For a month, Gary battled his demons on his own. But when it snowed that February, Gary shoveled a dozen walks and made more than twenty dollars. He left the children alone, wandering until he found a corner and a speedball. That evening, saddened at the sight of his brother, high once again, Chris threw Gary out of the house.
The choice then was his mother’s basement or another attempt at detox. “If I go back to Vine Street,” Gary admitted to a friend. “I’m gonna die there.”
He returned to the homeless shelter. He stayed inside for a week. He started struggling through the meetings, the counseling, the group therapy. Once he got a month clean under his belt, he began going out on neighborhood work details with other residents.
In March 1996 Gary slipped away from a work crew and walked from South Baltimore to the Fayette Street strip. Fat Curt was on post when Gary came through asking about product.
“You ain’t been around.”
“I know it. What’s good?”
Curt looked at him. “You sure you up?”
“Yeah,” said Gary. “I’m up.”
Ten minutes later, Gary and his brother June Bey were down in the basement at 1827 Vine Street, cooking and poking and firing. After nearly three months in which he had used only a handful of times, Gary’s body couldn’t handle the usual dose, and suddenly he fell from the bed to the floor.
June Bey panicked. Rather than call 911 immediately, Gary’s brother tried to clean up the mess, to keep a secret that had long been known to everyone in the family. He splashed water on Gary. He picked Gary up and put him on the bed. He spent half an hour getting his brother out of the basement and down Vine Street to another address, and then, finally, he called for an ambulance.
Gary was dead on arrival at Bon Secours.
The funeral at St. James drew more than two hundred mourners, testament to the standing of the McCullough family in that church. Fran could barely walk past the open casket. Miss Roberta was utterly broken. DeAndre swore that for the sake of his father’s memory, he would never use drugs again. He stopped at the casket, touched Gary’s face lightly, and fought back tears. In the back of the church, Ronnie Boice took an aisle seat and wailed her grief.
Much was said by the pastor, some of it quite true. The choir sang. Gary’s white supervisor at Seapride, Paul, brought down the all-black congregation by talking about Gary’s boundless love and then offering a beautiful rendition of “His Eye Is On The Sparrow.”
“Damn,” mused Fran. “The white boy can sing.”
The obituary, written by the family, omitted the essential facts of the tragedy, but nonetheless came close to capturing just how much had been lost: “He always freely gave. Indeed, he often offered spiritual, emotional and financial support and the refuge of his own home to those in need. Deeply philosophical, Gary was always eager to impart the wisdom with which he was blessed via his intuition and spiritual insight, life experiences, discourses, lectures and readings … Still, no words can truly capture the beauty, sincerity and kindness of the person he was.”
Leaving the church, Fran stood on Monroe Street and wiped at her tears. DeAndre gave her a quick embrace.
“The game wasn’t for him,” she said, watching the touts at Fayette. “He wasn’t hard enough to be out here like he was.”
The son nodded. “I know this sounds wrong,” DeAndre said finally, “but I’m almost glad for it. I feel like he was never going to get out of it, you know, he was never going to be what he was, and I think he was sad from knowing that. I feel like he’s at peace now.”
When he stood over his father’s casket and swore his oath, DeAndre McCullough truly believed the words. He always does.
By the summer of 1994, DeAndre was everyday slinging with C.M.B. at McHenry and Gilmor. The arrest in the Gilmor Street stash house hadn’t slowed him much, particularly since the case, involving an event that occurred just after his seventeenth birthday, was yet again referred to juvenile court. As a condition of his probation, DeAndre was prohibited from setting foot anywhere near McHenry and Gilmor—a condition that he managed to obey for almost a month.
By the end of that summer, he was taking hacks to some of the Park Heights drug corners and spending most of what he made on the best snorting heroin in the city. He went clubbing. He bought women. He stayed high. He also took a few small charges, but nothing so dramatic that a juvenile master was willing to violate his probation.
