With Joe Pemberton’s passing went any hope that those things Kenny wished for could one day come to pass. And in the absence of a deep and abiding faith, that hopelessness turned into recklessness. Kenny now plunged fully into the chaos of the drug culture. Hooked on heroin, he became a legend of another kind on New Bedford’s and Fall River’s streets: a ruthless enforcer with little regard for the thorny code of the streets. He began to accost drug dealers, beat them mercilessly, and steal their money and drugs. At some point, several local drug dealers sat down with Kenny to try to convince him that he had to stop this activity; that if he were not who he was, the matter would have been handled very differently. But Kenny, ever the warrior and certain no one would dare challenge him directly, refused to yield: he laughed at them and walked out.
Yet for all his bravado, it appears the consequences of the lifestyle he led had begun to sink in. One afternoon in the summer of 1972, Kenny stopped by the home of Eddie Casey. Casey was an accomplished boxer in his own right, and the two had developed a genuine friendship. Their relationship had been cemented when Kenny came to Casey’s mother’s home to help her with several odd jobs. Casey had been out of town, and so his mother wanted to pay Kenny for the work he did. But Kenny refused to accept the money.
His visit to Casey’s home in New Bedford was a surprise; Casey had not been expecting him. He was even further puzzled when he saw Kenny standing there holding the huge trophy he’d received as runner-up at the National Golden Gloves finals in 1970. “It was beautiful and must have weighed one hundred pounds,” Casey recalled. “Kenny said, ‘I want you to hold this for me’ and handed it over to me.”
Casey knew how important the trophy was to Kenny and knew what Kenny’s giving it away meant. Casey also knew how stubborn and forceful Kenny could be, but he refused to accept this good-bye from a man he loved and respected. “Kenny had a sense that something was going to happen. I looked at Kenny and said, ‘You gotta cut this out . . . you gotta stop using.’
“ ‘Eddie, listen,’ he said. ‘Nobody . . . nobody can talk to me about this. It’s gotta be me. I have to do it myself. It’s not that I’m not listening, but I gotta do it myself.’ ”
On July 30, 1972, four gunmen followed Kenny and his friend Carl Matthews for several miles before unloading their weapons on their vehicle. Matthews ran from the car, taking a bullet in the arm. Kenny stayed in the car and was somehow uninjured. The drive-by was not his last warning. On the night of August 2, Kenny bumped into one of his former trainers, Frank Brito, at a local New Bedford nightclub. Frank was a gentle man who had trained him as a young fighter. Some years earlier, a fellow trainer, Angelo Dundee, had invited Kenny and Frank to come to Muhammad Ali’s training camp. Ali was training in Boston, preparing to defend his heavyweight title against Sonny Liston, the man he had taken the belt from a year prior. During their visit, the ever-brash Ali had insulted Brito, and in a flash Kenny was flying across the room to take on the heavyweight champion of the world. The two were separated before any blows were thrown, but Frank never forgot Kenny’s unwavering devotion.
But now Frank took one look at Kenny’s half-closed eyes and teetering balance and realized that he was high. He motioned him over to a small table. “You know I don’t get into your personal business, Kenny. Never have,” Brito said. Kenny slowly nodded his head in agreement. “But I’m hearing some bad things out here in the streets. There are people looking for you, and they don’t wanna talk. You gotta stay out of Fall River.”
Frank Brito was not the only person Kenny saw that day. Earlier he had stopped by Jerry Huston’s boxing gym in downtown New Bedford. Kenny had been strangely affectionate, clapping Jerry on the back while loudly proclaiming, “My man!” He soon became a distraction, and Jerry asked him to leave. Desperate to connect with her, he also appeared at his sister Geraldine’s job, something he had never done before. Kenny’s previous visits that day may have been the last pleas of a person looking for help or a man consigned to his fate. During their conversations, Kenny had appeared disoriented.
To Frank he had initially seemed unaware of the danger he was in. But on hearing Frank’s advice, he turned clearheaded, his steely gaze boring holes through Frank. What he said next put the matter to rest. Placing a reassuring hand on Frank’s shoulder, he told his trainer, “Anybody who is looking for me knows where to find me.” Chills ran down Frank’s spine. Kenny got up to leave and then turned back to offer one final comment.
