Low Road

by Eddie B. Allen, Jr.

  Donnie walked into the Chronicle lobby unannounced and stopped at the front desk. He asked for Marie Teasley, a reporter whose byline he had followed enough to recognize her name. She kept track of the Detroit social scene, of which he could see himself becoming a part. A receptionist telephoned upstairs to the reporter as she worked in the newsroom.

  “A young man is here to see you,” the clerk said. “His name is Donald Goines.”

  The weather was warm that day, and it wasn’t uncommon for visitors to stop in unannounced. In spite of its changing focus, the Chronicle was still regarded as a community institution. It was located one street over from Masonic Temple auditorium, around the corner from Cass Tech High and in the immediate vicinity of office buildings, so there was a fair amount of foot traffic and vehicle flow from the nearby Lodge Freeway. It was fairly convenient for anyone in the neighborhood, or working downtown, to stop in and pick up a newspaper or place a business ad. Marie watched Donnie as he walked the stairs to the second floor. She had heard his name before but didn’t specifically place it. She thought she’d read about one or two of his crimes, though Donnie really hadn’t raised the kind of hell that would legitimately earn him the title of newsmaker, hard as he may have tried. Nonetheless, Marie associated the uncommon Goines name with dicey dealings. It was certainly not one she heard in any of her professional circles.

  “Are you Marie Teasley?” Donnie asked as they shook hands.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Donald.”

  She noticed that Donnie carried with him a couple of his books, but she had no inkling about why he was there at her office. Although she and columnist June Brown frequently had readers who popped in and asked to meet them, Donnie’s introduction had a purpose behind it. Marie wrote a popular column called the “Jet Set.” It highlighted the interests and achievements of people on the move. Anyone from a student at nearby Wayne State University to a party host might receive mention in the “Jet Set,” depending on that particular week’s news. The column was included in a ten-page lifestyle section that featured fashion, food, and entertainment, among other related topics. Donnie told her that he read the “Jet Set” and enjoyed it a great deal. Pleasantly surprised to hear him say he had become an author, Marie decided she would conduct an impromptu interview. They talked as Donnie sat by her desk.

  The reporter was a little taken aback, however, when she saw the titles Donnie handed her.

  “Oh, Lord,” she thought to herself.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Donnie said, reading her thoughts. “I’m writing my life.”

  It was an unsolicited confession, and to a stranger. His new outlook allowed him a freedom he probably hadn’t experienced in years. Marie flipped through the pages, immediately struck by Donnie’s intimate knowledge of the subject matter they discussed. She asked how he wrote with such familiarity. Again, Donnie explained with complete honesty that it had all been a part of who he was since his boyhood in the North End of Detroit.

  “But I’m coming through it,” he proudly added.

  Marie was impressed by the way Donnie handled himself. She would include him in her column. He never even had to make the formal pitch. Not much later, Marie was told about an assignment. Doris, a cousin on the Goines side of the family in New York, was so proud of Donnie’s achievement that she wanted to put something together for him. She made her way to Michigan and threw Donnie a book-signing party. Relatives and friends gathered at a downtown hotel room where they lavished the man of the hour with praise. Donnie enjoyed all the attention. There were probably more congratulations offered there than he had received in all of his thirty-five years. Marie Teasley was among the well-wishers in attendance. She wrote an item for the paper and got a photograph of Donnie published along with it. Now thousands of people would know the name and face of Donald Goines. During that time, he actually managed the strength to lighten that monkey on his back and reduce his heroin consumption. For a moment, all too brief, it looked as if everything was coming together.

  * * *

  James Brown became known as the “hardest-working man in show business,” but for dry cleaning, he couldn’t come anywhere near touching Joe Goines. The family patriarch was still operating North-side at an amazing eighty-five years old when his son’s first book was published. He had always been a little guy; however, those who learned about his bankroll during the years described him differently. Neighborhood folks often used the nickname “Big Joe.” It had a glorious connotation, not unlike the “Big Chief” title he used in his occasional unwinding rituals, but it also revealed the esteem with which he was held. Men such as Joe and Shorty Hunt, who operated Hunt’s Market, were essentially the backbone of the community. Their dedication to providing service was the sort that had helped keep black neighborhoods together. In truth, Joe had never hated the color; he just hated the hassles associated with blackness. And with the help of his wife, he had successfully raised and sheltered three children from a good many. Marie, Donnie, and Joan knew nothing of the terrifying, sanctioned racism that was everywhere when their parents grew up in the South, and they would never have to work for the white man as long as the family business remained. Still, they chose different routes.

