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

by Wayne, Jimmy

  Mama slunk away. “Come on, Jimmy. Get on home.” Mama was acting nothing like the scared woman on the other end of the telephone line when those other prisoners were demanding her to get off the phone. Now she wanted to show how tough she was. I’ve since learned that showing off is a common trait of many ex-convicts after they have been released from prison. They want to let everyone know, “I just got out of prison.” It’s a type of intimidation game.

  “I’m sorry, Dusty,” I called back to my friend, as Mama steered me away from the Dillingers’ yard. “Sorry, Mrs. Dillinger,” I said softly so Mama wouldn’t hear me.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I waved at Dusty.

  IT WAS ABOUT THIS TIME THAT I MET MY FIRST TRUE LOVE. Her name was Sparkles, and she was my absolute best friend in the world. With her sparkling brown eyes and her short legs and her tongue constantly hanging out, she was quite a sight. Her white curls were matted and looked like a saddle. Her fur was full of fleas, but I didn’t care. I loved my dog, Sparkles, more than anything in the world.

  Sparkles slept under Grandpa’s trailer. When I went outside, she quickly surfaced and greeted me with her tail wagging. Sparkles and I went everywhere together—to the swimming hole, to Dusty’s house, to Ingles grocery store. Sparkles and I were inseparable.

  Sparkles had pups while Mama was in prison, so I had to work extra hard to earn enough money to support Mama’s habits and still have enough money to feed Sparkles and her pups. Only two of the pups survived, but Sparkles was a great mother to them.

  Like me, Sparkles had the run of the neighborhood, so it wasn’t unusual for her to wander off for a few hours at a time. One morning I saw Sparkles walking away from the trailer, and she looked worn out, her body tired, her head hanging down. I didn’t think much of it at the time and felt sure Sparkles would return soon to feed her pups.

  But by midday there was no sign of Sparkles, and the pups were crying, obviously hungry. I tried to feed them some canned dog food, but they wouldn’t eat it. They wanted their mother. I could relate to that.

  Later that afternoon a friend of mine, Randy Miller, walked down to Grandpa’s trailer. Most people avoided Grandpa’s trailer, so immediately my sensors were up.

  “I saw Sparkles lying by the road,” Randy told me, “and she wasn’t moving.”

  “What? No!” I ran all the way up the long dirt road to the main highway, and there I saw her. Just as Randy had said, Sparkles was lying on the side of the road—and she wasn’t moving.

  I ran to her as fast as I could and knelt down beside her, holding her in my arms. Her curly fur was bloody, and she wasn’t breathing. The love of my life was dead.

  I tenderly picked up Sparkles and carried her in my arms, back down that long dirt road, crying all the way to Grandpa’s trailer. With tears streaming down my face, I buried her in the front yard. My heart broke in a million pieces that day. I missed Sparkles terribly, but at least we still had two of her pups.

  A short time later Mama returned and decided that we were moving to a new location, Sante Trailer Park. A family friend, JR Wilson, had an old red pickup truck and was helping us move. As I prepared to load Sparkles’s pups onto the truck, Mama stopped me.

  “They don’t allow animals there,” she said. “We’ll have to take the pups to the pound.” That news broke the remaining pieces of my heart. JR took the pups to the Matthews Animal Shelter near Gastonia, and a few days later he brought me a clipping he had cut out of the Gastonia Gazette.

  It was a black-and-white photo of Sparkles’s pups! They each wore a collar with a numbered tag. Below their photo was information in case someone wanted to adopt them.

  I guess I should have been happy that the pups were going to get new homes. But I wasn’t. Staring at that photo and knowing that Sparkles was dead and her pups were up for adoption devastated me, crushing a part of me that’s never healed. I know it sounds exaggerated, but that was the worst heartbreak I had known up to that point in my first twelve years of life. A piece of me died.

  Today weeds have overgrown the area where twenty-five or more trailers once stood in Reed’s Trailer Park. But you can still find a few bent rusty nails in the side of a tree, where the two-by-four ladder led to my tree house. More importantly to me, that tree marks the spot where Sparkles is buried and where I wrote my first poem—a poem about a mother and her child being separated.