By 1995 DeAndre was on the pipe, at one point going through an entire half ounce of coke in his room on Lorraine Avenue in a single evening. His mother knew; Fran could smell the butane and cooked rock all the way downstairs. By then, though, she was in free fall herself so there was little she could say to her son that would mean much.
Down on his corner, DeAndre began messing the packages, burning through suppliers, and running up debts. In an argument with a dealer named Man, DeAndre teamed with Shamrock and robbed Man’s stash house, taking product and money at the point of a four-four. The dispute might have escalated, save for the fact that Man himself was later wounded by the Terrace boys, and Shamrock went courtside after being charged with a murder stemming from another drug-related robbery. That case fell apart quickly, but Shamrock then caught a drug distribution conviction; he is currently on Eager Street, waiting to be sentenced for violating his probation on that charge.
At home, meanwhile, DeAndre played his dope-fiend moves on his own family. Once, he skipped with Fran’s Independence Card, using it to withdraw a full month’s check money in retaliation for all she had taken from him. He even stole a stash from his cousin Dinky, though he was clever enough to blame R.C. And when R.C. tried to tell Dinky, he got banged for his trouble, though later, Dinky admitted that he had been avoiding the truth, and he quietly offered R.C. an apology.
“DeAndre been getting high too much,” said Dinky mournfully.
And when Dinky was shot to death, DeAndre went over-the-top crazy. The night after the Terrace boys ambushed his cousin on Hollins Street, DeAndre joined up with three other B-and-G regulars, rolling up on the playground at Lexington Terrace and firing into a crowded knot of rivals. That night, the Baltimore and Gilmor crew came through Fran’s door on Lorraine Avenue high and drunk, talking about how they were sure they’d caught bodies. But there was nothing in the morning paper. One bystander had been slightly wounded, nothing more. No matter: DeAndre swore he would catch up with the boys who got Dinky. He’s swearing it still.
At Dinky’s funeral, DeAndre began using morphine. Soon after, he also tried the needle, creating a small, tight line of tracks on one forearm. By then, his ability to make a run with a package was no longer what it needed to be. Two years earlier, at fifteen, he had made Fairmount and Gilmor jump; now at seventeen, his game produced only argument and debt.
On the odd, awkward occasion when he would roll past Riggs Avenue to see his son, DeAndre could see Tyreeka look at him with vague terror. Sometimes he would go into a nod. Other times he would talk out of his head. But always he was bitter and angry, ever more resentful as Tyreeka seemed ever more distant. She had managed to stay in school and was looking toward graduation and her first year of college at West Baltimore’s Coppin State. She was working part time. She was raising DeAnte alone. At some point she had grown past him and DeAndre was smart enough to know it. He tried to tell her nothing was different, that he was getting it together, that he wasn’t getting high.
“But,” Tyreeka told others, “I can tell he ain’t the same.”
When his mother returned to detox, the worst of DeAndre’s ride ended. Coming back clean, Fran gave her son an ultimatum, telling him that he could not continue getting high in her house, that he had to support her effort to stay clean. He argued at first, resenting what he saw as her holier-than-thou pretense.
“You had your fun,” he told her. “Now you telling me I can’t have mine.”
Eventually he softened. Soon after his mother returned to Lorraine and began looking for a county apart
ment, DeAndre checked himself into Oakview for detox, taking advantage of state guidelines that offer minors treatment on demand. But a week later, he checked himself out and visited Tyreeka, admitting to his addiction and blaming heroin and cocaine for all the problems between them.
Tyreeka was frightened, but after much trepidation, she took him back, offering him one last chance. Within two weeks, DeAndre was back down Gilmor and McHenry.
Fran threatened him, told him he would not be allowed to move out to the county with her. Yet the weight of their shared past made it impossible for her to believe in her own threat. For years she had cheated DeAndre; now, when he was cheating himself, she felt too much guilt to put him out in the street.
