Street Light

PROLOGUE

My novel Reichold Street was originally a series of short stories written around a common theme that were combined into a much larger story. The very unique experiences of the various characters you meet grew beyond one book, becoming a chronicle of their lives.

The second book in the series, One Way Street, expanded what we knew about the inhabitants of that place, particularly the character of Paul Barrett.

This third book, Street Light, rounds out the tale.

Is it finished? I don’t know. I’ve often said writing fiction is a whole series of surprises, as the characters sometimes amaze even me with the things they do. So it remains to be seen if there’s more to tell.

That being said, I’ve enjoyed learning about the denizens of Brickdale. I hope you have, too.

An excerpt from …

REICHOLD STREET

2012 Readers Favorite Gold Medal Winner

It was late August, 1962, when I first saw Albert Parker. After all this time I still remember the year quite distinctly. It was my second teenage summer and, like discovering I had a sexual identity, it was a part of life’s first great transition. I had been waiting for months for something special to happen, something magical. Something like having Marilyn Monroe show up on my doorstep.

In my dreams she would be wearing that flouncy white dress she wore over the subway grate in The Seven Year Itch. She would lean close and ask me, in one of her breathless whispers, to take her. At the time, I wasn’t even sure what that meant.

Hell, it didn’t matter. Just having her show up would have been enough, as long as the gang saw her. Of course, Marilyn never came to 752 Reichold Street in Brickdale.

Albert did…

An excerpt from …

The Devil & Charlie Barrow

ZEBULON and Other Stories

2013 Readers Favorite Silver Medal Winner

It was seven o’clock in the evening on a bitterly cold day in December, in that nebulous time just before the New Year and all its hoopla, when I saw Beelzebub walk into Flanagan’s Place.

Horns, forked tail, pitchfork, cloven hooves, sulfurous clouds, flowing cape and all, the old Beast strolled in nonchalantly and took a seat at the far end of the bar.

Lookit that, would ya? I poked the customer at the table I had just bussed with a hard elbow.

"Hmmph," the man grunted, obviously irritated at the interruption to the football game he watched on the big TV in the corner. He scowled at me before starting again on his platter of chicken wings.

He barely glanced at the dark apparition…

An excerpt from …

Tinker

TINKER and Other Short Stories

Unlike random accidents that alter lives suddenly, genetics is a sneaky thief. The dementia that claimed Marie’s mother…and her mother before that…began to make its presence known with my bride in a long, loopy slow dance. It tried to trick us at every corner, like a walk through a funhouse mirror.

I had to watch Marie keep sliding deeper with a complicated grief, the kind that accompanies the terrible erasure caused by Alzheimer’s…by far the meanest junkyard dog of incurable diseases. It did not take large, devastating chunks of her. It was, instead, a death by a thousand little cuts and nicks….

An excerpt from …

ONE WAY STREET

What was his name? Blake turned to look at me. He had blacked his face for camouflage and muddy streaks were caked on top of it. He could have been a clown, if he smiled. Or the devil himself, if he was angry.

Albert Parker, I said, He used to live right across the street from me.

Good guy?

I thought about it a moment. Yeah, I said, looking over at Blake, a really good guy.

You said he used to live across the street. Did he move, or something?

No, I said, he died.

Aw, that’s too bad, man, Blake said. He adjusted his bandolier and started to lean back against the mound of dirt behind us. What’d he die from?

Coming over here.

And now…

Street Light

CHAPTER 1 - Paul

Sometimes I wonder how different my life would have been if I hadn’t grown up on Reichold Street. My parents would have had the same influence on me, sure, but things would have been so different with a varied set of neighbors and friends.

No Ken Pozanski, no Twins, no Sticks. No Albert Parker or Janice Patton…then what? It strikes me funny sometimes, when I think about it. What would have happened, not only to me, but to all those kids I grew up with, if I hadn’t been there? If any of them hadn’t? It would mean a different set of experiences for each of us. But what?

They would still have played baseball in the street, wouldn’t they? I’m sure Randy and Donnie would have continued their uncanny ability to speak the same words at the same time. But would they have become known as The Twins? I’m sure Billy Strate would’ve been just as skinny as the kid we all knew in Brickdale. Genetics doesn’t change with location…at least as far as I know. Most likely, he would still have had a wicked fast peg from shortstop to first base, but would he still be the kid everyone knew as Sticks?

And Puz…I have a hard time imagining Ken Pozanski as anything but Puz. Would he have inherited another nickname instead of the one I gave him?

Then I start to wonder what things would be like if I had never known Albert Parker. The fun goes out of my thoughts then. Would his life have turned out the same way? What was my friendship worth to him? Was it worth anything at all? Would it have been worse for him living there on Reichold Street, having no friend? Would my life have been different, if I had never known Albert existed?

Perhaps.

I might not have volunteered for Vietnam. I know it was in part due to my feelings about what had happened to Albert that I enlisted in the first place. In spite of my father’s God and Country attitude, joining the Army wasn’t the first thing on my bucket list. It didn’t even make the top ten.

