Low Road

by Eddie B. Allen, Jr.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  Preface

  Prelude: Death in Retrospect

  Maturing

  War

  Dope Fiend

  Cash and Bitches

  The Joint

  Publisher

  West Coast

  Prodigal Son

  Legacy: An Epilogue

  Notes on Sources

  Copyright

  For Dad, who taught me to believe

  Acknowledgments

  All praises are due to the One divine and unparalleled Creator for the opportunity to take part in documenting the life discussed in these pages.

  Low Road: The Life and Legacy of Donald Goines is the result of a community effort that could not have been sustained to completion without prayers, support, time, encouragement, and other valuable resources provided by the following: Eddie B. Allen, Sr., and Linell Allen; Charles Glover; my agent and the wonderful ambassador of kwan, Susan Raihofer, who played Mick to my humble Rocky; Joan Coney and Marie Richardson; Monique Patterson and St. Martin’s Press, who took the chance; DMX and Brandon Himmel; attorneys Larry Pepper and Barbara Cohen; Paul Lee/Best Efforts, Inc.; Curtis Jamaal Allen; Sam Greenlee; Imelda Hunt/New Works Writers Series; Fred Girard; Dr. Kenneth Cole; John Hollowell; Janet and Bill Mitchum; Maurice Armstrong; Joe Williams; Lisa Montez; my older, wiser sister, Robyn, and the entire Ussery clan; Craig Ciccone; Wil Segars; Ralph Watts; Tim Pharaoh Muhammad; Lisa B. Lee; Roman Godzak; C. Liegh McInnis; Bentley Morriss; Neal Colgrass; Susan Strunk; William Shackleford; Brenda V. Peek; LaShaun Moore; Janerio Morgan; Shondra Tipler; Peter Goldman; Alisa Giddens; Eric Levin; Racquel Ward; Raymond Stevens; Walter Williamson; Marie Teasley; Maisha Maurant; Erik Perry/Kaboodlz Entertainment; Gil Robertson; Kim Trent; Terrence and Kendra Collier; Phyllis Pollack; Denise Crittendon; Sandra Combs-Birdiett; Steven G. Fullwood; Sonya Vann; Jack Lessenberry; Dwight Cunningham; Rev. Charles “Slim” Lake and my friends at God’s Church of the Streets; Lynda Crist; William Cooper, Jr.; Ruth Seymour; Ozzie Bruno; Gary Pomerantz; Betty Dooley; Samuel “Rickey” Rowe; Leri Ulmer; Jim Lesar; Liberty R. O. Daniels; Nicholas Parham; Tumika Patrice Cain; Tonya and Brandi Neal; U.S. Navy Master Diver (Ret.) Michael Washington; Bill Thomas; Charles Muhammad and the Self Expression Teen Theater board, staff, and students; Jon Richardson; Jelani Jebari; Christopher Woodard; Rochelle Riley-Wilson; James McCarter, Keith Dye, Toni Smith, Vic Doucette, and Dennis Shea; James and Karla Aren; Ben and Gloria Crain; “Cousin” Ray Allen; Larry Davis; Jacqueline Hardy; Stewart Walker; Mansour Bey; Jerry Jones; Alicia Densemo; Dayjanae Mathews; Marcel Riddick; Toya Hankins; Charlie and Karen Thomas; Margaret and Donna Stevenson; Tricia McCaffrey; John Robinson Block and my friends from The Blade in Toledo; lastly, the most patient and helpful staffs of the Detroit Public Library’s Burton Historical Collection and the Family History Center in Bloomfield Hills.

  All praises, all praises, and all praises.

  Foreword

  The year 2004 marked the thirtieth anniversary of Donald Goines’s death. It also marked the year that I produced my first film, Never Die Alone, based on the thirty-year-old Goines book. I’ve read every Donald Goines novel; so as soon as I heard that there was an opportunity for one of them to be turned into a movie, I jumped at the chance.

