The Abundant Life

By Aaron Jacobs

Things are not going well for Alexander Wolf. At thirty years old, he leaves behind federal prison for a more confining environment: his childhood home. There, Alex must rely on his family. The only problem is their situation is more dire than his. In a fit of desperation, Alex concocts an outlandish rescue plan for his Jewish family: marketing

• Language: English
• Publisher: RunAmok Books
• Release date: Aug 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781642555806

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Praise

for The Abundant Life

Aaron Jacobs makes a strong, gimlet-eyed debut with this tale of guns and religion — American culture’s two eternal verities — and one cynical young man’s improbable attempt to save his family and his own soul through the power of salesmanship.

- Jonathan Dee, author of The Locals and Pulitzer-nominated The Privileges

. . . uniquely done and definitely reminds me of one of those must-read classics.

- Manhattan Book Review

". . . written in language that cannot be printed in a family newspaper. [The Abundant Life is] a funny, madcap story that somehow doesn’t defy reality. "

- The Washington Independent Review of Books

"With its delightfully unique, hilarious, and, many times, infuriating characters, The Abundant Life introduces us to the Wolf family and we are better for it. I swear my mouth puckered from Jacobs' acerbic wit, just the way I like it."

- Samantha Bee, host of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee

"The Abundant Life is an entertaining and edgy rebirth story spun by an unflinchingly honest narrator. Aaron Jacobs has written a novel that is compulsively readable and filled with whip-smart social commentary that is often laugh-out-loud funny. This is one firecracker of a debut."

- Julia Fierro, author of The Gypsy Moth Summer and Cutting Teeth

"Aaron Jacobs' madcap tale of family dysfunction, heavy weapons smuggling, and the uniquely American enterprise of hawking eternal salvation in exchange for legal tender is a stunning literary debut that will have you laughing from the first page to the last. With an inventive yet utterly believable plot, memorable characters, and sharply crafted sentences, The Abundant Life will leave you racing to the end and pleading for more."

- Shulem Deen, author of multi-award winning All Who Go Do Not Return

It is Salinger-esque in spirit and execution. And you can quote me. Oh, you just did? Well, great then.

- Jason Jones, actor/writer, The Detour and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

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Copyright © Aaron Jacobs, 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law

ISBN: 978-1-64255-580-6

Run Amok Books, 2018

First Edition

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Printed in the U.S.A.

For Katie

From White Boy Bandito: How a Clever Suburbanite Became Death’s Middleman for South American Revolutionaries, by Dr. Laura Sullivan PhD. (Verdict Press: 2006, 199-200)

If you were to look up the definition of the word judge in Webster’s Dictionary, you wouldn’t be surprised to see a photograph of United States District Judge Randall Espinoza, and rightfully so. At the age of fifty-three, Espinoza, the Solomon of the Tenth District, as he was known for his impeccable record of wise rulings, exuded the utmost respect for the law. The bags under his eyes and the stoop in his shoulders told the tale of how mightily this case had weighed upon him. He knew he had a job to do. Justice had to be served and he was her servant.

He brought the court to order with a fiery Bang! of his gavel. Please be seated, he uttered his words, chosen with great care. Today is sentencing. United States versus Wolf.

This was the moment Alexander Wolf had been waiting for. And dreading. He was about to learn his fate.

Espinoza instructed Alexander to stand. Alexander kept a cool face getting to his feet. Or tried to. He might have been dressed to the nines, but the metal shackles on his wrists and ankles clashed hard with his natty suit. The air in the courtroom was as stuffy as an overheated library, but the mood was electric. The gallery was filled to capacity with journalists, court reporters, sketch artists, law students, and spectators who had devoured every juicy detail in The Case of The White Boy Bandito as if it was the most delicious T-bone steak in the world.

The judge peered over his glasses at the defendant. Before we get to your sentence I want to say, on a personal note, I know in my heart of hearts that you are guilty of things I cannot prove, things that we don’t have laws for. If it were up to me, I would devise a punishment that was truly fitting. I find your crimes, your demeanor, indeed your very character, heinous and cowardly, and made further repellant when the court considers the way you, Mr. Wolf, took advantage of an obviously sick man. Have you anything to say?

The entire courtroom waited on pins and needles. The hair on the backs of their necks stood straight up. It was so quiet that when an old man in the back of the gallery coughed, it sounded like a gunshot.