For the past year DeAndre has drifted between long corner runs and brief interludes in which he struggles mightily to right himself, swearing yet again that he won’t go back, that he won’t use, or sell, or lie to himself about his own weakness. At these moments, he is earnest and genuine. He gets up early. He visits his son. He looks for work, and, if he finds it, he pulls in a paycheck or two before beginning the inevitable slide. Last October his uncle Dan took him out of Baltimore down to Harrisonburg, Virginia, a Shenandoah Valley town where Dan lives and works and where there are no corners. DeAndre worked nearly a month at a McDonald’s there. He liked Virginia, and the people seemed to like him.
On Thanksgiving he came back to Baltimore to see his son and attend DeAnte’s third birthday party. He spent most of his McDonald’s pay on a present, but he showed up high for the party at Tyreeka’s house. He did not return to Virginia.
Earlier this spring, DeAndre got himself in debt to a supplier by the name of Sweetpea, a hardcore player who was known to use a gun now and then. Most threats failed to resonate with DeAndre, but Sweetpea seemed serious about recouping his loss and, more to the point, he seemed to like shooting people. For the first time in his life, DeAndre was on the run—a situation that only resolved itself when Sweetpea was himself shot to death on Gilmor Street in an unrelated dispute. Similarly, this spring marked the first time that DeAndre was locked up on an adult charge with bail attached. It was nothing, really—just an argument at a sub shop. DeAndre claimed he was trying to break up a fight and had been wrongly arrested for assault. Nonetheless he caught a three thousand dollar bail.
He called Fran from Central Booking.
“I need three hundred to get out.”
“Then you best get comfortable.”
He was inside more than a week—the first time he’d been locked up since Boys Village. DeAndre seemed chastened by the experience. For a quiet week or so, he tried to stay inside at night, watch basketball on TV, and write raps and poetry.
These verses are his:
Silent screams and broken dreams,
Addicts, junkies, pushers and fiends.
Crowded spaces and sad faces,
Never look back as the police chase us.
Consumed slowly by chaos, a victim of the streets,
Hungry for knowledge, but afraid to eat.
A life of destruction, it seems no one cares,
A manchild alone with burdens to bear.
Trapped in a life of crime and hate,
It seems the ghetto will be my fate.
If I had just one wish it would surely be,
That God would send angels to set me free.
Free from the madness, of a city running wild,
Free from the life of a ghetto child.
At this writing, DeAndre is just past his twentieth birthday. He professes some surprise at this. He had thought he would be dead by now, like Dinky or Boo or half a dozen other boys who came up with him. When he was younger, he had always imagined his death in stark, violent terms—a gangster’s end, quick and hard and ripe with all the indifference to which a young man likes to pretend.
Live the life, leave the life. Ain’t no big thing.
But the corner is relentless and certain. It can’t be underestimated. It can’t be appeased with pretense or melodrama or the easy fatalism of youth. It waits. It works. It finishes whatever it begins in its own time, in its own way.
Today, DeAndre McCullough, an addict and small-time drug dealer, is still with us.
AUTHORS’ NOTE
This book is a work of journalism. The names that appear in these pages are, in fact, the real names of people who have lived and struggled along West Baltimore’s Fayette Street. The events recounted here—with the exception of those described in the epilogue—took place in 1993.
Our research began in September 1992, when we first ventured into the Franklin Square neighborhood to begin meeting people and making ourselves known. We chose that area almost at random. The established Fayette Street strip that runs from Gilmor up the hill to Monroe Street is one of a hundred, perhaps a hundred and twenty open-air drug markets operating in Maryland’s largest city. As such, it appeared to us typical; Franklin Square therefore seemed comparable to any number of inner-city neighborhoods overwhelmed by the drug trade. Beyond that, we selected West Fayette Street because of its proximity to racially mixed areas. We felt this was important for demonstrating a basic fact: While the vast majority of Baltimore’s major drug markets are located in black neighborhoods, many users serviced by these markets are white. At Fayette and Mount, as on so many other American corners, the demand for heroin and cocaine is decidely multicultural.