  Of course my writing as a twelve-year-old was elementary by today’s standards, but to me, writing the poem expressed my innermost thoughts. Part of the poem reads:

  I wish I was like a flower,

  Who was loved by a bee.

  I wish I had a family

  That really cares for me.

  I wish I was like a whole

  And wish I was like a well.

  I feel like in this place

  That I’m locked up in a jail.

  I have feelings like everyone else does

  I was loved at one time

  I know I really was.

  I love someone

  And they love me true

  And if you love me,

  I will love you too.

  Sixteen

  THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS

  SANTE TRAILER PARK IS A SMALL TRACT OF LAND TUCKED back in the trees off Highway 74, near Gastonia. Unlike Reed’s Trailer Park, tall pine trees stood in statuesque pride throughout Sante Park, providing plenty of shade in the summertime and protection from the elements in the winter.

  I was sad to leave Reed’s, but I was pretty good at making new friends. One of the first kids I met in Sante Trailer Park was Mike McBride. Mike was a few years older than me and had a little brother, Stevie, as well as an older sister, Theresa, who had a son named Chris. All four of them lived together with their mother, Bernell, in a small one-axle camper parked between two trailers. The camper was so tiny that I wondered how they could all fit inside to sleep. A neighbor allowed the McBrides to run a drop cord from their trailer to the camper so Mike’s family could have electricity. Mrs. McBride served the family a lot of macaroni since that was an inexpensive meal. I never met Mike’s dad.

  Despite their poverty, the McBrides were some of the richest people I had ever met. They may not have had much money, but they were rich in love. The family members loved each other and worked together. Mrs. McBride was devoutly religious and wouldn’t tolerate any cursing in her presence. Although she was very poor, her kind and loving demeanor was a picture of dignity. She modeled a truth to her family—and to me—that it is not what you have materially that matters but who you are as a person.

  Mike, Stevie, and I loved to go camping—which was ironic, considering that they lived in such a tiny camper—along with two other brothers who lived on the hill behind the trailer park. We thought the brothers were rich because they had an inground swimming pool.

  Sometimes Mike and I played football behind the nearby convenience store or rode bikes to the Diane 29 drive-in theater to watch a movie. We crawled under the white wooden fence and found a spot where no cars were parked. We took a speaker off the pole and placed it on the ground beside us so we could hear the movie. We watched movies like Return of the Living Dead and Back to the Future, along with plenty of B movies. We were just boys, living every second of life the best way we knew how. Thanks to Mike and his family, I was beginning to think that Sante Trailer Park might turn out to be a good place to live after all.

  My sister, Patricia, had already moved out and was living back in Reed’s Trailer Park with Steven Burgess, a twenty-five-year-old man who had courted Patricia with cheap gifts and empty promises. Mama saw an opportunity to get rid of Patricia, so she signed marital rights documents granting permission for Steven to marry Patricia, even though she was only fourteen years old. I didn’t know Steven, but I noticed that Patricia was crying when he escorted her out of the courthouse where they were married. The tears streaming down her face did not appear to be tears of joy.

  ONE SUNDAY MORNING MAMA DIDN’T WANT TO GO
TO CHURCH, so I went outside to play. Later that morning, on a whim, I walked over to a vacant trailer and opened the back door. I peeked inside and discovered Mama lying on a dirty mattress with Tim Allen, a man she’d recently met in the trailer park.

  A clean-cut, slender man in his midthirties, Tim lived in the trailer park with his dad, Charles. Tim had diabetes and depended on insulin, but he was a strong, hard worker nonetheless. It didn’t take Mama long to get Tim’s attention. They quickly became a serious couple, and since Mama and her previous husband were divorced when she went to prison, Mama and Tim soon got married. The three of us moved into a trailer together.

  Despite our awkward first encounter, Tim seemed to be a pretty good guy. In the early months of our relationship, he actually reminded me of Carroll, the best of Mama’s previous husbands. Tim was good to Mama, and he tried to be a great stepdad, treating me as his own son. I enjoyed doing things with him; we laughed together and had lots of fun. Tim discovered that I enjoyed building clubhouses in the woods, so he often brought home boards and large pieces of cardboard that I could use in my clubhouse. As far as I was concerned, Tim was awesome. I even thought we might be a real family—whatever that was.