I guess you could say I took a wrong turn somewhere, somewhere I went the wrong way. I promise to do better in the future, apologized a contrite Mr. Wolf.

I doubt that very much, countered the judge. Unlike you, I’ve dedicated my life to following the laws of our great nation and I must do what is in the best interest of the people of this district. Alexander Wolf you are hereby sentenced to a term of no less than thirty-six but no more than fifty-four months at the federal correctional institution at Otisville.

ONE

All of what follows coincides with my release from Club Fed (to use a ridiculous misnomer) and my thirtieth birthday, in late March, 2008. The events leading up to this point were the subject of a book and a television movie. Not like that should be news to anyone. Thanks to my dickhead luck, my story of exporting the Second Amendment captured the zeitgeist, as they say, and for a minute or two, this book and the movie it spawned were popular in the way lurid pieces of cultural garbage are apt to be. And while I just can’t help myself from discrediting these so-called studies and analyses of my life, I’m not going to get obsessed about it. It’s important I give my family a respectful showing. I’ve done enough to them already.

It wasn’t even my plan to drag them into this. They’re decent people, not without their own failings, and will probably recoil from the notoriety, just as they have any time a spotlight aimed at me went wide of its mark to shine on them. But how do I erase them from a story that’s about all of us, about how we were punch-drunk from our troubles and waiting for a breeze strong enough to put us on our asses for good? If my incarceration alone was responsible, I could have done the honorable thing and played scapegoat, but for that to have happened we needed to be blind to my father’s gambling, my mother’s meliorism, and my sister’s greed. Our business flopped, our house crumbled and, like the idiots we were, we refused to admit our problems outmatched our ability to withstand them. Worse, we loved each other. Even that we got wrong. So I was thankful that not long after my release, Jesus Christ saved us. It was a practical and, more importantly, American salvation. It freed us from the stickiness of our life together. Except this isn’t a story of evangelical yokels or the fevered ramblings of a moral reprobate born again. The fact of the matter is, we weren’t even Christians. We were Jews.

To be fair, we were slack Jews—violating the Sabbath, never visiting Israel, covering our heads only when cold. Excluding a taste for Yiddish phrases and pickled herring, the Old World vestiges were barely visible on even my grandparents, who scratched out admirably unexceptional lives in Bronx apartments often redolent of said herring. By the time my parents came of age, all but a few traditions had dissipated like so much of the shitty pot smoke they called their liberal arts education. Suppose we attended temple once a year, I suspect we ate pepperoni on our pizza a dozen times more. Somewhere along the way, my forebears must have been believers, pious guys and gals with a mystical bent no doubt, but over time and continents our faith took on the markers of a loose social identity. Even the scar tissue on my penis pointed not to descendants of Abraham but to a group of people who found the idea of discussing Republican politics over gimlets to be as unsuitable as hunting bears with a paring knife. For that matter, hunting anything with anything.

At any rate, my release, scheduled for midnight, March 22, pushed past two in the morning. I took it in stride. I was used to waiting. Which isn’t to say I liked it. I just didn’t take it personally. There were people who made decisions and people who had decisions made for them. The border was more porous than I imagined and, having passed through it thirty-nine months earlier, I’d had time to adjust. My endurance had grown into a massive and intricate sandcastle, the kind that wins ribbons on Independence Day. But my mother, father, and sister had driven from their home about sixty miles away and waited for my processing with their patience a sagging and crumbling mess, a July fifth sandcastle.

All because of me. Even Rachel—who, due to our age difference and my limitations, considered me somewhat of a curio and not always a brother—seemed uncharacteristically charitable. They weren’t this proud of me at my graduation from college (where I posted a solid, if not quite laudable, 2.8 in every aspect of my life) and this pride, I believe, stemmed from the idea that in many ways I was closer to them than at any other time. I saw them at regular intervals throughout my stay in FCI Otisville, and I received weekly written correspondence from at least one of them, a letter or a card; so that I must now admit that my level of communication with my family was at its all-time highest when I was upstate, doubtless because they knew my whereabouts every moment, a statement they couldn’t make during my mid-twenties.