  I was locked up when I first heard of him, when I first read his books. Here were a set of novels that didn’t always have a happy ending. He wrote about a lot of things that I could relate to. A lot of the characters I knew. King David’s story of living a grimy life, going through personal pain, and gaining a conscience is very relevant to the plight of the black man today. I didn’t like the character. He’s a bastard, and I’m not a grimy person—I’ve come through that stage—but I knew enough about him to try to make him real. I don’t think King David is as amped as I am, and I talk kind of fast, so I had to slow it down. Like an old man talkin’ shit to the young players.

  For all the terrible things he’s done, he doesn’t see himself as beyond redemption. But reality hits, and despite the fact that he’s coming to terms with some of the wrongs that he’s committed, he still gets what he deserves. The message is, “You do dirt; you get dirt.”

  This is a theme with many of the Goines characters. No matter what crisis or trouble pushed them into crime, they get it in the end. I think Donald Goines understood this about life and wanted us to understand it: Everything we do has a price.

  His writing has already inspired me to produce another film. We’re going to do Daddy Cool. I don’t know if I’ll play Daddy Cool. I’m not going to star in every one of my movies. But what I will bring to the film industry is the same thing I brought to the record industry when I came into it—the same thing Donald Goines brought to his books—realism. Uncompromised, unconditional “dog love.” Not love for everybody, but we’ll have a clique, we’ll be tight, and we’ll bring real, official shit to the table. No fake, animated representations. The truth in undeniable. Show somebody the truth, and it can’t be ignored. This is what Donald Goines did. Even though it’s presented as fiction, truth can be taken from every book.

  And even in death, he’s still real.

  —DMX

  (a.k.a. “King David,” of the Fox Searchlight motion picture Never Die Alone)

  March 2004

  Preface

  I can clearly remember the vivid image of the brown-skinned man with the outstretched arm that adorned the paperback cover of my cousin’s book. His sleeve was rolled into a bunch as he prepared to inject himself with a syringe. Above the illustration was the word Dopefiend. I was probably about nine or ten at the time. My cousin was perhaps sixteen or seventeen.

  She read the book intently as we traveled down the highway, my dad at the wheel and Ma riding shotgun. We were on our way to some summer destination or another, as was my family’s custom when school let out and the days became long. My uncle’s daughters were frequently recruited to baby-sit me, particularly when adult activities, like a Bid Whist game, were in the plans or when there was the possibility of a visit to Cedar Point or a similar amusement park not far away.

  I contented myself in the backseat with Rosa, tilting over headfirst onto her shoulder as the steady motion of the vehicle guided me toward sleep. I probably drooled on her arm. It wasn’t until maybe ten years later when I once again encountered the book that had so engrossed my cousin. A copy of Dopefiend somehow wound up on the shelf of my parents’ library. Remembering Rosa’s attentiveness, I picked up the book and flipped through its pages.

  It didn’t take long for me to understand how easily a reader could get lost in the imagery. I found myself taking in the striking descriptions and compelling dialogue as if the characters were acting out scenarios in front of me. Set in the 1970s, Dopefiend tells the story of Porky, a morbidly obese loser, who draws his self-esteem and popularity from drug connections. Things run in favor of the social outcast as he participates in the urban dope game. Porky becomes a neighborhood kingpin, with money, respect, and attention from young ladies who would otherwise ignore him. So great is his dominion among the addicts, as a matter of fact, that his female peers perform the most disgusting of sex acts with dogs for his perverse enjoyment, in order to win his grace.

  Having decided that I would be a newspaper reporter, specializing in coverage of urban and oppressed p
eople, I appreciated the realism of Dopefiend’s account. But I had not learned exactly how real the details of the novel were. They had been taken directly from experiences and observations in the life of Donald Goines. The author had been murdered when I was only two years old.

  He and I shared similarities, but had little in common: We were both writers born in Detroit during the month of December. We both had been raised in two-parent, middle-class households. But that’s about where it ended.

