Excerpt: THE STORY OF JONAH STONE by Amrit

Fiction: “And then whaddayaknow, they did, and here I am, sitting nonchalantly on a park bench on a Wednesday afternoon, half a free man.”

-  Amrit

The Story of Jonah Stone is the second part of the Billy Munro trilogy. A sequel to The Birth of Billy Munro (2021), this novel follows Jonah Stone, a man doomed to a wrongful conviction, who through a strange twist of fate is released back into the free world almost two decades later. Jonah tries to make sense of the world he has been thrust into, at once very different from what he last knew it to be, and very similar in peculiar ways. The narrative explores how Jonah’s story ties together with Billy’s: What makes them the same, and what sets them apart.

Like the previous work, The Story of Jonah Stone was released as concept album by Mocaine on Dec 10, 2022—accompanied by a 30,000-word novel (available only in print: India | International). The second part, like the first, will also include a short film that will be released on a future date. The singles “Arizona” and “Fuck You, Goodbye” from Jonah Stone were also released in the run-up to the album.

The following is an edited excerpt is from the chapter “Youth”, Part 2 of 5 in The Story of Jonah Stone.

On his third day in prison, Jonah walks down the hallway in a single file, third in a line of seven. The jovial Kerwin, who he has recently come to know, is in front of him, explaining why they were in a separate cell block. Kerwin never shut up longer than ten minutes all of the last two days, incessantly trying to strike up a conversation with Jonah through the grates embedded in the wall their cells shared. Kerwin was the kind of person that did not need another human being in the room to hold a full-fledged conversation that could last for hours; but there was also something good-natured and innocent about him, like a large part of him had somehow survived the process of growing up and spending years in an environment such as this. An environment that was already beginning to press down on Jonah’s mind, like an oppressive presence built to stifle the very light out of him.

“They try to keep us away from the general public; we don’t work on the Row,” Kervin says, “We the elite ones, the ones that are gonna fry.”

And with that, Kerwin launches into a laugh that earns him a baton in the gut from the guard to his left. He laughs it off, straightens up, and continues to talk to Jonah in whispers, showing him “the ropes around the pig-house, as was his duty as an upstanding citizen of the Florence State Prison.”

Jonah can’t help but smile to himself at Kerwin’s unabashed, unbreakable spirit, and he can’t help but feel that he will get to know Kerwin a lot better in the time to come, whether he wants to or not, and this glimmer of humour makes the oppressive weight of the stark white walls just a little bit lighter. Jonah senses that one day he will be grateful towards whatever forces govern us for crossing his path with that of Kerwin Brown.

*

A strange optimism bordering on delirium takes over him, and he feels like this world is now his for the taking, or at the very least to be a prosperous part of, because there was nothing in his way anymore, all he had to do was try.

Jonah looks out the window of the small one room apartment that Tawney, his P.O, helped him get. It’s a small place, just large enough for the bed that occupies most of it, with a small, old wooden desk in front of the bed, right under the only window in the four walls that made up this room. There was a lavatory across the terrace, no air conditioning or kitchen.

It makes him feel content, probably because the room was only slightly larger than his prison cell.

Jonah is at a loss for things to do. He knows the things he has to do in the long run, like get a job, and makes sure he doesn’t miss any meetings with Tawney, and make sure he follows the rules of the housing community and not stay in the pool after 6 o’clock in the evening. But right now, as he sits at the edge of his bed, his head almost touching the left wall of the square that was his, he has no idea what to do with himself. He should get up and go somewhere, but where? The city’s changed a lot since he last knew it, and there’s new buildings and turns all over the place. He remembers that Tawney told him to get a cellular phone, because he needs to be contactable by the State at all times. Maybe he should go and get himself a cellular phone. And find out what this Galoogle is while he’s at it.

Jonah gets up and gets dressed, fully aware of the fact that he has no idea where to go to get a magic phone, but he heads out of his house with a sense of adventure anyway. A strange optimism bordering on delirium takes over him, and he feels like this world is now his for the taking, or at the very least to be a prosperous part of, because there was nothing in his way anymore, all he had to do was try.

This feeling of optimism would quickly be taken over by a sense of utter confusion once Jonah reaches the mall. He looks around him at stores and brands, some familiar and some new, and the white fluorescent light reminds him of the prison showers. It happens very quickly, but now Jonah is on his knees in the centre of the ground floor foyer, gasping for breath as if he’s being choked by invisible hands, sweat dripping from his face as if the air conditioning hasn’t been blasting through the vents right above him at 16 degrees for the past eight hours.

