The Redemption of Bobby Love

by Bobby Love

  After what felt like an hour, I finally found the tracks and I wanted to shout for joy, but I didn’t. I stuck to my plan and followed the tracks—​running and walking and running again—​until they led me to an intersection where two roads crossed. The sun was starting to show itself, which meant I must have been in those woods for close to three hours. Up ahead I could make out the outlines of the town of Hamlet. I started walking toward what looked like the town center. Hamlet was so small I easily found the bus depot, bought a ticket back to Greensboro, and waited outside for about thirty minutes until they announced my bus was boarding. I hopped aboard and tried to stay awake and alert, but after the adventure I’d just had, I fell asleep almost instantly. When I woke up two hours later, we were back in Greensboro.

  * * *

  When I stepped off the bus, I knew I couldn’t go to my house. I didn’t know if they’d started looking for me or not, but I didn’t want to take the chance and walk into a trap. Instead, I went to my friend Eric’s house. Eric was a couple of years older than me and had already graduated from high school. He lived with his grandfather in a nice house on Warren Street. His mother had passed away, but the whole family had always been kind to me; plus, they had money. My hope was that Eric would let me stay at his house for a few days while I figured out what to do next.

  “Cotton Foot! Where’d you come from?” Eric said when he saw me on his porch. He was still in his pajamas.

  “Can I come in?” I whispered, afraid someone would see me.

  Eric ushered me in and we went straight up to his room. I told him what I had done and asked if I could lay low at his house for a few days while I made plans for my next move. He said yes, but he told me I couldn’t stay there during the day because his grandfather might see me.

  “No worries, man,” I said. “But can I just catch a nap real quick, and then I’ll make myself scarce. I promise your grandfather won’t see me.”

  Eric told me as long as I was quiet and left the house before 10:30, when his grandfather usually woke up, it would be okay. Eric set his alarm clock to wake me up at 10:00. I breathed a sigh of relief and felt my shoulders truly relax for the first time since leaving Morrison.

  I lay down on Eric’s twin bed and watched him as he started picking out his clothes and getting ready for work. We agreed to meet back at his house at 5:00 p.m. I promised Eric I’d be careful when I left, even offering to climb out the window if I had to. Eric told me I could use the front door. “Just be quiet,” he said.

  Even though I only slept for about two hours, I was full of energy when I tiptoed out of Eric’s house. I wanted to go over to Gillespie and catch up on everything I’d missed since being away at Morrison. I had more friends in that area of town and knew more kids at Gillespie than at Ben L. Smith. Since I wasn’t in a hurry, I stopped and bought myself some snacks and a sandwich and killed more time walking around town, being careful not to go into any stores that I knew my mother liked to frequent.

  By the time I made it to the park across the street from Gillespie in the afternoon, I had to wait just a short while before the final bell rang. While I waited, I started to make a mental list of friends I could visit who might be willing to let me stay with them or who could loan me some money so I could get out of town. But I still didn’t know where I should go. Other than Washington, DC, I couldn’t think of anywhere else where I’d have a safe place to stay. Before I could come up with any answers, school let out and kids started crossing the street and heading my way. I immediately saw my friend Wayne, who lived near us. Wayne was really my little brother Melvin’s friend, but we all played ball together. I called his name and he turned toward the sound of my voice and headed my way when he saw me.

  “Yo, Cotton Foot!” he said when he got close to me. “What are you doing here?”

  I started to explain, since Wayne knew I’d been sent away to Morrison. But he interrupted me before I could finish my story.

  “Man, there were cops all over your house this morning,” he said. “I already knew you’d escaped.”

  “For real?” I said, beginning to sweat.

  “Yeah, man,” he said. “Melvin told me that they told your mama that if she sees you, she has to call them right away. Unless you’re trying to get caught, I’d get out of here fast.”

  “You’re right, I gotta get out of here,” I said to Wayne, as cold panic flooded my veins. Greensboro wasn’t that big. It was only a matter of time before somebody recognized me. Maybe somebody already had and had called the police on me, or worse, called my mother.

  “I won’t tell anybody I saw you,” Wayne said, looking over his shoulder.

  “Thanks, man,” I said as I took off running toward the bus stop. I had to get back to Eric’s house to lay low, get some cash, and get out of the city. I had planned to stop by my house and let my mother know that I was okay, but now that Wayne had warned me about the cops, I made the painful decision to leave without saying goodbye to her.

  When I got back to Eric’s house, it was only 4:30. I waited outside and tried to stay out of sight. As soon as I saw Eric, I ran up to him and told him what Wayne had told me.

  “I gotta get out of Greensboro now!” I said. Eric agreed. We ran into the house. Eric changed his clothes, got some money from his grandfather, and we went down to the bus station together. Eric paid for my ticket to Washington, DC. Right before I got on the bus, he said to me, “Cotton Foot, be careful up there.”

  * * *

  When I got to Washington, it was the middle of the night. I called Raymond from a pay phone at the station and begged him to come get me. Thankfully, he agreed.