“And if they don’t know, you can tell ’em.”
“Please, Kenny,” Frank said. “Go home!”
He pleaded further with Kenny but to no avail. When he last saw his former prize pupil, Kenny was climbing into a car with Matthews, but not before looking cautiously up and down the darkened street checking for danger. Frank did not know it at the time, but they were headed for Fall River.
It doesn’t take long to get from New Bedford to Fall River. It’s about twenty minutes, fastest if you take Route 195. This is likely the route Kenny and Carl Matthews took that humid night of August 2, 1972. The official police investigation indicated that the two men went to the Massasoit Cafe, a popular nightspot on the corner of Pleasant and Rocliffe streets in Fall River. While inside, Kenny reportedly hit his head on a table and walked outside to “get some air.” Matthews followed him outside with an ice pack, catching up to him a few feet past the Rocliffe Street entrance. As the pair walked up the street a bit farther, a man five feet six inches tall and wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans strode past them, turned around, and opened fire. The first two shots from the small-caliber pistol struck Kenny squarely in the chest. The next two bullets ripped into his side as Matthews pulled him to the ground.
Kenny, who had made his living and his reputation with his hands, never had the chance to raise them in his own defense. Although a police cruiser was only a block away and several patrolmen came to his aid, there was little they could do. Kenny was pronounced dead on arrival at Union Hospital. Just as he had predicted, his killer had approached from behind. Kenny was twenty-six years old.
Relying on reports from eyewitnesses, police set up a dragnet over a thirteen-street radius, but the assailant managed to escape, fleeing through backyards behind the cafe. Matthews told investigators that he could not provide a description of the suspect. Police were initially optimistic that “several leads would pan out,” but rumors began to fly across the two cities that Kenny had been set up, that he had been lured to the cafe and then gunned down. Kenny’s grieving supporters in New Bedford, including members of his own family, had no intention of waiting to find out if this was true. Newspaper accounts indicate that a wave of retaliatory brawls and shootings erupted between New Bedford and Fall River during the next two days, and in each instance Kenny’s death was cited as a motivating factor. One of the incidents involved my uncle Warren, who was arrested after threatening two men with a gun.
With tensions high, the proprietor of the Colonial Funeral Chapel called the New Bedford Police Department requesting a police guard. He had been receiving threatening phone calls, he said. His request was too late. On the following Friday night, in the early morning hours, one or more perpetrators broke into the funeral home and set Kenny’s body aflame, using a can of lighter fluid from a nearby storage cabinet. Only a falling plastic fluorescent light shade, likely the result of immense heat, extinguished the blaze. No one was ever charged with Kenny’s murder, although rumors still abound that his death was avenged by the barbed scale of street justice.
Kenny, the sixth child of Joseph and Mary, was buried under heavy police guard in the southern end of New Bedford’s St. John’s Cemetery. Just one row away lay his beloved father. On the funeral stanchion, Kenny’s casket was closed, a necessity given the events that had unfolded at the funeral home. Off to the side stood a large boulder that would be rolled over his grave to prevent further attacks. The only consolation came from knowing that Mary and Joseph were not alive to bury their son.
The section of the cemetery to which the mourners had come to say their final good-byes was named St. Matthews—the same name as the companion with whom Kenny spent his last hours. If you know the story, before following the invitation of Jesus to join his disciples, St. Matthew was a tax collector. I read a hard lesson in that: for the life you, Kenny, have chosen, the bill is now due. Etched on the grieving faces of his family and friends was another hard lesson: the ones who love you, Kenny, must also pay a price for the life you have chosen. Those who loved him could only lament—not just for Kenny and his eternal soul but also for the loss of that part of themselves Kenny had taken with him. Had they known what was to unfold, I suspect they would have cried some for me too.
