Out of the Madness (16 page)

But these things didn’t bother me. I walked the five miles to work and then back late at night. One of my aunts, Cheryl’s
sister, lived directly behind the store. One day, when she was on her way home, I asked her for a ride. With an expression
that said she enjoyed treating me, this project black, like shit, she said no, and that she didn’t have to explain her reasons.
I walked again that day.

On another day, her husband, Tony, came into the store. He saw how hard I was working and felt it was his duty to give me
a word of advice. “Jerrold, you might as well stop working so hard. It doesn’t matter what you do. You’ll only get as far
as the white man lets you.” I argued against what he said, didn’t believe it. But his words stayed with me.

One day after walking home from work, one of my aunt’s daughters swore up and down that I had been smoking weed. It was a
straight-out lie, by design, an excuse to get rid of me. It hurt me, and I could not understand it. But I was so sick of the
place that it didn’t matter.

I talked with my aunt Felisa, the sincere, down-to-earth one. She lived along the way I had been walking. She said I could
come and live with her for a while. So I moved into the shabby Sherwood Garden Apartments, which was about a mile from the
store and a much easier walk.

This aunt had five much younger children. She was downtrodden poor but still was kind enough to let me stay there. As recompense,
I let her get groceries from the store and put them on my charge list. I also gave her generous amounts of my earnings.

At the house, my sister came by one day to see me. She was pregnant and was getting married to her boyfriend, Marcus Greer,
who had grown up in Oak Cliff. I wished her well and told her I hoped everything worked out. I figured she could handle a
kid; she would be twenty-one when her little girl was born in 1988. She told me to stay in touch. She later moved into a drug-infested
apartment complex in Pleasant Grove, another part of Oak Cliff.

Meanwhile, my brother had returned from his six months of Job Corps training. He moved in with a distant cousin in the Prince
Hall Apartments. He was so disappointed when he returned, finding out that most companies thought his Job Corps mechanics
training was a joke and didn’t really consider Job Corps graduates. He had been fooled by the government’s propaganda. It
was all a waste. Now he was over in Prince Hall, suffering.

At the store, I again was exerting myself beyond normal. The first day, I worked a graveyard shift. I was instructed to clean
the parking lot. I scrubbed on my hands and knees until I bled, picked up every piece of trash in the surrounding brush, along
the street, and at the back of the building. When the manager came out to inspect, she said she had never seen the lot that
clean in all her years with the company.

I went on and worked hard at the convenience store, pulling double shifts, sixteen hours, becoming so fast on the cash register
that the manager would often stop and inspect my receipts. She doubted that I could program the gas module and insert the
prices while giving the customers direct eye contact. When the store was not busy, I would go through it in a blaze, mopping,
stocking, dusting, and cleaning.

In the first month I won the customer service award and an outstanding review by the customers. The district office called
the store and said to the manager, “He even has customers calling this office with praise,” something that had never happened.

The district manager was very pleased. He took me into the office with the white female manager and told her to start teaching
me how to do paperwork. “You’re a very sharp young man, Jerrold, I want to one day send you to management school.” Things
changed after that meeting.

At work, the manager started acting strangely. She told me my work was not good and that customers had been complaining. I
couldn’t imagine who would have complained—I had become a skilled ass kisser. She wouldn’t divulge her sources but one day
accused me of stealing and said if I got one more complaint, I would be fired.

I was so devastated. My hopes had gotten so high, I thought I could become a manager and go back to school. I knew she was
intimidated and was harassing me because of this. And she accused me of stealing! Up until then I had not dared touch anything
in the store or let anyone else—and I would quickly defend the store against the young men who did steal, compromising my
own safety. I knew she was going to fire me. So before she could hammer down her death blow, I quit and then took me some
money.

It was fall 1987. I was seventeen, but most people thought I was in my early or mid-twenties. With nowhere else to go, I headed
back to south Dallas.

My mother had moved out of Dixon Circle and into a duplex with a man who lived on Latimer Street. It was several streets from
Lenway on the other side of Oakland. Once I contacted her, she suggested I come to live with her again. I was glad to get
back to the old neighborhood.

In south Dallas, she was living in a paint-peeling duplex with an older man. The elder, whom I nicknamed Big J., had been
living at the house for more than sixteen years. He was a retired plumber and owned land in an agricultural part of Texas.
He had successfully raised several children, children who never came around. Anyway, he stayed in a good mood. He was in fair
shape to be in his eighties, walking each morning down to Oakland, to drink with his friends.

In south Dallas, I got back with all my friends, the camaraderie on the corners and at the Ice House. Each evening in large
groups, we got together, the ages ranging from fifteen to eighty, and talked about life: what was going on, who had become
pregnant, gotten shot, gotten murdered, went to prison. We discussed our philosophies about life and women, listened to the
old heads, the elders, who knew a lot about everything. In these coversations, which were loud and lasted late into the night,
everyone would share his deepest conviction. Everyone knew he was a marked man. Everyone was trying to beat the odds and stay
alive.

T
he spring of 1988 had arrived, and already the duplex was hot. In the front room, the coffee table sat next to the dirty chair
with flat armrests. Pieces of old furniture and pictures decorated the walls. The curtains were thick and blanketed the windows.
It was dark, so dark I had to feel for the door that led to the only bedroom, where Big J. had clothes bagged in trash bags
and stacked everywhere.

From in the living room of the duplex, among rows of other duplexes, I watched the girl in the private school uniform get
off the city bus that ran down quiet Latimer Street, which crossed with Metropolitan and Atlanta. She was small and short,
with smooth skin and thin legs. She had on her private-school skirt and dark shades today. She walked around the corner and
out of sight. One of these days I’m going to get to know her, I pledged.

