by Lisa Fenn
“Filming this feels voyeuristic, like we’re capitalizing on his misfortune,” I whispered. “Shouldn’t we help him look for his things instead?” Kameron disagreed, but he ceased recording. Dartanyon puffed and paced like an angry bull along the bleacher’s edge. “Who’s the coward who stole my stuff?”
I had seen Dartanyon disappointed. I had seen him manhandle a competitive opponent as though it was his next meal. But I had never seen him look capable of inflicting savage violence, which is how he looked that day. Even I felt afraid to approach him. I took off to the principal’s office instead.
“Ma’am, one of Lincoln’s athletes had his belongings stolen from the bleachers. He’s blind. Can you lock all of the entrances so we can find the culprit?” I asked.
“Honey, in the time it took you to get here, they probably already sold his stuff off out on the street,” she said, turning away.
“You have to at least try,” I pleaded. “Let me write down his name and my number in case you find them.” I handed her my card. She rolled her eyes.
By the time I returned to the gym, Dartanyon had stopped pacing. He stood awaiting his final lift with his hands on his head. “When you take something from someone who has nothing, that hurts deeply,” Coach Taylor said. “I was so glad Dartanyon didn’t go beyond what he did, because it would have taken half of Cleveland to hold that kid back.”
Dartanyon had slated his third deadlift attempt at 575 pounds. Though he had already set a new record and secured the overall title for his weight class, he needed to contribute as many pounds as he could toward his team’s total. Taylor led him back to the bar. Dartanyon gave it a yank, but it was tough for his body to succeed without his heart. He had already won, but he had also lost. He let the bar crash to the ground and went off to kick some more bleachers.
The Wolverines held on for their fourth consecutive conference title that afternoon. Leroy and Dartanyon accepted Lincoln’s trophy. But even with a gold medal around his neck and a plaque in his hands, Dartanyon had been stripped of his right to celebrate. I surveyed the school administrators and surrounding police; none considered Dartanyon’s plight worth an incident report or even an “I’m sorry, son.” The fighter needed someone to fight for him that day, yet no one did.
“How about when we finish here, we start replacing what was stolen,” I offered. Dartanyon nodded, still too angry and hurt to speak. I said good-bye to Leroy and let Coach Taylor know that I was holding Dartanyon off the bus.
“Are you sure you have enough money for everything?” Dartanyon asked.
“I have my credit card,” I said. “We should be fine.”
“They don’t take credit cards at the phone place, just cash,” he said.
Though that seemed odd to me, I focused on solving the problem rather than questioning it. I knew my bank card would only allow me to withdraw up to $200. I turned to Kameron, who was packing up his gear and trying not to eavesdrop. “Can I borrow some money?” I asked. “I’ll pay you back tomorrow.”
Kameron ran his hand through his hair and scratched the back of his neck. I knew what he was thinking. A credible producer does not stop filming her subject during a theft as he flies into a frenzy in the middle of a championship tournament. A credible producer does not chauffeur her subject around town and buy him a cell phone. A credible producer does not drag her crew across ethical lines. For though we may have felt badly for Dartanyon’s predicament, journalistic code forbade us to do anything about it. We were trained to keep our emotional distance, to remain objective. And I understood the necessity of this when working with professional athletes. Yet when working with vulnerable kids, the principle of drawing a line in the sand seemed duplicitous. How could I ask Dartanyon to travel into emotional depths, only to glean his experiences and leave him there?
“We can’t not help him,” I said. “I mean, look at him.” Dartanyon sat hunched over a bleacher, drooping like a kicked puppy. Sports journalists like to identify turning points—in a match, in a season, in a career. Which at-bat changed the momentum of a series? Which interception sparked a comeback? Before us now appeared the balance not of a game but of a life. Here was a chance to go beyond talking about a loss. Here was our chance to redeem one.
Kameron reached into his pocket and drew out his wallet. “Go save the turtles.”
