Melodic Innocence of a Child’s Laugh

Dear Jordan,

    Our phone call was great. But I have to tell you, the quality of the old pay-phone style phone I was using was really poor. I heard the song, but it was like it was far away and wrapped in static. Still, the spirit of it came through. And it was good.

     Also, when I’m on that phone I can’t talk freely. There are Islamic terrorists lurking about, and walking by, and listening. And I don’t want to be overheard by any of them.

      One thing I overheard on your end was the voice of a child. It sparked something in me at a deep level. I don’t know how to even describe this to you. It was the sound of the world I left behind. I live in an underworld where there are no women and no children. There are only calloused, violent, flint-faced men. Death is all around, all the time. Guys get murdered, or OD, or commit suicide, or die of sickness constantly. Death and killing is so ever-present, that human life has no value at all. Living here is like living in the jungles of Vietnam. That’s what people don’t understand. When you go to prison, it’s not “time-out.” It’s a war zone, and a lot of people won’t live through it. 

     When you got drafted and sent to Vietnam, if you survived a one year tour, you got to go home. But what if a judge sentenced you to 27 back-to-back tours in Vietnam? How would you feel? That’s what happened to me. I’ve completed 8 of them so far. I’ve got some scars on my body, and some scars on my soul. Jordan, I’ve never been raped or bitched up. And I do better than most at staying out of conflicts. But over the years I’ve had to do some savagely violent things to survive. That’s just a normal part of doing prison time. But there is nothing normal about it. 

      The government created for themselves this world-underneath-a-world. They own and control everything here. If you ever want to know what it would look like for the government get their way on everything, just look at prison. They prohibit all things good. And let all things bad fester and brood. This world in which I live is so ugly that God Himself must look away. I’ve all but forgotten the world from which I came, the world in which you live. But when I heard the voice of your child, my soul leaped up into my throat, because it reminded me that the world was still real. It’s still out there. Hearing the melodic innocence of a child’s laugh was like seeing blue sky after a long time in a cave. It gave me the feeling of turning down the street to the house where I grew up, after having been away for many years beyond number. It was like smelling the sea after a long overland journey to find it. I heard your world, and it sounded like home.

Love,

–Schaeffer Cox

www.PayPal.me/SchaefferCox