CHAPTER 42
Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
After all these years, I have only dreamed of my father once. In my dream I’m standing across the street from the house on Arnold, and Kenny stands on the other side, directly in front of the house, his arms folded across his chest. His back is to me, and he stares up at the three-decker that had been my house of horrors. He senses I am there and turns around, unfurling his arms and letting them fall to his waist. Even from a distance, I perceive that he has a presence about him. For a moment I understand why those in his generation still talk about him as if he were still here. But he is not. He is gone now, and I am what remains.
We meet in the middle of the street. He shakes my hand quickly and emphatically, his grip every bit as strong as I expect. “It’s good to see you,” he says, with a smile intended to make up for lost time. An uncomfortable silence prevails. There is a long row of maple trees running down both sides of the street, and they buck and sway as if listening to our conversation.
“It’s good to see you too,” I finally say. We were both fighters whose lives had been marked by loss, defiance, and a desperate search for some sense of family. But our response to life’s tragedies had been profoundly different. In another time and place, I would have asked him about this, but I have more pressing questions to ask, answers I need to have. Here, in this dream, I get the chance. “So, you knew about me?”
“Yes, I knew.”
I look away, trying to fight the surge of anger that is suddenly coursing through me. I point a finger at him and then at the house on Arnold. “You could have saved me from all this! You were the only one who could have. You were my only chance.”
He has no answer. Now it is he who looks away, down past the corridor of trees, a soul forever tormented by regret.
I glance up at the house again, remembering all that unfolded here, feeling anew the loss of my childhood. “I needed you,” I say. It is a confession that surprises me. And now my voice drops, and urgently and fiercely, my voice breaking slightly, I ask, “Why didn’t you ever come for me?”
His shoulders slump and his head drops; perhaps he wishes I had not asked him that question. Yet it seems he already knew it was coming, because his answer is ready. He sighs deeply, the type of exhalation that unburdens a soul. Now it is he who confesses, his voice low and soft: “I thought I had more time.”
I have not dreamed of my dad since.
CHAPTER 43
In the early hours of a summer Saturday morning, on the second floor of a small house in a western Boston suburb, I am awakened by the pitter-patter of feet walking into our bedroom. It can only be our six-year-old son, Quinn. He is often the first one to arise and usually makes a beeline right to me, demanding that I wake up. He does not see fit to bestow this privilege on his mother, who lies deep in the comfort of morning slumber.
“Dad, Dad,” he whispers. I feign sleep, but the playful smile dancing across my face betrays me.
“I know you’re awake, Dad. You’re not a very good fooler.”
Laughing quietly, I sit up. He is wearing his Buzz Lightyear pajamas, clutching his favorite book, The Lion and the Mouse. I drink in his light complexion, curly brown hair with blond tints at the crowns, and bright-blue eyes.
“I wanna go downstairs and read the story,” he says, pushing the book into my hands.
“Gotcha,” I say, swinging my feet out of the bed and into the plush cool of the carpet. The rest of the house is quiet. “Let’s go check on your brother and sister first,” I whisper to him. I take his hand, so small in mine. We walk down the hall and open the door to each of the bedrooms. His brother, Vaughn, younger by two years, is fast asleep, light-brown hair peeking above his burgundy comforter. The boys look so similar they are often mistaken for twins. I smile at the tiny hump under the blanket. Even at the tender age of four, Vaughn carries himself with certainty and purpose, as if he has been in this world before and knows how it is all supposed to unfold. His sister, Kennedy, a year old and a near spitting image of her mother, with the spirit to match, is also deep in slumber, arm wrapped around her large Raggedy Ann doll, the one made for all new children who come into the congregation at Myrtle Baptist Church in Newton, Massachusetts.
“They’re still sleepy,” Quinn announces.
We walk to the top of the staircase, and here we stop. “Airplane ride, Daddy?” he says.
“Absolutely,” I say, sitting on the top step. He climbs aboard my back, clinging to my neck, those tiny arms holding on for dear life. This is a morning ritual of ours, one that I will also enjoy with his brother and sister in time.
“Don’t let me go, Daddy,” he pleads. Never, son, I think. I could never let you go.
