Fearless

by Eric Blehm

  “I’ve done my stint,” he said to Kelley when they reunited. “I know what I’m doing is wrong. Teen Challenge is a very secure place; it’s a safe haven. You work, there’s structure, you learn the Bible, you have no freedom. It’s a safe environment, and then you get thrown back into reality. Okay, I’ve been guarded and protected and all this, and now I’m just back where I started. Even though I have all this knowledge and this wisdom I’ve gained from God and from my experience there, those demons are still calling my name. It takes over. So how do I live here, in the real world?”

  “ ‘Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding,’ ” Kelley replied, quoting Proverbs 3:5–6. “ ‘In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.’ You just have to trust in God and don’t give in,” she said.

  For six months, Kelley spent the better part of her days either baby-sitting Adam or searching for him during his relapses, which occurred every week or two. Since being in Hot Springs seemed a big part of the problem, Adam moved fifty miles east to Little Rock, got his own apartment not far from Kelley and her father, enrolled in classes at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and found work as a waiter at the Steak and Ale. Kelley handled his money, requiring receipts for every dime he spent—but it was easy for Adam to squirrel away tips for the next time he heard the drug call his name.

  On July 11, 1998, Kelley and Adam attended Richard Williams’s wedding in Arkadelphia, an hour south of Hot Springs. Adam was a groomsman, along with Jeff Buschmann, Heath Vance, and other friends from high school, so the reception resembled a Lake Hamilton High class reunion. Richard had earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA; Jeff had gotten his bachelor’s, had graduated from the Navy Officer Candidate School, and was currently attending Navy Flight School in Texas. There were more stories of college degrees and good jobs.

  “Everybody had moved on to the next level,” says Jeff, “but Adam was at the same place he was when he graduated high school, and I could tell it bothered him. People who didn’t know asked him what he’d been up to, and he’d say, ‘Still working with my dad, off and on.’ ”

  Throughout the festivities Kelley stayed by Adam’s side, making sure he didn’t drink anything besides the champagne toast; they both knew what that would lead to. While Adam seemed saddened by the reminiscing, Kelley loved hearing about his crazy stunts—the belly flops, the bridge jump—but she was deeply touched by the story of his refusing to take the life jacket off at the lake because his mother had told him not to. He was so honest and so pure, Kelley thought.

  At one point during the night Richard took Kelley aside. “I’m sure you’re hearing all these crazy stories about Adam,” he said. “But let me tell you, the one thing you’re probably not hearing is how he would jump in front of a truck for any one of us. He’s got a heart of gold.”

  With so many others advising Kelley to run from Adam, it was nice to hear something positive. “Thank you, Richard,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

  Two days after the wedding, Adam disappeared. The day after that, Larry called Kelley because one of his work trucks and a bunch of tools were missing. “It’s Adam,” she said before he could finish. “I’ll go find him.”

  “No, Kelley,” Larry said. “You’ve done this how many times? I don’t want you to go off and get yourself killed on account of Adam. I think the only thing that’s going to stop him is prison.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Brown,” she said firmly, “but Adam’s not going to get off that easy.”

  Nine months of patience, encouragement, and empathy had finally left Kelley feeling “crazy angry.” She hung up the phone before Larry could say another word. As she hurriedly got ready, she rehearsed aloud what she was going to tell her boyfriend when she tracked him down: “I am sick and tired of this, Adam Brown! You are not going to do this to me! You are not going to do this to your family! I don’t care if you’re in trouble with some dealer, I don’t care what your problem is, you are not going to go hock all your dad’s stuff. It’s not fair!”

  Finished with her planned tirade, Kelley regained her composure and drove to the east side of Hot Springs to comb the streets.

  After two hours of fruitless searching, near dusk she was amazed to see Larry’s truck—with Adam driving and someone in the passenger seat—pull out from a side street directly in front of her. She stopped beside him at a traffic light and when Adam looked over and saw her, he hit the accelerator and sped through the red light. Kelley glanced left and right and did the same, staying on him as best she could. She pulled over briefly to wait for traffic to clear after Adam wildly swerved across two oncoming lanes to turn down a street. Then she continued the chase.