Being a bit pale ourselves, we stood out on Fayette Street, and we were initially regarded by many of the corner regulars as police or police informants. Worse, a few of the older heads remembered Ed from his tenure as a patrolman and detective with the Baltimore Police Department, lending credibility to the rumor that we were snitches or plain-clothesmen or worse. A singular memory is the sight of Eggy Daddy, waltzing up Vine Street singing, “I spy for the FBI,” at the top of his lungs, announcing our presence to everyone.
To counter such suspicion, we did a lot of talking, joking, and hanging around with no particular purpose. We played basketball with the rec kids. On warmer days, we took the touts to the corner store for iced tea. We passed out dozens of copies of Homicide, David’s earlier work, to make it clear that we really were writers trying to put together a book. Most of all, we met people on their own terms and did a lot of listening.
To Western District patrol officers, many of whom were unfamiliar with us, we were also suspect. To their way of thinking, whites had little reason to be north of Baltimore Street except to buy heroin and cocaine. This assumption led to a string of police stops, queries, and on occasion, threats of arrest and orders to quit loitering and leave the area. Eventually word of the book project got back to the stationhouse and there were fewer such encounters.
Officers who did know us presented another problem. Early in the year, in the aftermath of a shooting at Monroe and Fayette, a veteran detective made a point of picking David out of a crime-scene crowd and chatting amiably—an interaction that required some explaining as far as the corner regulars were concerned. In time, most officers understood our dilemma and responded by ignoring us, or better still, taking a moment now and then to offer us some mild abuse.
By February, most of the regulars were convinced that whatever else we claimed to be, we weren’t police. No one could recall seeing us buy or sell anything, nor did we seem to do anything that resulted in anyone getting locked up. Basically, we kept telling the true story until folks began to believe it.
Our methodology was simple enough and is best described as stand-around-and-watch journalism. We went to the neighborhood each day with notepads and followed people around. One day, we might follow DeAndre McCullough down to Gilmor and Fairmount; another day, we might be at the rec center with Ella Thompson; the day after, we might head for a shooting gallery with Gary McCullough.
Often, because the presence of notebooks was intimidating to people in the corner mix, we would leave pad and paper in our pockets, our cars, at the rec center, or in the homes of a few people comfortable playing hos
t to us. Events would occur and we would step away for a time to write down the details. While reporters know that this isn’t the best or easiest way to record what they witness, they are also aware that pulling a notepad amid illegal activity is certain to change or stifle events. For this book, the hard way was the only way.
Approximately 75–80 percent of the incidents described in the book were witnessed by one or both of us. On some occasions, important events occurred when we were busy with another individual or otherwise not in the neighborhood. As a result, these scenes had to be reported through traditional, retroactive interviews with those involved. Fortunately, the corner world is so self-contained that in the wake of an incident, several accounts would invariably come back to us from different sources. At that point, it remained for us to sort wheat from chaff—a process essential to all reporting.
We did not begin writing until 1994, choosing to first follow our characters for a full year so that we could make better sense of their experiences. To keep the focus of the narrative on those who live along Fayette Street, we chose not to put ourselves into the story. At times, it may be clear to readers that the authors—described as “hacks” or “friends” or “companions”—are bit players in a particular scene. Anyone trying to guess at the presence of the authors in various scenes might be surprised, however. For example, we were not in English class when DeAndre raised his hand to volunteer for public oratory, or when he cornered Boo at the bus stop, knocking him down and demanding his money. Those incidents were recounted to us. On the other hand, we were in the room when DeAndre went before the juvenile master, when Tyreeka gave birth to her son, and—to our chagrin at the time—we were there when Gary McCullough got jacked by the stickup crew on Fulton Avenue. We have tried to be accurate about the fact of our occasional presence, but at the same time discreet.
The dialogue in the book was either witnessed by one or both of us, or, in a handful of instances, reconstructed from detailed interviews with those involved in the conversation. Similarly, when it is indicated that characters are thinking about something, we have not simply interpolated their thoughts and feelings from their actions. More often than not, we were present at the events upon which the person is reflecting, and their thoughts were verbally expressed to us at the time of the incident or immediately after the fact. In other cases, interior monologues were constructed from repeated interviews.
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