  He was a product of the post–Depression-era city, where men of color still walked a fine line between pride and self-preservation. It was months before his seventh birthday when thirty-six hours of rioting on Belle Isle Park and in neighboring parts of the city left thirty-four dead, twenty-five of whom were black, including a man who had been waiting on a bus at the corner of Mack Avenue and Chene. The eruption, which ended only after state and federal troops arrived to rescue an overwhelmed Detroit Police Department, resulted from a large skirmish on the island, followed by two unfounded rumors: that whites had thrown a black baby off the Belle Isle Bridge and that blacks had raped a white woman.

  I, on the other hand, could not recall a Detroit where people of color were the minority. For most of my life the mayor, police chief, and many prominent business owners were black people. Arabs had begun to operate a large number of the gas stations and small grocery stores in the Detroit I knew. White neighbors, teachers, and police officers would not be seen until my parents moved to the northern suburb of Southfield. And even then, if I mumbled when I spoke or failed to make eye contact with any one of them, it was because of my early shyness, not because I had any familiarity whatsoever with racism.

  But the biggest difference between us lies not in the eras or environments in which we developed. It was the drugs. I had seen the impact of drugs in my own family. Two loved ones had died as a result of using or selling controlled substances. I have never even smoked a cigarette. I considered, and still consider, drugs to be among the worst enemies our communities have ever faced. Mr. Goines, however, became addicted as a youth and, sadly, lived the majority of his life under the influence of narcotics.

  So I had never considered telling a story like his when the friendly young general manager of a small Ohio radio station approached me. I liked Charles Glover. He laughed and smiled a lot, never seeming to take himself too seriously. Mark, a mutual acquaintance, had introduced us during the early months of 1999. I had recently been laid off from a communications job in Detroit and was looking for a freelance opportunity in radio. Mark and I had discussed bringing a public affairs and social commentary show to Charles’s station in Toledo, where I’d lived until the previous year.

  I wrote several scripts, and Mark helped put music together for our proposed segment. After weeks of discussion about the show’s focus and sponsorship possibilities, we had all become comfortable with one another in our working relationship. I can’t remember how it came up, but one afternoon as we sat in his office, Charles mentioned that he’d had a “crazy uncle” in Detroit. We chatted a little more until he revealed that he was Mr. Goines’s nephew. The memories of my cousin reading in the car and the book I found in my parents’ library immediately flashed through my mind.

  Charles explained to us that his mother, Marie, was Mr. Goines’s older sister. He shared memories of growing up around neighborhoods I recognized, while his grandparents, Aunt Joan and “Uncle Donnie,” served as the fabric of his family. He shared how he had approached various writers and literary agents in recent years, hoping to find the person who would recognize the value and significance of a biography about Mr. Goines. There had been one bio, hastily published the same year his uncle died, but Charles said that he and the family regarded it as a poor effort. If I was interested in writing the story, he told me, he would assist by providing not only as many personal recollections as he could produce, but also personal documents, photographs, and other materials that would be helpful in revealing who Mr. Goines was.

  To say his offer was unexpected wouldn’t accurately capture the feeling. Probably the last thing I imagined I’d hear before returning to Detroit that day was that this easygoing broadcast exec was related to the man responsible for Dopefiend, Black Girl Lost, and Eldorado Red. I couldn’t imagine their seemingly incompatible personas having anything to do with one another. But I guess I processed it all rather quickly.

  I had considered writing a biography on another subject prior to our meeting, though under more ordinary circumstances. It moved me that Charles thought enough of my character, not to mention my abilities, that he would trust me to tell his uncle’s story. I accepted the invitation and we agreed to get together for as many meetings and exchanges of information as it took for me to create a written account of the Goines legacy. What followed was approximately two years of research.

  The work that resulted is largely based on a series of interviews with Charles; his mother, Marie Richardson; his aunt, Joan Coney; and other family members, friends, and associates of Mr. Goines and the Goines family. Investigative research of the author’s life was also used but was hindered in many cases because of the destruction of state and federal records, along with delays in compliance with requests for public information. In various places, dialogue is re-created based on recollections given during interviews.