“Go do what?” I asked, confused.
“You know, like those documentaries about baby sea turtles that hatch on the beach, and they have to waddle like a hundred yards out to sea in order to survive.” He went on to explain that while these defenseless baby turtles are inching their way toward the water, vultures and other birds swoop down to eat them. If the hatchlings manage to avoid the air attack, they then have to outwaddle crabs the size of soccer balls that chase them down and drag them to an underground death. Because these reptiles are born into a predatory obstacle course, only one percent makes it into adulthood. And this grated on Kameron.
“You start rooting for them—Go, baby turtle, go!—and then Noooo!” He threw his hands into the air in animated disbelief. “And then it hits you. Why doesn’t the camera crew just pick them up and throw them in the ocean? Sea turtles wouldn’t be endangered if cameramen helped them!”
Leroy and Dartanyon’s crawl to adulthood was also pitted with callous traps. But the rules of documentary required us to subdue our emotional responses or risk coloring our reports beyond the factual and objective. We were supposed to let the turtles die.
For three months, with his salt-and-pepper Persian eyebrow raised, Kameron watched me bond with Leroy and Dartanyon and bend the rules in the very ways we were warned against: buying meals, giving rides, growing attached. Throughout our filming, Kameron had seen it all. And finally, on that day, he had seen enough. He clumped a wad of cash into my hand and commissioned me for a journey over that sacred ethical edge. “Go save the turtles,” he said again.
Dartanyon and I raced to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to obtain a new state ID card. We were turned away for lack of a birth certificate, which Dartanyon did not have. We bolted downtown to the Bureau of Vital Statistics, where I bought a replacement birth certificate. We arrived back at the BMV at 4:59 p.m., one minute before closing, as the guard turned the lock on the door.
“Sir, please let us in. This young man is visually impaired,” I begged, banging on the door. “His wallet was stolen, and without a new ID, he can’t get a new bus pass. Without a bus pass, he can’t get to school. And I think we can all agree that kids should be in school.” The guard, a towering older black man, shuffled back to open the door, probably figuring it’d be less effort to let us in than chase me around a circle of half-baked logic.
Our last stop was for a new cell phone. I expected to drive to an Apple or Verizon store. Instead, Dartanyon directed me to the crumbling brick storefront of what appeared to be an antiquated beauty supply store. Hair dryers, brushes, wigs, and shampoos were locked up in glass-enclosed counters. And yet the store was packed with a swarm of male customers, being served by a crew of Middle Eastern and African American men. The clerks were in perpetual motion, darting back and forth behind a black velvet curtain hanging in the back of the store. Everyone seemed to be speaking in a flurry of broken English and unfamiliar slang.
“Ma’am, your money, please!” a man shouted at me from behind the counter.
“Already?” I asked. “But you, uh, is there paperwork to sign? Did he pick out a plan?”
“There’s no plan, or paperwork,” Dartanyon mumbled to me. “He just needs the hundred and fifty dollars.” I handed over the cash. The clerk put it in his pocket and shooed us on.
“Dartanyon, that place felt really strange,” I said, still trying to get my bearings as we walked back to my car. “It didn’t look like anywhere I’ve ever bought a phone before.”
“It was a front,” he said. “But they sell cheap jailbroken phones too.”
“A what?”
“You know, a front, like they sell drug
s there.” He explained how customers order in code, using words like cush and bubble rum and bogga sugar in their requests. Runners would then go behind the curtain to weigh the orders. I suddenly felt violated, like an accomplice to anarchy.
“Dartanyon, that was completely irresponsible to take me in there without telling me what it was!” I said. “I would have taken you to a real phone store.”
He jerked to a stop. “You were perfectly safe,” he said. “I would never let anyone lay a hand on you.” With that, he took hold of my shoulders and moved me to the interior of the sidewalk so that he could walk closer to the traffic. He was a curious amalgam of refined etiquette and shrewd street smarts.
