Honk, If You Love Me

By Vince Campanelli

To Gary Dando, the sound of a car horn honking is like nails on a chalboard. He can't stand the sound. He then witnesses a minor traffic incident which forever changes his life - for the worse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vince Campanelli
• Release date: Jan 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465937414

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Honk, If You Love Me

By

Vince Campanelli

Published by Vince Campanelli at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Vince Campanelli

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Lompoc, California - Federal Prison

Lompoc prison guard John ‘Bo’ Butler was terrified. A mountain of a man, standing six feet, five inches tall and weighing a little over 300 pounds, Butler thought he just might pee his pants. He hoped he didn’t look as scared as he felt. His hands were shaking slightly and his legs wobbly. He hoped he could make it the next 100 or so feet without embarrassing himself.

For those who knew Butler - nicknamed ‘Bo’ for his facial likeness to Bo Jackson, the great former running back for the Auburn Tigers in college and later the Oakland Raiders in the NFL - the idea of him being afraid would have been ludicrous. He had played in the National Football League for ten years as an offensive lineman for the New York Jets.

Football, by necessity, is an extremely violent sport, and Butler had both taken and dished out plenty during his time in the league. Like most football players, there was a small part inside Butler that enjoyed the brutality. He would never say it aloud but he had liked smashing some poor guy in the mouth and knocking him to the ground.

He had butted heads with other 300-pound behemoths for years. Men whose sole job was to knock Butler down and beat him up if possible, get him to quit. Football was not a game for the weak or the timid. Football at its core; is a close-quartered, hand-to-hand fight to acquire land and may the stronger man (and team) win. In all his years in the NFL, Bo Butler had never backed down from a battle. However, if he had his chance today, that’s exactly what he would do.

An almost equally physically imposing man, John Kymer, was on the other side of the prisoner Butler was escorting. Kymer was a newly hired guard with only a few months of experience. Lompoc, as with most federal prisons, paired up guards largely based on experience. They would team a young guard with a more experienced one so the younger guard could learn the intricacies of handling hard-core prisoners. This reinforced proper training techniques and created a uniformity of treatment for the prisoners. Like a college or business campus, the Lompoc population was a society unto itself with its own rules and traditions.

Paired together on Kymer’s first day on the job, Butler and Kymer were a good team. Normally, rookies rotated among the veteran guards until a combination clicked. However, Butler and Kymer had hit it off from the beginning. Only slightly smaller than Butler, at six foot-three and 250 pounds, Kymer had shown real promise. He had learned to be tough yet honest with most of the prisoners, which was the real trick. The prisoners Kymer and Butler dealt with on a daily basis were the worst society offered. Lompoc was an institution for extremely violent criminals and predators. Murder and rape were the usual crimes and very few would ever be paroled and out on the streets again.

Butler never forgot the teachings of his mentor, Al Smith, whom he had paired with when he had first gotten the job at Lompoc. Smith told him these men had nothing left to lose, literally. That made them dangerous. Treat them with a little respect, Smith cautioned the new guard and they’ll treat you the same. Butler carried two batons, a taser and pepper spray, and had never used any of them on an inmate. Yet.