Diesel Heart

by Melvin Carter Jr

  The plane setting down in Minnesota was surreal, but it was a moment I had envisioned, rehearsed, and savored in the taste buds of my mind. This was the moment that had kept me going for the past year and a half. I had anticipated this moment over and over in my imagination: Mission Accomplished—War Hero Returns Home, ticker tape parade. My secret thought was that there should be a special medal of honor for Black soldiers surviving military racism.

  I stopped in the airport barbershop to get a real close last-minute shave with an old-fashioned straight razor. The white barber in the all-white shop seemed aloof, but everyone got sentimental upon realizing that I was returning from a military mission and about to see my family for the first time in almost two years.

  Spring had sprung, this soft gentle day in Pleasantville. Fresh new leaves had recently sprouted just for me. Branches waved to greet me from the side of the road on the slow-motion taxi ride home. St. Paul’s native son was back! Lilac flowers tinged purple with sweetest fragrances celebrated my return. Yes! This was my victorious hero’s return home, my private one-man ticker tape parade, to be milked and savored.

  The taxi rolled to a stop about a block away, around the corner from home. The Carters knew I was back in the country but didn’t know I had left Chicago, and they were not expecting me.

  The neighborhood looked pretty much the same, except that the giant oak tree across the street was gone. As usual, music blared up and down Dayton Avenue from the Carter house’s wide-open doors and windows. Melodies swerved and soared and rhythms pulsated from the front porch, up the street, and down the block. Yes, this must be the place!

  Without knocking, I barged right in. Mom and Terrie happened to be cleaning the front room. They looked at me. I looked at them. We all screamed. My little brother Mark, now much taller than me, appeared from around the corner. My baby sister Paris was now a beautiful woman. Everyone and everything looked so different, and we all panicked. I turned around and ran out the door. Mom and Terrie followed me out to the sidewalk, validating that this was the right place. Paris, Mark, Mathew, and Larry leaped in and out of my arms, pouncing on my back. Momma said that they didn’t recognize me because my face had filled out and I had gained weight.

  After the big reunion, Mom said that we should go to Dad’s job so he could see me. The thought that my dad might want to see me was kind of startling.

  The car rolled up to his workplace. He approached slowly, curiously inspecting his firstborn son. For an instant, a glimmer of joy seemed to trickle across his face. For the first time since my early childhood, he reached out and embraced me.

  15

  Trial and Error

  I stayed at my parents’ house for months, working and paying rent. Dad’s bottom line was school, job, or both. His creed was to work and study as though my life depended on it. Education, working, and survival are synonymous! There is no difference!

  Job hunting. I called Northern States Power Company to fulfill my career in electricity. After days of being placed on hold and given the run-around, eventually an expert authority got on the phone. Clearly he had decoded my blackness and assured me that I had no future in the power plant business, listing several reasons why. Well, that was the end of all that career stuff! I lived off unemployment for a while.

  Henry had already been out for months and had a good job as an airline ticket agent, and he had a new two-bedroom upstairs apartment. It had a state-of-the-art stereo and other appliances that he had worked hard to accumulate. He was excited to show me and so satisfied. But the voice in my mind screamed, You mean to tell me that this is it? I should have been proud of my cousin and happy for him, but inwardly I was bitterly disappointed for us both. Without knowing why, or what I had expected, my response was flat.

  Fatso ’n’ Jasper were now family men, both attending vocational schools. It was great to see them, except they were both drinking too much and growing beer guts. I made them run laps around Como Lake and the Central High School track.

  I also explored the female population. I met a young college student from Mississippi named Irene. She had smooth rich milk-chocolate skin and deep thick natural Afro hair. She was tall, slim, striking, kind of a trophy-type traffic stopper. But she caked on makeup, covering her natural beauty with cosmetic gunk, and wore a cheap blonde wig. Her natural eyebrows were completely shaved off, replaced higher up on her forehead with an eyebrow pencil, and she had long exaggerated fake eyelashes.

  She agreed with everything I said and laughed at all my jokes. But one night under the moon, gazing at the stars, I asked her what she was thinking about. Gently she replied, “Oh, nothing.”

