Storymania - A Man Named Joe by Brian J Hankins

A Man Named Joe
Brian J Hankins

A shadow of a man lay on his couch, in a flea ridden room, so dark, so gloomy, and all alone. At the age of sixty four Joe felt the hands of death slowly enter his body, they were the hands of his best friend and companion Jack Daniels, a bottle of caramel colored liquid that cost Joe everything.

Joe wasn’t always controlled by his friend Jack. I am certain that at one point, earlier in his life, he started out with hopes of a life with family, loving children, a good job, living in a nice neighborhood and retiring comfortably. But after he met Jack that all changed. He became what society despises, or looks upon as grotesque. People would cross the street just to avoid an encounter with him. He was the wretched, a stain on society, something to avoid, he was the town drunk. Joe wasn’t always branded with this title. At one time he was a young man, struggling with the same decisions that most people make.

He went into the army and served in the Korean Conflict. Joe was stationed in Germany and this is where things began to change in his life. A sweet smelling German girl with red lipstick, pink blushed cheeks, and an accent that would make you melt and a bottle of Jack Daniels were all available for his taking. This is how Joe and Jack meet. In that German bar, so far away from his small hometown, life to this small hometown boy took on a whole new meaning, Joe was about to encounter a whole new world. From this point in his life things were about to change.

After a few glasses of that intoxicating, warming, caramel colored liquid and a few soft whispers in his ear from the damsel he had just met, the night bloomed into an intoxicating blur. One moment Joe remembered being in the bar with the German girl, and the next he’s down by the river with her. They began to argue and the girl pulls a knife out of her purse and lunges towards him. He defends himself and knocks the knife out of her hand, he grabs her and they fall into the water. The next thing Joe remembers, as he washes to the bank of the river, is holding her under the water until she stopped struggling. He struggles as he lifts himself up to his elbows, his head is pounding, his eyes are trying to focus, and as his vision becomes clear, there she laid dead, drowned by his very own hands, under the influence of his friend, Jack Daniels.

Joe was taken into custody by the military police and discharged from the service and returned to his hometown. After his discharge he faced charges back in Germany, where they wanted to try him for the death of this girl. Germany tried to extradite him but his family interceded, went to Washington D.C. and lobbied on his behalf. After this, Joe and Jack became the best of friends.

Joe married after returning home to a nice hometown girl who didn’t know his history with Jack till she was well into her marriage with him. Jack kept his ugly head hid until one night they went out with some friends from work. Jack went too far and Joe took him home for the first time, it wasn’t a happy time for Joe’s wife. He beat his wife that night in a drunken rage. This was just the first, of many more to come over the next twenty years. She lived with this secret, as a loving and devoted wife did in those days, as many battered wives did, waiting for that glimmer of hope that someday Joe would pick her over his best friend Jack. Does that day ever come? Does happily ever after only happen in fairy tales? Time would tell. But she held onto her dream of a life with her husband.

As the children began to arrive, seven in all, Joe had his ups and downs with his old friend Jack. He never could manage to let go all together. He held a job, a decent job making professional sports equipment. Joe made the best; he had a talent that was well known. Professional athletes would come from all over the country to have their gloves made by this talented man, but they were not aware of his alter ego, Jack Daniels. His employer suspected something was wrong, after all it was a small town and everybody knew everybody else’s business, but they did nothing as long as Joe didn’t bring his friend Jack to work with him. They tolerated him, week after week, month after month, year after year, because of his talent. Joe and Jack were part of the “good old boys club.” He was caught in a vicious cycle that had no beginning and no end that was apparent to anybody looking in through clear eyes.

Joe’s oldest son, age 12 at the time, began his own self destructive cycle. Sam, a young blond, curly haired blue eyed boy wanting to be a football player, struggled with two separate lives. The life he had at school, getting good grades, being popular, and being good at sports and the second, his life at home. The life he desired most of all. He faced abuse at home, not having the necessities of life, such as food, clothes, and what he desired the most, the love and support of his father. Sam longed for the love of his father, he knew he had it from his mother, sisters and brothers, but the person he wanted it from the most was his father, Joe. When Sam couldn’t earn the love of his father he felt unworthy and sank into what one would consider a mirrored image of the person he wants to be loved by.
Sam begins to drink alcohol and smoking cigarettes and doing all the things he knows he is not supposed to do. He finally loses the struggle between school and home and begins following a path of self destruction. He has a great path to follow; he simply walks in his father’s footsteps. Sam, at this point is having serious problems at school and he’s starting to get in trouble with the law, small things at first, but they soon expedite into serious problems.

Sam, by the age of fourteen, and his friends are no longer getting the buzz they used to get when they first started drinking. That warm feeling they used to get from just a few drinks, now was taking more and more to reach the desired effects. Alcohol cost much more, because they had to buy more of it, and it had gotten harder to obtain. It wasn’t doing the job anymore. It wasn’t taking him to the place he wanted to be, the place where there is unconditional love, and a place where he didn’t have to think or feel the pain.

One day they all met, Sam and his friends at the regular place. This time however it was different than all the times before. One of his friends had brought with him, a new friend, a friend that would take them to new places and take as much as it would give. Her name was Mary Jane. You could wrap her tight, put fire to her end, toke her a few times and get that same intoxicating feeling as you first got with your old friend Jack. She took you to a place where you had never been before, and she made you feel like you were “the man.” But at what cost, what was the price Sam had to pay? Just like his father, Sam had found his own best friend. At first, Sam only used marijuana on the weekends, but it quickly became an everyday event. Sam thought it made him feel better about himself and helped him to deal with his everyday life.