I had significant doubts about our involvement in that whole war. If only Albert hadn’t gotten into so much trouble. If that judge hadn’t sentenced him to jail…or admonished him to join some branch of the service to avoid it. If all that hadn’t led to the day he died in that Godforsaken place…my feelings might have been different.

As it was, avoiding a couple of years in jail turned into a death sentence for Albert, and colored my world forever.

Would I have been one of the many demonstrators against the war if that hadn’t happened? I often wanted to. Back then, I was so unsure which way was the right one, it could easily have been something I’d do. My thoughts were so divided. Heeding my mother’s heartfelt directive to go to Canada and avoid the draft was something I thought about. Becoming, in the process, a draft dodger and an outlaw felon in my own country was certainly something within the realm of possibility. It would also have made me an unwelcome pariah to my father. What if I had risked it?

If I had waited for Uncle Sam to draft me instead of enlisting, would things still have been the same? Would I still have the same miserable, evil memories of that war that haunted me right onto a psychiatrist’s couch?

Hell, would I even be alive to wonder?

So many maybes. Whenever I start thinking like that other questions arise, like would I have ever started writing? Would I have met Carrie and had those wonderful years with her? Would she still be alive if she had been with someone else instead of me?

That’s the thought that makes me weepy. If Carrie had never met me, she wouldn’t have been in the car when Blake Thompson tried to run me into the ground. She wouldn’t have died that night if she hadn’t been with me.

What would her future have been? What would mine look like? So many what if questions.

Every shrink I’ve been to has warned me about doing things like that…thinking those thoughts…but I can’t seem to help it. I don’t want to feel so responsible for all the misery in my world, but look at what happens.

I should have said something when my old war buddy, Blake, shot that lieutenant on Hill 882. But a lot of grunts felt like fragging their superiors in that mess and I wasn’t positive he had done it. It could just as easily have been a sniper, or any one of several other scared grunts.

I think Blake turned psychotic after we got home, when his girlfriend dumped him. That was the act that led him to kill the boy she was cheating with. That’s what messed him up, feeling like he had to kill his own Brenda after she saw him shoot that boy. No witnesses, after all.

He was pretty well messed up already, but he went off the deep end then. He began killing people from the Army he believed had offended him somehow. He came after me because he suspected I was a witness, too.

It was me who told him things like the god-awful atrocities in war were just going to keep on happening. Why? Because our leaders didn’t know how to resolve any of the shit going on in the world. What would he have been like if I hadn’t planted that stupid thought in his head?

Was I the one responsible for making Blake insane? Oh, I planted the thought with him all right. I know it. He said as much on that last day in my house in Rancho Santa Fe, when he tried to erase me and my friends from his deranged list of hurtful things.

"You said so, Barrett." That’s what Blake spit back at me. You told me it would go on and on and on.

Was that why Carrie died? Because I made some less than thoughtful remark to a budding psychotic in the middle of the god-damned jungle? Or was I just a player in it all? Was it destiny that drove us and all the actions we made?

Is there such a thing?

I’ve thought about it a lot. If we could go back and change something – anything – what would any of us be like? Would things be better? Would Carrie still be here beside me? Would my friends not have the hideous memory of an insane Blake Thompson trying to wipe us all off the planet? Would my heart feel any less heavy?

I really don’t know.

I understand why the shrinks don’t want me thinking like that. I really do. There is nothing good that can come from woulda-shoulda-coulda. Nothing at all.

Still, if wishing could make it so, I make that wish.

I miss my Carrie.

CHAPTER 2 - Micah

I been so long in stir the sunlight hurt my eyes when I finally got outside again. Gave me one doozy of a headache, ya know? It’s not like I never got out in the yard. I just didn’t go out there often. When I did it was never for more than a few minutes. The yard can be a hurtful place. You learn that fast or you get hurt…a lot. Being out there long term is often a violent story in a different world.

Outside now, the bright sunlight hurt my eyes and made me squint. Didn’t take but fifteen minutes for it to feel like the top was coming right off my skull. Throbbing, pounding, banging, ya know? Made me wish I hadn’t used the last of my meth stash partying in my cell the night before my release.

Oh yeah…I partied. I had a stash.

Some outside folk might think it isn’t possible to get drugs so easy inside stir. Although I think there must be more than a few who know of course they can…who are you kidding? It’s just business as usual.

There’s a long and – what did the warden call it in that goddam speech he gave about cracking down on shit inside? Sordid tradition – yeah, that was it. A sordid tradition of dirty business going on in most American prisons.

Our State pen was no different. Warden Dooley…we called him Doofus and so did a lot of the guards, just never to his face…Dooley had visions of running for state office someday…Governor maybe.

So, he was always giving speeches like that. Parading in front of the women’s auxiliary of some do-gooder group or another. All to tell ‘em how he was keeping the streets safe for women and children, and rehabilitating us bastards inside at the same time.

Bullshit.