  For her part, Myrtle never failed to support her boy’s vision of a successful literary career. She had no way of imagining that in the earliest stages of his becoming a popular author, Donnie would deeply wound her. In 1972, the entire world might as well have known what he thought of his mother with the introduction of two words: whore son. Despite her knowledge that the combined words formed the title of his second book for Holloway House, the detailed chronicle of events in the life of a Detroit prostitute’s only child cut Myrtle to the core. Whoreson: The Story of a Ghetto Pimp sprang forth from Donnie’s mind, not his upbringing. It was the product of both personal recollection and imagination. He really hadn’t intended to publicly embarrass loved ones. Had not meant to make any particular commentary about his rearing at all, at least not on any conscious level. Donnie was simply doing what had gotten him a foot in the publisher’s door—writing what he knew. Myrtle, however, wasn’t anywhere close to thinking that way. This particular book, her boy had chosen to write in the first person. He had become the voice of Whoreson Jones, the story’s bizarrely named central character. In Whoreson’s words, Donnie told of how Jessie, a young, attractive woman who sells sex for a living, gave birth with the help of Big Mama, the boss of a tight prostitute stable in Black Bottom. Jessie has conceived the child with a Caucasian trick, who Whoreson will never know, leaving him with a beigelike hue that elicits the same hurtful nicknames Donnie was called as a boy. The plot is set in the same city, near some of the same neighborhoods and surroundings where the Goines family had been settled for going on forty years. But if these fact and fiction parallels weren’t enough, there was the specific description of Whoreson’s arrival into the world. No fanfare. No theatrics. Nothing even as compelling as the cutting of an umbilical cord. It was the season and the year of Whoreson’s birth that begged to be read as autobiographical. Myrtle found it almost impossible not to wonder if she was actually the composite for this Jessie, about whom her son had written:

  From what I have been told, it is easy to imagine the cold, bleak day when I was born into this world. It was December 10, 1940, and the snow had been falling continuously in Detroit all that day. The cars moved slowly up and down Hastings Street, turning the white flakes into slippery slush. Whenever a car stopped in the middle of the street, a prostitute would get out of it, or a whore would dart from one of the darkened doorways and get into the car. Jessie, a tall black woman, with high, narrow cheekbones, stepped from a trick’s car, holding her stomach. Her dark, piercing eyes were flashing with anger. She began cursing the driver, using the vilest language imaginable about his parents and the nature of his birth.

  Donnie had placed Whoreson’s birth date only five days and four years apart from his. True, Jessie bore no physical resemblance
to his mother, but the book’s other references were sufficient to hurt Myrtle’s heart. Had she given Donnie any reason to see her as a whore? Was she somehow responsible for his poor choices? Donnie and his sisters labored to convince her that the thoughts and observations in the book belonged completely to a fictional character, though they never believed she fully accepted the explanation. After all, the facts remained: Donnie had run away from her to Korea and returned a different person. A man-child in a not-so-promising land. Was there something more his mother could have done to show him a better means of making his way through this world? It would be several books later before he acknowledged Myrtle in the same public way; this time there would be no confusion about his message. He thanked her on a dedication page, writing “… to my mother, Myrtle Goines, who had confidence in my writing ability.”

  Black Gangster reached book racks by summer, the same year as Whoreson. Donnie was at the start of a creative torrent that wouldn’t slow down any time soon. Overall, it didn’t take much for him to come up with a scenario in the vein of what he had already sold to Holloway House. He had plenty of those. The mechanics of the storytelling could always be worked out with his writing coaches on the West Coast. Donnie located a character named Prince at the center of Black Gangster. In the opening pages, Prince is being let out of his cell at Jackson as he and other prisoners are led to the mess hall. Suggesting the author’s familiarity with the history of the old-time Detroit mobsters, such as those in the Purples and the Little Navy Gang, Donnie brought Prince out of the pen and up through the ranks of the underground as a bootlegger. Finally, the character finds himself as the powerful boss of organized crime. Like Dopefiend, it would become an urban classic. Donnie had finally matured to the point that Prince’s ascension no longer resembled his personal aspirations. There was, however, a personal aspiration he held outside of his writing career, one he’d held for many years: to kick. To kick, or break the addiction, was, in fact, the most deeply held desire of many an addict. It was true that he’d done terrible things, undoubtedly contributed tears and heartache to the lives of others. At various times, he had even been deemed unfit to exist as a human being outside of the strictest twenty-four-hour supervision. Donnie knew within himself that no person who was controlled by any source was fit to be called anything except a slave. Perhaps the most torturous form of slavery was the one that had complicity at its root. The kind that felt like hell to let go. He was tired of heroin’s torture. Had been since that first time he asked his mother to lock him in the bedroom. However tired he was, though, he wasn’t ready to sign himself over to the whitecoats. A rehab clinic or hospital was more than he felt ready to deal with. Maybe the concept of confinement and restrictions seemed too much like prison.