I stopped to pick up a sandwich for Dartanyon and then drove him to his sister’s house. “I still don’t know how you got us into the BMV when it was already closed,” he said as we pulled into the driveway.
“And I don’t understand how you got a phone from a drug dealer selling twenty-year-old hair dryers,” I countered.
“I guess we make a good team. We each got some different skills.”
Dartanyon started to open the car door and then turned back to me, serious and searching. “You know, there’s no one in my life who would have had the time or the money to do what you did for me today,” he said, his voice catching. “I’m pretty sure God dropped you into me and Leroy’s lives for reasons other than television.”
That day, moving from producer to protector, I was the turning point. I made the decisive play. I crossed the journalistic line and found that the good stuff—the stuff that matters—was on the other side.
I thought most of my childhood was a big wasteland that I needed to keep hidden. I didn’t know I had a story until I saw it on television. I guess it’s only later, when we tell someone else, that it even becomes a story at all.
—DARTANYON
CHAPTER 9
WHAT WOULD YOU DO FOR A FRIEND?
As our shooting wound down in mid-May of 2009, I began gathering final creative elements for the edit phase, such as exterior shots of the school and time-lapse footage of clouds moving above train tracks, to transition between place and time in the script. Collecting photos from Leroy and Dartanyon’s childhoods was also a high priority. Still photographs allow reporters and producers the versatility to cover various themes we might want to introduce as our writing process unfolds. For instance, images of Dartanyon as a child would allow us to cover plot points related to his visual impairment, his mother’s death, or his transience.
If a picture says a thousand words, the absence of a photo can say even more. To my knowledge, only one childhood photograph of Dartanyon exists. He looks to be about six years old, and his face is right up against the camera, as though he may have accidentally taken the shot himself. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he was the boy in the picture when I showed it to him. He had no other childhood images with which to compare it.
Leroy’s only recent photographs were taken by Ed Suba from the Akron Beacon Journal, during a time he would have rather not preserved. He had never seen any of his school photos—he had either transferred into a new school after class pictures were taken or transferred out before yearbooks were distributed.
In the absence of personal photos of Leroy and Dartanyon, I hired a local photographer to shoot their portraits, to capture the grit of their journeys as well as artfully depict their friendship in a way other than carrying. The boys were pleased, to a degree, by being asked to pose. It was an overt, definitive way to pause the demands of their daily lives for the sole purpose of giving them attention in a way that few other things, including a video camera, can. The lens says, You are important in this moment. You’re the subject. Nothing else is the focus. It’s just you. Your face, your eyes, your smile, your brawn, your brow, your image—you.
On that same day, reporter Tom Rinaldi arrived in Cleveland to conduct Leroy and Dartanyon’s on-camera interviews. Throughout the last few weeks, I had worked hard to prepare the boys by encouraging them to explore their thoughts about their pasts and one another. Their ability to articulate their memories and emotions would make or break viewers’ ability to connect with them. In my mind, as well as in Tom’s, our months of shooting and the possibility for resulting opportunities for the boys hung in the balance of these interviews. And though I had not shared these pressures with Leroy or Dartanyon, they sensed the shift in tone as I led them into the darkened school gymnasium, where four video cameras hovered around two chairs. Leroy waited behind closed doors while Dartanyon took his place beneath the heat of the halogen lights. Tom led him into the specifics of his home life.
TOM: How would you describe your family situation?
DARTANYON: Not really one of the best. There have been times that I’d have to, like, scavenge the house for food because we have so little. I’ve moved about five or six times within the past three years because we didn’t have money.
TOM: What has been the most difficult part for you?
DARTANYON: The hardest thing growing up was hearing everybody else talk about “I am going to do this with my mom” and all this other stuff, and I was like the only child whose mother was . . . well, like Mother’s Day is still one of the hardest holidays for me because my mom is in heaven right now and I don’t have a mother to give a gift to or say Happy Mother’s Day to.