Now they had me to themselves, without bending to the strictures of the visiting room, and could hold me like a real human being, where before we kowtowed to cretinous correctional officers, guards. If I didn’t match their enthusiasm it was because I was uneasy about what awaited me on the other side of all those fences topped with endless coils of razor wire. Yes, I was glad to be out, grateful I had somewhere to go, but in the run-up to my scheduled release it became pretty clear to me that I had no agenda: no money, no job, no woman, no friends. The lone bullet point on my customized reentry program was that I was to rely on folks I hadn’t lived with since I was a high school senior. The anticipation of taking my first steps as a free man had another component to it. What if I wasn’t skipping into the embrace of entirely generous arms, and my arrival, however much desired, would be added weight to an already knee-buckling load?

As the three of them advanced in my direction, my mother hustled ahead, declaring, Me first, violently throwing her arms around my neck, her body humming against mine. She pulled me down six or eight inches until our foreheads met. It was then I caught her smell and in its familiarity I found the polar opposite of the smell of prison. My father and sister closed in around me.

Alex, come here, my father said, his hand palming the back of my head. He wrapped his other arm around me, crushing my mother, who gasped, I can’t breathe. Rachel, careful to avoid getting smothered herself, laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. We stayed there a minute outside the Administration Building while the sprawl of the institution swelled around us. Maybe I was the only one who noticed it. I didn’t want to be touched anymore.

I stepped back, hands in my pockets, and said, Where’s the car, old man? I’m not sure what their laughter meant. I had been calling my father old man since he was the age I was now and maybe they welcomed the idea that some things hadn’t changed.

Heading to the parking lot, I said, Are there a lot of people out there?

Who else are you expecting? my father said.

Media? Well wishers?

This time I knew what their laughter meant. As far as they were concerned, I’d outlived my shelf life as a morbid novelty. How could they know—I definitely didn’t—that I would soon renew my membership in the cultural oddities guild?

At breakfast the next morning, the hoopla of the previous night had given way to the reality of our new living arrangement. Rachel sat across from me at the old oak dining room table, her hair snatched back into a ponytail, wearing a pink tank top adorned with a graphic of her high school’s mascot, a lion. My father stood over me, refilling my juice glass (I was eye level with his belly softness), and my mother was in the kitchen. The afterglow of my homecoming had not yet worn off, but from what I remembered growing up, we didn’t eat breakfast together often, so the meal itself concocted a set of unintended tensions. While I enjoyed the spread my parents were cooking up, I couldn’t help but notice the way Rachel sulked over her eggs. This was, after all, a celebration for me, not her. Who the fuck was I to enter her domain anyway? My sister was an achiever, an honor student since she was practically a fetus, so she deserved attention—attention, evidently, she no longer sought but demanded. She had no way of knowing I wasn’t there for any birthright; it was hers for the taking.

She buttered a piece of toast for an inordinately long time, reducing the whole world to that meditative act.

How did it feel to sleep in your old room? my father said.

I won’t go into what it was like that first night except to say I couldn’t fall asleep until I double-checked that the door was locked. Besides, it wasn’t my room anymore. They redecorated it a den years ago. Though mine to reclaim, the Patrick Ewing poster was long gone, the hole I’d punched in the wall over some girl was patched, all four walls repainted, ceiling fan replaced; and, most crucial, the pint of Jim Beam, along with some low-rent pornography, last seen sharing space on a closet shelf, was MIA. Even my bed, from where I’d hatched my earliest plans of world domination, was nowhere to be found. I’d slept on the fold-out couch, twisted in the sheets, dreaming dreams of underwhelming prospects.

I wasn’t up to it, but I dragged my ass downstairs that morning, needing a hot meal to get going. Now I gave my father the answer he deserved. Really great. Thanks for having me.

This is your home, too. Always. Judy, he called to my mother in the kitchen, how’re we doing on the coffee. And back to me, How was the coffee in Otisville? Did you get coffee?

Oh my God, of course he did, sighed Rachel.

He jerked his head away from her, as though her voice was a bee.

What kind of question is that anyway? You think Big Al wants to talk about it? You might as well ask him about the rapes.

Not as good as the coffee, I answered.

You’ve got to understand she’s upset about something, he said.

Way to state the obvious, old man, she said, the use of my nickname for him a sign she wasn’t pleased with either of us. She returned to her toast but when her cell phone began buzzing, the butter knife hit the plate. She read the text, looked up from the phone at me, laughed, and then her slim thumbs, with their chipped polish, flitted over the buttons, returning the message. She dropped the phone to the table, picked up the toast, took a bite, and said, Jelly’s coming over, okay?

