The Glorious Prodigal (15 page)

Stuart was thankful that Jennings did not disturb him with incessant talking, and he grew to like him very much. But at times the man’s jubilant spirit got on his nerves. Stuart could not begin to fathom how a man could seem so happy in a place like this. Though Munger was no longer a problem for Winslow, the other guards could be cruel at times, too. Every day was filled with backbreaking labor, and worse, the ever-present aching loneliness of serving out his twenty years for a crime he now deeply regretted.

Seasons came and went, though Stuart barely noticed their passing. Even the summer sunshine that pleasantly warmed him during his breaks in the yard or on outdoor work detail could not brighten his mood. The constant gray and cold of his concrete surroundings reflected the growing despair in his heart as day after day dragged by, one indistinguishable from another.

His family and friends had long since deserted him. He never had visitors, and even his mother had stopped writing within a week of his incarceration. It was probably easier to forget he existed than to live with the shame of having a criminal for a son, he figured.

He went through periods of terrible depression, believing that he was surely doomed to an eternity of hopelessness, even after his earthly sentence was satisfied. But Pete Jennings kept him alive through such despair. He was extremely patient, often urging him to read the Bible and believe that God loved him and had not forgotten him. Sometimes Pete’s preaching got the better of him and Stuart would lash out, but deep down he knew that Jennings truly cared, and some
part of him did not want to lose the friendship he had come to cherish. Warden Armstrong talked to him from time to time as well, also urging him to read the Bible and get his life focused on God, instead of on his own troubles.

Three long years dragged by in this way for Stuart Winslow. The thought of seventeen more of the same made him want to kill himself. Twice he tried, and twice he failed, with the result that he was put on a constant suicide watch. At those times Pete redoubled his efforts to persuade Stuart that his life could be better if he would simply stop running from God.

Somehow Stuart survived those years with the help of Pete Jennings and Warden Armstrong.

****

One Sunday Stuart was lying on his bunk reading a western for the third time when Jennings said, “Hey, what do you say we go to chapel, Stuart?”

“Not me, Pete. You know that.”

“Oh, come on. It’s better than lying in the bunk,” Jennings insisted. “Some of the singin’ is pretty good sometimes. The guys keep asking if you’d play. The warden found an old guitar for us to use, but no one knows how to play.”

“I said no. I’m never going to be able to play again anyway. I’ll just stay here, Pete.”

Jennings hesitated, then finally left.

Stuart lay there for a while, regretting his decision. Pete had asked him many times before if he’d consider playing for the men in chapel if they could find him an instrument and he always refused, but today seemed different. He did miss his music and began to wonder if he could indeed still play the guitar or fiddle after so many years of neglect. Not wanting to deal with the thought, he closed his eyes, locked his fingers under his head, and dozed. After a time he came to a half-conscious state, and the thought that often drove him to a state of despair came to him like a voice out of hell:
Twenty years, Winslow. Your folks will be dead. They don’t care about you anyway. You’ll be a worn-out old convict.

The walls seemed to close in on him, and he resisted the impulse to rise and beat his head against the concrete. The temptation to give in to the despair had been constant these last three years, yet it was growing less severe lately, thanks to Pete Jennings’ gentle encouragement.

“By the time I get out,” he muttered aloud, “Raimey will be twenty-four years old, and I won’t ever have seen my other child.”

The image of Leah suddenly came to him as vividly as if he were looking at a portrait. He had not thought about her so clearly when he had been with her, but now something in him seemed to cry out,
I’ve lost her. I’ve lost her forever!

Stuart Winslow had been a tough enough man in the outside world, but the hopelessness of spending seventeen more years in this desolate place had broken him—not outwardly, for he let no one see the anguish he fought against in his heart. But now as he lay there alone in the cold prison cell, he suddenly realized that tears were rolling down his cheeks. Before prison, he had never been afraid of anything, but now he was afraid—afraid of
time.
It was going to crush him and leave him, and he would have nothing left. With a desperate motion he rolled over and pushed his face into the pillow, and his body began to shake.