I saw more crap inside than I did outside. I don’t think there was a day that went by I didn’t see some asshole getting his face pounded. It was either that or stroll by someone passed out in the commons room or the yard from dope. Most so-called civilized folks think the hacks would put a stop to shit like that, but what do they know? It doesn’t take long for cons to know which badges will turn handsprings to help them bring crap in.

The same way civilians who want illegal goods know where to go, and who to ask. You just try ‘em up…get talking to them. Sometimes you get your ass kicked, but soon enough you learn who’s going to respond and you score.

It’s a weird market inside. Anything you can't buy at the commissary has value. Even a simple can of tobacco winds up broken down and sold for obscene amounts. An ounce of pot will go for six or seven times the street price. It's a hothouse of outrageous returns and someone always has a juice card where an underpaid pig wants to get in the car. If one of the badges agrees to deal, it’s easy for an inmate to have cash sent in. Real easy.

The biggest selling items always offered a slice of escape, and it ain’t what you think. It ain’t a file, or a blueprint of the pipes leading outside the gates. It’s an instant of abandon. The kind that allows an inmate to forget his locked-down life and live outside the walls, if only in his mind. Even bug juice or brake fluid copped from the psych ding wing goes for a lot.

Street dope is golden and, inside, finding street dope isn’t hard. It’s like going to the mall. There's the weed man, the crack man, the meth man, heroin, LSD, whatever you want. Once you prove yourself, so other inmates know you’re not a dry snitch, but someone who can really hold his mud and not bring down a heat wave, they become friends. And, inside, your friends will tell you where these things can best be found, or tell others how to find you.

I was the Meth Man.

Used the stuff…knew where it was outside and how to get it to the inside. Like I said, the price inside was insane and it was fairly easy to get a badge to help. They don’t pay those screws enough to deal with this asshole crowd all day. Me and those crooked badges, we put away lots of cash.

Ten years I’d been at it. Ten friggin’ years…and then my parole papers arrived and I was killing my number early. Good behavior and all that. More bullshit. I think the deputy warden got wind of my lucrative business. He and my crooked hack were just getting me out of the way so they could redirect more cash to their own damn pockets.

I gotta admit I was nervous, thinkin’ about what I was going to do with myself all day. Almost as much as I was about getting my hands on and using all the cash I’d put away outside for the day I got my letter out of this place.

Word got around fast inside when someone was killing his numbers. Getting out early on parole was nearly every cons dream. It was second only to finding an easy, willing bitch to help relieve years of frustration. When someone’s release letter came, the neighbors on the cell block knew almost as fast as the warden that some con was walking.

"Hey, Micah!" some monkey-mouth hollered on my release date as I got near the gate in the yard, my little duffel bag of personals and gate money in hand. How about sending in some decent eraser dust, will ya?

The stupid, faceless voice got nothing but the finger from me, which got some chuckles from the other cons out there. I couldn’t help smiling a bit myself, even though it’s something I seldom do…because of the teeth, ya know?

I’m supremely conscious of my teeth. They been bad for a long time now. I was walking out of stir this time ‘round almost a wealthy man and planned on getting the canines fixed as soon as I could. But all I could think of at that particular moment was how good it was gonna feel to breathe air as a free man again.

That, and getting even with the two snitches on the outside I was pretty sure got me put away. Didn’t need no inside fool reminding people who I was and why.

My first stop was the drug store in town to buy a pair of dark shades to help my aching eyes. Then I caught the first bus to Brickdale. Familiar turf and all that. Besides, I’d waited a long time to pay those two hated snitches back and wanted to do it pronto…and Brickdale was the place to find them. Or at least the best place to start.

I’d already done enough shit in my life to make my only way out of the slammer for good likely to be a back door parole. That meant feet first in a box, even before those two came along. So it didn’t matter to me that getting caught icing ‘em was a ticket to all day and a night in stir.

Life without parole didn’t scare me. I was the Meth Man. I could deal with that, when the time came. Hell, if they sent me back inside I’d arrange for a little accident for the deputy warden and my dirty hack. Then I’d take the business back and live almost as good as a prince. At least until someone got the big idea to take my place…or try to.

But I was on the outside now and once I scored a line, settled my nerves and caught that Brickdale bus, there was only one thought on my mind.

Getting even…and that meant only one thing.

Somebody was gonna die.

CHAPTER 3 - Paul

There’s an old adage that says, Time waits for no man, and I don’t think it’s exaggerating much to say everyone over the age of twelve knows it. I know it makes me sound simplistic as hell every time I say it, but it’s true. There’s no way around it, outside of science fiction.

Life always moves forward, despite the best attempts of men to hamper its advance. You can’t stop that massive train, and you can’t make it go backward, no matter how hard you try. I can attest to those facts from experience, just like everyone else you know.

Several times in my life I’ve tried to bring traumatic events to a halt. At the very least, I wanted some of them to progress at a less frenetic pace. Only to have them continue to flash by as if I hadn’t wished anything upon them at all.

The whole of my childhood was one. It passed by all too soon, even though I was looking at it every