Broken Stones

By Roy Swanberg

Raised by a single mother with hatred for a father living out his life in a super max security prison, JT struggles to find his way through life as a young boy in a small town in Illinois. With an arrogant, selfish, vile attitude and mouth, JT barely squeaked through high school. He needed his one and only friend, Caleb Shepherd, to help him maintain a C average just to stay on the football team for his senior year.
After graduation, on a wilderness canoe trip in the Border Water Canoe Area (BWCA), JT witnessed an accident that for the first time in his life brought him to feel sorry for someone else.
Upon returning home after the canoe trip, JT is invited to visit his despised father in prison. Does finishing high school, playing football, the canoe accident, and the visit to see his dad have any effect on JT’s arrogant, selfish, vile attitude and mouth?

• Language: English
• Publisher: White Tree Publishing
• Release date: Mar 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781912529698

Book preview

About the Book

Raised by a single mother with hatred for a father living out his life in a super max security prison, JT struggles to find his way through life as a young boy in a small town in Illinois. With an arrogant, selfish, vile attitude and mouth, JT barely squeaked through high school. He needed his one and only friend, Caleb Shepherd, to help him maintain a C average just to stay on the football team for his senior year.

After graduation, on a wilderness canoe trip in the Border Water Canoe Area (BWCA), JT witnessed an accident that for the first time in his life brought him to feel sorry for someone else.

Upon returning home after the canoe trip, JT is invited to visit his despised father in prison. Does finishing high school, playing football, the canoe accident, and the visit to see his dad have any effect on JT’s arrogant, selfish, vile attitude and mouth?

Broken Stones

Copyright ©Roy Swanberg 2020

Published jointly by

Sterling Rock Books as a paperback

and

White Tree Publishing in eBook format

This White Tree Publishing eBook

ISBN: 978-1-912529-69-8

Sterling Rock Books

Paperback ISBN-13: 9798618958165

This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Book

Dedication

Author’s Note

Publisher’s Note

About the Author

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Epilogue

More Books by Roy Swanberg

About White Tree Publishing

More Books from White Tree Publishing

Dedication

To Rick Hill

The only one I called son

Author’s Note

This fictional story out of Prairie Heights, Illinois, takes place in 1979 before the day of cell phones, iPads, iPods, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The title for this book comes from Ezekiel 11:19, The Living Bible. I will give you one heart and a new spirit. I will take from you your hearts of stone and give you tender hearts of love for God.

Publisher’s Note

This book has 40 chapters, plus an epilogue. In the second part are advertisements for our other books, so the story may end earlier than expected! The last chapter is marked as such, which as readers ourselves is something we wish all eBook publishers would do! We aim to make our eBooks free or for a nominal cost, and cannot invest in other forms of advertising. However, word of mouth by satisfied readers will also help get our books more widely known. When the story ends, please take a look at what we publish: Christian non-fiction, Christian fiction, and books for younger readers, and go to our website www.whitetreepublishing.com.

About the author

Roy Swanberg is a retired public high school teacher. He has written and published many articles in magazines and is the author of six novels: Because He Cares: a story showing that prison bars cannot keep the love and grace of God in or out; a four book series of Jason’s Promise: a story of a teenager who discovers there is often no choice, no option, and no other way through many of life’s harsh situations.

Also a historic Christian fiction novel entitled The Other Two Crosses: A story of the early lives of the other two thieves crucified with Jesus and what brought them to their crosses; and a non-fiction book, Writing in Retirement: a description of his experiences in starting the writing process at age sixty-five.

Roy lives in Princeton, Illinois with his wife, Jan. They have two grown children and four grandchildren.

Author’s website

www.swanbergchristianwriter.com

Other books by Roy Swanberg

Link to full details

Because He Cares

Jason’s Promise

Jason’s Promise II

Jason’s Promise III

Sons of Jason: Return to the Vern River

The Other Two Crosses

Writing in Retirement

Chapter One

1979

A flying cheap alarm clock aimed for the wall missed its target and sailed out the nearby open doorway, spinning its way like a top down the small hallway. It came to rest as a pile of broken glass, plastic, and gears of all sizes. It was followed by a streak of swearing out of JT’s well-crafted and impeccable cussing vocabulary.

From a nearby room came the words, What the…? What’s going on? Joseph, what in the world was that?

Shouting back, Just my alarm clock, Ma. Just a clock.

Didn’t sound like a clock to me?

It ain’t a clock no more.

Why’d you throw it like that?

Mad at myself, Ma. Just mad. Still yelling from his room, JT continued, Me and Shepherd, his dumb dog, Boots, and Brady was gonna have a day on the canal in his canoe, and spend the night there. I slept late and missed it. Stupid me forgot to wind the alarm clock last night and it stopped.

JT’s mother’s voice grew louder. Why those boys invite you for a trip like that?

Dunno. I guess them do-gooders think they can make me into a good kid or something.

