Promise Kept (Perry Skky Jr.) (3 page)

“Oh, he’s getting creamed,” some guy in the crowd yelled. Normally I could see over crowds, but people were standing on folks’ necks trying to see this fight—you would have thought it was a World Championship bout or something. However, when the police raided the joint, bodies blocking our way moved quickly toward all exits. In the mass of confusion I saw a bloody silver knife in the hands of the gang leader. Savoy dropped to her knees and my heart stopped. I couldn’t even recognize her brother’s face, and knew from the bloodstain on the left side of his belly that the thug’s knife had pierced Saxon’s stomach. I was so torn I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to let thug dude get away with it. I wanted to go after him, fight a fair fight and kill his behind. He had waited until his boys tore Saxon up and then he took him out—it just wasn’t right.

But as soon as I turned, Savoy called out, “Perry, help me! Help me, please. You’ve got to help me stop the bleeding. My brother, I don’t know if he’s going to be okay. Please, I’m scared, help me!”

“I’m going to go get the police,” Deuce said.

Part of me was wishing I hadn’t been such a knucklehead in the beginning—in terms of Savoy—and all of this could have been prevented. But it was facing me now. When I touched Saxon’s body he wouldn’t even move, scream out in pain, or cry for help. My body started shaking as if I was in an ice cold freezer. It was déjà vu. I remember the paramedics trying to save Collin Cox, our other suitemate. Though his prospects had been bleak, he pulled through. Seeing Saxon’s frail body in front of me, I just didn’t think that he would be so lucky.

“We’re going to lose him,” Savoy said, reading my mind.

Instinctively, I said, “No, no. He’s going to get through this! He’s going to get through this,” as I rocked her in my arms.

I was so sick of hospital waiting rooms that if I had stock for every time I had been in one over the past couple of years I’d be rich. It was a good thing we were here for the bowl game, because Savoy’s parents were still in Miami and met us at the hospital. I didn’t know how to console her. She stayed in the arms of her mom, as her dad and I paced in opposite directions so we would stay clear of one another. I knew deep down it was useless to hold out much hope. Saxon was in real bad shape and if this was the end for him I didn’t even know if he was saved, and that killed me. I cried out,
Lord, give me another chance! Help me make sure that my friends know You. You want me to be a fisherman of men, alright. I’ll put down my shoulder pads. I’m here. I’m available. Save my friend. Dang, I know we can’t do it without You. This is a lot—dealing with trouble.

I
was in such a daze, hoping everything would be okay with Saxon, that when my cell phone rang it startled me so that I almost took a leak in my pants.

“There you are, son,” my dad said. I hoped he hadn’t called the hotel and checked up on me. I had told him and my mom that I was going to go sleep off my depression over the horrible game. Before I could explain the night, he took my breath away by saying, “Son, this isn’t good news.”

What in the world did he have to tell me? What wasn’t good news, what was so bad? With Bilboa’s aunt and uncle’s accident early in the year, I couldn’t take it for granted that just a mere car ride across town would always prove to be a safe one.

“Are you and mom okay?”

He took a deep breath. “It’s Grandma.”

“What’s wrong with your mom?” I said, feeling very angry at the Lord. He told me that he would never put more on me than I could bear. I couldn’t bear losing Saxon, and now my dad calls me at 3
AM
to talk about my grandma. For real, this is too much.

“Are you at the hotel or not, son? We talked to your coach—he said you could ride back with us. Grandma’s at the hospital. We drive back tonight, we’ll be back there by midmorning.”

“Going back with the team won’t be quicker for me?”

“No, Coach said y’all weren’t pulling out until about ten.”

“Dad, I’m not trying to stress you but I’m not at the hotel.”

“Boy, you hooked up with some girl?”

“No sir, I’m at the hospital.”

“WHAT!” he exclaimed with such an irate voice the phone dropped out of my hand.

“Alright, we’ll find our way to the hospital. Stay there!” he said after I explained everything. “And we’ll just make sure Deuce gets all of your stuff on the plane.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Grandma going to be okay?”

Dad got all choked up, he couldn’t even answer me. My mom got on the phone and said, “Son, we’ll see you in a little while. We don’t know much about your grandmother’s situation, other than she had a severe stroke and they’ve called all the family in.”

I sat down in the chair, put my hands over my eyes and wept. What in the world was going on? It wasn’t good, it didn’t feel right, and I needed comfort. I didn’t feel right seeking it from God because I had issues with Him. I had actually forgotten where I was until Savoy came over to me. I teared up when she said to me in a sweet voice, “It’s going to be okay. It’s not your fault and it’s not my fault. We just got mixed up with some horrible people and Saxon is going to be okay. He’s going to be alright.”