****

As soon as Pete Jennings reentered his cell after the chapel service, he saw instantly that something had happened to his new friend. From the day of his arrival, Stuart Winslow had shown almost nothing of what went on inside his spirit. Pete knew he had had a hard time with Munger that first week at Tucker, yet Stuart’s face had been almost frozen in a fixed expression. Even after becoming his cellmate, Jennings felt as though he just couldn’t reach the man. It was as if Winslow
had buried all his feelings behind a cold wall—and
nobody
was going to get at them!

But one look at Winslow’s face now and Jennings understood that something had broken. Winslow was sitting on his bunk, his hands clasped together, and when he turned, Jennings thought,
I’ve never seen such misery in a human being!

“Stuart, what’s wrong?”

At first Stuart Winslow appeared not to hear the question. His cheeks were drawn and his mouth stretched into a thin white line. But it was his eyes that caught Jennings’ attention, for they were fixed in a terrible stare—as if Winslow were looking at something dreadful.

Jennings sat down and put his arm around Winslow’s shoulders. His voice was gentle as he said, “I see it’s caught up with you, Stuart, and I’m glad.”

“What . . . what’s caught up with me?”

“Everything,” Jennings responded. He was a man who was intensely sensitive to people, especially the men in prison he’d come to know over the years. He’d been down a hard road of his own, which had landed him at Tucker Farm. Now as he gripped Stuart Winslow with his arm, he said, “Most everybody learns to bury things, Stuart, things we don’t want anyone to see . . . things we’re ashamed of. I had a cemetery of my own, and all the rotten things I didn’t want anyone to know about, I buried them there. It was a pretty crowded place, Stuart, because I was a bad guy.”

Winslow’s eyes flickered with recognition, as if Pete’s words were a familiar story to him. He said nothing but focused on the face of his fellow prisoner, who continued to speak in a soft voice. He was acutely conscious of the pressure of Jennings’ arm as it pressed against his shoulder. At one time he would have shaken it off, but now he welcomed the gesture.

“So I buried all my bad stuff in that cemetery, but I knew it was there. At night I’d dream about it . . . and wake up in a cold sweat. What if somebody found out about all that junk?
What would my wife say? Or my mother and father? It got to be pretty bad, Stuart. In fact, it got so bad I couldn’t stand it.”

“What did you do, Pete?” Winslow’s voice was slightly above a whisper, and a tortured expression twisted his face.

“I did all the wrong things. I tried to drink enough whiskey to blot all that stuff out. That didn’t work, of course. It never does. Then I tried to reform. That made sense to me—for a while. I quit drinking and gambling, and I even started going to church. Oh, I put on a pretty good front.” Jennings smiled and shook his head as if amused somehow by the memory. “But it was no good.”

“Why not?”

“Because I found out pretty soon that changing the outside didn’t do anything about what I was. All the bad things I did—why, they weren’t the problem!”

“I can’t see that.”

“Sure you can, Stuart, if you’ll think about it. Why did I do all those things? Because I was messed up
inside.
See that? If a guy gets his heart right, then the things that come out of him will be good. But if he’s got a rotten heart, that’ll come out sooner or later. Like the preacher says, you can take a hog and wash him and polish his hooves and put a pink ribbon on him and douse him in cologne, but the first mudhole he sees—why, he’ll jump right in and wallow in the mire! Because he’s still a hog, no matter how good you make him look and smell!”

Jennings paused, then suddenly rose and moved to the small table beside his bunk. Picking up his Bible, he sat down and opened it. “You need one thing, Stuart, and just one. Get that one thing right, and all the other things will straighten themselves out.”

Stuart Winslow had heard Pete tell him these things many times, and he had heard many sermons in his life, but somehow they always seemed unrelated to him. Even if the preacher was eloquent, he’d really felt no compunction for the way he had been. But he felt something now—for the first time—and
it frightened him. He felt like a man on a cliff, dangling over an awful height. He felt a pressure to escape, but he didn’t know how.

“I’ve ruined my life, Pete,” he whispered. “It’s too late for me!”

