Walk to Beautiful: The Power of Love and a Homeless Kid Who Found the Way

by Wayne, Jimmy

  That was the first time I had ever seen a naked woman in our home. It would not be the last.

  MAMA HAD ONLY A FIFTH GRADE EDUCATION. SHE COULD read and write, as long as you didn’t mind a lot of misspelled words. Although she made numerous foolish mistakes and unwise decisions, I always believed that Mama had a good heart and good intentions. In my naive seven-year-old mind, that explained why we always had such a strange assortment of people hanging around our house. Welcoming the freeloaders may have been a direct result of Mama’s Baptist background.

  A nearby Baptist church ran a bus route, picking up and transporting people who had no other means of getting to church. One wintry night Mama, Patricia, and I were the last passengers off the church bus. As always, the driver waited in front of our house as we walked to our front door.

  It was late evening, and a light blanket of snow covered the ground. Mama fumbled with the keys, trying to unlock the front door, when she noticed two teenagers huddled close together behind a pine tree in our front yard. A streetlight shined down from behind them. Neither of them wore a coat, and they were both shivering so badly that their bodies were shaking. The boy held his hand against his mouth as if he were trying to keep warm by breathing on his hands.

  Mama called out, “Who’s there? Who are you?”

  “Tate Coffee,” the boy responded weakly, “and this is my sister, Barbara Jean.”

  Fresh from a rousing Sunday evening church service, there was no question in Mama’s mind about her responsibilities. “Well, come in and get warm and get somethin’ to eat,” she said.

  The church bus drove away as Tate and Barbara Jean followed us inside and waited in the living room while Mama built a fire in the fireplace. Tate continued holding his closed hand up to his lips, clutching a rag that looked like half of a sock and inhaling through his mouth. Every so often he would take a plastic bottle from his back pocket, remove the cap, hold the rag on top of the bottle, and then flip the bottle upside down, saturating the rag with paint thinner. He’d return the bottle to his back pocket and then hold his fist with the wet rag in it up to his mouth.

  I noticed that his hand was raw and cracked. His eyes were red and glassy. Obviously, the paint thinner was making Tate look and feel the way he did. Barbara Jean never said a word the entire time they were there; she just sat quietly beside Tate. After Mama fixed something for Tate and Barbara Jean to eat, we all settled in for the night.

  As kind and noble as Mama’s gesture was, it set in motion a never-ending downward spiral. From then on Mama took in every Tom, Dick, or Sally who happened to come by the neighborhood and needed a place to crash. In the following months our house went from smelling like Pine-Sol—Mama’s cleaning agent of choice—to beer and dirty clothes. It seemed every drug addict, sniffer, prostitute, and criminal who stepped foot on Vance Street found refuge at our house.

  It got to the point where strangers wouldn’t even knock before they would come in, raid the refrigerator, and find a spot on the floor to sleep for the night.

  One of the addicts who’d been occupying our living room floor told Mama that a guy named Forrest Rose and his pregnant girlfriend, Dixie, were living in the woods near our house. Mama immediately headed out the back door and trudged into the woods until she found them, bundled up inside a cardboard box covered in plastic and snow. She begged them to come back to our house and stay until they could get on their feet. They came, but they never got on their feet. Quite the opposite. Once they moved in, Forrest invited all his lowlife friends to visit. Many of them became visitors who wouldn’t leave. These druggies, alcoholics, and venereal-disease-ridden derelicts took over our home, adding to the lunacy of life on Vance Street.

  We had people such as “Crazy Fletcher,” who lived in one of the many mill houses—nearly identical small homes built by the textile companies and rented to their workers—near our house. One night Crazy Fletcher showed up at our house, carrying a record player along with an Ozzy Osbourne album, Bark at the Moon. Fletcher set up the stereo on the floor, cranked up the music, and then sat down in a chair beside it, staring at the odd menagerie of maniacs mingling in the living room.