Your friends are always welcome, my dad said.

You have a friend named Jelly? I said.

Jelly Belly, that’s my girl. Her real name is Jill.

Is she fat?

Hardly. She rolled her eyes. She’s like obsessed with you.

How does she know me?

"Not the real you. The you from the movie."

I told all the neighbors not to watch it, my father said, orange juice container in one hand, grapefruit juice in the other.

You mean the neighbors who were still talking to us? Rachel said.

My mother joined us in the dining room. She looked tired through her smile.

You all right? I said.

I’m fine. She smiled again. I’m glad you’re home.

She ate a little and I ate more and my father finally sat down. We all ate in peace and quiet. It was pleasant. Or would have been if I was just visiting, a successful son breaking from his hectic schedule for some brief, but much needed, domestic comfort. Only I wasn’t just visiting, though there was little mystery how I ended up here. I’d had an idea for a while and now these scrambled eggs and potatoes and whole wheat toast and coffee and two types of juices confirmed my suspicions. I was on the cusp of my thirtieth birthday and living with my parents, not because the sky opened up the day I was born and emptied a karmic colostomy bag over the hospital nursery. The dice hadn’t been loaded against me. In fact, one could make the argument that as a white man I belonged to the pantheon of dice loaders (though possibly a provisional member on account of my Semitic extraction). No, in my case, it was an attitude or manner I’d cultivated for much of my life. I was an arrogant prick. Maybe just cocky. Or some other phallic-inspired descriptor. This quirk (a cute way of saying defect) had fooled me into thinking that I was destined for great things, great accomplishments, that I was, in the absence of great things and accomplishments, simply great by myself. It convinced me to scoff at our governing laws because I was, you see, so lovely and thrilling a man that allowances would be made for me. Believe me, there are few lessons harder to take than the slow comprehension of your innate mediocrity.

The front door then burst wide, a girl’s voice shrieking into the house, Hey there, Wolf pack. I smell breakfast. The slap of flip-flops against bare feet echoed down the hall, and here came Jelly, her tits ushering her into the room. Her face was slightly too round, her nose too short; there was an indication she would one day grow heavy in the upper arms. In other words, she wasn’t a classical beauty, but from one glance I knew she commanded an unwieldy amount of power over both the boys and girls her age. She was so close a descendant of the girls who held sway over me in my teens that, though separated by more than a dozen years, I had to gather myself when she got close to the table.

’Sup, slut? she said to Rachel.

Nothing, you little hooker.

I wish you girls wouldn’t talk that way, my mother muttered. She turned in her chair to greet our guest. Are you hungry, Jill?

Naw, but I smell coffee. I’d love some of that.

My mother stood but Jelly waved her back down. I’ll help myself.

As she disappeared into the kitchen, I sought relief in my hash browns from her loud, exceedingly comfortable presence.

My mother said, She and Rachel are like sisters. Jelly practically lives here.

Just like Raphael, I said, referring to an indigent day laborer my mother once let stay in our house for weeks on end.

Not like Raphael, Rachel hissed.

Jelly returned with a mug and helped herself to the coffee pot. She sat next to Rachel and began trying not to look at me, but her eyes wandered up from the table. Eye contact in prison is an invitation to conflict. This little game she played put me on edge.

Mom, Dad, breakfast was great. I’m going to take a shower, I said.

Before I could excuse myself, Jelly extended her hand across the table. Thanks, Rach, for introducing me. Your sister can be so rude.

I took her limp hand, the first touch of a female who didn’t share my DNA in quite a while. I can’t exaggerate the effect human contact, or lack thereof, has on a person. My body overreacted, my semi-erection turning overly confident. Nice to meet you, Jelly.

"You know my name? That’s cool. I know your name too. Can I just say I know all about you? The Wrong Way Son, what can I say? It’s like the best thing that’s ever been on TV."

I wouldn’t know.

Really? I thought you were like a consultant or something.

I shook my head. She said, Well, anyway, it’s amazing. That scene, when you were in South America, you sell that one guy a gun. I was like, ‘Don’t do it! He killed your best friend.’ But then it turns out the bullets are blanks or whatever and when he tries to rob that store the shopkeeper kills him with a bat. She spoke very fast and I didn’t know what she was talking about.

I’ve never sold a gun in my life, I said. I’ve bought plenty, though.

My mother frowned.