“No, it’s not!” Jennings turned several pages rapidly, saying, “I want you to listen to one verse from Isaiah chapter fifty-three, the sixth verse.” He read slowly, following the words on the worn page with his finger: “ ‘All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way. . . .’ ” Pete smiled, but tears stood in his eyes. “I guess that sums it up for both of us, Stuart. Nothing more stupid than a sheep! It’ll wander off and die if left to itself.” He shook his shoulders suddenly. “But listen to the last part of this verse—and listen close. It’s what helped me to find Jesus.” He read the last phrase of the verse with triumph in his voice: “ ‘And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.’ ”

Jennings’ hand closed hard on Winslow’s shoulder. “Ain’t that great? Ain’t it wonderful!”

“I . . . I don’t understand—”

“Why, the whole gospel is right there! We’re all sinners, but God took all our sins and put them on Jesus! I don’t have that cemetery anymore—it’s all gone!”

Winslow listened as Jennings began to read from the Bible. The small man moved from the Old Testament to the New Testament, like a man showing a house, with pride in every room. His eyes shone, and his voice was filled with joy as he ended by saying, “Go back here to Isaiah fifty-three, verse eleven.” He thumbed the pages and directed Winslow’s gaze to the page. “Read out loud, Stuart—that part I’ve got underlined.”

Stuart licked his lips, then read the verse in a faltering voice. “ ‘He shall see the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.’ ”

“That’s what finally won me, Stuart, when I read the first
part of that verse—the part that says, ‘He shall see the travail of his soul,
and shall be satisfied.
’ ” Jennings shook his head, and the tears ran down his thin cheeks. “God saw what Jesus did—and it satisfied Him. That’s what you’ve got to believe, Stuart! Believe that your sins were on Jesus when He died on the cross.”

Something was beginning to stir in the heart of Stuart Winslow. Deep down inside he felt a
swelling
such as he’d never known. It was impossible to describe in words, but as he sat on the bunk in the gloom of the cell, a tiny light began to come into his heart. He suddenly realized that he’d felt this before but had ignored it. Now he welcomed it, for the thought was growing in him:
I need something more than myself!

As if he had heard the thought, Pete Jennings said, “You can’t do it by yourself, Stuart. None of us can. But you don’t have to. Jesus has already done all of it.”

For the next hour the two men talked, their voices swallowed up by the steel and concrete walls. Neither of them heard the sounds of the prison, nor was either conscious of the passage of time. Time meant little to them, in any case, and Pete Jennings loved the soul of this man with all his heart.

Finally Jennings said, “Stuart, Jesus loved you and died for you. But you have to open your heart to Him. If you do, He’ll come in—I know it! He’ll give you a new heart, and the whole world will be different. But you have to invite Him inside.”

Winslow was trembling, but he whispered, “Tell me what to do, Pete! I want to know God!”

“Let’s kneel right here and pray.”

At once Stuart came off the bunk. He was trembling almost violently, and he could not seem to think clearly. One thing, however, was absolutely clear—the Spirit of God was calling him!

Jennings was not a man of eloquence. He prayed fervently but directly, speaking as he might to a dear friend. “Dear Lord, Stuart here is in a bad way, but you can help him. I know you
can, Lord, for you helped me. He needs Jesus, and I’m asking you to draw him to yourself right now!”

Stuart Winslow began to weep great gasping sobs that wracked his body. He was conscious of Pete praying, but could not make out the words, for he was calling out as a drowning man might cry for help. He had no hope that he could ever find his way alone, but he was aware that One greater than himself was in the cell with the two of them. He did not know how to pray, but he knew how to cry out!

And cry out he did—not so much with his voice as with his spirit. He knew that he was whispering, “Jesus! Jesus! Help me!” over and over. He was vaguely aware of Jennings holding his arm. But he was lost in a fight that he knew he had to win—and he knew at the same time that he was helpless.

Later he was never able to remember how long the two of them prayed, but finally it was over. He came to himself, sitting on the floor, with Jennings beside him. He felt drained and enervated, powerless to do such a simple thing as rise from the floor.

But he
knew
something was different. He knew it!

Slowly he turned to his companion, and his voice was suddenly strong as he said, “I’ll never understand it, Pete, but something has changed.” He lifted his hands and raised them in a gesture of victory, and his expression was aglow as he whispered fiercely, “Thank you, God, for forgiveness! Thank you, Lord Jesus, for coming to me!”