  One of the things I most admired about Tim was that he and his dad, Charles Allen, were so close. Having lived my entire life with an absentee father, I had never before seen the sort of strong father-and-son relationship shared by Tim and Charles.

  Both Tim and his dad had drinking problems, but when Tim and Mama married, Tim used the occasion to challenge Charles to give up the booze. They agreed to stop drinking alcohol completely. Tim held up his end of the deal, but Charles struggled to stay away from alcohol. Whenever he could, he slipped away from the trailer park and found a drink.

  One summer day, about six months after Tim and Mama got married, the three of us were driving up Highway 74, toward the Dixie Village Shopping Center, when Tim spotted Charles sitting at a picnic table on the other side of the busy highway. “Look at that!” Tim said with obvious disappointment in his voice. “There’s my dad, and he’s drunk.”

  Mama and I looked across the road and saw Charles staggering around the table. Tim reduced the car’s speed as though he was going to stop, but then decided against it. “I’ll come back and pick him up after I take you two home,” Tim said. He drove past Charles in the direction of Dixie Village.

  I could see Charles looking toward us and waving as we drove away. His eyes were glassy. He may have been drunk, but he recognized us, and by the look on his face, he must have realized that Tim was sorely disappointed in him.

  Tim drove on to the store, where we purchased the items Mama wanted, and then we headed back toward Sante Trailer Park. As we passed the spot where we’d seen Tim’s dad, Tim peered across the highway, searching for Charles around the picnic tables. But Charles was nowhere in sight.

  Tim was disgusted. “He’s probably passed out on the ground beside the picnic table,” he said. We continued on home, and Tim dropped us off at the trailer. Then he hurried back up the highway to get Charles.

  But it was too late. By the time Tim arrived at the picnic area, Charles had already stumbled out onto the highway, apparently staggering back toward Sante Trailer Park. He was struck by a car and was killed instantly.

  It was a few hours before Tim returned home, sharing this horrific news with Mama and me. He was devastated and beside himself with grief mixed with regret. “I could have helped him,” Tim cried over and over again. “I could have rescued him. I could have saved him! But I didn’t.”

  Tim loved his dad more than I could even understand. The decision to pass by his dad was one that Tim would regret for the rest of his life.

  TIM HAD A TEENAGE SON, CHARLES, NAMED AFTER HIS grandpa. Charles Jr. lived in Bessemer City, North Carolina, with his mother, Kathy, Tim’s former wife. Charles and I were both thirteen, and we became instant friends. I spent most of my time hanging out with him the summer that his grandpa died. We did all sorts of things together—camping, hiking, boxing, and most of all, chasing girls, though we weren’t quite sure what we’d do if one of the young ladies returned our interest. Still, we had fun.

  As the Fourth of July 1986 drew near, Tim was still grieving the loss of his father, so Mama allowed me to spend the weekend with Charles at Kathy’s apartment in Bessemer City. Meanwhile, my oldest brother, Charlie Barber, whom I barely knew, visited Mama and Tim.

  While Charlie Barber was with Mama and Tim, he and Tim got into a fight. The two of them exchanged strong words and threats, getting into a raging argument that spilled all over the house. Charlie Barber decided to leave, but on the way out of the yard, he picked up a brick and slammed it against the top corner of the windshield of an Oldsmobile Delta 88 that he had seen Tim driving. The windshield shattered where the brick had hit, but it held together due to the safety glass. Charlie Barber hustled into his car and roared away.

  But what Charlie Barber didn’t know was the Olds Delta 88 was not Tim’s car; it belonged to Tim’s recently deceased father, Charles Allen. When Tim saw what Charlie Barber had done to the windshield of his father’s car, he was furious and vowed to get even.

  I came home from Bessemer City that evening, and when I saw the broken windshield, I ran inside the trailer. “Mama, what happened?”

  “Charlie came over, and he and Tim got in an argument,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Mama gave me a brief synopsis, but it was obvious she was in no mood to talk about it. Apparently, she and Tim had gotten into an argument, too, with Mama sticking up for her flesh and blood. She didn’t say much; she simply left the trailer without telling us where she was going. We later learned that she went across the trailer park to Grandpa’s trailer. Grandpa had recently moved to Sante to stay close to Mama.