  I pressed on. “Ain’t no such thing as nuthin’! There’s gotta be something on your mind.”

  In a flash she got offended and defensive. “No!” she snapped. “I’m telling you that I ain’t thinking about nothin’! There is absolutely nothing on my mind!”

  But I needed some kind of conversation. By process of elimination, she had helped me realize what I wanted in a real relationship. Good night, Irene!

  My brother Mark’s band, the Purple Haze, was surprisingly great. His horn section attacked complicated, syncopated riffs and complex runs. They featured music by bands like Chicago and Tower of Power. I was astonished!

  Lavender, a small brown-skinned girl from next door, was the band’s self-appointed ballerina and appeared on the dance floor at every gig. The harder she danced, the more her smile beamed. Everyone presumed she was part of the show. She and the music took turns possessing one another. She’d ride the beat like a galloping horse and flutter across the melody, embellishing it with her radiant smile that only the music could invoke. But other than hello, she and I never spoke.

  Sometimes in these days, I’d hop a Greyhound bus eastbound and figure out where I was after I got there. Most of the time it worked out real good because I’d find myself in some Chicago or Milwaukee nightclub.

  One time I bounced over to Kenosha, Wisconsin, barging in on my old buddy Donnie Bedford. He and a carload of rough-looking guys were going to a baseball game at Wrigley Field in Chicago. So I piled in with them, three people squeezed in the front seat and four in the back. The big ol’ raggedy bobsled had no front bumper and no license plates and was filled with Black guys—talk about begging for trouble! And of course somebody lit up a joint. By the time we hit Chicago, the smoke in the car was so thick we could hardly see each other.

  Suddenly police cars out of nowhere pulled us over on State Street in downtown Chicago, instantly surrounding us with dozens of shotguns, rifles, and pistols pointed down our throats. Street cops in uniform, snipers from second-story windows, even drunks and homeless people on the streets had produced weapons. The words “Get that gun out of my face!” came out of my mouth. We were out of the car, our legs spread, hands on the car, the cops extremely rough. We were snatched, grabbed, pushed, pulled, and repeatedly searched, hands deep in my pockets.

  The others were terrified, repeatedly whispering to me, “No, Melvin, please don’t fight!”

  We were arrested and taken to Cook County jail. I had a pocketful of bullets, but for some reason I had left my pistol at Donnie’s house. I was charged with possession of explosives and drug possession for the marijuana in the car. In the process of all the searches, one cop took my last fifteen dollars. At HQ downtown, I complained. They lifted my arms high behind my back, cutting off what little circulation I had left in my wrists due to the cold steel handcuffs. Extreme pain gripped my wrists. Hands from behind choked my throat and pulled my hair.

  The jail was a zoo of multiple chicken coop–like cages stockpiled on top of one another. It took me only four hours in a cage to confirm that I was unfit for captivity. I was released on my own recognizance. Dr. Feelgood and his brother Mike fetched me out of jail and treated me to see the Dells at the famous High Chaparral. Their hit at the time was “Stay in My Corner.”

  Later that summer I returned to Chicago for my trial. A white lawyer frien
d of my mother’s persuaded his white lawyer friend in Chicago to take my case pro bono, as a favor. He sent the Chicago lawyer a letter stating that “Melvin is good, but frisky, and perhaps will always be around some kind of trouble all his life.” The Chicago lawyer was so good, by the time he finished his closing arguments, even I thought I was innocent! I sported my pious-angelic-choirboy face in agreement. The explosives charge was dropped, and the marijuana charge was reduced to a petty misdemeanor. I paid a fine of fifty dollars and raced the heck back to St. Paul.

  The thing most on my mind was how to earn a living. I decided I’d try to become a firefighter, and I passed the written exam. Out of hundreds of applicants, I was the only one who completed thirty sit-ups with a thirty-five-pound weight on my chest, and my physical fitness score was the very highest of all, but I failed the height requirement by a quarter of an inch.