And then it ends just as quickly, and Jonah is suddenly very aware of where he is and what he looks like, bent over on his knees on the floor, and he straightens up and tries to keep a straight face as the sweat continues to drip through his now ruined shirt (at some point he seems to have pulled it out of his pants and crumpled it meticulously). He is relieved to find the nearest exit right next to him, on his left, ten feet away. People stop and stare, he hears whispers and gasps. He dashes out, opening the top two buttons of the shirt to get some air on his boiling chest, and keeps walking, until he doesn’t know where he is any more.

He turns a corner and runs into Rodney. They both recover from the shock of it and go on to make small talk, all the while acutely aware of the fact that the other was hiding something. They both decide not to push the other on the subject. They make their way to a community park four blocks away and take a seat on one of the benches.

There are hardly any people around, and the silence eventually gets to Rodney.

“So, what was prison like?” Rodney asks him sheepishly, as they sit on a bench in a park like normal people.

Jonah looks at him wearily, and he chuckles, “I know, sorry, couldn’t help myself. Let me ask you this. How’re you doing now… you know, adjusting to everything on the outside? Is it… strange?”

“Yes, Rodney, it’s all very strange,” Jonah says.

“No, I’m serious here. Do you think about it much, your time inside, now that you’re out?”

“What do you really wanna know, Rodney?”

“I dunno, just, what it was like in there, if you, you know, made any friends on the inside or anything, is all.”

“Some. But friendships on Death Row all end the same way, and that’s all there is to think about between the stark white walls of the box that each of us is put in. So you learn to stay cautious at all times, which is harder than it sounds with certain people in there, constantly trying to antagonize you and get a rise out of you by talking to you through the grates about things you don’t wanna talk about.”

Jonah takes a deep breathe, looking like he just came out of a trance. He takes another deep breath, and continues, seeming even more careful in his speech this time.

“But yes, I... I did make a few friends in there. People like me, I suppose, whatever that means.”

“It’s like we’re somehow united, even the inmates you hate, even the inmates you don’t really know, it feels like we’re all being taken for our date with the executioner.”

Rodney takes a moment to process all the information that has just been given to him, looking off into the distance, and you could see the wheels turning in his brain as he made sense of it all.

“Are you gettin’ along okay now?” he asks. “On the outside?”

“I think so,” Jonah says with a cautious smile and stares into the horizon.

“Do you still think about it a lot? Life on the inside.”

Jonah takes a second to collect his thoughts and then decides to indulge his old friend.

“I think about it a lot, yes. Every time I hear footsteps in the hallway, it comes back.”

“What does?” Rodney’s quick to jump on the chance handed to him. Jonah thinks for a minute, to Rodney, it looks like he’s struggling to give voice to his thoughts.

“It was my friend’s execution. The day before, actually. I’m in my cell, waiting. Kerwin is in his cell, waiting. No one is talking, not even Wendell, who never shuts up. It’s the rare occasion when the entire row is silent; we’re all just… waiting.”

He has a quiet way of talking: sombre, low-pitched, as his eyes stare off into the distance, his face sometimes betraying flashing traces of a grimace, lips moving slowly, as if it was agonizing to enunciate the syllables of his thoughts.

The Story of Jonah Stone (album art)

“Now the doors are opening. End of the row. We can hear their footsteps, the guards, coming to take him. It’s hard to stay within your own self, in… in the first person, in a manner of speaking. That’s something you’re always struggling to retain in there, but it’s not like that on this day. It’s like we’re somehow united, even the inmates you hate, even the inmates you don’t really know, it feels like we’re all being taken for our date with the executioner. But we’re not. It’s just Kerwin they’re taking.”

He breathes deeply, and continues, and for the life of him Rodney cannot look away from his eyes, a picture of anguish.

“I see the guards walk past me now. I hear them stop at his cell, put the chains on him. I want to be strong for him. I hear him ask the guards if he can have a word with me. But I can’t face him. He’s the one who’s strong. For me. Finally, I turn to him. ‘Because I know you. Because I know you. Because I know you’.”

“What?” the word involuntarily escapes Rodney’s mouth before he can stop it.

“That’s what he kept saying. His last words to me before they took him away. Maybe his last words ever. He wanted me to believe. In myself. It felt like a small part of me died that night, a part forever lost. And after that the next few years went by rather quickly, if I’m being honest. I didn’t think about much, and then lawyers showed up, again, this time even more certain than before that they can get me out.”

Jonah turns to Rodney and smiles but somehow the deep-rooted sullen sadness never leaves his face.

“And then whaddayaknow, they did, and here I am, sitting nonchalantly on a park bench on a Wednesday afternoon, half a free man.”

“Why half?”

“Because now they have sufficient evidence to suspect I didn’t do it. But until they find out who did… I’m still a suspect.”

***

Mocaine is a project led by Amrit Mohan, comprising some of the best musicians in the Indian Indie circuit. You can find Amrit on Instagram: @mocaineisaband and Twitter: @mocaineisaband.