Or what about when you were in the helicopter and the cops are shooting at you and it’s going to crash and you jump out, but it’s like the jungle or rainforest or somewhere, and you land in this thing that’s like an oasis, Jelly said.

What about when that guy shot at me and I caught the bullet in my teeth?

Wait a sec, that didn’t happen.

Look at you, the brightest knife in the drawer. You’re right, that didn’t happen, but neither did anything else you said.

I was telling the truth. Regardless of what my biographer would like the world to believe, I was never some rogue smuggling weapons across foreign borders. It’s not illegal to export a gun. The way I went about it was inventive (if you ask me) and would have made for a more interesting, if less fanciful, story than the one Laura dreamed up. I’ll address that later. For now, let me state for the record that I was convicted of and served thirty-nine months for violating title 18, part 1, chapter 44, sections 922 (g) 3,4,5A of the US Code. Without resorting to a ton of legalese here, what this means is that I gave a firearm to someone our government decided shouldn’t have one. To be a little more specific than that, I’ll add that I was driving with this person beside me when a routine DWI roadblock in southern New Mexico put us, and a rental van full of .50 caliber rifles, in close proximity to state police.

Jelly said, Come on, really? What about when you were in jail? You were with that lady doctor? The one who wrote the book? That’s true, isn’t it?

Wrong again, I said. This time I was lying. I was furious with Dr. Sullivan, but mostly with myself. The whole thing was a product of my arrogance, and Laura twisted me up, knowing I couldn’t go anywhere—outsmarted me, really.

You should sue them for plagiarism or something, Jelly said.

Plagiarism is when you steal someone’s words or ideas, Rachel said. It doesn’t apply here.

Whatev, bitch.

Okay, I hate to break away from this stimulating conversation, but I have to go to the office, my father said.

His announcement was news to me but fazed no one else.

It’s Saturday, I said.

I go every day.

Since when? I said.

Your dad’s a serious breadwinner. Ain’t that right, Mr. Wolf? Jelly said.

Thank you for the endorsement, he said.

Rachel drummed the tines of her fork against her plate and looked to my mother. I guessed she knew why he was working weekends and didn’t like where the conversation was going. I delighted in her discomfort, for then I wasn’t experiencing it alone. She grabbed her friend by the arm. We’re going to my room, she said.

Jelly took a last look at me. Nice to meet you, Alex.

They scampered off upstairs. My parents brought me up to speed. While I don’t blame them for hiding things from me when I was away, I was nevertheless shocked to learn that when my father said he was going to the office it was so, in the very likely event that his business folded, he could take solace knowing he’d done everything he could, as if effort had ever trumped luck.

It’s been a tough year, my mother said.

So, now you know, he said.

What I didn’t know, however, was how it happened. My gut told me he gambled Dynamic Business Solutions away, and inwardly I winced as if witnessing a car accident. Outwardly, I gave away nothing, a skill I learned not in prison or in my business dealings. Right here at the old oak dining room table I’d honed my capacity to sop up hostility and disappointment until it was buried within me, somewhere with the acid and bile.

I couldn’t ask him what was happening. I wasn’t unsympathetic but if I was right about the gambling, it meant humiliating my father, which is a shameful thing for a son of any age to see. Anything else I should know?

My mother answered: Termites.

What does that mean?

In the basement. If we’re getting it all out there, you should know. This place could collapse at any minute. She was joking but also seemed resigned to its inevitability.

My father was standing opposite me now, holding his plate. We’ve exterminated them, but there’s damage.

Right now we can’t afford to fix it, she said.

What are you going to do? I asked because I didn’t detect a sense of optimism in the way she said right now, as if in the not too distant future they would have the money for repairs.

What could they do but live with it? Rachel was furious, they said. Ours was an uppity town, and she’d been spoiled vicariously.

I just hope she understands your mom and I are doing our best, which is what we’ve always tried to do for you two, my father said.

I believed in his sincerity. But since I also believed his wagering on horse races had caused these problems, I hedged at throwing the weight of my support behind him. This made me feel like an asshole because he never hesitated a second to support me.

The fatigue in my mother’s face was still there. The result of a bad night’s sleep or wood-eating insects? Of an ungrateful daughter or an irresponsible husband? A convict son? Then I looked at the old man. He wasn’t only my father but a man who dealt with the exigencies of life the best he could. That he never gave up might have suggested to some people he was a decent kind of guy. It also might have meant he was too stubborn to know when to pull the plug.