  Marie was now married to her third husband, a career military man named Warren Richardson. She and her clan, including Charles, who had become a free-spirited young performer, settled in an area of Georgia where Richardson was stationed. The community of Warner Robins was about 120 miles south of Atlanta. Located in the central region of the state, it was relatively small in size with a population of about 30,000. Marie had become accustomed to traveling the country and relocating when necessary. Her children would total four, with the birth of Jean, a daughter. Detroit virtually became a second home in the time and space that separated them from the city. As Donnie continued adjusting to his new professional direction, he decided that a change of scenery was in order. He gathered his belongings and headed south to spend time with his sister and her family. Donnie would use the time in Warner Robins to continue his writing but also to try and distance himself from familiar temptations. With Joe and Myrtle slowing down and Joan tending after her own clan, he could use a support network, and he hadn’t spent a great deal of time with his big sister in recent years. Meanwhile, the nephew he’d spent the most time and energy trying to coax—or corrupt—into manhood had developed a talent for music. Charles could sing and play drums. He began writing songs and preparing for what he hoped would be a career of making records and grooving on the stage. His bands performed as Round House, Free Soil, and Doc Holliday. They played rock and blasted southern blues. It was rare for a drummer to handle lead vocals, but Charles could melt soul into the microphone. Like much of his generation, he was heavily influenced by the Motown Sound. He grew to love Marvin Gaye. Yet, Charles was versatile enough to sing like a white boy when the music called for it. He began to dress and adapt himself to the part of universal rock rebel, in the young and free tradition of a long line that preceded him. And like a long line of musicians’ mothers before her, Marie was less than thrilled. She knew of her son’s talent, but the accoutrements daunted her. Heels and pouches had somehow never fit in with the image she had envisioned for her oldest boy, no matter what his career choice.

  It was cool for Charles to be able to reconnect with his uncle. To whatever extent that he had become hip or street wise, it was not without Donnie’s influence. Charles remembered the way he’d walk the neighborhood in Detroit when he was younger, without fear of a hassle from anyone. His uncle’s reputation had its benefits as a hedge of protection that followed him when he went to buy a candy bar. At the same time, he could recall occasions when he didn’t know what in the world could be wrong with Donnie, like when old Joe gathered the power from somewhere and shoved Donnie across the room. In a drugged-out haze, Donnie was feeling ornery and Joe didn’t appreciate the mistreatment he saw being given to his grandson, Charles. Donnie could play the crazy nigger out in the world; Joe wasn’t going to abide it in his presence. Whether it was for the good or bad, Charles knew few dull moments when Donnie was around. Now he would have the opportunity to see his uncle in the flesh again. Unbeknownst to Charles, it would also be the last occasion during which they spent any substantial amount of time together. For now, it appeared to be a good period, and there appeared to be favorable circumstances for Donnie to beat his drug habit. He met and hung out with his nephew’s bandmates. He had plenty of stories to tell and a truckload of shit to talk about everything from war to women. At the same time, he continued to focus on his work, mentioning that he’d like to attend a book conference out West. Donnie seemed genuinely content with his stay when, as quickly as he arrived, he decided to leave. Charles wasn’t sure how much the stay had accomplished, but he knew he had seen no indication that Donnie was shooting up. That wasn’t testimony Charles had been able to offer on many occasions.

  * * *

  Jessie and Nancy Sailor were established Detroiters who had moved north from Georgia. Jessie did well as a company man with Ford Motor. His cousin, Earl Little, had done quite the opposite. While living near Lansing, about ninety miles from Detroit, Earl was killed in 1931, reportedly by the Black Legion, a white supremacist group. While he had been a Baptist minister, he was also part of a worldwide movement organizing for Marcus Garvey’s influential Universal Negro Improvement Association. In time, the white folks in the community came to regard Reverend Little as an agitator. Much later, his seventh son, Malcolm, would become even more widely known for his efforts to awaken the masses as the Nation of Islam’s spokesman, Malcolm X. Jessie and Nancy had children of their own, fifteen in all. They resembled a big southern family living in the city. The second-youngest child was a daughter named Shirley Ann. Acknowledged as a striking beauty, with brown skin and delicate features, by the time she reached womanhood she had strayed from the path her folks had laid out for her and her siblings to follow. Shirley hooked up with a pimp who eventually turned her out. When their relationship ended, she moved on. By the time she met Donnie, Shirley had a son and a daughter. Though she had developed a level of street knowledge, Shirley had a childish innocence, a sweetness, about her. The combination of her physical and character attributes was enough to quickly gain Donnie’s attention. Shirley was ten years younger than him, yet they connected as a couple. She grew to love Donnie dearly and deeply. They appeared to complement one another well. Close to Joanie in age, Shirl
ey found approval in the Goines family. And she was enough of a fox that she didn’t ever have to worry about Joe slamming a door in her face.

  Donnie, Shirley, and her children settled into a place together. It was probably the most domestic setup he had experienced in his entire adulthood, but he seemed OK with it. After all, he had done plenty out in the world, and he was still a fairly young man. For better or worse, he had made his own way for the past twenty years. So with his new career, it was appropriate that he adapt a new lifestyle. His common-law wife, Shirley would be about as close as he’d ultimately come to having a bride. Their daughter, Donna, named in unmistakable similarity to her father, was born to complete the household. She became a Sailor, rather than a Goines. In the meantime, other Sailors had begun moving west from Detroit. Shirley had siblings in California, which was, just by coincidence, where Donnie’s business contacts were based. The couple agreed that they would try something new together: living in Los Angeles.