“I hope he will, babe, but it’s my grandma—my parents are on their way to get me. She is in a hospital too, in Atlanta.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “We just got to believe that both of them are going to be okay, Perry. Pray and trust God.”

“Whatever,” I said to her, really feeling completely frustrated.

I wasn’t perfect and I wasn’t doing things right. But daggone, a whole lot of crazy negroes are living a life of sin, fattening their pockets, escaping the police and partying with their friends nightly, and never have any kind of drama like I seemed to always find myself in. I saw my parents come in. Not having any news about Saxon or my grandma’s condition was unsettling. I couldn’t stay; I had to jet. Before leaving, I headed over to Deuce and told him to explain to Coach Red that all of it was my fault.

“It’ll be alright, man. Just go with your family. It’ll be alright,” Deuce told me. But after the day from Hell, how could I believe that I would possibly survive? The anger that I had tried so hard to get rid of was now back. In the car with my parents, I put on my iPod because I didn’t want to hear the gospel music my father was playing to try to encourage himself. I just wasn’t feeling it. I felt that God was abandoning his promise. Many people I cared about were hurting and it was just taking a lot out of me. When we made it back to the Georgia line, my dad woke me up. I hadn’t been with him daily since going off to college, but he still knew me pretty well.

“So, you angry now. Mad at the world, huh? Everybody ain’t gon’ live, son, if it’s Saxon’s time to go, if it’s my momma’s time to go. Though we may not agree with God’s plan, He knows better than we do. He knows the way. You’ve got to let go of the need to know why. When you believe in Him you’ve got to understand that He owes you no explanation.”

“So He just gets to make all of the rules? Though we play the way He tells us to play, He still pulls the rug from under our feet.”

“First of all, son, none of us will be perfect until we are with Him. God didn’t make you go to either one of those clubs—the one the coach benched your behind for or the one where your friend got stabbed.”

I did a double take. I couldn’t believe my father was talking so squarely to me. If I didn’t respect him I would have taken my fist and punched him so hard his head would have gone through the driver’s side of the window.

“Don’t be looking at me like I’ve done lost my mind. I’m telling you what’s real. Did He make you go to those clubs?…Answer me!” he said when I said nothing. I shook my head. “ANSWER ME!”

“No.”

“Alright then. Now my momma, she been prescribing her own stuff, you know what I’m saying? Smoking that stuff, trying to ease her own pain. I don’t want her in pain and I don’t want her getting high every night trying to alleviate it. It’s our time to go when we get tired, we’ve just got to know that God knows best. We’re just supposed to be ready and everybody we know and love is supposed to be ready too, because if that’s the case you can face whatever comes and believe that God’s got it.”

We drove the rest of the way in silence, listening now to his gospel music. He had a point. God didn’t leave me when I needed Him. I need not be mad at Him. I needed to find my way back.

“So, he’s in a coma?” Chaplain Moss asked me as I sat in his office a week later.

“Yeah, I don’t understand all of the medical terms and reasons why, but it doesn’t look good. They’re saying if he comes out of it that he might be on life support or something,” I said, trying to shake off the flu-like symptoms that were catching up with me. I’d been on the go every day, driving back and forth to Rockdale County Hospital to see my grandmother. I guess I should be excited because she was released and now resting back at home. I didn’t have to feel obligated to go there because my aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and a ton of her neighbors and church friends, were all there to serve. Deep inside I wished that I could be in Miami and whisper something crazy to Saxon, like, “Man, you ain’t no good. I’m a way better baller than you.” Something that would just irritate him and make him jump up out of his deep sleep and go off on me.

“So how do you feel about all of this?” C. Moss asked, leaning over his desk, waiting on me to tell the whole truth and nothing but my deep true feelings. I just swallowed hard, wishing my itchy throat away. I reached for a tissue off of his desk.

“I don’t know how I feel.”

“A lot of mixed emotions?”

“Yeah! Being grateful that my grandmother is going to be okay, I want to scream a big ‘Thank You’ from Mount Everest to the Lord. Yet how can I, when I am still gloomy because the sparkiest teammate I have might be gone.”

“And if he’s gone, where do you think he’s going?”

“You’ve never seen him at any of your FCA meetings, have you?” I said, harshly. I was not trying to be funny, rude, mean or any of that. But I didn’t have time to be sitting in a counseling session having someone pick me apart when I was broken. I knew I had issues with God. I knew I was mad. Saxon was not a believer—or maybe he was, and the life he led just didn’t show it.

“I can’t judge Saxon. I don’t know,” I said to C. Moss.

“Fair. Can you judge yourself?”