  As soon as I got in his car, though, Raymond lit into me.

  “What have you done, Buddy?” he started.

  “Raymond, I couldn’t stay at that place,” I said, pleading my case. “Every day I was in a fight. I was scared for my life to stay there.”

  Raymond looked over at me in the passenger seat. He didn’t say anything. We drove the rest of the way to his apartment in silence.

  The next morning Raymond woke me up and told me I could stay, but I had to get a job.

  “You’re not going to be here living off me and Marie,” Raymond warned, lecturing me before I’d even had time to wipe the sleep out of my eyes. “You gotta pay your own way and you gotta stay out of trouble.”

  “What about school?” I asked.

  “I thought about that,” Raymond said, “but if you go to school, you’re going to have to get your records from Greensboro. And once you let people from Greensboro know you’re here, they’ll probably send the cops to come get you. Besides, you’ll be sixteen next fall and you won’t have to be in school after that anyway.”

  I wanted to go to school, but I wasn’t about to argue with my brother. He was the only thing standing between me and living on the streets. So that day, after breakfast, I went and registered at an employment agency. When I filled out all of the paperwork, I used my real name and Social Security number, but I said I was eighteen instead of fifteen. Since I was tall, nobody questioned me.

  Meanwhile, Raymond called my mother and let her know that I was safe, working and living with him and his wife, Marie. When Mama heard the news, she was happy to know that I was okay and sent some money to my brother to help with my upkeep. She didn’t want me to be a burden. Mama also informed Raymond that she had been told that as long as I stayed out of North Carolina, nobody from Morrison would be looking for me. I don’t know who told her that, but it proved to be true. I stayed away from the state of North Carolina for a good long while and I never heard from anyone at Morrison again.

  It only took one week to be assigned my first job from the employment agency. I was hired to be a janitor at Georgetown University.

  And it only took me three weeks to lose that job. On the day I received my first paycheck, the other janitors invited me to an alcohol-fueled celebration during our lunch break. I had no business trying to party with grown men, drinking har
d liquor, trying to act like a grown-up. When my boss found me passed out drunk on the job, she fired me immediately. Then when the employment agency found out about why I was fired, they refused to send me out for any more jobs. Undaunted, I hit the streets on my own and found a job at a fancy candy store on F Street. I worked as a janitor and stock boy. The white lady that owned the store was really nice to me, as was the Black lady who worked behind the counter, who would sneak me free samples of the chocolates. I liked working there and I felt important when I’d take my lunch break and go across the street and order a tuna sandwich at the lunch counter. But that job only lasted for about three months before the thief in me decided to come back to life.

  I had noticed that the owner always left the safe open in the back of the shop. She’d put receipts and cash in there all day long and then lock it up at night. One day I just kept thinking, Try it. But I knew better. I walked past that safe three times before I finally opened it up and grabbed a handful of cash. By the time I got home to my brother’s house that night, the owner had already called my brother and told him what I’d done. “Why did you do it, Buddy?” Raymond said to me when I walked in the door. And the very next day he made me go back to the candy store and return the money.

  I was really ashamed of myself because that lady trusted me. And I liked working at the store. When I walked into the shop, I was afraid of what she was going to do to me. But all she said was “I gave you a chance, Walter. A chance a lot of other people wouldn’t have given a boy like you.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “I hope you don’t go through life like this, Walter. Let this be a lesson. And don’t ever do something like this again.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I won’t.”

  And then she fired me.

  I wish I could say this is when I finally learned my lesson and got my act together. But it’s not. I didn’t take that woman’s advice. In fact, I did quite the opposite. I kept stealing and robbing people like it was going out of style.

  Within a year, Raymond and Marie kicked me out of their apartment after I stole Raymond’s car for a night of joyriding with my friends. I was just about to turn sixteen. From his house, I went to go live with my older sister Irma, who also lived in Washington, DC. Unlike Raymond, Irma thought school was where I belonged, and she promptly got me enrolled at the high school closest to her apartment, Eastern High School. When I had to provide the name of the last high school I had attended, I said Ben L. Smith, and no questions were asked about my missing year of education. Because I had never finished tenth grade at Smith, I entered Eastern as a sophomore and started that year over again. But Eastern High School wasn’t an institution that inspired learning. The way I saw it, the teachers and administrators couldn’t care less whether or not students showed up or did any work. Kids spent more time in the hallways smoking and getting into fights than they did in the classrooms. The only good thing that came out of my experience at Eastern was learning about a special program that allowed high school kids to work in government offices for twenty hours a week and get paid. I applied and was given a job at the Pentagon, working four days a week.

  At the Pentagon I was a file clerk, and I enjoyed the work, filing papers and running errands for the generals and secretaries in the office. I was good at my job, but I couldn’t get promoted because when they tried to get me security clearances that would allow me to go into different parts of the Pentagon and take on more work, they found out I had a record. “I see you had some trouble in your life,” my boss, Ms. McDonnell, said to me on the afternoon the information came through. I thought she was going to fire me, but she didn’t. Ms. McDonnell was a very kind lady, and she told me that I could continue to work in her office. She never held my background against me. For that I was grateful.