  After a few songs, Fletcher stood up abruptly and stormed out the back door. He returned a few minutes later, carrying an ax. Striding straight through the house, he reached the record player in the living room, raised the ax high in the air, and brought it down with all his might, crashing it right in the middle of the stereo and splitting the album and turntable in half. Everyone in the room scattered as Crazy Fletcher screamed while chopping his record player to smithereens.

  A few of the remaining bystanders grabbed Fletcher and threw him out of the house. He never explained what set him off. Maybe he didn’t know. Or maybe he really didn’t like Ozzy Osbourne’s music. Regardless, nobody thought much of Fletcher’s escapade. It was just another day on Vance Street.

  In addition to Crazy Fletcher, we had “Preacher Beaver,” who lived in a mill house to the right of ours. I never heard him preach, but I often saw him sitting on his front porch swing with his Bible on his lap and some notebook paper beside him as he worked on the upcoming Sunday sermon, occasionally waving at those of us passing by. The only time I ever saw Preacher Beaver leave his porch was when I cut my foot in the neighbors’ yard. Preacher Beaver saw me bleeding, ran and picked me up, and carried me home.

  A meek, kind man, Preacher Beaver occasionally gave the kids in the neighborhood a quarter to buy an ice cream cone from the ice cream truck as it came up Vance Street. But one afternoon, with a bunch of slackers slouched on Mama’s front porch, Preacher Beaver walked over to our house and yelled, “Who threw the beer can in my yard?”

  The culprit could have been any number of drunks hanging around Mama’s house, but everyone remained silent. We all noticed that Preacher Beaver brandished a pistol in his right hand.

  “Well?” The preacher waved the pistol in the air.

  No one said a word.

  He then pointed the pistol in our direction, randomly aiming at each person sitting on our porch, as he asked again, “Who did it? Who threw the beer can in my yard?”

  Preacher Beaver was clearly upset, but it was hard not to laugh because his hand was shaking so badly. He looked like Barney Fife, when Barney would get so nervous he could hardly hold on to the gun.

  A couple of the preacher’s relatives ran out of his house and up the sidewalk. They grabbed him and tried to calm him down. During all the commotion, one of the hippies sitting on our porch decided to stand up. I’m not sure if he was planning on confronting Preacher Beaver or if he was merely getting out of the line of fire. It didn’t matter. One of the relatives stepped in front of Preacher Beaver and hit that hippie so hard in the jaw it knocked him off his feet and flat on his back. That was the loudest punch I had ever heard. No one on our front porch moved an inch. We all sat as quiet as convicts in a prison yard during count time.

  The family finally managed to get Preacher Beaver under control and wrestled the gun out of his hand. They walked him safely back to his house. One of them carried the pistol as Preacher Beaver prayed loudly. I would have loved to have heard his sermon that Sunday. I didn’t hold his outburst against him; I guessed that everyone has a breaking point—even Preacher Beaver.

  WITH PEOPLE SUCH AS CRAZY FLETCHER AND PREACHER Beaver living nearby, I wasn’t surprised when I met another interesting character in our neighborhood. Carver, a freckled-faced, freckled-fisted, redheaded boy, would fight anybody. Carver was older and much bigger than I was, and he appeared to be cool, so I wanted to hang around with him.

  The first time I met Carver, he growled, “Come with me.” I didn’t know where he wanted me to go or why, but I followed him obediently. We walked all the way through some woods that led to an open field. That’s when he took a lighter out of his pocket and lit some of the dry weeds. Within seconds the small fire spread like a school of tadpoles in a pond, engulfing the dry field in enormous red flames.

 
I got scared and ran as fast as I could run back to the house, leaving Carver there at the edge of the burning field. Even from our yard I could still see the black smoke billowing over the tree line. I heard the fire truck sirens and their squawking CB radios through the trees. It took several hours for the firemen to extinguish the blaze, finishing the job before the flames fanned out to the wood-frame mill houses nearby.

  I never squealed on Carver, but when Mama heard he was a troublemaker and probably the one who had started the fire in the field, she told me to stay away from him. That was easier said than done. Telling Carver I couldn’t be his friend anymore made me just one more person in his life who rejected him. And Carver responded poorly to rejection.