I knew where he was going with this whole line of questioning. He wanted to know if I thought I had witnessed enough. If I had led Saxon to Christ and if I had given him the opportunity to hear the gospel. But the answer to all of that was,
no
. I met Saxon after my first day of high school as a senior, with a sea of South Carolina’s recruits visiting. His cocky behind made me sick to my stomach and I probably wished him a trip underground, truth be told, but time and circumstances had changed our bond. And if he went to spend all eternity with the devil because I didn’t explain to him that there was another way, maybe I didn’t deserve to be at the Pearly Gates either.

“You don’t have to say anything, Perry. I can tell you hate that you didn’t witness to him enough. Let me just let you off the hook—I’ve witnessed to Saxon. He’s heard the gospel. He shoved me off, told me he said all the right things in the correct places he needed to, to let people think he knew the Lord, but in reality he told me he didn’t. Hearing that news was so damning, so final, so finite. He’s got to pull through this, son. There is absolutely nothing wrong with hoping for another chance to make sure he knows God. Heck, maybe he was just pulling my leg and he already does. I mean, you football players have heard so much that you’re the best of the best and that you’re the cream of the crop, unlike regular students. Sometimes, most times, you get close-minded.”

We ended our talk in prayer and as soon as I got back to my apartment, I didn’t have time to chat with Lance and Deuce. One of them had been in the kitchen preparing dinner, and though they had a plate set aside for me, it just wasn’t social time for me. I was so mad that I couldn’t go see my grandma, because the Peach State, which never gets an ounce of snow, had flurries falling. I called my dad and said, “I’m just gonna come.”

“Naw, son, I don’t need you on the road. It’s really cold, it’s icy out there. It’s a little bit of rain mixed with that snow. Please stay put. Your grandma’s up and she can talk. But I want to warn you—the stroke has affected the appearance of her face. The doctors are saying she’s not out of the woods. If you want, you can talk to her for a moment.”

“She’s awake? Yeah, yeah. Let me talk to her.”

“Hey, punkin pie, you’ve been worried about me, boy?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said.

“I heard you every time you came and visited me. I’m always asleep and they only let me have a few visitors up in that little old hospital room, but I know you been there, I seen ya. I’m supposed to be the sick one, but one time I woke up and you were knocked out. I ain’t bother you, though. I figured you needed your rest. One of my boyfriends said you were nice at the hospital, signing autographs and stuff. You know that meant a lot to me.”

“Grandma, you are crazy!”

“And getting better every day.”

“You better be getting better,” I told her. “I got to buy you that big old house one day soon—big enough to have your different men in different parts of it, that kind of big.”

“Oh, child, please. I don’t need to hide nobody. I’ve been thinking, seeing stuff. I just had to break all of their hearts and had to let them know that I was still in love with my dead husband. I’m real tired, Perry. I know God has got something better for me than all of this.”

“But Grandma, you gon’ be okay,” I urged.

“Yeah, I’ma be alright up in Heaven, boy, and ain’t no doubt that’s where I’m going—to my momma, my great grandmomma, to see her face who I haven’t seen since I was little. Your granddaddy, mm-hmm, he mad that I got a lot of ole men friends, but we’ll straighten all of that out when I get up there.”

“Grandma, you don’t need to talk like that.”

“Baby, if you don’t remember nothing I done taught you, and I know I done taught you a lot—”

“Yes ma’am, you have.”

“—I want you to remember that if you are a believer there ain’t nothing wrong with knowing that this place is not your home. Be excited about what’s to come. Ain’t no need in rushing nothing and I ain’t saying—well maybe I am saying. Whenever the Lord say I’m ready, I’ll be ready. Make sure you lay some pretty red roses on my grave now.”

I agreed, but her crazy talking was making me more irritable. I really felt sick. I started coughing, my body started aching. Would my life get well?

“So, this is Hotlanta, huh?” my cousin Pillar said as I drove her around downtown. She was something else, a cute mixed girl that knew she had it going on.

“So where you want to go, what you want to see?” I asked her, hoping she had a plan.

“This is your town. Everyone knows who you are and that you’re the man in it, wherever.”

I turned the car around and headed for the Georgia Aquarium. It was now the largest in the world. Now that I only lived two miles from it on Tech’s campus I’d never had a chance to visit. When I pulled up she said sarcastically, “Oh, so you thought I wanted to see some fish?”

I knew she was high maintenance and would insist on telling me where she wanted to go. I stupidly had taken her at her word, and my plan wasn’t good enough. I pulled over and said, “Alright, where do you want to go?”

“I thought we could go to Morehouse.”

It was so obvious that she wanted to flirt with somebody, but I knew that there was a gate on campus and tricked her and said, “Yeah, we can go to the AU.”

“It’s called the Atlanta University Center, right?”