chapter 2

We exited the freeway and followed the directions to Turning Point.  It was a nicely fenced complex, inside a square city block; all the buildings were beige with green trim.  It had two dorms, a multipurpose room, an administration building, and a laundry room.  A nice shaded yard filled with picnic tables and lounge chairs.  An outside meeting was in progress when we arrived.

     Mike pulled his suitcase from the back of the van and slung his duffel bag over his shoulder.

     Defeated, we approached the administration office and were greeted at the window.  This window would be the center of all communications for the duration of Mike's stay.  They had been expecting us.  They told Mike to have a seat outside in the yard; they would be with him shortly.  They told me he could have $15. In ones or five's, I was also told to say good-bye, he would be allowed to call in a few days.

     Mike looked around and said "Mom, don't leave me here, take me home.  I'm not staying here."

     I looked at Mike and whispered. "Do you see any bars on those windows?  Do you see barbed wire on the fence?  Do you see these guys sitting out here in the yard, smoking?  These are the same guys you were in jail with, and if I take you out of here, our next stop is jail."

     I hugged him and told him I loved him, and turned to walk away.  Beth did the same and we headed out.  As we were leaving one of the men said to us, "You got that right!"  I didn't think anyone had heard that conversation. 

     The facility held 115 men, it was completely open, and it was not a jail, although if you walked out of there that is probably where you would wind up.

     On the drive home Beth was crying, "How do you do it?  Just drop him off there?  What are you feeling?"  She asked.

     "I feel he is safe."  I said, "I haven't felt that in a long, long time.  I won't have to worry every night if he'll make it home safely or when the phone rings, be terrified it's him in jail or worse, the Police asking me to come identify his body."

                             * * *

     I had heard about crack cocaine, who hasn't!  I impressed on my children that it was a very addictive drug, one not to be

messed with.  Marijuana was something I tried as a teenager growing up in the early 70's.  I'm sure a lot of people did.  I thank God I didn't care for the high, and I hoped my son wouldn't like it either, unfortunately he did. 

     Mike didn't tell me he wanted to try it, he just did. 

     Talking to him about what drugs would do, I told him he could lose his memory.  This was before the commercials about the egg in the frying pan. 

     "Mike," I explained calmly, "I know a lot of people who smoke pot; they don't have much of a life.  If they had their choice between food and a joint they would choose the latter."

     Lost brain cells and all, totally ignoring my concern, he tried it, he liked it, and he didn't seem to care that I didn’t condone it.  Although I accepted it since so many people I knew, family included, used it.   

    "If you should decide to try any drug, please be upfront with me and talk with me before you try something that could

Change your life forever,” I pleaded nervously.

     Mike, looking at the floor, replied, "Okay, mom, don't worry, I won't mess around with drugs.  I'll even try to stay away from pot."

     Wanting to leave the lines of communication open I ended the discussion.

     Mike was thirteen years old then.  Things went downhill after that.  He didn't want to go to school, he wouldn't do his homework, I thought he was slow, and couldn't learn.  In reality, as I found out years later, it was the drug, and, yes, marijuana is a drug!  From thirteen years on he couldn't concentrate, he couldn't comprehend, he lost interest in sports, hobbies, and everything else family included. 

     Okay, I thought, this too shall pass.  But it didn't.  At sixteen he dropped out of school and went to work for the family business.  An automobile transport business his father had started in 1981 and I joined in 1986.  Dragging him out of bed for work was no easier than it was for school. 

     "I'm tired!  I didn't get to sleep till 3 a.m.!"  He would say indignantly.  "My back hurt so bad I couldn't sleep." 

     He thought life was a vacation, I should just let him sleep all-day and party all night.

     When he was at work he wanted to go and get high.  An eight-hour day at work was not his idea of life!

     "You go to school or you go to work!"  I told him firmly.

     One night, Mike and some of his friends decided to steal a boat.  The boat, a little rowboat, was tied to the dock.  Just as they were pulling away, the owner screamed, "Let go of My boat!" 

     They came into the house as if they'd been just walking around.  They went straight to Mike's room.  It wasn't long before the police came and arrested all of them.  The police took him to jail like a common criminal, kept him there for a couple hours, and then released him to us, his father and me.  For that, he was ordered by the court to get a G.E.D. diploma.

     He took a course at the local library to prepare for the test, and he took that test twice before he passed.  Still I did not see that marijuana was the problem.      

     He's just slow, maybe he has Attention Deficit Disorder, there are others in his extended family that have BI-Polar Disorder, Chemical Imbalance, Manic Depressive, maybe he has it too. 

     When he was nineteen his grandmother, my mom, got a place in a retirement community and had to break her lease at the apartment complex where she was living. 

     "Instead of losing that money, mom," I suggested, "why don't we let Mike stay there until the lease expires, we have four months."