  On a long straightaway, Adam pulled over onto the shoulder, hit the brakes in a cloud of dust, jumped from the truck, and dashed into the woods. Parking behind, Kelley got out and approached the middle-aged man, a “sleazy drug addict,” sitting in the passenger seat. She leaned in through the open driver’s door and grabbed the keys, then called the Browns on her cell phone, gave Larry the street name, and confirmed that he had his own set of keys.

  Ending the call, she told the addict to get out. “Where did he go?” she demanded.

  “Hell, lady, I don’t know,” the man snapped. He stepped out of the truck.

  “Where did he go?” Kelley repeated. “I know you know.”

  The man stood there, shaking his head. “Well, I can take you to where we were going.”

  “Fine. Hop in my car.”

  He directed her to a neighborhood not far away, where she parked in front of a run-down house.

  “You want me to go in, see if he’s there?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” said Kelley. “Bring him out if he is.”

  She locked the doors after he left and waited for a few minutes, but feeling increasingly uncomfortable, she called the Browns to let them know she was okay and drove back to Little Rock. At home she kicked off her shoes and fell into bed, exhausted. Staring at the ceiling, she prayed for Adam’s safety—she always did on nights like this. This time, however, knowing she was at the end of her patience, she also asked for a favor.

  “Lord,” she prayed, “if you have something in mind for Adam, maybe you could nudge him a little, because he’s having a real hard time finding that path on his own.”

  Jeff received a phone call at his apartment in Corpus Christi, Texas, the following morning.

  “Busch,” said Adam, “I’m in trouble again and could really use your help. Can you get me a ticket to come down there? I promise I’ll pay you back.”

  Without further thought, Jeff bought Adam a one-way ticket from Little Rock and picked him up that evening at the airport. Over dinner Adam filled him in on everything that had happened since the wedding, how he’d done something so stupid that Kelley could have been raped or killed. From where Adam was hiding in the woods, he’d watched her leave with the addict in her car. He’d hoofed it to the crack-house where he’d been headed, searching for her car, but she’d already driven away. Then he walked to a nearby church and spent the night on the front steps, praying.

  As much as he loved Kelley, Adam had concluded that he could not continue to endanger her life. The only way to protect her was to disappear, go somewhere far away—like to his buddy’s place in Texas. “I owe you,” Adam told Jeff. “I had to get out of there, but you gotta promise me: if my parents or Kelley call, you can’t tell them I’m here.”

  About the same time Adam’s plane landed in Corpus Christi, a woman who worked at the Steak and Ale phoned Kelley with the news that she’d given Adam a ride to the airport, but she didn’t know where he was headed and he had no luggage with him. “I just thought you should know,” she said to Kelley. “He didn’t look so good.”

  All of Adam’s friends were within driving or hitchhiking distance of Hot Springs—everyone except Jeff, whom Kelley called as soon as she got off work. Jeff had just promised to
keep Adam’s whereabouts under wraps when the phone rang. Pointing at the receiver he mouthed to Adam, “Kelley.”

  Adam shook his head adamantly, mouthing back, “I’m not here.”

  You bastard, Jeff thought. You’re going to make me lie to her, aren’t you?

  “Hi, Kelley,” he said. “How are things? How’s Adam?”

  “Jeff, you are such a bad liar,” Kelley said, laughing. “I know he’s there. He got on a plane and flew there this morning. I checked the flight. Let me talk to him.”

  “Okay,” he said, handing the phone to Adam, who cursed at his friend. “She knows you’re here,” Jeff whispered. “She checked the flights—dude, she’s a travel agent.”

  But Adam refused to talk to her, so Kelley told Jeff she’d try again in a couple of days. “I’m glad he’s safe,” she said. “I’ll let his parents know he’s with you.”

  When Jeff returned home from flight school around ten the following night, he heard loud music in the apartment complex. His neighbors were young families, professionals, and officers in the military, and there was Adam on the second-floor balcony, music blaring and a can of beer in his hand. “Busch!” he shouted.

  Infuriated, Jeff rushed into his apartment. He pushed aside the cold beer Adam offered him, shut off the stereo, closed the door to the balcony, and said, “Adam, this isn’t gonna cut it, man. You cannot be doing this.”

