“Well, Payton told me it’s not automatic. Something about a new coach.”
“Whatever, man. You know your sister is over the top.”
“I hear you, man.”
“Isn’t it interesting how they used to be roommates and cheer together and now we hooked up?” Lance asked me all out of the blue.
Us guys didn’t really know how to express our feelings, we didn’t wear them on our sleeve or anything. It wasn’t easy for us to just be transparent, but I think he was trying to say that he really appreciated our growing bond and I did want to look deeper, care about my boys a little more, so I said, “You ain’t half bad, Shadrach. Even though I still remember you trying to take my girl when I first met you.”
“Aw, come on now, Perry. You had dissed her. You need to be thanking me.”
“Thanking you, what?”
“Come on, check this out. If I hadn’t of gotten with her, you wouldn’t have gotten jealous and wanted her back, right?”
“Boy please, I had wanted her back way before she lost her mind thinking you had something on the ball.”
We just laughed. It was really good just hanging out with him. We knew the only way to really have our relationship grow was to keep God in the center of it to make sure that we were keeping each other accountable.
Later, as we sat there watching our sisters try out and their names had been called again as Georgia cheerleaders, we didn’t waste time giving them the flowers we picked up from the local Kroger grocery store and getting back on the road.
“I’m serious man, you gon’ hook me up with a girl—obviously she’s a believer. You think she’s alright? I want to meet her.”
“I don’t know. I’ve been rethinking it all.”
“See, see. Perry, what, dang!”
“I mean she’s been through a lot, this chick. She’s been through a lot. I’m not going to put her business out there and stuff, but I just don’t know if you’re ready.”
“I mean, I know I’m in a different place. I was a knucklehead for quite some time, but finally being able to experience the position of starting quarterback humbled me. Getting out there and having the crowd boo. I learned that you may want some things but you really better be ready for them, and I do want a female in my life, if she’s cool. I’m ready to do the right thing.”
When we stopped off for gas and he went to go use the john I called up Savoy.
“Hey babe, you got plans tonight?”
“Hey babe, I miss you. I’m definitely excited to see you.”
“I got a favor though.”
“Uh oh, what is it?”
“That whole double date thing? You hated it, I know, but I’m trying to hook Lance up.”
“With who? I ain’t got no girls he’ll like.”
“I don’t know if you remember that girl that I met when I was at Hilton Head?”
“Oh Blondie!”
“Her name’s Anna.”
“Yeah, Blondie. I know her, what? She was looking at you.”
“So, Lance was looking at you.”
“Maybe all four of us will be down for doing the same thing—you down for us hooking up?”
“As long as I don’t have to be her girlfriend it will be cool.”
“You ain’t gon’ be rude or nothing are you?”
“Perry, me rude?”
I gave her Anna’s number and she told me she would coordinate the details and call me back if Anna couldn’t do it. Otherwise, Lance and I would head straight over to Max & Irvinn’s Pub where they had arcade games and good food.
“I’ma treat you, man,” I said as we walked into the place.
“Good, cause you know my folks still got me on limited income,” Lance teased.
“So, you really want to meet that girl? You gon’ do the right thing?” I asked him as I looked around for Savoy.
“Yeah, when can we do it? Next week?”
“How about now?” I smiled as I turned his head over to Savoy. She waved at the two of us and motioned for us to come over.
“Well, I know that ain’t her, that’s your girl.”
And then Anna stood right beside her wearing a cute black dress, not outshining my girl, but both of them were fly, and the dudes all up in the place were checking the two of them out. Lance hit me in the back.
“Alright, alright. I see what you doing. Let’s go.”
I knew he liked her. After we had dinner Savoy and I left to go play games and leave the two of them to talk. I knew the way they were staring at each other there was some kind of connection, but I had done my part. It was time for them to see if they could make a go of it. How would they know unless they had some alone time to be able to thoroughly start checking things out?
Getting into Danger
“Son, I need to talk to you right now,” my dad said with a stern face as he stepped on my doorstep unannounced.
“Hey Dad, sure. Yeah, come in,” I said, wondering what in the heck I had done now. I had gotten a few Cs on some papers, which was very unlike me, but I didn’t think Tech was in the business of sending quiz grades home. Yeah I had spent a little money on the card, but it was nowhere near maxed out. I had even gone to support my sister and I got right back up and went back to school, so something was up. I hope he didn’t come up here to say I was rude or something. What was this visit all about?
“I’m not trying to come in, son, you need to get your wallet, keys, personals, whatever and come on out. We need to take a ride. Hey guys!” my dad said to Lance and Deuce. He waited outside while I grabbed my things.
My boy Deuce said, “Ooh, somebody’s in trouble.”
“What did you do?” Lance asked.
“My dad’s standards are so high he makes what Jesus requires look like bad parenting, you know what I’m saying,” I chuckled.
“You know I understand—every other night my dad’s calling me asking me have I done this or that,” said Lance.
“Just take it like a man and move on, at least you’ve got a father that cares,” Deuce said. “You too Lance. I haven’t seen mine in ages. I would say stay out of trouble, but since you are going to be with pops…you straight.”