  I transferred out of Eastern High as soon as I could. Eastern’s reputation as a “funhouse” wasn’t what I was looking for. On my own, I enrolled at a nearby school called McKinley, where some of my friends went. Unlike Eastern, McKinley was known as an excellent institution for Black students. All of the teachers were Black, I’d heard they had the highest graduation rate in the city, and supposedly the principal had been named Principal of the Year several times. I wanted that for myself. The teachers at McKinley would tell us about how bad things were when they were coming up and that it was our responsibility to get our education and do important things in the world. They had high expectations for all of us and made us believe that we could do anything we put our minds to. It reminded me of my teachers at my first junior high school back in Greensboro, before I’d been forced to integrate Gillespie. While I was in the school building at McKinley, I wanted to perform well for the teachers, I wanted to believe in the vision they had for us. I wanted to be a good student. I even tried out for the basketball team but was cut in the second round. McKinley was a good place for me, but on the weekends, all I could think about was having fun and getting wild.

  Two of my friends had cars, and we’d go all over DC to parties and clubs. It didn’t matter that we were underage. As long as we had money, they’d let us in. Sometimes we’d rent a hotel room, invite girls, and have our own parties there. The only problem was that all of this fun cost money, and the money I was making at the Pentagon wasn’t enough to cover my portion of the partying. So I got a second job at a topless bar called Clive’s not too far from my sister’s apartment. I was probably the only high school student in the District working at the Pentagon and a topless bar at the same time. I worked at Clive’s during the week until 2:00 a.m. washing dishes, packing beer, taking the garbage out, and I had to clean the kitchen and bathrooms. It wasn’t glamorous work, but my friends thought I was the luckiest cat around, having a job where seeing topless women was a regular occurrence.

  All the kids I hung around with were Black. Some of them came from good families, and most of them went to some of the best high schools in DC for Black students, like Dunbar and McKinley. Dunbar had always been a school for Black Washington’s finest families and was a feeder school for Howard University. But my friends and I weren’t thinking about college. We were intoxicated with the untamed energy of the time, when lawlessness and criminal activity, the street life, and civil rights were all creating a sort of electricity in the air. Sam Cooke had been murdered in a seedy hotel. Bonnie and Clyde opened in the movie theaters. Malcolm X had been assassinated. Then so was Martin Luther King Jr. The Nation of Islam was telling brothers to use “any means necessary” to protect themselves. It was a dangerous time to be young and Black in America, but for me and my friends, it was an exciting time. We felt like we had permission to make our own rules for survival, even when our rules were against the law.

  Little by little, I started to go to school less and less. Soon enough my sister Irma kicked me out of her home too. Raymond found a tiny apartment for me to live in by myself, and so I was on my own by the time I was seventeen. I was still going to school, as long as I didn’t have something more exciting to do. And I was still working at the Pentagon and at Clive’s. I was making enough money to cover my rent and my expenses, but I still wanted more. I always wanted more. And then the opportunity to get more made itself known.

  One of my friends, Jack, pulled an armed robbery with some guys I didn’t know. When he told me about it, I wanted in on the action. I didn’t even pause to consider the consequences. By this point, taking one more step into criminal activity didn’t faze me. Robberies of all kinds were taking place across DC at the time, and it didn’t seem that big a deal to get involved. I told myself that as long as I wasn’t physically hurting anybody, then it was okay. I didn’t consider that taking someone’s money was a form of inflicting pain, and that’s how I absolved myself from feeling guilty about what I was getting into.

  Jack told me he could introduce me to the two guys in charge, Davone and Rudy. They were brothers, one short, one tall. One dark, one light. People said they had different mothers but the same father, and he
was in jail. Fashioning themselves after Bonnie and Clyde, the two brothers were robbing grocery stores and other mom-and-pop shops around DC. When I heard about all of their capers, I wanted some of that fast money they were making. It sounded dangerous and exciting. And easy.

  Davone and Rudy weren’t looking for another member of their crew, though. And they weren’t impressed by my eagerness.

  “You got a gun?” Davone asked me when I met him at Jack’s house one night.

  “No,” I said.

  Davone turned away from me like he had no use for a kid with my limited credentials.

  “But I can get a gun,” I added quickly, bluffing.

  Davone turned back toward me and smiled real slowly. “You get a gun and then we can talk.”

  “All right,” I said, not immediately knowing how I was going to get a gun, but also knowing that I wasn’t going to let this chance slip away from me. I knew I could figure it out.

  It turned out, getting my hands on a gun wasn’t hard or complicated. Working at a topless bar, I’d met plenty of people who I knew could help me solve this problem. Clive’s was the site of any number of illegal transactions. In fact, I was selling knockoff designer clothes and jewelry in there on the weekends, and I was doing a brisk business. It was actually that business that led me to getting my first gun. It turned out the bouncer Sam, who was this big white guy in his early twenties, liked the sweaters I was selling. I knew he had a gun and so I offered him a trade.