  I pray that this work accurately reflects the people, places, events, and accomplishments that characterized Mr. Goines’s life. May it resonate in the hearts of his readers and admirers as confirmation of his intelligence and creative brilliance, in spite of his conspicuous flaws. May it be added unto the truth of his significance as one of the most important contributors to urban contemporary literature and popular culture.

  Prelude: Death in Retrospect

  The biggest, baddest, motherfuckin’ gangster in history. That’s who he’d wanted to be. Young men in his day dreamed of playing in the National Football League. Dreamed of signing a contract with Motown. Even dreamed of leading their people to freedom. He dreamed of being lawless and untouchable.

  Eventually, he became the Godfather of display racks, bookshelves, and flashlights under children’s bed covers. Now Donnie lay on his back, eyes closed, in a decorated casket, paperback novels tucked beneath his arms. The cause of death was a shotgun wound to the skull, an autopsy report stated. The back of Donnie’s head had to be reshaped by morticians so his corpse looked more presentable.

  It had been a very long thirty-seven years. Now, he would rest.

  Sobs and organ music created eerie sounds around him. Several women buried their heads in the chests and shoulders of their husbands as they filed into the church, down the aisles, and to the place where his body rested. Donnie had touched some of them more deeply than their men previously knew. But absent from the services was Mary, the only woman who’d ever caused him to show himself emotionally vulnerable. A young prostitute, she’d become pregnant and pleaded with Donnie to let her give birth to the child, which she was confident belonged to him. Infuriated by the sentimentalism, he forced her to have an abortion. He believed in putting his bitches to work, and there was no such thing as maternity leave on Woodward Avenue.

  She never survived the procedure. Never even left the clinic.

  Two lives were cancelled, instead of one. Donnie agonized over his guilt. He hurt inside.

  It was not long, though, before he was back on the streets with a vengeance. He went underground, where grief and sensitivity were weaknesses and ruthlessness was tantamount to survival. Raising hell became an art form when anyone crossed him. It was the only way to show nonbelievers who the fuck they were dealing with. It was the streets, ironically, that helped stage Donnie’s brief but memorable literary career. It was the streets, ironically, that gave him the only legitimacy he ever enjoyed during his adult life.

  In the end, however, as his mother, sisters, and a sanctuary filled with other friends, relatives, and admirers of his writing gathered in the east-side building to say good-bye,
it was painfully obvious that the setting in his arena of experiences had changed. His corpse had been moved from a crime scene to a county medical examiner’s office. From the church, it would be taken for burial at a sprawling cemetery in Warren, Michigan. With no headstone to identify it, even his place in the earth would become an obscurity. Weeds and untended growth would reach up to smother the tiny, concrete grave marker, just as demonlike distractions, temptations, and vices reached up from hellish places to smother his brilliance and potential.

  Maturing

  I remember that I was much too young when I first started reading his books, probably in the second or third grade. I recognized people in my neighborhood who were like the characters in his books.

  —Robyn Ussery, enthusiast

  Wham!

  The shocked woman was stung from a blow to her face. A pretty, brown baby lay blanketed safely nearby in the snow, completely oblivious to the rage her mother directed at an unfortunate passerby who had stopped to admire the infant.

  Wham!

  Myrtle struck the bewildered woman again. It surely was not a scene one would have expected to witness in Evanston, Illinois, during the winter of 1934. Two white women fighting on a public street over a Negro baby? Actually, only Myrtle was fighting. The stranger was being thrashed. And actually, contrary to appearances, there was only one white woman. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed Myrtle was, perhaps, even more European in appearance than Claudette Colbert, the Paris-born movie star whose Imitation of Life was in theaters that year. It was entirely understandable, then, that the passerby made the mistake of commenting about Myrtle’s firstborn in such an unflattering way. As Myrtle carried the baby wrapped tightly in a blanket to protect her from the extra chill blowing off of Lake Michigan, the woman approached her, thinking that the three of them shared a common racial heritage. When she asked Myrtle to see the infant, Myrtle proudly parted the blanket to reveal her daughter Ceolia’s bronze face.