  About that time, I heard Tim thrashing around in the back bedroom. He stormed out to the living room, and when he saw me, he said, “Come with me; let’s go for a ride.”

  I could tell that Tim was upset, but I didn’t have any concerns. We all lived with anger in the trailer park. That was nothing new.

  Tim and I went outside, and I pulled open the big, heavy passenger door on the Olds Delta 88 and got in. I closed the door and sat there wondering where we were going.

  Tim got in the driver’s seat and placed a fifth of vodka on the seat between us. He cranked the Oldsmobile’s motor and drove out of Sante Trailer Park. “Let’s stop by the store and get a Mountain Dew,” Tim said in his usual friendly voice.

  A Mountain Dew? Gee, thanks, Tim! I was excited because that was my favorite soda, and it was rare when I got one.

  Tim pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store and parked in front of the entrance, leaving the engine running. I waited in the car while he went inside and bought two twelve-ounce bottles of Mountain Dew, one for him and one for me. He hopped back in the car and handed me the Mountain Dews.

  We headed west on Highway 74, passing by Sante Trailer Park, traveling instead toward Crowders Mountain. Wherever we were going, we weren’t going home.

  Tim was driving fast, and I was a little nervous, but the Carolinas are NASCAR country, so driving fast was the norm. I wasn’t too worried.

  Then Tim said, “Pour me some liquor in that cup,” as he pointed to a cup on the floor.

  I opened the bottle and carefully poured the vodka into the cup, filling it halfway.

  Tim nodded in the dark. “Now pour a little Mountain Dew in there,” he ordered.

  I quickly obeyed and handed the mixed drink to Tim. He guzzled the drink in one swig. He extended the cup in my direction. “Again,” he said.

  Like a passenger-seat bartender, I repeated this process several times before we reached Crowders Mountain. By then Tim had downed four full cups of the vodka and soda in rapid succession.

  We took a left turn off Highway 74, in front of the property where Grandpa formerly lived. We passed Mountain View Agape Fellowship, the little white church on the
hill, and zoomed past the old bus stop where I had stood and waited so often for the school bus. As we topped the next hill, Tim lifted his foot off the gas pedal, slowing the vehicle. He then turned the car into someone’s driveway and stopped.

  We sat there in the dark for a few minutes, not saying a word, with the engine still running. Tim peered into the darkness in the direction of a lone trailer. His eyes remained fixed on the rectangular shape in the darkness. Finally, he whispered, “Load this gun.” He handed me his .22 caliber, nine-shot revolver.

  Without hesitating, I loaded the gun and handed it back to Tim. I had no clue what he had in mind to do, but I wasn’t about to disobey his orders.

  We sat quietly for a few more minutes, with Tim idly caressing the gun. After a while the front door on the trailer opened, and we could see someone standing in the shadows of the doorway. But all the lights were off in the trailer, which made it difficult to identify the person.

  Tim hissed to me, “Ask him if he’s Charlie.”

  What? He wanted me to ask the figure in the dark for his name? I shrugged, and obeyed. I yelled out the passenger window, “Hey! Are you Charlie?”

  The man grunted and said, “Yeah, who wants to know?” He sounded a lot like my older brother, Charlie Barber.

  That’s all Tim needed to hear. He backed the car out of the driveway and into the road, and then pointed the gun out the driver’s side window at Charlie. Before I realized what was happening, Tim fired off six shots. Whether he was too drunk to aim straight or just trying to scare Charlie, I’ll never know; but all six bullets tore through the aluminum exterior of my older brother’s trailer and miraculously missed Charlie.

  Tim stomped on the throttle, and while peeling out with the tires spinning, he fired three more shots into the trailer. He looked like an outlaw, riding the back of a horse through a town and shooting up the saloon.

  The big Olds roared off, and Tim slapped the gun down on the front seat as we headed back toward Highway 74. Just before we reached the main road, he steered the car off onto a side road, where we parked and watched through splintered trees as the police raced by in the direction of Charlie Barber’s trailer.