I took a back trail behind the house, down to Vernon’s. I was spending more time at his house, as though I were a family member.
The house had two duplexes, one in the front (his grandmother and uncles) and one in the back (his mother’s). His brother
Jonathan*, who usually roomed with him, was living with a girl in Grand Prairie. His mother and stepdad liked having me around,
thought I was a good influence on their radical, dangerous son. His mother and grandmother always told me in private that
they wished Vernon would follow my example instead of trying to rob and take everything.

His mother worked full-time, and his stepdad worked odd jobs. I often slept in the extra bed over there, more than on my couch
at the duplex. Vernon, every now and then, would read. He read the Bible and other books on religion, his aunt’s college books
on math, medicine, and other subjects—she had gone to a community college for a couple of semesters. His uncles had read voraciously
also and had a collection of books in their room in the front duplex, books we used.

Vernon and I were growing in curiosity, intellect, and discernment. But this was not caused by any teacher, any school, or
any role model, because none of them existed; and we both had quit school. Although from time to time we would catch glimpses
of the sixties experience from the old heads, their personal challenges and failures, the wisdom they had gathered through
years of confrontation, most of our passion, our desire to know, our sense that something was terribly wrong with all of us,
came from within. A dormant force, an internal conflict, a sleeping thing.

We often expressed our views in the rap and poetry we still wrote in the back room. Everybody in the neighborhood admired
it. Vernon often wrote about the twisted times he saw, and he had two favorite pieces:

Don’t let this world mislead you, refuse to go astray.

Sad is the brother who for the love of an illusion would throw his life away
.

So many brothers and sisters die for nothing every day
.

Wise is the man who dares in his heart to find a better way.

The suffering is so enormous, the pain is so intense.

We die like rats in a cage at each other’s throats, in a world that makes no sense
.

Frustrated and angry we get as we go round and round.

Lost in an insanity, where can truth be found
.

He went on and wrote:

Rise, unite, and awake
.

Strengthen the mind of the blind, so that they may come to see

… Life is too short to live and die in vain
.

Don’t live your life in vain, hating and spreading pain
.

Love each other as thyself and to thyself be true
.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
.

Each one, teach one
.

Tell the children man is mind and allow them to find the true design
.

Rise, unite, and awake
.

From Vernon’s back room, we also planned robberies. Vernon influenced me, and others, to try robbery to get money and resources.
He felt that my inspirations were a waste of time. He was a devoted atheist, and we had countless arguments on the existence
of God. And after many of these discussions, he finally agreed that God must exist and agreed to work on his relationship
with God.

But that same rebellious character made him believe we should just take what we wanted. So we became stick-up kids, something
Vernon had done before. I had hustled up several guns. I bought a .38 revolver from a dope fiend for twenty dollars and purchased
a used twelve-gauge at a nearby pawnshop for under one hundred dollars. I had turned eighteen, the legal age to purchase shotguns.

Vernon and other young men would rob some place, get us a big booty, and live off it for several months. We only robbed foreign-
or white-owned stores, which we felt were sucking the community dry anyway. Sometimes Vernon robbed dope dealers, whom we
classified with the whites and foreigners. We usually grossed a few hundred, sometimes over a thousand dollars. Afterward
we would split the money. We also had vowed never to sell dope. We saw what it had done to our families and what it was doing
to the neighborhood.

The few robberies weren’t a big deal, were really rather funny. I usually was the lookout or driver. We always took our time,
evaluated the risks, location, getaway routes, alternative plans, and levels of danger. I had gotten a penal code to determine
which types of robberies were more serious than others. And I consulted Vernon’s uncles, who were experts. We never got greedy,
never got caught, and never harmed anyone.

With our booty, we would give our family members and friends money and gifts, even though we knew some of them would waste
it on dope. Vernon was so compassionate. He would do things like rob some store and give all the money to someone who couldn’t
pay his or her rent, not leaving one dollar for himself. We would give our friends money to get them some beer. We would buy
ourselves a new outfit, a rap tape, some Thunderbird wine, or beer, weed, and food. Then we would relax a little, meditate,
think, and, sometimes, get enough motivation to look for work again. We were like Robin Hood, in that we took what we needed
and gave to the poor and took from those who were robbing us anyway.

Neither Vernon nor I went out, dancing, movies, and all, but mostly stayed in his room, reading and talking. Sometimes we
rented a room from a nearby notorious motel, where we would invite our friends to relax for a while or invite our lady friends.

The neighborhoods in the south Dallas communities were close this way. All the young men and women for several blocks would
be close with and concerned for each other: Willie, Michael Ray, Tabaras and Lee Roy, Shon and Tasha, Elvis, “Dog Daddy” Wayne,
“Big Daddy” Kevin, and many others. It was not uncommon to find us sitting on a corner or at someone’s house, drinking, tripping,
laughing, and eating or discussing the news or events in the neighborhood. We were like a big family.

Vernon smoked weed. I, too, began to smoke weed but stopped after about six months—and he stopped a little later. We would
quit drinking altogether for a month or so, then maybe start back drinking a few cans a week. We hardly ever got drunk, just
on a few occasions when we misjudged the alcohol. He and I both could cook, he much better than I, and we ate heartily at
his house.

We also were the protectors of our families. We and our friends, who lived on the nearby streets, looked out for one another.
Everybody recognized this unspoken code, that everybody from the “hood” helped each other fight—including girls. At any time
of day I could roll up in the neighborhood and round up six or seven guys, who would lay down their lives for me. And many
times I would go somewhere and be willing to lay down my life for my friends. If a stranger came to the neighborhood to start
trouble, which many did, he could easily find himself being kicked and stomped by a dozen people or having his car riddled
with bullets.