     She agreed to let Mike stay there as long as he paid all the bills.

     It was a cute one-bedroom apartment, with cathedral ceilings, a bar between the living room and kitchen, cabinets under the bar in the kitchen, a bookcase under the bar in the living area.  Most of all for Mike it was his, he was home. 

     Mike moved in the first week of June, he vacuumed the beige sculptured carpet, washed and even waxed the parquet flooring. He brought his stereo, television, and VCR.  He furnished it with modern garage sale at best.  He even had a friend to share the expenses with him.  He was in heaven.

     Now I had to go there and wake him up to get him to come to work.  His friend Dirk didn't have a job.  Dirk was 20 years old, the same size as Mike, and his fine straight red hair he wore short on the top and long in the back fell on his face like a little boy haircut.  I never did care for Dirk; he wanted to be cool, to be the leader.  I saw through his "Eddie Haskill (be nice to parents) behavior" when the boys were 15 years old. 

     He was now in major trouble for being involved in 2nd degree murder.  Dirk and 5 other men were at a party, when a Korean student came in.  One of the guys instigated a fight, it escalated outside, and they beat and kicked this boy to death.  The 20-year-old man that instigated the fight got 50 years in prison; everybody else got 12-15 years.  The sentences were so severe because the authorities believed it to be racially motivated.    Dirk's parents put up a $125,000 bond and the taxpayers got him a real good criminal law attorney.   He was supposed to be living at home, working full time and home by dusk every night according to the provisions of his bail.  His parents felt bad that he might go to prison, so his mother babied him.

     Mike never seemed to have the money for the rent.  Dirk never paid for anything, so I wound up paying it.  He started having problems with the neighborhood.  Kids he went to school with and grew up with well had grown up with since we moved to Florida when he was fourteen. 

     Mike had started dating Dirk's half-sister Sarah.  Sarah was a beautiful petite blonde, she stood about 4' 10", very shapely body, thick long blonde hair she wore wrapped loosely in a

scrunchy, framing her small face with her delicate features.  Her old boyfriend wasn't very happy about her and Mike dating.  We figured he was starting this neighborhood battle to get even, he was a gang member, and he wanted his girlfriend back.

     One afternoon, shortly after Mike and Sarah started dating; three boys cornered Mike in the field by Sarah's house.  As he was arguing with one, another jumped him from behind, he held his own until all three were upon him.  Dirk, his roommate stood by watching, Mike, afraid for his life, didn't know what to do, when out of nowhere, the "gang-leader" ordered the three to stop.  He said one-on-one, Mike saw opportunity and ran for his life back to Sarah's house where her parents comforted him.  They didn't bother to call the police.

      The gang could claim this victory; people were too scared to see.

     It was the 4th of July, Mike had asked Sarah out to a party, and he and Sarah pulled into her driveway, my brother Tom was in the back seat.  The driver side door was pulled open and Mike pulled from the car, before he had time to react, the guy punched him in the face and was gone, leaving him to wonder what the hell.  Tom couldn't get out of the car in time to help. 

     This time the police were called, a report was made.  The officer talked to the attacker, one of the three from the incident in the field.  The officer told him "if you’re going to hit someone, don't do it on my shift, I don't like the paperwork." 

     They told Mike maybe Sarah was more trouble than she was worth!  Of course Mike was in love, and love knows no boundaries.

      Two weeks later Mike was at our house waiting for us to get home from a trip, we had been up north and were on our way home the gang was giving him a hard time and we were getting there as fast as we could.  We asked my brother Tom to keep an eye on things and since we were expected that night Tom went home. 

Tom stood 5' 10" on a medium frame; he weighed about 160 lb. with thick medium brown hair he wore short and neat, most of the time.  His face was strong and structured, his deep blue eyes, revealing the rough life he had led, and a mischievous smile beneath his mustache. 

     We pulled in about two-thirty, three a.m.; it was a clear night, slightly cool and breezy for mid-July.  I noticed wires hanging out of the back of Mike’s car.  We went inside and asked, "Mike what happened to your car?"

     He thought we were kidding, "I pulled the car out of the driveway into the street so you could have the driveway to unpack; I knew you'd be tired."   Mike said his voice full of disbelief.  "Then I went to bed!  I heard the dogs next door going crazy.  I looked out the window, I didn't see anything, and so I went back to bed." 

     That was about 2 a.m., when we came home we took him outside.  He found that someone had broken his back window and stolen his sound system. 

     It must have just happened, if we had come home five minutes earlier we would probably have caught them.  Our subdivision had only one way in and one way out.  

     As we waited for the police to arrive we observed a blue pick up truck leaving the subdivision, probably with Mike’s sound system in the back.  

     Again we made out police reports and again there was nothing they could do. 