  “Busch,” Adam said, “I don’t know what else to do. I sat here all day thinking maybe I’ll go work on an oil rig, make some money, pay my parents back, the Whiteds, you. But what then? I can’t go back and work for my dad; I don’t want to either. I don’t want to go back to Teen Challenge. I’m praying every single day, but it’s not getting any easier. I’m a loser.”

  “You’re not a loser,” Jeff replied, sitting across from Adam at the kitchen table. He had a sudden thought. “What about enlisting in the Navy?”

  “With my record?”

  “My dad could probably help with that and find out if it’s even possible.”

  Jeff knew the Navy—he’d spent a lifetime listening to his father talk about what it had to offer—and he knew Adam, so he considered the possible jobs that might fit Adam’s personality. Something elite, but not out of reach. Says Jeff, “Most people didn’t think of Adam as smart because he was always acting like a dumbass, but he was super intelligent, a thinker; also fearless and a little crazy.”

  “You could be an EOD guy,” he told Adam. “Explosive Ordnance Disposal. You know, disarm bombs and blow things up.”

  “That’d be fun,” said Adam, nodding. “But how about a SEAL? Your dad always said they’re the best.”

  “I don’t know, Adam. They are the best, but man, their training is tough, real tough. And they do most of their training in the water. You have to be a good swimmer and diver.”

  “I can swim.”

  “You can keep yourself from sinking,” said Jeff, to which Adam laughed. “But it’s not just the training; you have to be a really good swimmer. And I’m not talking Lake Hamilton; I’m talking about the ocean.”

  If Adam did qualify for general enlistment, he’d be four or five years older than most of the other recruits in boot camp; it would be tough to keep up with the guys fresh out of high school. The boot camp standouts would get the good positions, and Jeff didn’t want Adam to end up a fleet sailor, assigned to a ship on tours lasting nine months and sometimes more than a year. So he kept pushing Adam toward EOD. It wasn’t popular, for obvious reasons, but it was elite and important.

  By the end of their discussion, Jeff saw some of the spark return to the eyes of his old buddy, who shook his hand and thanked him.

  The next day Adam called Kelley to apologize. He told her that he’d run from the woods and tried to chase her car down when she’d driven off with the addict. “I knew nothing about that guy,” he said. “He could have been a serial killer, you could have been killed, and it would have been all my fault. I’m not good for you; that’s why I left. I don’t want you to keep chasing after me.”

  “Do you really want me to stop?” Kelley asked. “In your heart?”

  “No,” said Adam. “In my heart I love you, but that’s why I need to let you go.”

  Kelley told Adam how she’d been praying, and praying hard, asking God for guidance, asking him directly if she should abandon the relationship. “Adam,” she said, “God has not told me to leave. I love you. My heart says stay and see this through.”

  “You are stubborn. How can I argue against that?”

  She laughed, then warned him that she wouldn’t be stubborn forever. It was time for him to make a plan, a real plan that he would stick to.

  Adam said that Jeff was encouraging him to join the Navy and aim for EOD, “but ever since I saw that movie Navy SEALs in high school, I’ve wanted to be a SEAL. Do you think I can do it?”

  “Of course you can,” Kelley said without hesitation, even though she had only the most basic idea of what a Navy SEAL did.

  There was a long silence before Adam spoke again. “This is what I need to do,” he said. “I can feel it in my heart. I need to get out of Hot Springs. But the only way I’m going to do it is if you marry me. I want you with me. Will you marry me, Kelley?”

  So many times she had prayed about whether she should leave Adam or stay, and “God never told me to leave—not once.” Still, it was a leap of faith when she said, “Okay, Adam. I’ll marry you. But there are going to be some rules.”

  The following day, July 19, 1998, Adam returned home to Hot Springs and married Kelley in front of a justice of the peace. They didn’t tell a soul, nor did they celebrate with a special dinner or even a date. While she loved Adam dearly, this marriage was almost a business arrangement. “He knew I was committed,” Kelley says. “Now he had to prove he was committed. I had to play it tough and couldn’t let my guard down yet.”