  One day Carver stopped me on the sidewalk and told me to get off my bicycle. I was scared and confused, but I said no. That was not the answer Carver wanted to hear. Sitting on my bicycle, I looked up to see Carver’s face; instead, all I could see were his flaring nostrils. He looked like a giant compared to me. Carver reared back his cannonball-sized fist and belted me in the nose, knocking me clean off my bicycle. He then jumped on my bike and pedaled away. I never saw my Huffy bicycle again.

  Carver stopped me another day, when my sister and I were walking home from Clay Street Elementary. This time I didn’t have a bike he could steal from me, so I wasn’t sure why he was picking a fight with me. He started thumping on my chest and, like most skinny, scared kids do, I looked down. That’s when I saw the box cutter lying in the grass.

  I quickly reached down, grabbed it, and slid it open, hoping that Carver hadn’t seen or, if he had, that the blade might cause him to think twice before attacking me.

  It didn’t. Carver taunted me, “Come on, runt; cut me; come on, try it!”

  I was more afraid now, thinking Carver was going to take the knife away from me and slice me to pieces with it. Instead of threatening him, I froze.

  Just then a policeman pulled up in his patrol car. The officer yelled out the window and told my sister and me to get in the car and he would take us home. We immediately jumped in the car and closed the back door. As we rode away, Carver stood there snarling at me.

  In a weird way I felt sorry for him. Carver was a broken, fatherless boy who took out his pain and anger on everyone else around him. I knew what it was like not to have a dad. I understood Carver all too well.

  The police officer took Patricia and me to our house and let us out of the patrol car. But before I could get away, the officer said, “Son, I saw you pick up something back there. Can I have it?”

  I lowered my head sheepishly and handed him the box cutter. He nodded and drove away.

  SOMEBODY WAS ALWAYS FIGHTING ON VANCE STREET. WHEN the druggies and drunks weren’t laid out in our yard, staring dumbfounded at the stars, they were slugging it out with leather belts wrapped around their hands, beating each other with their belt buckles. Violence was a normal, everyday occurrence on Vance Street, but one incident still gives me chills.

  Leonard King was a kind, quiet guy who lived in our neighborhood, vying for Mama’s attention. One night, in an effort to please Mama, Leonard agreed to give Cecil Cross a ride to his grandmother’s house just off Airline Avenue. A fledgling artist, Cecil loaded his string art in the backseat of Leonard’s car and got in the passenger’s side backseat. I sat next to him, behind the driver’s seat. Mama rode shotgun, and Patricia sat between Mama and Leonard in the front seat.

  Along the way I peppered Cecil with questions about his string art. He patiently answered each query and explained how he drove nails in the board and ran yarn from one nail to the other, creating the artistic pattern. All the while, he continued giving Leonard instructions about how to get to his destination.

  When we turned onto his grandmother’s street, he said, “Just pull over there in front of that car,” pointing at a car parked on the side of the road. Leonard complied and pulled the car over to the side of the dimly lit street. Cecil exited the car with his string art.

  Almost immediately, a car rolled up behind us with its headlights off. The bright lights came on just as the car came to a stop, only inches away from our bumper. Instantly the headlights of the car parked in front of us came on as well. Both of the cars’ headlights were on their brightest beams, illuminating the inside of Leonard’s car. The four of us sat there like sitting ducks in a shooting gallery. Leonard mumbled something under his breath as he looked through his sideview and rearview mirrors.

  I looked out the back windows but couldn’t see anything due to the blinding headlights. I peered through the front windshield and saw nothing but blinding lights as well. Then suddenly a skinny man slid between Leonard’s front bumper and the car parked in front of us, making his way around to the driver’s side, where Leonard was sitting. The man shined a flashlight in Leonard’s face then yelled back to someone standing by the trunk of the car parked in front of us. It sounded as if he said, “Yeah, that’s him.”

  The skinny man turned back to Leonard and hit him in the face with the back of the flashlight. Leonard’s head lurched toward Patricia.

