Endless the Chase

By Jacob Russell Dring

Emerging a changed man after sixteen years in prison, Kanoa Talako experiences a traumatizing event that catapults him onto a path of torment and disarray. As he spirals out of control, his sanity is in question but his intentions are not.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781329853638

Book preview

Endless the Chase

Endless the Chase

Jacob Russell Dring

Copyright © 2016 by Jacob Russell Dring

Cover art © 2016 by Mark L. Valdez

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, restored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Therefore unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

Printed in the United States of America.

1

M

elodies of wind shifting over trees might have alleviated the skepticism building in his veins. But after sixteen years behind bars, all he is given is the stale whistle of warm air rolling through barbed-wire. The towering chain-link walls on either side of him offer the same cold shoulders that the prison’s guards had given him during his time spent inside.

Kanoa Talako was on approach of twenty when he was convicted. To not have seen his mother in so long, and only exchanged letters once every few months, including half a dozen phone calls altogether, has scarred his spirit.

The only reassurance is freedom.

What a cost, though.

Kanoa has served his time and then some. He has paid his dues, warranted additional punishments, and suffered them justly.

Now he yearns to hugs his mother once again. Too long has he not had this opportunity; a violation of his rights as a human being, he’s believed. But the feeling of guilt is gone; regret remains everlasting as if a presence in his blood. A feather-light weight gradually dissipating.

Time would tell its progression away from his body and mind, but Kanoa had never been a patient boy—this was what the warden, guards, and fellow inmates have said. His mother, even the step-father whom he killed in the midst of a struggle, would certainly have disagreed.

A ten year sentence gone sour while in the pen, thanks to authority problems and issues with other inmates.

He had the option of making it out after eight years and good behavior, but he ultimately had only himself to blame for exacerbating things.

Kanoa trudged down the concrete path between arid grass and seemingly-skyscraper chain-link fences, his gaze mostly accompanying the boots he wore. Plainclothes for a complex yet arguably simple man. Intricately minded, Kanoa housed a labyrinthine thought process that had gotten him into more trouble than he later deemed worth, but ultimately chalked it up to human nature.

His nature, moreover.

Unavoidable.

Kanoa tried to focus on the simpler facets of his life, now. Do as issued, stray not, and keep his mother happy. Shed the regret day by day, albeit in tiny iotas. With his abusive step-father out of the picture, neither Kanoa nor his mother had to endure any more negative energy in their lives.

His prison release was nothing celebratory. He had made no true friends in general population, while alienating the trustworthy voices in his head during solitary confinement punishments. The only allies he came to know in the duration of his sixteen-year stay with the Georgia DOC were built on fleeting bonds of trust; enough to help keep him afloat, and alive.

Eventually he got his act together.

That release date, after his last review—the second positive one in a row following a series of awful ones—formed like crosshairs in his mind’s eye. He sought it as a lion would that wounded gazelle. He did not cut back his mane, did not trim the accentuations of his age accumulated while inside; he simply kept himself well-groomed, and developed acute tunnel-vision.

The good kind.

The kind that meant a healthy mindset, spiritual centeredness, and the notion of justified freedom.

Hours ago, dawn had broken the Georgian sky. Such beauty, he imagined but could not see for himself; perhaps tomorrow morning he will get up in time to witness it.

No, no perhaps.

Kanoa would see to it.

For now, the basking in daylight was ample. Walking as a free man ought to, albeit not without the burdens of reality upon his shoulders. The requirement of being under parole was most onerous, but even more so was fitting himself back into civilization. He, a jaggedly carved black-and-white puzzle piece tossed onto a half-finished image of myriad colors.

There was no sure fitting in—just a struggle to lodge himself into a crevice and try not to suffocate to death.

Kanoa reached the edge of the prison property, given neither pat on the back nor valedictory wave. The arches of his light brown boots teetered on the curve of the roadside curb, and for a brief moment so did he loll in a pendulous state. A breeze swept by, kissing his face and neck before passing by, leaving his long bangs flittering against fawn skin.

And then it was gone, and then he was alone. And then Kanoa took a deep breath, mustered a fleeting smile, and stepped onto the asphalt. The weight of his 6’5" stature shifted from shoulders to heels, coming to a heavy rest. He looked both ways, down ostensibly empty roads; a fork to his aimless destination.

Given, this wasn’t entirely true.

Without any baggage, Kanoa possessed two items on his person—a bus ticket provided by the prison and eighty-five dollars he had accumulated for this day. Dunking his right hand into his jeans pocket, he fished out the bus ticket and then flicked at it with the forefinger on his left hand. He clicked his tongue and shook his head once, squinting against the onset of a radiant sun.

Sixteen years in a world away from the world.

He thought that going straight to his parole officer’s building would not only be silly but a little insulting, too. After all this time he was just supposed to go right back to it? It felt like a slap in the face, like forcing him to an outhouse run by the same prison he was finally being released from.

Or, Kanoa could take a tsk-tsk wave of his PO’s finger in exchange for visiting his mother first. In an extreme case, he figured he could serve a few more years if it meant spending just a couple of days with her after all this time.

Released on a Sunday, Kanoa couldn’t request for the weekend—it seemed fruitless. But he would take what he could get.

Pocketing the bus ticket, he began his stroll down the side of the road in one direction. His memory wasn’t sixteen years-old; he had evaluated maps in anticipation of this day, heeding both the PO’s office and his mother’s home from the prison’s location.

His mother’s home…

His home, too, for what it was worth.

But never his step-father’s home; just a place of residence, a bunker for him to decay in and treat as he saw fit. Which was always unfittingly. Nonetheless, Kanoa refused to this day to remember that man with so much as a face, let alone a name. He was simply a featureless, dim silhouette in Kanoa’s mind.

It had taken him years to forget his face.

Nearly a dozen of them.

But now that he had, the name too was lost to mental putrefaction. Kanoa saw it as a victory, though, not a defeat in any shape or form.

He held onto this, and remembered to focus on the positives.

Focus on progression.

On his way to the house that sheltered his childhood memories and everything that made him feel more like a human being than an animal, Kanoa absorbed his surroundings. He didn’t take for granted a single thing, even if it seemed or felt trivial.

Life before he was convicted was close to meaningless, if ever spent alone. Now that he was out, life wore a new disposition entirely; he sought to give it light again, to mold it into something worthy of justified pride.

Something to be cherished…

And not just by himself, but by his mother, too, and anyone else he came to befriend.

Thirty-five years old—Kanoa would have a future. He smiled at this radical notion, until he believed in its logic.

He let his surroundings siphon off the doubts, and opened the floodgates to his mind.

Kanoa let thoughts and emotions bind.

The white picket fences belonging to some of the local residences were not as white as the clouds above, nor as pearly as white women’s earrings. But they did offer a difference in the palette that the town had to offer, largely dull and rustic colors. City folk passing through might mentally retch at the sight, or roll their eyes and shrivel their noses.

Kanoa, however, loved