I’ve got to go to work for a little bit. Will you be okay? my mother said. Her going to Franklin Avenue Community Outreach on Saturday was no surprise. My father once offered to relocate their bedroom furniture to her cramped office so they would see each other more often.

What should I do if the house falls down?

Dig.

*

November, 2004

I say we go to trial. Tri-al! Tri-al! I chanted.

Martin Skolnick, legal counsel par affordable, stubbed out a cigarette on the courthouse steps, in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He checked his watch. Time to go in. Ready?

Their case is soft as camembert. Want to know what we’re going to do? The golden boy—me—and his furry hedgehog of an attorney— you—are going to serve up that government cheese with some toast points and grapes and an icy pitcher of martinis.

Skolnick glanced up at the entrance. I think your parents are already inside.

Focus.

You’ve accepted Woods’ deal.

I let her rattle me and that was a mistake. It’s not too late. We can dickslap the entire U-S-of-A. I know we can. They have no case. I’m telling the truth about the hunting club.

Woods is a smart lawyer. That’s kind of how you become an assistant U.S. attorney. But even if she was a bad lawyer, she’d still see the absurdity of big game hunting in the mountains of South America.

Absurd how?

Because you don’t need a .50 caliber rifle to hunt fucking alpacas and llamas and shit.

Last time I checked, absurdity has never been illegal. Thank you, Founding Fathers! I bought the guns legally, paid for them with money earned through no criminal enterprise.

Skolnick checked his watch again and decided there was time for another smoke. They have a witness, he said, shaking out a match.

I know you don’t mean Ernesto. Dude’s a paranoid-schizophrenic who smokes a ton of weed to help quiet the voices in his head urging him to hurt himself. If you can’t discredit him, what am I paying you for?

Yes, he’s a pothead. That’s bad news for you. You gave a gun to a drug addict.

I gave him nothing. He just happened to be with me when I got pulled over. It should’ve been Ron with me.

And where’s Ron?

Not cool.

I’m just reminding you that you’re lucky you didn’t disappear with him. Besides, Woods has a sworn deposition from Ernesto saying you promised him one of the guns, that it was a gift for being a ‘very, very good boy,’ or however that dummy phrased it. Plus he was here on an expired visa and just got off the psych ward.

Unbelievable, I said.

Let’s go inside.

Fuck that. Let’s fight.

Woods can make things so ugly for you and your family.

I need a fighter and I’m stuck with a pussy looking for easy billable hours.

He fired twin jets of smoke out of his nose. It looked like he was smoothing the fabric of my suit jacket but he was really holding me by the shoulders. You outfitted a guerilla army. Who do you think you’re bullshitting?

I was helping a friend, I said, but stopped short of saying that I didn’t have a lot of friends.

I know you’re nervous, but it will be fine.

Martin, I don’t want to go to jail. What could have been a more natural feeling? And yet it was the first time I admitted it. I wasn’t cut out for prison and I was scared, scared I’d be killed, scared I’d be tormented, scared I’d be broken down psychologically and stripped of the posturing that protected me, scared that once my genuine self was on display everyone would see me as I was beginning to see myself, and that wasn’t a guy I wanted to hang out with. I couldn’t say that though, even at this late hour, not to Skolnick or anyone, couldn’t admit how afraid I was standing outside the courthouse. The best I could do was say I didn’t want to go, as if it didn’t suit my preference.

The deal’s in place. You’ll get to serve your sentence close to home. Let’s go inside and take it.

So I, Alexander Wolf, pleaded guilty to knowingly transferring a firearm to a person/persons who is the unlawful user or addict of a controlled substance, a person/persons who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution, and a person/persons who, being an alien is illegally or unlawfully in the United States. Imagine my luck. I hit the trifecta with Ernesto. I got thirty-six to forty-eight months, medium security.

My parents and Rachel sat in the first row of the gallery. Judge Espinoza closed the courtroom to the media. It was no favor to me, he hated the attention, but I was thankful all the same.

Afterwards, as I shook Skolnick’s hand, he assured me I’d be fine. Yes, prison was nasty, but I could handle it. Worst case scenario, I’d be out in four years, leaving me plenty of time for a good life. The crisis was over, he said. He might be right, I thought. I sat down again and even started feeling relieved. Maybe it was all over. Then I turned around and saw my family. It wasn’t