  The attacker then leaned inside the car and hit Leonard in the face and head several more times with the flashlight as he repeatedly yelled, “I told you, I’d get ya!”

  Leonard tried to defend himself against the man’s blows, but the attacker’s leverage gave him an advantage over Leonard, who was stuck in the car’s front seat. The skinny man slugged Leonard one last time then jogged away.

  Leonard’s face was bleeding. Mama wasn’t saying a word, and Patricia was leaning into Mama’s side, frantically holding on to her. We sat there stunned and scared. Then the man’s silhouette came sliding between the bumpers again; this time he carried a hatchet. He quickly maneuvered his legs between the two cars’ bumpers and ran around to the driver’s side, where Leonard was still sitting, dazed and only semiconscious.

  I looked up from the backseat through the driver’s side window into the attacker’s angry eyes as he jerked open the front car door. Leonard tried to pull the door closed, but he was too weak, and the skinny man had already stepped between Leonard and the door.

  The man then raised the hatchet back as far as he could reach and swung it downward, burying the blade into Leonard’s body with a horrifying thud. Leonard let out a bloodcurdling scream that sounded like three lions roaring at once. Mama and Patricia screamed and bolted out the passenger’s side door.

  But the attacker wasn’t done. The next chop split Leonard’s leg open. There was a third, fourth, and fifth chop to Leonard’s torso and arms. I sat paralyzed by fear, wanting to flee but too afraid to move. At one point I saw what looked like a sickening cord of blood stretching three feet in the air, like crimson chewing gum, from Leonard’s body to the blade of that hatchet.

  Now in a full rage the maniac began swinging the hatchet wildly, at times hitting the top of the car as he brought the hatchet down again and again. Each time the blade sank deep into Leonard’s body, it sounded like a belt popping, followed by another of Leonard’s hysterical screams.

  Somehow Leonard mustered enough strength to turn over on his stomach and crawl out the passenger side, slithering onto the asphalt, and then he staggered to his feet. Blood saturated his clothes and dripped on the road.

  The attacker saw Leonard standing and quickly ran around to the front of the car, attempting to catch Leonard before he got away. Leonard seemed to realize that the skinny man was not going to stop until he was dead, so with what must have been a burst of last-ditch-survival adrenaline, Leonard staggered off toward Airline Avenue.

  The attacker was right on his heels and swung the hatchet one last time, hitting Leonard in the back of his head, close to his neck. He stumbled forward and disappeared around the corner.

  By then I had gotten out of the car and was standing in someone’s yard. I looked around for Mama, but she and Patricia had already fled the scene.

  I glanced backward and saw the skinny man along with several other men knocki
ng all the windows out of Leonard’s car. I didn’t know what to do other than run in the same direction Leonard had gone, so I ran down Airline Avenue. Not far away I saw lights and an open bay garage door at a warehouse. As I got closer, I could see people standing around Leonard as he lay on the floor in a puddle of blood. I ran up and told the people there what had just happened.

  The paramedics arrived shortly afterward and loaded Leonard’s unconscious, barely breathing body into the back of the ambulance. I crawled inside, as well, and sat down beside the paramedics. They worked on Leonard the entire time as we raced to Gaston Memorial Hospital. When we arrived, I got out and stood at the back doors of the ambulance and watched the paramedics pull Leonard’s bloody body from the ambulance and rush him through the emergency entrance. I didn’t know where else to go, so I followed them.

  The hospital staff stopped me and then led me to a separate room, where they asked lots of questions. I did my best to tell them who I was and what I saw, but I’m sure I must have sounded like a traumatized kid who had just seen a nightmare—because I had, and the scene was burned forever in my mind.

  After a while a few of Leonard’s family members arrived; then Mama showed up. She had left Patricia at a friend’s house.

  Leonard’s family grieved over why this had happened to Leonard and who might be to blame. While Leonard’s family was consumed by grief, Mama quickly grabbed my hand and stormed out of the hospital. We ran across the hospital parking lot and onto the dark highway. Mama held out her thumb as cars approached.