JT’s mother, a.k.a. Ma, now stood in his doorway in a faded pink ratty robe, hair resembling an osprey’s nest, and a smoky cigarette burning her eyes while bouncing on her lips, and said, Well, I hope they can. I don’t have no luck on that. Clean up this mess.

Later, Ma.

In the bellowing voice of an angry sergeant, I said, clean it up. And clean it up now!

Yeah, Ma.

Three thirty in the afternoon the same day on the Hennepin Canal just north of Tiskilwa, Illinois, the agitated four-year-old Border collie, Boots, barked and growled violently at a buck standing majestically on the mule path of the Canal. Caleb Shepherd, a.k.a. Shep, with his friends Joel Brady and Boots were in a canoe that was drifting sideways in the aqueduct which was built around 1895 to carry the canal over Big Bureau Creek.

The four foot deep water bridge was a favorite place for Tiskilwa and Prairie Heights kids to swim in ‒ if they didn’t mind the mud, weeds, and the two foot long carp bumping into them. But for now, seventeen-year-old Caleb and Joel were just trying to get Boots to stop barking and rocking the boat.

The harder Caleb pushed his paddle into Boots’ hip with, Boots! Boots, shut up. Stop it. Stop it! the louder the dog barked, and the more he twisted. The pooch had his paws on the gunwales of the small craft, and the canoe began to rock back and forth.

When Caleb turned around and made a move to reach him by the collar, the canoe rolled over like a spinning log. Caleb, Joel, and Boots instantly found themselves reaching out in midair between canoe and water with nothing to grab onto. All three splashed headfirst into the four foot deep stagnant, brown and greenish weed-filled putrid water.

When they finally stood up, their bare feet were stuck in three inches of cold, grisly mud. They watched a tent, two sleeping bags, two paddles, three shoes, a cooler, food pack, and fishing gear floating all around them. The fourth shoe was still stuck on Joel’s left foot.

After they righted the canoe, the two senior high school friends started to gather up what floating debris they could. Boots continued barking, trying to climb out of the aqueduct after that deer. He finally made it onto the old mule path, sniffed the ground, and started to run after the animal that the boys thought started the problem in the first place.

One yell from Caleb, Boots! Boots! Sit! Stay! and the well-trained dog quickly sat, obeying his young master.

The Hennepin Canal connects the Illinois River to the Mississippi River and was built in the late eighteen hundreds to lower the cost of shipping freight from Chicago to the Mississippi, and then down the great river to the south. It never completely paid for itself because the railroads had a better idea. Now it was only a recreational area. The canal originally had thirty-three locks and nine aqueducts to carry the canal up hills and over ravines and creeks. The Hennepin Canal aqueduct over the Big Bureau Creek is about one hundred feet long from tree line to tree line.

Caleb and his longtime friend, Joel, had been close friends since their early days in the Happy Hands Preschool at their church. Miss Joyce, Miss Jan, and all the other teachers watched the little ones grow up in Prairie Heights, and taught many of the town’s children. The friendship of Caleb and Joel had always been strong, but was made rock solid on the day Caleb’s dad was killed in a military accident in Minnesota. Joel was the first friend to get to Caleb on that horrific day, and they had sat in silence on the steps to Caleb’s back porch, pitching dimes at cracks in the driveway.

While in the canal, the two dredged up whatever belongings they could. Caleb stepped on one of his shoes, took a deep breath and reached down into the questionable water to retrieve it. The other one and Joel’s right shoe were found stuck together – now mud brown. After they put ‒ threw ‒ their equipment back into the canoe, still with six inches of water in it, Joel said in an angry voice while standing hip-high in the putrid water, I hope the carp are happy.

Caleb answered in the same tone of voice. The carp will grow another two inches today on our food. Look, the cooler is wide open and floating away.

Maybe it’s a good thing JT didn’t make it here today.

Caleb let out a laugh like a roaring lion. Boy, can you imagine him standing here in this mud? I can hear him now.

Yeah, his swearing would turn the air blue and wilt the weeds.

But it might warm the water up.

Ya got a point there.

Standing belt-buckle deep in the water without a shirt on, Caleb said, Four years ago on that canoe trip dad took me on in northern Minnesota, he told me things like this would happen. Now coughing and spitting up muddy canal water, he continued, He said things would happen that had no choice, no option and no way out. I guess this is one of them. It’s going to be a soggy night.

"You mean we’re going to stay out here tonight?"

We’ve got to. What else can we do? We’re five miles out of town. Your dad won’t pick us up till tomorrow. No way to tell him our problem. By the way, this will make men out of us.

"This is how we become men? I thought there were other ways."

"It’s one way."

With clothes clinging to the P.H.H.S. seniors as if they were painted on, they walked in the rancid environmentally deprived swamp, bare foot, to the end of the aqueduct dragging the canoe behind them. Boots just watched his master and friend, and several times shook the filthy water out of his matted hair in his own way, adding more insult to the two teenagers.

After their impression of Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, the boys moved to the west end of the aqueduct and set up some type of camping space for the rest of the afternoon and night. The night was soggy and cold, as Caleb said it would be. No one came along to discover their plight or to help them in any way. Any match or fire starting method was not to be found.