Then, after three months of grappling with the story’s central tenet—the one that lured me out of bed and onto a plane—Dartanyon’s turn to reflect upon his relationship with Leroy had arrived.
TOM: Why do you carry Leroy?
DARTANYON: Just to get him from point A to point B.
TOM: What do you think you give to Leroy?
DARTANYON: I honestly don’t know.
TOM: What connects the two of you? What can the two of you uniquely understand about one another?
DARTANYON: We just have this bond.
TOM: How did you end up being the one to carry him?
DARTANYON: I pretty much just chose to. I can’t imagine not carrying him.
As I suspected, Dartanyon wasn’t sure why he carried Leroy. It was never a choice for him. It was simply the right thing to do.
TOM: What does it mean to you to have him sit there on that mat while you wrestle?
DARTANYON: It means a lot. It’s like having my brother there. Like basically having someone I know I can trust. I know he’s going to be there.
Leroy’s turn came next. Tom approached the topic of the accident cautiously. He knew he needed to hit a soft spot, and yet, like everyone else, he did not want it to come at the expense of Leroy’s smile. He began broadly, letting Leroy choose the direction.
TOM: What happened that morning?
LEROY: My brother and I were walking to school, and we’re on either side of the track. It just comes by, comes by . . . and there was rocks and gravel and I kinda just slipped, kinda just went under. I was twirling and spinning and then I was just laying there and I just stared up at the sun . . .
Leroy’s voice trailed off as the memories thickened in his throat.
TOM: How angry were you after the accident?
LEROY: Well, my anger cannot be expressed. I still have a lot of it inside of me. As the years go, it like decays, to where I am not even caring anymore.
TOM: What has been the toughest part for you?
LEROY: Making friends. Every time I moved to a new house, I tried not to make friends because I knew we would move again and I would have to leave them.
TOM: Why is Dartanyon the one you let in?
LEROY: I don’t know.
TOM: Try.
LEROY: I don’t even know how to explain it.
TOM: We asked Dartanyon what he sees when he looks over during a match, and he sees you sitting on the edge of the mat. What do you think he said? And I know you guys could joke all day, but this isn’t a joke. What do you think he said?
LEROY: I don’t know.
TOM: You can joke about how he sees a blob or a blur.
But Dartanyon used another word. He said, “I see a brother.”
Leroy covered his mouth with his hand and lowered his head, searching. His eyes grew moist. He looked up.
LEROY: You know how you get that feelin’ when somebody says something that gives you a chill up your spine? That’s what just happened right there.
TOM: Why, Leroy?
LEROY: Because that’s how I see him. He’s my brother. But I didn’t know he felt the same.
TOM: What is that worth?
LEROY: To know that there is somebody who will actually put me on his back when I fall down. Not a lot of friends would do that, but I know he will. To know that you will like pick me up and throw me on your back is astounding.
TOM: What’s the message in that?
LEROY: Basically there are good people out there.
The exchange would never make air, yet these healing words would resonate forevermore in the fractured heart of this once lonely boy. Leroy understood that the carrying was simply a symbol for the caring, that he had an ally whose love ran deeper than blood. Dartanyon’s rides were restoring Leroy’s faith in humanity, and although these sentiments had been long apparent to me, they weren’t known to Leroy until he, himself, spoke them into existence.
On the drive home that evening, that truth set Leroy and Dartanyon free. They bubbled over, giddy and gratified, recalling the day: Did Tom ask you that question too? What did you say? Dude, that shot of you against the lockers was awesome! They realized that their pasts need not be shrouded in shame. They believed that perhaps their thoughts—their lives—were worth recounting. They looked at one other and saw a friendship unsurpassed. And that made me the happiest person in the car.
ON THAT EARLY June night, 40 percent of Lincoln-West seniors gathered on the auditorium stage for graduation, their gowns flowing and their tassels poised to swing, each ready to mark the end of their high school journey.