  But then there was the band. Ernie, Benny’s brother, was just released from the marines. He was a great guitar player, and he joined a band from Omaha, Nebraska, called the Show Pushers. They were looking for a trumpet player, so I decided to give it a go. My brother Mark quit his band and joined the Show Pushers, too, bringing in Michael Johnson, a phenomenal alto sax player, and the drummer Big Foot/Big Time Jimmie Ransom. We knew from the very first practice that we had something special. Bob Griffo, the tenor sax player, was a musical monster, soloist and composer. Jimmie, the drummer, was a rhythmic beast; eyes rolled up inside his eyelids when he played, he went into a trance, transformed into living personification of the beat. The rhythm section was already incredible before we got Jimmie. We toured with the big names of that time—Jackie Wilson, the Chi-Lites, the Whispers, Curtis Mayfield, Johnnie Taylor, the Staple Singers—opening for them. After a while on the Chitlin’ Circuit, aspiring drummers waited for our truck to pull into the lot just to help Jimmie set up his drums. We rehearsed at a place in north Minneapolis called The Way, and a little neighborhood guy named Prince came and listened.

  Musically I played well enough to get by, but these guys, including my brother Mark, were legitimate heavyweights. I compensated with lots of showmanship and great stage presence. We were going to hit the big time. We had several moments of true glory, negotiated a recording contract with Stax, and recorded at the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama. In about a two-year time span, we had covered well over a hundred thousand miles, much of which consisted of riding in the back of rented U-Haul trucks and vans. Once about two-thirty AM in Atlanta, Georgia, where we had opened up for Jean Knight, whose big hit was “Mr. Big Stuff,” we got into a heated argument over whether she was good or not. Suddenly the police barged in and arrested me and Mark, as well as four others, for disturbing the peace. The Atlanta jail was awful—overcrowded, and with endless rows of beds with metal webbing.

  On stage. Left to right: Bob Griffo, Michael Johnson, me, Mark.

  Outside of going to jail, routine starving, and occasional homelessness, it was a rich, intriguing experience. We traveled the Deep South, the back hills and heavy woods. We stopped in places that would make anthropologists’ mouths water. I saw poverty shocking and unimaginable, homes with walls made of cardboard, roofs made of discarded street signs and billboard parts, and, of course, no indoor plumbing. After-hours joints, bars, nightclubs, greasy spoons. One after-hours joint built down near a hidden creek had a fishing hole in the floor where they’d catch the catfish, cook it, and sell dinners.

  At some locations, we would be mobbed for autographs and used bodyguards. At others, nobody knew our name. Truth is, we didn’t make much money. We were doing great to have something to eat and a roof over our heads.

  But before too long it was time to go back to St. Paul, get a job, and think about settling down. St. Paul was a welcoming place. I was back at Mom and Dad’s again. Paris got me ’n’ Mark paper-pushing jobs at Honeywell. Although I was making very little money, I was glad to know where my next meal would come from and to have my own car.

  Outside 1065 Dayton, our family home, with brother Mark. I’m sitting on my trumpet case.

  Soon after this return, a carload of women approached me on the street, inviting me to a world peace meeting. It turned out to be a Buddhist gathering. Buddhism, to me, was more a philosophy than a religion. The conversation was about daily practicing of beliefs, above and beyond the religious “Thou Shalt Nots.” Before too long, I was chanting every morning and every evening. Buddhism forced me to face, confront, and redirect all my deepest-seated issues. It focused my energies, guided me to concentrate all that accumulated anger and all that energy to propel me in directions that were in my own best interest rather than raw rage and rampages. What Huff and all the brothers had said back in Bouknadel stayed on my mind. Gradually, who I was flickered in and out of focus. I continued searching and seeking meaningful conversations with young ladies. My spirit told me there was someone out there just for me.

  In November of 1970, while I was making my way in my new job, I had a shock. Ronnie Reed, the Central High School homecoming king, Ronnie, the all-star high school football running back, Ronnie, among my closest childhood playmates, also my tormenter, whom I loved dearly and even protected at times, had been arrested. Ronnie was arrested for armed robbery of an Omaha bank and conspiracy to kidnap the governor and to hijack an airplane!

  On a cold snow-blizzard December day, Dad thoughtfully sat me down in the living room. He said that it was about time I started thinking about what I’d want in a wife and in a family of my own. He reflected, “Don’t get me wrong! Ain’t nothing wrong with a ready-made family. There are lots of good single women with children that need a father. And that’s fine if that’s what you want. But you’re at the age where if you wait much longer, either you’ll decide or circumstances will decide for you.”

