The Runaway - Jake's Dilemma

This is the third of my character studies for my new novel, The Runaway. I would like to introduce John Henry "Jake" Phillips. For those of you who've been following this series, I need to make a correction. Jake was formerly called Tyler in Ima's Musings. That name just wouldn't settle with me and when I started telling his story, Jake seemed a much better fit.

Story premise:

A young woman is found unconscious and bleeding from a gunshot in an alley. She has no identification and there are no witnesses to her assault. She is taken to the hospital where she eventually regains consciousness but has no memory for her identity.

With the help of a police detective and her neurologist, she works to regain the pieces of her missing life. Over time, memories begin to surface, leading to clues about her identity. The clock is ticking, however, for buried within her locked subconscious are the clues not only to the murder attempt on her life, but the details of an assassination plot on an African American candidate for the presidency of the United States.

Jake's Dilemma

My life is quickly spiraling out of control and I have no idea how to stop it. Life seemed so much easier three years ago; my purpose was clear and I knew exactly where I was heading. I fear that whatever, or whichever way I go from here, I am traveling down the road to destruction.

I’m 30 years old now. I ain’t had the best life. I was raised by a drunken and abusive father along with my brother Kyle, who was four years older than me. My ma skedaddled right around the time I was 6. I figure she’d had enough of pa’s mean and ornery ways. I mean, I can still hear her screaming and hollering in my dreams. Sometimes, I wish she’d’ve took us with her, wherever she went. Maybe things wouldn’t be so crazy right now.

Pa weren’t much of a parent to either of us boys; without ma around to beat on, he looked around and I guess decided that I’d do as well as any. Kyle was more of a father to me than Pa ever was, and he tried to protect me best he could, but he weren’t more’n a kid hisself, so sometimes, I got it pretty bad. I learnt pretty quick though, how to stay outta pa’s way, ‘specially when he been drinkin’.

Things changed when I was ‘bout 14 and Kyle was 18. I weren’t fast enough when pa came lookin’ for me and he laid into me real good. I actually thought this was the day he was finally gonna kill me, ‘cept that Kyle came in and stabbed him dead. We knew for sure that we was going to jail, but Kyle came up with an idea for us to just leave. We were living out in the country in Mena, Arkansas and sometimes it could be months afore someone came out to the farm to pay a visit.

So, we packed our stuff and just left; leaving pa on the kitchen floor where he fell. It was a few weeks later that we saw a newspaper story about his death. I honestly can’t say that either of us was sad that he was gone. We sorta drifted from place to place for awhile; Kyle would do odd jobs to make some money and we usually only stayed long enough to get enough money to keep moving. Eventually, we found somebody to give us some new ID, and then we found ourselves right at the junction of I-20 and Highway 59 and in the city of Marshall, Texas, just south of Dallas.

I enrolled back in school and Kyle found a full time job at one of the oil rigs outside of town. For the first time in our lives, we had found peace and stability. We’d been living in Marshall ‘bout 4 years, yeah, I remember cause, it was just before my graduation from high school. Kyle had started spending more and more time away from the house. I’d been teasing him about finding a girl, but he angrily denied it and refused to tell me about where he’d been. He was increasingly absent in the following months, more touchy than usual, barking at just about anything I said to him. He was also leaving the house for longer periods of time. It started to remind me of living with our pa and I worried that maybe he was drinkin’ or doin’ drugs.

I wish it had been that simple. Turns out he had been recruited by this group calling themselves White Nationalists. They were wreaking havoc on the blacks and Mexicans in town, robbin’ businesses and raping their women, threatening folk who tried to vote certain ways. They believed they was doing a public service and was trying to halt the demise of the white man.

I told him I thought he was stupid and for the first time in our life, he beat the tar out of me. He continued what were now, his weekly excursions into the night, but I could look at him and knew that something was terribly wrong.

The Sheriff came by the house and told me that my brother was dead.

He said Kyle’d been found on the other side of town, beaten to death. He was also castrated and had his penis forced down his throat. Talk around town was that the Carter boys did it. They were a group of colored boys, who weren’t blood kin but hung together and called themselves a family. Supposedly, Kyle and some of them ‘nationalists, raped a couple of their girls and they, the Carters that is, killed him for it.

I knew what Kyle ‘nem was doing was wrong, but he didn’t deserve that! I didn’t deserve to have the only kin available to me snatched away like that. It didn’t help that no one was arrested for his death, even though the whole community knew who did it.

I was a bomb waiting to explode when those same nationalists showed up at the house. They brought food and comfort and embraced me as a brother. They started talking to me about how the coloreds had killed Kyle and started talking about all the other injustices that were laid on the white man because of those coloreds. They gave me a focus for my grief and a target for my rage . . . and we planned.

I eventually moved away from Marshall. I was accepted into Texas A&M and then was offered a job in Chicago. I took it, eager to put the crimes of my past behind me. I’m 30 years old now, almost 31 and I work in marketing and am relatively happy with my current circumstance. I have tried severing ties with my associates in Texas, but unfortunately, that’s been easier to say than do. I hadn’t heard from anyone is nearly 10 years and had just started to breathe again. However, about 2 years ago, I was contacted again, and was told that my services may be required again. Of course, I immediately refused. My life was threatened, the lives of my friends were threatened and exposure of my past misdeeds, including my old identity and the death of my pa, were threatened to be made public. They had pictures of everything and everyone, so that told me they had been watching and monitoring me. It seemed easier to play along than to overtly defy them.

You see, I’ve been dating this woman, a black woman, of all people. The irony of my past hits me every time she smiles at me. She is the reason for my happiness and my reason for living. In a way that she will never understand, she has redeemed me.

She is my twin soul. We both come from pretty fucked up childhoods, and, like me, she’s a survivor. Her name is Ima.

‘Course, she don’t know nothing about my past and now I must make certain that she remains in ignorance. Because, if I fail to do what I’ve been tasked to do, she will be the first to die.