Author: Hack Savage

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2007-03

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9781425735135

To buy the "Big House Ballads," a little home made whiskey sippin´ music, please go to this link www.prisonpredatorsprey.com. Toby Jacks is no stranger to crime. To the prison officials, he's just another inmate doing time. Before his conviction for auto theft, however, Jacks skillfully plotted a series of murders in Olympia. The reporters tagged him the Capital Killer. Though the murders remain unsolved, captivity has not diminished Toby Jacks pathological predatory urges. Every day the prison guards monitor his behavior along with that of the other inmates at Stafford Creek Correctional Center, unaware that Jacks is the serial killer. As his old night-stalking song echoes in his mind, Jacks watches and waits for his next victim. This time his prey is one among the prison staff. Every contact with an inmate has as much potential to be peaceful as it has to result in a violent outbreak. As guards understand, the job is more than mechanics, more than brute force. They can play a large part in directing a peaceful outcome. The characters in the book are alive and rich with life experience. Some of their finest contributions to corrections come from their backgrounds as well as from their solid gut instinct. Will Morris has what his father calls "that Injun blood." After years of working as a faller in the timber industry, Will came to Stafford Creek to work as a guard. Will's gut instinct tells him Toby Jacks is up to no good. Harry Holiday, Perry Thimble, Max Dillenger, and Elsie Pratt are what the new-to-corrections staff calls the "tower gods." They are people who have walked the bricks for years, having experienced the turbulent times of the 60's and 70's. Times change. People can change too. Instrumental in the change of prison operation are fellow "old-schoolers" Buck Campbell, a sergeant at Stafford Creek, and his life long friend/rival Charley Gould, who has worked his way up the chain to his present position as associate superintendent of Washington State Corrections. Buck and Charley both lived through the violence of the past and unwittingly fulfilled the words spoken to them as young guards in Walla-Walla from a simple-minded yet intuitively brilliant black inmate, Luther Patch: "That be your sign, Charley Gould, when you see the blood of the vine on the walls of Walla-Walla then you time be at hand. Just rides the tide, Charley Gould, tide in, tide out. You be pouring the new wine into new wine skins, praise be to the sweet Jesus, he be putting his finger on you and teach you as you ride that tide in and the tide out. But when you see them pour that new wine into those old wine skins, you just hold your peace, say nothing! Because it be the Lord's doin, they be a-teachin you, you hold your peace until the blood of the vine be on the walls at Walla-Walla, that be your time." Buck Campbell, sweet Jesus be havin purpose and meaning to you too. Charley be the heart of the sweet Jesus but you be the spirit, yes sir, you be the spirit speakin´ the truth and pissin em off. You be growin into a son-of-a-bitch, Buck Campbell, but you be God's son-of-a-bitch, speakin´ the truth and pissin em off." Charley, Buck, and the tower gods do bring that new wine to the new prison and its staff. Prison is a spiritual place; a place Harry Holiday calls the Holy Darkness. In this place of incarceration, spiritual receptivity can be honed, becoming a valuable tool in dealing with the dark natures of inmates like Toby Jacks. Some correctional officers learn the mechanics of the job and do well in the correctional world under normal circumstances. But with Toby Jacks and his kind, only those who have honed their intuitive abilities can match up to him and his devious schemes. Jacks has his own spiritual receptivity, however, as he listens to a voice that speaks to him from the depths of a deep dark for