By the time Sam was sixteen years old he had graduated from marijuana to pills as well as the needle. Keep in mind that he continued to drink and smoke weed too. He had come full circle, just like Joe and Jack, no school, no love, and no life. Joe and Sam became like vinegar and water, they just didn’t mix. The worse Sam got, the more Joe tried to control him. Joe eventually gave up trying and settled back into his usual routine with his old friend Jack Daniels. Sam had become a mirror image of his father.

Late one evening on a dreary night, it was raining and chilly, the fog was so thick you could cut it with a knife, Sam was stoned on marijuana, alcohol, and pills, this is what it took to get him into that state of euphoria that he loved so much, he was walking through town like a zombie and decided he would break in to a sporting goods store. He stole several knives, a rifle, ammunition, and a baseball glove. Sam went home with the intent of confronting his father and setting the score right. Sam was in one of those moods where he was determined that confronting Joe was the only solution to how he felt. When he arrived home he found his father passed out with a bottle of Jack Daniels at his side. Sam, enraged and wanting so desperately to confront Joe, began verbally abusing Joe. Joe awoke and realized Sam was there. Sam slapped him on the side of the head with the baseball glove and stated in a harsh voice, “This is all the fuck you have ever cared about. These Goddamm baseball gloves and you’re bottle.” Sam was out of control and didn’t realize that his father was in condition to defend him self. Sam pulled one of the knives from his jacket pocket and stabbed Joe in the side. A sense of horror came over Sam as he pulled the knife from his father’s side and the dingy white t-shirt he wore began to turn red with his father’s blood. He grabbed for the rifle he had stole, with intention’s to finish the job, and he heard a sound in the hall. Sam wondered who it was, what it was, and he realized it was his mother. He raised the gun and points it towards his mother. She lunges for the gun and grabs it as it goes off, the bullet heads in the direction of the ceiling, and Sam looks his mother in the eyes and realizes what he has done. He drops the gun and runs out of the house, only to be apprehended by the police in just a few minutes.

Joe was not seriously hurt and survived his wounds inflicted by his son. At this point Joe realized that if he were to exist he and his old friend Jack would have to become acquaintances instead of friends. Joe’s wife still looks at this day as a day of sacrifice, the day her son was sacrificed to gain a part of her husband back. But she still wonders if the cost she paid was worth what she gained.

Joe visited his son at the jail, humbled by the experience he had been put through by Sam. Sitting there waiting for Sam to be brought out to the visiting room Joe reflected on his life. What had brought Sam to this point, what could he have done differently to avoid this situation, what has his life become? Still deep in thought, a cocky Sam walks into the room where his father waited. But all Joe could see was a curly haired blond, blue eyed boy that he so desperately loved. Joe had never been capable of telling Sam that he loved him and , at that moment, it tormented Joe. As Sam sat down opposite Joe at the table, he looked into the boy’s eyes and what he saw scared the hell out of him. He saw himself, so many years ago, a young soldier, lost and all alone standing over a woman he had killed. Joe felt like he was that woman, dead inside. He wondered what to do, what to say, and before he realized his mouth was moving Joe told his son that this was his entire fault, and that he loved him with all his heart. Tears were streaming from Joe’s eyes as he looked at his son’s face and asked him to forgive him for all that had happened.

When Sam looked up at his father, he was full of tears as well, he said to his dad, that’s all I ever wanted to hear. Joe began to tell Sam about the journey he had taken with his old friend Jack and when he was done he took Sam in his arms, and once again told him that he loved him. Although a little late, it started a new journey for the both of them.

Sam was sentenced to spend an undetermined amount of time at The Department of Youth Services for the crimes he had committed. He was sixteen years old at the time and would never return home to live with his family again. A journey began that day for the both of them. Joe’s was an attempt to discover what he had lost during all those years of drinking and abusing his family, and Sam’s was to not turn out like his father.

Sam struggled with his addiction problem for many years after he was released and finally sought help for his problem and lives an alcohol and drug free life. What’s ironic is Sam is now a professional alcohol and drug addiction counselor; he helps people that have addiction problems like he once did. He’s married, has a wonderful family, and lives a life he could only dream of having when he was a child. He learned from Joe’s mistakes.

For a while, the incident between Joe and Sam influenced Joe to pull his life together and be the father he knew he should be to the rest of his children. But eventually, he missed his old friend Jack and the warmth and allure of that caramel colored drink that seemed to call his name. He lost everything, and inevitably lost his life to the one thing that he considered his friend.

Several months before his death, Sam visited his father for the first time in many years. When he walked into the room his father was lying on the couch watching television. Sam hardly recognized him; he weighed about 90 pounds and was eaten up with liver cancer that was caused by his drinking. He was a shell of the man Sam had remembered. They spoke for a couple of hours about all the trivial stuff people talk about, and when it was time to leave Sam went to his fathers side and told him that he was sorry for all the pain he had put him through as a child. Joe looked into Sam’s eyes and muttered the words that changed Sam’s life, “I love you son.” Those were the last words Sam ever heard his father speak.