     In September, the kids got so rough that he had to move back home, Dirk had already moved back home, he didn't like Mike dating his little sister. 

     They would sit on his porch and wait for him to come out, they would catch him out and pull him out of his car and beat him.  Our local Sheriff's department, the ones with the slogan "To Serve and protect" said, maybe he should move!

     One night they waited for him in our driveway, they hid in the bushes and when he pulled in they grabbed him and started beating him.  At this point he had quite enough and finally fought back.  When he fought back, Dirk came from down the street and now it was two on one, one of them ripped his gold chain from his neck before he managed to get them both off him.  By the time I got outside to see what was going on, they were pulling away. We called the police, they came and told us that Mike was no angel either and he should move, after talking to this and that officer at length, we were finally told by one of them that Dirk was violating his bond, and if we really wanted to do something, we should call the police department that wants him. 

     The next day I did just that. The detective talked to Mike, the prosecutor talked to Mike.  An emergency hearing was scheduled; Mike's testimony would surely put Dirk in jail. The prosecutor told Mike "If you start to feel scared about turning in your friend, just look at the dead boys mother, she is sitting right there." 

     Mike looked over and she nodded a sad look of appreciation on her face.  The end of the hearing revoked Dirk’s bond and he was back in jail awaiting trial on the other charges of second-degree murder.  We thought all was over now. 

     The same day Sarah broke up with Mike and that night some big guy in a Cadillac chased Mike home, he told him he was a dead man. 

     Mike tried to talk to Sarah, but she wouldn't even listen, she refused his calls, it was over.

     That was in October, from then until February things went along pretty well, he had some harassment but his friends were loyal and not afraid anymore.  He was working but still with problems, His father and I often wondered how to find out if he had some kind of imbalance, but he seemed so close to falling apart we didn't want to make waves. 

     It was on St. Patrick's Day, my daughter Amy and I had been to dinner at our church.  They had given her all the green balloons to take home. 

     My husband heard a pop, pop; he looked over at the balloons and thought they had popped.  It wasn't until the next morning when I saw glass everywhere.  We noticed the picture on the wall had been shattered with such force the glass flew 15 feet.  Confused and dazed we realized someone had actually shot at our home.  Of course we called the police to make a report but they could do nothing about it.

     A detective called and said he would question Dirk in jail and see what he knew.

      "No" I protested, "why bring on more trouble?"  We could prove nothing, we had nothing to gain, and it would only start more trouble!  Now it was serious, our lives were in danger.

     In April Dirk had his trial and was the only one out of six defendants found not guilty, he had a pretty good lawyer.  Did I mention that his step-dad was a detective?  The prosecutor was not allowed to use his confession, Dirk's lawyer said it was coerced and that held up in court.  So after Mike had Dirk's bond revoked, we definitely expected trouble and Dirk couldn't wait to give us what we expected. 

     The day after he got out of jail he was driving up and down our block, slowing down in front of our house, peeling out, Dirk and his friend Jay, it seemed were obsessed with getting even with Mike.  Mike couldn't take it anymore; He moved out and took a room in a motel not far from work. 

     On the day before Mother's Day my husband and I went house hunting and my mother was baby-sitting Amy.  Amy asked if grandma would take her to the neighborhood pool, and grandma said she would.  We got back around 4 p.m. and our yard was torn

Up. Our neighbor was waiting for us.  He said if we wanted to press charges we should call the police. 

     It seems Jay and Dirk went through our neighbor's yard, our bushes, up around our palm trees and through our driveway

barely missing our fence.  One neighbor saw them and called the

police but when it came time to identify them she did not want to get involved, she lived right behind Dirk.  I could understand her dilemma.  These people could be very dangerous and she had to live there.  The police said there were pieces of branches under Jay's car, but there was no hard evidence to link them with our yard.  So again there was no proof and nothing we could do. House hunting was made a top priority.  We were very glad my mother and Amy were at the neighborhood pool, and not at home when it happened.  We later found out that Mike had come by to drop off flowers for Mother's Day.  Possibly triggering the lawn job. 

     Mike kept losing weight, I thought he was sick.  He looked terrible.  I thought the poor kid is just ugly, people around the office were telling him to quit using drugs.  He looked like a skeleton.  I thought they were awful.  I really felt he was just ugly and they shouldn't be picking on him. 

     In June we bought a small handy man special and moved Mike into it.  We got an unlisted phone number; we didn't tell anyone where he was living.  He lived there like a hermit.  He kept the shades drawn all day and night.  He was getting very paranoid, he heard noises, and his imagination went wild.  He couldn't make a decision about anything.  He even started to think we were going to do something to him. 

Reviews

[KAREN]

This must have been terrible to go through! Excellent job on the writing!

[teddybard]

A heartrending tale, so well told