Allan, a former guard at a local prison, is full of stories. This is one of them.

Orange jumpsuits and metal bars and stale Doritos. They were his life.
He had no further goals than to survive this ghastly imprisonment. All higher ambitions, all the dreams he once fostered, high marks envisioned on that wall of fame while lying on his back underneath faded drywall and crumbling realities: all were erased by inescapable truths. Some things are the same around the globe. Bad choices land you in the big pen. Consequences are unavoidable and interminable.
In the cracked mirror by the side of his bed he watched the lines on his forehead deepen into crevices, watched his mouth harden and his eyes grow defiant, distant. He witnessed harder stories, saw younger lives than his plunge into a cavernous pit of self-destruction, and he watched his own features blur as he clung to the last vestiges of a once bright mind.
One story he would never forget.

That tantalizing word “escape” often peppered the conversations of these two young partners in crime. Jeff was lean, hard and flinty, his hair one dirty, solid mass. He was sentenced to five years for petty theft and forgery. Sonny was dark and slender, built for McDonald’s, not for the merciless street life that led him here.
Jeff laid out the plan. It was hasty, but he thought tight. This little prison in this obscure north Idaho town couldn’t be very secure. “Tomorrow,” he told Sonny. “We go tomorrow.”

Allen rounded the corner of the squat, nondescript building. This was a thankless job, one he kept for the paycheck and nothing else. You’d get ambitious youth to work here and in a couple of months they’d be as cynical as the best of them. Seeing the worst of human nature every day robbed you of faith and hardened your spine. From force of habit, Allen
glanced at the tall fence topped with coils of barbed wire surrounding the prison. His eyes widened.

Things had gone terribly wrong. Jeff’s heavy muck boots were caught in the barbed wire, his head dangling upside down, the blood pounding in his ears. Red spiderwebbed his hands as the barbs tore. He kicked feebly against cruel luck and his own rotten life. The guard was running, shouting a volley of commands. Stopitrightthere/dontyoudaremoveamuscle/stopitellyou. I’m not moving, trust me.
Sonny sat under a tree outside the fence, wincing as he cradled his ankle. Broken. Why does everything I do turn out like this? As from a distance, he watched the unfolding drama. Handcuffs. Blind resistance. Sharp pain. Face in the grass. Inevitable acquiescence. Despair. Sonny cursed.

Yes, that was the story he wouldn’t forget.
There were perks to prison life. Most people didn’t notice them. A hot meal three times a day. A guaranteed roof over your head. He smiled at the guards, at his fellow inmates. One was safe here. After all, the things he’d once dreamed of were fanciful. This was reality. A hard reality, but a deserved one.
And then Allen came in, handed him a stack of papers, and ushered him to the door. He was free.
He made it as far as the streetlamp in the front when he realized he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t get a job, make it in the real world. This was a catastrophe.
“Please,” he pleaded. “I can’t make it out there. It’s not safe.”
They said he had to go.
He went.
The first evening of freedom he grabbed a bag of Hershey’s and a granola bar from the local gas station and stuffed them under his jacket.
He made for the door. “Hands up, now!” Someone barked. He turned gladly. “Please take me. I don’t know how to live like a normal person.”
They’d been warned. “No,” they said. “Put those things back and go home.”
Home? Where was home? Several aimless days of pilfering and fasting, then he put a bullet in his chest.
Allan shook his head and sighed the weary sigh of a man who’s seen it all when he heard the news. Jeff narrowed his eyes and laughed at the bitter irony of it all. Sonny was quiet, wondering. He watched television, ate tasteless meals on cafeteria trays, and paced restlessly. Where was the grace that evaded the rules of justice, that forgave sins bigger than his? The grace that blotted out his criminal record, and gave him thousands of second chances? Sonny still dreamed about escaping: scaling the fence, shouting in triumph on the other side, and then sprinting into the clean air of freedom.

Freedom by grace. Was there such a thing?