Topic: Man on Fire

Jack Wise

Date: 2014-07-15 02:44 EST
The life and times of Jack Wise.

Life on the run.

I run, therefore I am free.

I suck at titles.

What not to name your journal.

_________

I really do suck at titles, and it's not like this is going to be a book that has a shot at becoming a movie. I wonder who'd play me?

I was told to write down my thoughts and feelings, even if no one gets to see them. Who knows, maybe I shouldn't take the word of a shrink with an office in a strip mall. He only charges ten bucks an hour, and his wardrobe shows that it's money well spent. Not that I am a fashion model, but damn.

So, I am A.J. "Jack" Wise. I was named after both of my grandpas on the day I was born, March 23, 1989. The place I was born may as well have been called Podunk, but no the little town is called Stillwater, and it's in Texas. Texans claim Stillwater is a suburb of Houston, but it's more like absorbed into Houston, and that'd be a cool place to live. Instead of a little burb that grew into Pasadena, Texas, which was engulfed by Houston, the place where I was born is out between Hebbronville, Laredo, and Alice. Instead of One hundred and fifty-two thousand people, we had one hundred and fifty-two, period.

We had farms. Everyone in the family worked the same piece of land, which seemed to be as far as the eye could see. I haven't been back in some time, but I'm sure it doesn't seem as big. I grew up like kids on the farms do. We had livestock of all kinds, tractors, farm equipment and that sort of thing. By the time I was four, I could shoot a squirrel out of the tree and skin it. Killed my first buck when I was six. I knew all about life and death. We buried great-grandparents in the family plots, butchered out prize hogs, cattle, whatever for our freezers, and we were up with the sun, in bed after dark. It was a simple, but very relaxing life.

Stillwater had one school for all grades. I know, it seems weird, but it worked for the people that lived there. A couple of years the teachers worked on farms because there were no school age kids. We'd already moved through to the other grades and no one had enough money to make their family bigger. Usually, the population would fluctuate around a graduating class. Some kids would take off chasing dreams away from farms and milking cows, others were starting families of their own way too young.

I planned to stay there. My family was there, my girl was there, and everything I knew and wanted was in that little town. On the year of my sixteenth birthday, it all changed.

Jack Wise

Date: 2014-07-15 02:57 EST
I played football. We had a pretty strong 3A team, The Stillwater Fighting Farmers! We were playing in the championship playoff and being the quarterback with the cannon, they really loved to see if they could break through the defense and knock me on my ass. It was a hard hit, which took my breath. They pulled me, and sent in a second stringer, which cost us the game. If they could have just given me a little time, I could have finished out that game, and won.

As it was, the scouts still had heard about me and based on my performance, wanted to talk to my parents about a college career. Plans were being made, my parents were sitting around our table with strangers, and I left with my girl, Katherine Jean Forbes. I called her Katy.

I swiped a pint of Kentucky's finest from the liquor store my Uncle Joey owned. Katy and I sat out on the back of my old Ford, and she was listening to me complaining about the loss of the game, that same game she sat in the stands and watched. She tried to calm me down, and I wasn't having any part of it. She finally grabbed my chin and turned my head in her direction and kissed me, right on the mouth to break my ranting streak.

She had on my letterman jacket and the way that moon was shining on her hay colored hair, I knew I was going to spend the rest of my life with her. I was drunk, and we were just a young couple in what we thought was love. Every move was fumbled around and clumsy. Nothing was slick. It wasn't like Patrick Swayze and Kelly Lynch in Roadhouse, the AM radio in my truck was talking about a coming storm, so there wasn't any romantic music, but we were still trying to grow up faster than we should have.

I still don't know how it happened, or what triggered it. I mean I know what I do now, but then? No clue. The fire went in all directions. The field caught and started to spread, but the bed of my truck, where we were, filled with the flames of hell. Katy's still alive, but that hay colored hair is a wig. She's been through so many skin grafts and surgeries, no one sure how she's alive. Her family wants to know why she was hurt that badly and why I didn't have so much as a hair out of place. They had questions no one could answer, until a couple fellas from Washington, D.C. came to Stillwater.

Jack Wise

Date: 2014-07-23 17:16 EST
My parents were talking to me about furthering my education. They were acting like nothing ever happened with Katy. The scout had offered them some money, under the table if they'd see to my signing with A&M. While they thought about the family, and how far that money would go to help us on the farm, I couldn't get the image of Katy burning and screaming out of my head. Everything was a fog. That's when that crap brown Crown Vic rolled up to the house, and two men stepped out.

They were in suits. One was a dove grey, the other navy blue. Both of them had on white shirts, and ties, their shoes would have been shining, except for all the dust on the drive. They hung back by the car after pulling into the drive. I suspect it was to let us get the wrong impression, or an intimidation factor of some sort. Dad sent me to my room, and I could hear the men in the kitchen, talking to my parents and claiming to be with a special office of the FBI that was cracking down on underage drinking. The Feds claimed that's what caused the fire.

It was a freak accident, the men said. But, they added time and time again, my drinking hadn't helped. The gas cans in the back of my truck for our tractor, my open bottle and that coming storm all played parts in the explosion. I wasn't hurt, cause I was thrown clear. It was a damned lie. I was right there by Katy and while I wasn't burning to a crisp, and that fire wasn't hurting me, I couldn't help her at all.

They claimed that a stray bolt of lightning hit the truck, ignited the cans, my liquor mixed with the gas and it all went up in a fireball. The truck was beyond repair, and they called Katy's living, a miracle. I don't know what it is or how and why she hung on, but I know now, later in life, that I know she ain't living. She requires 'round the clock care, and just sits there staring out her window with one good eye since she can't do much else. God should've taken that angel home.

Jack Wise

Date: 2014-07-25 18:31 EST
They told my parents that the sheriff's office and state police wanted to charge me with manslaughter. Even as an "accident", they said it wasn't involuntary if I had been stealing booze and drinking when I wasn't of legal age. I flipped out. I didn't want to go to jail as a kid. I'd seen the movies Escape From Alcatraz, American History X, and The Shawshank Redemption. I knew what happened to guys in jail and how jail changed them. I didn't have the ways and means to rig something like Law Abiding Citizen, so I knew I was going to become someone's bitch. Though, knowing now what I didn't know then? Jail couldn't keep me.

Still as a kid, I got some of my clothes and things, crawled out my second story window, dropped to the top of the John Deere tractor and ran away to my Grandpa Alfred's place. He was a musical sort, and a hard worker. He owned his own business in addition to working the land around his place. I walked into the house and he was singing along with the old console stereo. The man had an amazing voice, and his duet with Johnny was spot on.

Delia, oh, Delia Delia all my life If I hadn't have shot poor Delia I'd have had her for my wife Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

I went up to Memphis And I met Delia there Found her in her parlor And I tied to her chair Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

She was low down and trifling And she was cold and mean Kind of evil make me want to Grab my sub machine Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

First time I shot her I shot her in the side Hard to watch her suffer But with the second shot she died Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

But jailer, oh, jailer Jailer, I can't sleep 'Cause all around my bedside I hear the patter of Delia's feet Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

So if you woman's devilish You can let her run Or you can bring her down and do her Like Delia got done Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

Of course it wasn't a song I needed to hear, knowing about Katy and what happened to her, but what I wouldn't give to hear that man singing it again.