The cool night dragged on and on without sleep, and the wet clothes didn’t get any dryer. Ya know, Joel, if JT was here there would have been three of us and Boots in the canoe. It would have been too much for the craft anyway.

Knowing JT like we do, I think he would have walked the five miles back to town when he knew there would be no fire.

Can’t you see him trying to hitchhike in his wet clothes?

Some trucker would have picked him up. He’s got that kind of luck.

When hunger paid a visit, the misery grew worse. They finally decided that any chance for some kind of warmth was to lie close together with Boots between them. Many times Boots wiggled his way out to check on some nosy varmint and cause more time to go by without sleep.

Joel said in his frustration and embarrassment, Shep, this is one part of the trip we don’t talk about, right?

Right. It won’t sound good.

At this point, I know JT would have left.

Early the next morning, three kids from Tiskilwa came by with fishing poles and a cooler full of sodas and sandwiches. After hearing the miserable saga from Caleb and Joel, they shared some of the sandwiches with the soaked and hungry guys from the town north of Tiskilwa. The few sandwiches they ate did little to quiet down the growling in their stomachs.

Caleb and Joel filled the canoe with what belongings they had left. Caleb took a long look at his muddy dog and finally said, You’d better get in too.

The three headed west. Within a few miles they portaged around the locks at Wyanet and then canoed to the Hennepin Parkway State Park where they had planned to meet Joel’s dad near Sheffield.

Joel saw his dad standing on the edge of the canal as they approached in their muddy shoes and clothes. When Joel’s dad saw the dirt and strings of debris hanging from their hair, he started to laugh. As they got closer, he started to back away from the place where they were landing, saying, You guys look disgustingly dirty. Boots is a mess and not smelling too good either.

Dad, Joel said, there’s a story behind all this. Don’t laugh.

It’s not easy to keep from laughing. You guys look a fright. What happened?

Can we tell you later, Mr. Brady? Caleb said.

After they got the canoe on top of the car, Joel’s dad put blankets on the seats. Joel laughed. Boy, this makes ya feel good, huh, Shep?

Boots is used to it.

"I don’t mean blankets for Boots. I mean blankets for us," Joel said.

You guys look cold. I’ll take you to Loren and Donna’s Café and get something warm for breakfast.

Mr. Brady, it could be worse. JT was ’spose to be here with us, but I guess he slept in late yesterday. Either that or Jens didn’t want him out of town.

Who’s Jens?

Rob Jens, his parole officer.

"Parole officer? This is a friend of yours?"

The small wind chime on the door of the quaint Swedish decorated café in Sheffield jingled as the three walked in, leaving muddy footprints on the well-polished old hardwood floor. From the far side of the dining room, No! No. No. You guys don’t come in here looking like that and getting my floor muddy.

Under a full head of steam Donna propelled herself at the three. With a fresh pot of coffee in one hand and waving a fist full of menus in the other, she went on, Shoo, shoo, shoo, out, out, out! Go right back out that door.

Off in a far corner of the room a voice out of a crowd of farmers slurping their coffee from under feed dealer’s caps, yelled, Good going, Donna. Trow da bums out.

Back outside at the car, Joel said, Dad, we really look that bad?

Laughing again, "Yes, you two really do look that bad. Let’s find a place with a drive-up window. Caleb, when I get you home you’d better hose down your dog, then go to that shower in your basement. And keep your clothes on for the first five minutes."

Chapter 2

August sixth, six a.m.

First day of football practice

The tires were skidding and bouncing in place on Caleb’s Jeep, yet it took three more seconds for the yellow Wrangler to come to a smoking stop – almost sideways. Caleb was proud that his Jeep could go from forty-five to zero in three seconds.

Just a bit fast there, friend, Joel said as he tossed his bag in the back, grabbed the roll bar, and threw his legs into the Jeep.

Well, ya know Coach doesn’t like any of us to be late for practice.

Yep, the only coach I know who can get away with running such a tight ship and make all of us kowtowing like trained seals – and loving it.

He’s going to give the same speech about being on time he has for years. We’ve heard it for four years and we’ll have to endure it again today. Always a new guy to hear it. It does work, though. I learned by experience how hard he is on punctuality, in my freshman year.

Snickering, Joel said, I remember that day, and how you tried your best with any excuse you could come up with to explain it.

Didn’t do any good, did it?

Still laughing, Joel continued, All he said was, ‘Bench, Shepherd. Mr. Bench.’

Caleb Shepherd entered the student’s gravel parking lot behind the field house in a cloud of dust as he slid to a stop – again.

Shep, driving the way you do is not like you. You’ve really got to drive a little more normal. You’ll pay a big price in tickets and new brakes for your liberal driving habits.

Caleb looked at Joel for a long second before saying, You’re right. I have been getting a little loose on this driving stuff. You’re the only guy who could tell me that, though. I’ll work on it.

As the two buddies were climbing out of the Jeep, they heard the roar of