  Just as I thought the conversation was over, he went on. “One more thing, son!” Dad was up on his feet pointing out the window at the thick heavy newly falling snow. “Son, it’s cold out there. You are employed, got a car and a good job, and you’re all set. Don’t think of this as me putting you out in the cold …” His heart seemed heavy, his voice deep and soft, practical, logical, reasonable, and businesslike. “Son! Do not take it like that! But you are twenty-three years old. Your mother and I have done our duty as far as you are concerned. We’ve given you what we have and have more children in this house to raise. You don’t have to leave right away! Take all the time you need, a few weeks if necessary.”

  What I heard was, “Get your shit and get out!”

  I moved in with a fellow Buddhist, sharing rent for several months.

  Honeywell was good to me, except for the nature of the job and the salary. The possibilities of raises and promotions were promising. But the idea of a suit ’n’ tie job was better than the job itself, and it sure beat ditchdigging, dish washing, and the assembly line. It was “using my mind instead of breaking my back.” My job title was Analyst, Planner, and Expeditor. My task was to plan and push piece parts to completion and have them done by due dates. So every day I pushed, argued, and fought for stuff I really didn’t give a damn about. I had good bosses, but the workplace environment was rather hostile. Like the Aretha Franklin song said, “I can’t get no satisfaction! No! No! No!” My weekly binge drinking and drunken party rampages were still an issue. I talked myself out of quitting my job time and again.

  Not getting any satisfaction, feeling crummy in the first place, I decided to drop in to Augie’s Bar, a Minneapolis strip joint. It had been a couple of years since I saw my old friend Irene, and now she had reverted to nightclub stripping. I was glad to see her. We had a nice reunion, but it was painful and didn’t do me any good.

  Staggering out of the club, more bewildered by the experience than under the influence of alcohol, I found myself down the street at a different nightclub on Hennepin with live music and dancing. The band was kickin’ and the music was swingin’. As I sat at the bar brooding, my mind in a haze, “Ain’t you Mark Carter’s older
brother?” came from a voice behind me. It was Lavender, now an attractive young woman, no longer the little sister next door. Her smile was generous. Our conversation uplifted me. But the music called her, and she had to get back out there on the dance floor.

  Eventually the drummer hit the final beat for the night. Most of the patrons left right away, but I lingered a short while. “Everyone please drink up and leave. Time to go home or some other nasty place, but you’ve got to leave here,” came the voice.

  So, cool. I slammed down the rest of my drink and strolled on down the avenue, then came upon some excitement in the street. A small crowd had gathered, apparently a fight or something, in my line of travel. Some guy was making a spectacle beating his girlfriend, and the mob was egging him on. She was sitting on the sidewalk. He was pulling her by her hair with one hand and was about to hit her again with the other.

  As I got closer, I recognized her. It was Lavender, the dancer. Looking casual, I strolled on through, stepping between him and her, lifted her by the hand, continuing on, hardly breaking stride. “Come on, baby, you don’t have to take this,” I said. Still ballerina like, she rose from the sidewalk and went with me as I guided her down the street.

  Her boyfriend was livid. “Who the fuck is you, nigga?”

  As gently as possible, I whispered, “I’m her brother.”

  He went mad, calling me a liar, shouting, “This is my bitch!”

  I picked up the pace. He and his boys stayed in tow. He now stalked me in a low crouch, threatening me with an unseen weapon in his right front pocket. “Nigga’, you gonna die tonight!” His boys agreed, “Uh-huh …” They flanked the outer perimeter of my peripheral vision. “Nigga’, you gonna die tonight!” His hand in his pocket clutched a weapon.

  Luckily, a Minneapolis police car rolled by as the cops gawked at what was going on. It slowed down the action, providing time for my instincts to kick in. We ducked into a dark parking lot, the boyfriend still stalking along. We moved past parked cars between buildings, until we found ourselves fenced in, trapped, nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide! Although my back was to him most of the time, I keenly sensed every move he made.