Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007

Coping with crime

A fellow inmate stabbed one of my youngest brothers "in the back and the face,'' he told me as nonchalantly as if discussing the blueness of the sky.

It was during a fight in a Baltimore prison. Zadoc Bailey stabbed the other guy in the back. Neither reported the incident, so neither received treatment. They didn't want to be taken to solitary confinement.

A small scar is still visible on his face.

Zadoc told me this about a month before the 25th anniversary of a murder that has kept our oldest brother behind bars for a quarter of a century. Twenty-five years ago today, James Bunch died from multiple stab wounds. Herbert "Moochie'' Bailey Jr. pleaded guilty to the murder and has been in prison since.

Breaking back into crime

Zadoc was 2 years and 28 days old that April 27, 1982, night. He's 27 today and has seen the insides of more prisons and jails than any of us care to know.

He grew up in a household in flux. We were dealing with losing our hero and a primary breadwinner to prison. My mother was dealing with guilt and pain and anger and regret while wondering how she'd pay mounting monthly bills in the aftermath of a divorce and in the face of 10 children who depended on her.

"My counselor told me that I was slowly dying,'' my mother said a few weeks ago when most of the family gathered to talk together - for the first time - of our past. "She said I had to be able to talk about it to be able to raise my other children. The face of my children were saying, 'Mama, I need you, too.' When this thing happened to [Moochie], I think we all died some.''

Harris McDaniel, my stepfather, stabilized things. He was everything my father wasn't. He was attentive. He didn't yell or scream or beat her or us. Ever. None of us had to stand scared and shaking in the corner with a knife behind our backs to protect our mother, as Moochie had done as a little boy.

My stepfather's days were unusually long, though he never complained. He'd work a 12-hour shift at the Russellville Georgia Pacific wood plant and eat a quick snack before leading us out into the yard to build another bedroom onto our green-and-white single-wide trailer or fix a car engine or plant another garden or something - anything - that would keep us busy, teach us a trade and keep us out of trouble.

He gave up his hobby of racing cars because it scared my mother. He treated us as well his two biological sons, though some of us were cool to his initial presence in our house because "he wasn't our father.'' He stayed, raised and taught us by example anyway.

He was the primary and most influential role model Zadoc had while growing up. Zadoc didn't see my father's fists striking my mother's face.

And because he was only 2, he can't remember Moochie telling us how he killed a man during a strong-arm robbery attempt.

At the first sign of trouble, my mother intervened, desperately not wanting a repeat of our lives from the mid-1980s, which were consumed by prison visits. She sent Zadoc to counselors and psychologists. He was prescribed Zoloft and Ritalin and everything and anything that might keep him grounded, away from crime.

She sent him and another brother, James, to live with Willie in Washington, D.C., to get away from the bad influences in St. Stephen, and to Atlanta and Davidson College one summer to stay with me.

But nothing could keep them from trouble. Crime research suggests that the younger a sibling is when an older sibling commits a violent crime, the more likely the criminal action will be repeated. It's their way of trying to connect with a family member they know they should love but who isn't there. And because of their age they have fewer coping skills.

Moochie is a convicted murderer, but the next seven siblings - including those who witnessed the worst kind of domestic violence on a regular basis - stayed free of serious crime. Zadoc broke that string. And while experts may have theories about why that happens in families on this side of crime, Zadoc has a simpler explanation.

"That's what I wanted to do,'' he said. "It didn't matter about being good.''

He told me about his most serious charge, which led to the stint in that Baltimore prison where he was involved in two knife fights. He, James and a friend had a plan. They needed money. They got a car, drove toward New York City.

In the car were guns, the kinds of which I had never heard. They had made the trip up north several times to buy drugs to sell in our small town, actions that put them under the constant watchful eye of the local police and led to a drive-by shooting that left my mother's Chevrolet Blazer riddled with bullet holes.

"What were you going to do with all those guns?'' I asked.

"To get money,'' he said.

They imagined a few robberies of strangers. But the car they drove had no license tag, and they were pulled over by police. The guns and previous charges led to the prison sentence.

I knew they were there but didn't visit them. I couldn't bear more prison visits. And I was angry it was happening again, yet relieved they were stopped before killing or being killed.

But crime isn't the whole story of our family. There has been plenty of triumph.

Preventing similar fates

My mother preached and stressed the need for educational excellence. And most of us responded. Many of us worked our way to the top of our class. Many of us were elected to the National Honor Society and garnered top scores on national exams. We excelled on athletic fields and in the classroom, all while working part-time jobs.

My mother's discipline was swift and consistent. After accepting Moochie's fate, she became scared for the rest of us.

I think she would have beaten us every day, with switches from the trees in the backyard or hangers and cords, if she thought it would keep us out of trouble. Such methods would look like child abuse to an outsider, but I think we knew why she did what she did. My mother already had lost one black boy to the system. She didn't want to lose any others.

James Bunch's sister Malvenia Litchfield, who met my mother once at his funeral, understands. "I'm sorry for your mother. I'm real sorry for her,'' she said during a phone interview this month. "I lost a son myself.''

Litchfield's son died in a logging accident at the same wood plant where a few members of my family worked.

Even as she continued to wonder if Moochie had taken the fall for friends or if the criminal justice system had failed him, she demanded that we live no-excuses lives.

I think it worked.

Because Doug went to Clemson University and became a mortgage and stockbroker who learned how to take companies public and raised little girls who have talent agents and get acting parts in movies such as "The Fighting Temptations.''

Because Willie went to Howard University and became an air traffic controller in Washington, D.C., and opened a fitness center in that city's downtown. Because Josh married young and became the father of four kids and is a church deacon and builds armored vehicles for our troops in Iraq.

Because Joseph attended Morris College and became one of the most successful car dealers in South Carolina while pulling together an annual summit in Charleston to combat crime, poverty and illiteracy.

Because Melody walked away from Benedict College with a business administration and management degree - cum laude - and became a lead supervisor at NCR Corp. in Columbia, all while successfully raising a son she had earlier than we would have liked, and bought a house that is larger than the one from our childhood. Because Sherry went to technical colleges and survived a domestic violence situation and protected her children while finding stability in a life she's built, through fits and starts, in Atlanta.

Because although we had an alcoholic and abusive father and grandfather and an older brother convicted of murder and survived with the help of food stamps and free school lunches, we are taking care of our kids and respecting our wives and buying houses and saving money for tomorrow.

And my mother recently earned her GED - more than 50 years after she was forced out of grade school and into the fields to help her family survive.

My brother Moochie's only son, Albert Harris, got arrested in 2003 for robbery and spent time in one of the prisons in which we visited his father long ago, MacDougal Correctional in Ridgeville. He beat a man and robbed him of money he said the man owed him. He also served three years in the U.S. Navy and is trying to straighten up his life. He vows to not do anything else stupid.

He doesn't know much about the murder that sent his father to prison and hasn't asked about it. He doesn't remember much about his father, other than rumors that suggested he killed a man because of a misunderstanding over a TV repair.

Those 41 knife wounds on the night of April 27, 1982, robbed Mary Hilton, Litchfield and Raymond Brinson of someone they loved. None of them deserved that.

My nephew was 5 years old when a murder robbed him of a father. Today, April 27, 2007, my son is 5 years old. He won't be robbed of his.