself; she was so excited.
“I also do patriotic designs like American flags. They were very popular after 9/11. One of my customers met her boyfriend ’cause he loved the sunshine design I did on her toes. How about that? And I do New York manicures and French manicures and warm paraffin manicures. Once I did a pink ribbon for a breast cancer survivor. I do guys too, give them manicures and paint their toenails. I think it’s great there are men who are masculine enough to express themselves in such a fun way.”
Jack had stopped listening after “teardrop rhinestones.”
Jodie’s goal was to open her own shop one day. She was going to call it Ultimate Nails. “I think that says it all,” Jodie said, “don’t you?”
He thought, that’s what happens, you try to be nice to someone, they bore the hell out you.
The next day he drove Jodie to work and went out for a few hours, looking for a job. He was almost out of money and Jodie’d made it clear right up front, she wasn’t in a position to help him out financially.
In his brief job search, he tried a couple used car lots on Gratiot, asking if they needed an experienced salesman. They didn’t. He tried a construction site, a landscaping company, and a painting contractor, saying he’d do anything they needed done and struck out each time. He tried two strip joints on Eight Mile, asking if they were looking for a bouncer. They weren’t.
He stopped at a neighborhood saloon and sat at the dark bar that was crowded with afternoon drinkers. He sipped a beer and considered his options. Say he did get hired somewhere: now that he didn’t have the motivation to make probation, how long could he work some menial, chickenshit job? The answer was not very, if at all. He didn’t see himself showing up for work every day, doing something he didn’t want to do. He couldn’t see himself starting over, like he’d ever started in the first place. He was the way he was and wasn’t going to change. Not at age thirty-eight.
For the first time since leaving Arizona, he thought seriously about getting a gun and hitting party stores, small markets and retail shops that one person could manage. He’d just be more careful this time around, the fear of incarceration fading after six months on the outside.