by William Earl
William Earl’s
Metal Fatigue, © 2015, William Earl
Published by Lot’s Cave
All Rights Reserved
Cover by Moira Nelligar
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Lot’s Cave Novel
WARNING
Dedicated to my son, William
Metal Fatigue is an anthology of stories relating to prison, incarceration, hopelessness and hope. These are largely the first person accountings of survival behind bars and give a visceral look at what it means to do time. The stories present a critical look at the prison system and the stats for those held behind bars. A child lost to the system, a father’s plea for reconnection.
A wrongly punished man feels what he is accused of does not deserve punishment. There is no way society can enforce discipline on a man who feels he is being unjustly treated. For some, any attempted unjust discipline triggers the "Law Of Necessity", which means that to him "No Law" exists whatsoever. You see, necessity knows no law! For instance, any law forbidding one to kill is voided when done on self-defense. Moreover, during times of war, all laws are silent. Didn’t Congress declare war on crime? Thus a wrongly punished man finds himself in a state of war he did not declare. By his right of survival, does any law exist now that binds him?
For YOU, no intelligent person should respect an unjust law. Nor should YOU feel any guilt over breaking it. YOU should simply follow the Eleventh Commandment: "Don't Get Caught".
But for everyone, tougher criminal laws will never work. People do not plan to get angry or go out of control any more than they plan to behave predictably. Considered on a macro level, society cannot adequately change human nature by criminalizing it. Criminal incidents reflect the foreseeable if not predictable responses of humans under great stress. Pack overheated people onto roads and in cities, treat them like dirt, lie to them, manipulate them, price-gouge them; and you will see the numbers of rage incidents and criminality, by definition, increase. This is a ticking bomb.
Will somebody please help me find my son?
CONTENTS
Sons
Dear God, Please?
Where Do I Belong?
Is It Real?
Does Freedom Exist?
My Homework Assignment
I Want To Be Free
Does Liberty Exist?
Innocent With Impossible Bail
The Man’s Story
Three Deer
Jury Duty
Doin’ Time
Two Words
Survival
Waiting For The Word
Silent Voices
In Hell Without A Roadmap
Liberty Denied
Metal Fatigue
Mass Incarceration
Prison Slut
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author’s Revenge
Family Exotica
Taboo Erotica
Other Novels
Sons
The prisoners scrambled from their cells as lockdown period ended, fighting for an available telephone; grabbing a table on which to play cards; and arguing over which cartoon character, Batman or Superman, is the most powerful, all the while watching another slow day pass. The noise, awful, ear shattering... re-echoing throughout the concrete bunker causing slow, but permanent ear damage! The smell of unwashed bodies and decaying food from personal stashes... like a slaughterhouse dumpster filled with old sneakers.
One prisoner, taking the last seat, thanked the others who had moved over to make room for his cellmate a moment earlier, then turned to his cellmate, and asked, “You stressed?”
The cellmate, instead of answering, turned slightly, grabbed the deck of cards, and began shuffling, so as to hide his face.
“Disrespectin’ world,” muttered the first prisoner with a sad smile. He felt it his duty to explain to the others the necessity of cut’n some slack to his cellmate. His cellmate had just learned that the judge decided to take from him his only son, a boy of eight years, to whom he devoted his entire life. His only son... who idolized his father with all his heart. He would never see his son... ever again.
The cellmate, twisting and wriggling, and at times growling like a wild animal, felt certain all these explanations would not arouse even a shadow of fake-ass sympathy from the other prisoners, who—most likely—were all in the same plight as himself.
One of the others, listening with particular attention, said, “Yo man, ya should be thankin’ God ya got eight years with yer son. Dat same judge—he stole my son when he was sixteen months old by puttin’ me away fer dis crime I never done. Ya know what I mean? My son’s mom, she came down twice fer visits, and I sawed him, but she moved now—went to another state somewhere—I’ll never find ‘em or ever see my son again. No suh, man!”
“Yo man, yo! I feel ya, but lookit me! I gots me two sons and three girls outsides on the streets,” said another prisoner.
“I ain’t mad at you, but my cellmate, yo, it’s the only son he gots,” ventured the first prisoner in defense.
“What difference that makes, yo? Ya spoils yer son with attentions and stuffs ya buys, but ya can’t love him more than ya would all yer other kids if ya had any. It’s not like bread, man, that ya rips into pieces and give out to the childrens in small bits, each the same size. I loves my childrens with no discrimination. It don’t matter if it’s one son or two. If I be sufferin’ now fer my two sons, I ain’t sufferin’ half fer each son, but double…”
“Yeh… Yeh…” sighed the embarrassed prisoner, “but what if this father, he gots two sons outside, and loses one that dies in a car wreck, there’s still one left to make him happy… help forget… while…”
“Lookit man,” bellowed the other prisoner, getting angry, “a son left ta make him feels happy and forget the other, but also a son left he must stay alive fer, ya know what I mean? But ya knows the father with one son can put a shoe string around his neck and end his life and everything, ya know what I mean, man? Which is the bad, man? I think mines the bad, Yo!”