“He, he!” I said to Deuce.
When I met my dad outside, he said, “Son, I don’t need your smack, I need to get on back to Augusta.”
“Alright Dad, what do you want to do, walk somewhere to talk?” All of a sudden he back-handed me on the back of my head.
“Ouch, what was that for?”
“Get in the car, boy.”
He unlocked the sports car, and I couldn’t even appreciate how fly it was because obviously he was tip.
“What have you been thinking, Perry? You go from hanging with one suspect character to hanging with another. I can’t believe how gullible you are sometimes.”
All of a sudden I felt like someone had punched me in the chest. Had the feds called my dad?
He confirmed my worst fear by saying, “I got a call from the Drug Enforcement Agency informing me that they need your cooperation.”
“Dad, I told them I would cooperate in any way they needed me to,” I said, almost pouting. It was none of his business; I was a grown man now. I had to take care of my own problems. Yeah, I had made a mess and now I was ready to clean it up.
“Well, let me just say right now, with as much as you have on the ball, to get caught up in some federal scam! They want you to go to that jail and talk to Mario, to tell him to confess about some other bigger ring.”
“Dad, I can’t make him do or say nothing!”
“Well, if he can make you say and do stuff and land you in this situation, then you need to find out how to be persuasive and get him to do what’s in your best interest and his. Son, you used to be a leader and now all this following stuff, all this I don’t want to get my hands dirty, it’s too late for that. Your hands got mud on ’em and I hope it ain’t sat in there so long it won’t come off. I can’t believe you ain’t call me when you had to t
alk to the cops. That mess is illegal, we could have had them right then and there. Thankfully you cleared yourself on the tape but we don’t know what some of this leaked. And if what they’re asking is for you to persuade that guy to talk so he can get out of jail, then you need to be the very first one up there tomorrow morning. Skip whatever class, whatever test, whatever Coach wants you to do and get your butt down there to the federal penitentiary. They’re already waiting on you to be there at eight.”
I sighed.
The next morning, I couldn’t believe I was walking with the same crazy agent that had opened his mouth and ratted on me to my pops in the first place. Now he wanted my help, but he’d gone behind my back and made this even more of an issue.
“Why couldn’t you have just asked me?” I said to him as we walked through the triple set of steel doors.
“Son, protocol says because you aren’t twenty-one there are certain things we have to do. You might not like that, I can understand that, but this is my job and I’m not here to make friends. Now you have a job to do, you need to convince your boy to talk to us.”
“Just how do you expect me to do that, Mr. Right-by-the-Book?” I asked.
“I don’t know and I don’t really care, but I know you’re smart and a creative boy. You’ll figure something out.” Then he turned around and slammed the door, leaving me in a room alone. Then I heard through an intercom that Mario would be in in just a second, feel free to sit, stand, and do whatever I liked. I was so angry to be here in the first place that I didn’t really take in the eeriness of the whole place. I know most of the men that are incarcerated are black, and it just made my skin feel like a spider was crawling all over it at the thought of feeling trapped, unable to come and go as I pleased, only able to eat when someone says.
Alright Lord, I know you get tired of me time after time coming to You asking You for help but I need You, give me the words to say.
“I can’t believe they brought me in here to see you,” Mario said quickly, then he banged on the door that they had just brought him through and said, “Let me out now. I don’t want to see this person. Let me out.”
“Come on man, Mario. Can you just hear me out?”
“What, what you got to say to me? You the one who got me in this mess.”
“Hold on, partner. It’s because of you that you’re in here and you’re having to deal with this.”
“You don’t know what it’s like in here.”
“So, you need to work with the feds to get out.”
“And then what, be dead? I don’t think so. I’ll just deal with the thugs looking at me from every direction, looking at me like I’m their new meat.”
“Mario, you really have got a lot on the ball, you’re so tough, man. The only reason you’re doing all of this is because you were pressured into this in the first place. Turn the heat back on those crooks. They’re selling dope back to our community, messing up our race, messing up our future, messing up America.”
“Oh, so what, you signed up for the army now?”
“I’m just saying don’t let them let you take the fall, while they continue to sabotage the world, pushing us stuff. Don’t do it.”
For about five minutes we just looked at each other.
“I know it won’t be easy cooperating, but just think about it, man,” I said finally, realizing that he had to want this for him. “I’ll be here for you, dude. I care about you a lot.”
I got up, knocked on the other door and got out.
Five days had gone by and the feds had called me every single one of them.
“Your boy isn’t cooperating. You must not have said the right things.”
Now, they heard everything I said, I did all I could, but yet I was the one to blame because Mario was taking the heat, wanting to stay in prison and take the fall. I kept praying—I even fasted, which was something I hadn’t done in a long time. Legally they didn’t have anything on me, they couldn’t charge me, but ethically it could really screw me up if I was tied to all of that. When the phone rang and the prison’s phone number came up, I was so uneasy. I was hoping that it wasn’t them wanting me to come back up there and talk to him again. I had given it all I could and I was so shocked to hear Mario’s voice.