  The day after, Kelley went to work and Adam called Ryan Whited, who was now married and living in Hot Springs. Adam shared his plan to join the Navy. “If this is what you feel like you need to do, I’m behind you a hundred percent,” Ryan replied. “But you need to make real sure, because a military prison is going to be awful. And that’s what’s going to happen if you slip up.”

  “I’m certain,” Adam said.

  Ryan agreed to take him to the local recruiting office, and on the drive there, Adam said that he planned to be completely honest. “Well, you might not want to volunteer that you smoked crack,” Ryan replied. “If you do, I can promise you that you’re not getting into the military. Just wait and see what they ask.”

  “If I can’t be honest, then maybe it’s not what God has planned for me,” said Adam.

  Inside the spartan office were two large framed photographs: president Bill Clinton and a highly decorated Naval officer. “Check it out,” Adam whispered to Ryan. “There’s Mr. Buschmann.”

  “Hey, guys, what’s going on?” asked the recruiter.

  “Hello, sir,” Adam said. “I’d like to join the Navy. I want to be a SEAL.”

  “Great! Have a seat.”

  While they talked, Ryan listened in and paced around the office, examining the posters of aircraft carriers, battleships, and the camouflage-painted face of a SEAL rising out of dark waters. Adam filled out forms, and the recruiter explained that some standard questions would need to be answered and that Adam would be fingerprinted and have to sign under oath. Lying under oath was subject to a fine and possible imprisonment, “so traffic tickets, stuff like that, are okay, but if you’ve ever been arrested or anything like that, tell us up front.”

  “Yes sir, I have.”

  The recruiter nodded and said, “Okay. For what?”

  “I had eleven felonies, mostly stealing, nothing violent, but I don’t think you’ll find them on my record because I went to a drug treatment program after jail.”

  “Are you clean now?”

  “Well, sir, I’m not sure how long it stays in your system, but I h
ave smoked crack. But I’m done with that. It’s not going to happen again.”

  The recruiter leaned in on the table and shook his head. “Adam, I really appreciate your honesty,” he said. “I do, but do you really think you can join the Navy? This isn’t a joke?”

  Adam pointed to the photograph of Captain Roger Buschmann, Commodore of U.S. Navy Recruiting Command Area Three—the highest-ranking officer in all the Navy recruiting districts in the southeastern United States and the boss of this recruiter’s boss. “Call and ask him.”

  “You’re serious?” the recruiter said.

  “I’m serious. Maybe he can help. Give him a call. He’ll at least vouch for me.”

  In his office in Macon, Georgia, Captain Buschmann received a call from the recruiter in Hot Springs. “Sir,” he said, “I’m really sorry to bother you, but do you know a young man by the name of Adam Brown?”

  “I sure do,” said Captain Buschmann.

  “He wants to join the Navy. He says he wants to be a SEAL, but he’s … well, sir, are you aware he’s got a record a mile long? He’s had some drug issues, and just a lot of issues. I was going to send him out the door, but then he asked me to call you.”

  A wave of positive memories washed over Captain Buschmann. Adam Brown was the boy he’d considered most likely to succeed, the boy who had always followed the rules, even when it wasn’t cool, even when nobody was looking. Months earlier, Jeff had filled him in on Adam’s problems, so he knew about the drugs; he wasn’t aware, however, of Adam’s arrest—or of the laundry list of offenses the recruiter read to him. He couldn’t fathom any of it, because it was so out of character for the Adam he knew. And if there was one thing Captain Buschmann had an eye for, it was character.

  “I’ll vouch for him,” he said.

  “Sir?”

  “Use whatever waivers he needs,” Captain Buschmann confirmed. “Treat him like he is my own son.”

  After Adam signed the required stack of waivers, it was official: he was a Navy recruit. The newlyweds took Ryan and his wife up on their offer to stay with them until boot camp began in three weeks, then decided that they should start their life together properly by getting married in a church—God’s house. They discussed whether to invite their parents, but Kelley was certain her dad would not be pleased. And Adam thought his parents would conclude that he and Kelley had acted rashly and try to talk them out of it.