“Frontin’ man,” interrupted another prisoner, a fat, red-faced man with bloodshot eyes of the palest grey. He was panting. From his bulging eyes seemed to spurt the inner violence of an uncontrolled vitality his weakened body could hardly contain. “Frontin’,” he repeated, trying to cover his mouth with his hand, hiding two missing front teeth. “Frontin’, Yo. Did ya make yer childrens so they could make ya happy and forget all yer troubles?”
The other prisoners each stared at him in distress. The prisoner who lost his son at sixteen months sighed. “Yeh man, our sons don’t belong to us; they belongs to da womens… Ya don’t think of yer son when ya make him, do ya? Sons are born, ’cause… well,... ’cause they have ta be; and when they begin ta live, they takes our own life with them. This da truth—we’s belong ta dem, but deys never belongs ta us. And when they gits ta be eighteen years old, they goes ta their girlfriends and wives. Jist like we did, know what I mean, when we was that age. Yah... sons belong ta da womens.”
In silence, the prisoners all nodded their approval. Until finally, the first prisoner could no longer remain silent and slowly bega
n to speak.
“Let’s keep it real, man. Sons belongs ta da Country… Us too, had a father and mother, and other stuff too—girls, cigarettes, music, ideas, business ta do—and da country, dats what we’s went to ’ganistan, Iraq, and Desert Storm fer—even when ar fathers and mothers said, “No”. Man, even at ar age we loves ar country lots more than we loves ar childrens. Yo, is there any of ya that wouldn’t take his sons place at the battlefront if he could?”
“Yup, dats it,” agreed the fat man. “Keepin’ it real, shouldn’t we be thinkin’ of da childrens when deys eighteen and how deys feel? Bro, its jist nature dat deys love the country more than us. It be nature bro’, deys see us—things we be old mens now and can’t fight, and can only stay at home! If da country be, and it be like food dat ya gots ta have so ya don’t die of hunger, then it gots ta be defended. Keepin’ it real, da sons, dey knows. Dey goes, man, yo. Ya know what I mean? Dey’re men now, don’t want no tears; dey’re eighteen, ’cause if dey die, dey dies happy and doin’ their business, man. Bro, if one dies young and happy and never sees da ugliness of life, or da boredom of it, da pettiness, da bitterness of disillusion… What else could we want fer ar sons?” The fat man stood, his chest pumped with pride—for stringing so many big important words together.
“Ya’all needs ta stop yer crying; all of ya should be laughin’ like me. Or at least thankin’ God—like I does, yo—’cause my son… word is bond, man… before he died, see, he sends me dis letter from da war sayin dat he be dying satisfied dat he ended it all da best way he wanted—defendin’ his country—dats why, yo, I never cries!”
He shook his shoulders in his green prison shirt so as to show it; his livid lip over his missing teeth, trembling… his eyes watery and motionless. Soon after, he ended with a shrill laugh, which might well have actually been a sob.
“Yo ain’t shuck’n and jive’n, bro…You said it all… kept it real” agreed the entire table of prisoners.
The cellmate—still idly shuffling the deck of cards, had been sitting and listening—for the last six months—trying to find in the words of the other prisoners something to console him in his deep sorrow at losing his only son. Something that might show him how a father should resign himself to the loss of his son. But he found not one word among the many spoken; his grief the greater seeing nobody—as he thought—could understand or share his feelings.
But now, the words of the fat man amazed and stunned him. He suddenly realized the others were not wrong and could easily understand him. Instead, he himself had failed to rise up to the same heights of understanding as the other prisoners with sons… willing to resign himself without crying, not only to the loss of his son, but even his own son’s death.
He lifted his head, stopped shuffling the cards, bent over the table trying through the deafening cellblock noise to listen with great attention to the details which the fat man was giving the prisoners. How his son had fallen in ‘ganistan, a hero with medals to prove it, for his president and his country—happy and with no regrets. It seemed to him he’d stumbled into a world he’d never dreamed existed, a world previously unknown to him. He was pleased to hear all the prisoners joining in congratulations to the brave father who could so stoically speak of his son’s death.
Then suddenly, just as if he had heard nothing of what had been said, and almost as if waking up from a dream, he turned to the fat man, and asked: “Then... is your son really dead?”