“Man, it’s me. I’ve been thinking about what you said, dude, and they are about to let me out of here. I told them all I know and he’s going down.”
“You need to stop by the crib a little later. We need to celebrate.”
“I got to go gather my things and then they going to move me. Perry, you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I’m just shocked; it’s been a couple of days and I didn’t think you gave a crap about what I had told you.”
“Yeah, I heard you. I heard you. I messed up a lot of things at school and I know the fans think I’m crazy, but I got talent. I can play in the USFL, I can play in Canada. Give me a chance I can play on someone’s practice squad and play in the Super Bowl one day. The sky’s the limit, when I clear myself of all of this I can then be back on track.”
“That’s what I’m talking about Mario, yeah.”
“Plus, I’ve been clean. I’ve been in jail for these two weeks. I’m able to think. Those drugs can mess a dude up, you know?”
“Yeah, man, I know.”
“You don’t know, boy, you ain’t never smoked nothing.”
“I’m just saying I ain’t got to smoke it to know what it do to folks. So you about to get out, cool. I’ma see you later, right?”
“Yeah man, yeah.”
“Mario, man…ummm, I didn’t want to say it overly sensitive like a girl or whatever…” I was proud of him, I just didn’t know how to come out and let him know it.
“I got you man, I got you.”
“Yeah man, you feeling me? Cool.” As I hung up the phone I didn’t realize that I had two eavesdroppers listening to my every word.
“Dang, can a brother have a conversation without everyone in the whole world trying to hear him?”
“Alright, I know he’s getting out of jail, but I know you not about to go and hang out with him,” Deuce said. “That’s just crazy, man.”
“Yeah, man, that’s just like asking for trouble all over again. What you doing opening the door to trouble?”
“He’s clean, okay? He’s getting out of jail.”
“Yeah, okay. He gon’ say whatever he got to say to get you back over there. He knows you got a couple of dollars from your daddy, he knows you’ll feel some sort of obligation from him blaming you for all his mess, but man, please don’t fool with him,” Deuce commented.
I just sat down on the couch and scratched my head. They had a point, but I had to believe that Mario learned a great lesson and I was smarter now. I could believe and trust everything he said.
“He’s my boy, okay? I’m not trying to be disloyal to people, okay. How you treat people comes back on you, plus the word says we’re supposed to be our brother’s keeper.”
“Yeah, and doesn’t it say that we’re supposed to flee from fornication and guilt and a bunch of other reasons why you should not be hanging out with Mario?” Lance pointed out.
“Right, right,” Deuce said.
“I hear y’all and I appreciate you.”
Deuce came over and shook me. “Listen, get it through your brain that hanging with him will be real stupid. Mario is slick, Perry. I know you think you know a lot and I’m glad you speaking the word and what Jesus said and all that. I know I’m trying to grow in my word too, but some folks you just got to let loose. You let him know cooperating was the best thing for him and now what, you gon’ give him a chance to screw you again?”
“Get off me!” I said, brushing his hand off my shoulder.
“Alright, fine. Do what you want to, but if you end up in jail for real, messing with this dude again, don’t come calling me. I’m telling you right here and now that he is crazy. I was the one who went there with him, remember? I was the one saying give him a chance. L
et him do this and do that. Lance was the one that knew he was foul. I got burned once by him. It ain’t goin’ be no more. You, it’s been what, three or four times? Come on, Perry, don’t be stupid.”
I walked into my room and slammed the door. Oh, I had heard what they said and it had made so much sense.
My phone rang later on that night and when I saw that it was Mario, I didn’t pick it up. Shoot, he wasn’t going to get me into something else.
The next day Mario called me seven times. I ignored all of his calls but then when I was in class and flipped it open because I forgot to turn it off, he just started screaming. “I thought you was my boy? I thought you cared about me. You get me out here and then you ain’t nowhere out here to help.”
“Help you with what, Mario? You just said you out, what you need me for?”
“Trying to move some of my stuff to storage.”
“You got protection for that.”
“We talked about it man, I don’t need none.”
“What?!”
“They told me to take a few days to think about it, but I don’t need none. Ain’t nobody messing with me. They don’t even know I’m messing with them like that, but it ain’t like I got somebody to hang out with that’s worth something. You talk about God. You talk about me living my life the right way and then when I need you to be there for me, to hang out and stuff, show me where I’m supposed to go, you just kick me to the curb? You a trip man, I ain’t trying to get you in no trouble. I’m trying to get at you to help me stay out of it. Whatever though, I should have known you ain’t no good.”
Was he right?
All through the rest of my class I couldn’t concentrate. Mario’s accusations were weighing heavily on my mind. How could I convince him of doing the right things if I slipped from him completely? In the Bible, Jesus went into the bars when the disciples had messed up, to win souls for Him. If I was going to be ready to stand up for God I was going to have to be ready for anything that came. If Jesus could be crucified and get up and rise from the dead, certainly He was protecting me, and I really felt a strong calling that He wanted me to help. I knew where Mario stayed—he had an apartment right off of campus. I went over there and he was gathering his stuff.
Promise Kept (Perry Skky Jr.) Page 8