“I gotcha, buddy. Now let’s start ’er up.” He plants a wet kiss on my cheek, and off we go. We glide down the stairs, past picture frames of Pembertons and Murphys and of Tonya’s family, the Bushes and Kees. Our laughter is joyous, bouncing off the walls. I take a particularly hard turn that I know will delight him, and he grabs on to my neck even tighter. We land gently in the living room, and again he takes my hand in his, pulling me to the deep brown leather chair near the fireplace. I sit down, and he climbs onto my lap, his head snuggled perfectly against my shoulder. The sun has already risen, its soft, yellow rays poking through the half-open blinds behind us. A small flock of house sparrows whisper by, banking and gliding, before landing on the banister of the back porch. We open the book and begin our story. Ten seconds later, he interrupts me. “Don’t forget to use the lion voice,” he says. “Got it,” I say, shooting him a thumbs-up.
He settles back onto my shoulder, and I dive into the story with gusto. All is quiet, save the voice of the lion and the kitchen clock ticking gently in the background. Abruptly, he wheels around to face me again.
“Daddy?” he asks, his eyes searching the ceiling.
“Yes,” I say. I am ready for a question as to how the mouse knew to save the lion. Though we have read the story many times, he never tires of hearing the answer. But this is not the question he has for me.
“When you were a little boy, did you have a daddy?”
I stare at him for a long time. I thought this question would come years from now, perhaps as a final father-son chat before he went off to college. But it was not in the future; it was right here, right now. I had long ago decided that, when the time came, I would tell my children the truth. “No, son,” I say softly. “When I was a little boy, I did not have a daddy.”
His brow furrowed, little lines of confusion marking his usually serene features. He searches my eyes, looking for an explanation, then looks skyward as he usually does when he is thinking.
Looking up, his troubled eyes now clear, he says, as only a child can say, “Maybe next time you will have a daddy.”
EPILOGUE
Almost immediately after A Chance in the World first appeared in print, the messages began arriving. A seventy-three-year-old Irishman wrote to tell me that because of what I had written, the burdens of his childhood had evaporated, and he could go to his rest in peace. In another part of the world, a young mot
her from a remote African village remarked that thanks to Kindle, she had been able to read my book aloud to her children. I was stunned to hear from a reader named Steve Klakowicz who wanted to know how I had chosen that name for one of my book’s characters. Others wrote to say that they had reconciled with a parent or sibling because of the book, or that reading it had made them appreciate the blessings they’d been given. It has been equally satisfying to know that my book has led to heightened awareness of the need for foster-care reform. Better still, I often heard that what I wrote served as a catalyst for a loving family to provide a safe haven for a deserving child.
Even after a story is written, there are still chapters left to add. Tonya remains as magical to me today as she did twenty years ago, when we first met. Quinn, Vaughn, and Kennedy are all teenagers now. The boys, strapping student-athletes, take particular delight in having grown taller than me, although I remind them that height and an ability to fill a father’s shoes are two different things. Kennedy finds such discussions quite humorous, believing that little girls are always the tallest in their daddy’s hearts. Every summer, we return to Martha’s Vineyard and take a family picture standing in the exact spot where Tonya and I first laid eyes on each other.
Charlie Carmo called me after reading the book. Having learned that Patty Southworth was my first social worker, he felt he knew how I came to live with the Robinsons, and how Betty Robinson became aware that Kenny Pemberton was my father. According to Charlie, Patty and Kenny had been close friends, and Kenny likely told her he had a son and that she should make sure he wound up with a good family, in the likely event that something should happen to him. Patty, in her quest to fulfill my father’s wishes, brought me to the award-winning Robinsons.
A widower who contacted me shared additional news. Her husband had become ill and passed away. As she went through her husband’s personal effects, she came across his wallet. In it was a picture of him smiling broadly at a high school graduation ceremony, his arm draped around the shoulders of a young graduate. It was the only picture in his wallet besides those of his family. For years, she said, she wondered who that boy was. After reading the book, she realized that it was me. Her husband, Mike Sylvia, had kept that photo all these years, perhaps as a reminder that he had touched a life after all.
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