Low Road (29 page)

Mr. Goines's goal of taking his stories to a film studio appeared to be materializing at the time I spoke with Morriss.
Crime Partners,
which starred rap recording artists including Snoop Dogg and Ja Rule, was distributed in home-film release. “The other books are in option, film option,” Morriss said, “and if you know anything about film option—in this town, there's about maybe 30,000 film options a year, and less than one-tenth of one percent ultimately become a film.”

“Oh, so that's not such a big deal, in other words?” I asked him.

“Well it is to us because they pay option money,” he explained. “They protect it [for their use]. They give you X amount of money. You sign a contract. Then if they need an extension, they pay additional money and so on. So no, it's pretty good for us.”

The following summer of 2003, Morriss would tell me he planned to attend a “rough cut” screening of the
Never Die Alone
film adaptation starring rapper DMX.

Of any suggestions that Mr. Goines was unhappy with his publishing agreements Morriss said he was not aware. “He never said to us that if you don't give me more money, or if you don't promote it more, then I'm gonna go elsewhere. We never had that kind of a conversation.” Yet, while he said the writer never complained to him about finances, it struck Morriss as interesting that he was later contacted by Mr. Goines's old friend, Al Clark, who reportedly sought more compensation than what the author left for him in the will. “He even, at one time, contended that he wrote the books,” added Morriss. “It wasn't true. It just wasn't true. I got a call from him one day, and I said, ‘Mr. Clark, whatever you feel is right, put it in a letter to me. Send it to me, and we'll investigate the best we can.' Never heard from him.” By 2002, Holloway House had sold an estimated 5 million books written by Donald Goines.

One of the things that troubled me the entire time I was writing and researching this man's life was the way he left home as a boy. There seemed no rational motivation for his wanting to go through the trouble of faking his age, joining the air force, and serving for the time that he did, apparently without ever revealing the truth. Particularly considering that it was wartime, a boy his age should have preferred to be nearly anyplace else but in a uniform. Being flown to Korea was a tremendous leap from watching old combat movies and playing with toy guns. I thought the question of why a kid who got into card gambling and thievery would be willing to adjust to military discipline was also worth contemplating. I've been a peer as well as a mentor to adolescent boys who showed behavioral problems, and not one of them ever expressed a desire to join the armed services. Not one. It stands to reason that Mr. Goines was, at least, somewhat familiar with the rigidity of military culture before he decided to join up. At least one of his acquaintances, Walter, had gone to Korea before he was sent there. Any impressions he received about survival in the air force had to indicate the required adjustment to regulations and restrictions, and it's hard to imagine that he would have found this appealing. So whatever it was that possessed him to leave behind the material comforts and security of a middle-class childhood must have been excruciatingly stressful. Marie Richardson, the only living witness to what took place inside the Goines home during that period, told me repeatedly that she just didn't know. Maybe her brother was just “bad,” she said at one point. But, considering that he returned from Asia a heroin addict, as far as I was concerned, there had to be a more revealing explanation of what had driven him there. When I spoke to historian Paul Lee about this, he cautioned me not to “look for easy answers.” In the research seminars he presents through his independent company, Best Efforts, Inc., he repeats a basic rule: Avoid assumptions; the truth is often hidden behind them. So if I couldn't assume that anything in his personal life had been the cause of his running far away, what else did I have? I contacted Dr. Kenneth Cole to try and get some professional feedback.

Cole is a Los Angeles–based psychologist and author of the children's book
Good News.
His work has brought him into contact with youth who are the products of urban environments that were even less conducive to their maturity and healthy development than the immediate surroundings in Mr. Goines's childhood. A native of Flint, Michigan, one of Mr. Goines's various stomping grounds, Cole was immediately struck by the color issues Mr. Goines experienced as a boy.

“One thing that did come out, initially, was his whole perception of himself as a black man,” Cole said. “If someone is insecure about himself as a black man, one of the things he may do is embrace things that he perceives as representing black culture.” It had struck me as fairly obvious that Mr. Goines fell in with the wrong crowd as part of a childish reach toward social acceptance. Plenty of young people still make that mistake. What I hadn't considered was that self-consciousness about his physical appearance and related insecurity may have been at the very core of his emotional issues. Both of Mr. Goines's sisters had suggested this once or twice, but it struck me as an oversimplified explanation. I knew that, tragically, teenagers had killed themselves and, in more recent years, others as a result of feeling socially outcast. Yet, according to Dr. Cole's insights, Mr. Goines may have made the majority of his unfortunate choices based on the perceptions he developed as an adolescent. I thought the attention he later received from women must have remedied the early discomfort about his looks. In fact, Ms. Coney told me about memories of her brother in moments of vanity, when he would stand in front of a mirror and pinch his own behind. But I'm aware that we don't always see in ourselves what others see in us. Underneath it all, Mr. Goines was both sensitive and human, so he was not an exception to this truth. His immersion in crime and drug abuse, Dr. Cole explained, could have been an early response to his misinterpretation of how black men should think and act. Harder to determine was the reason he left home as a teenager. Whether or not he experienced some form of abuse, as I'd heard, Cole noted a behavior pattern that seemed to follow Mr. Goines into his adult years: “It seemed that much of what he was doing was far extreme. His books are
extreme
extreme, and that's good.”

Mr. Goines's sense of displacement may have begun in his family, Dr. Cole added. “He really was the odd man out, from the get-go. He just never really seemed to fit in.” The psychologist pointed out that, notwithstanding the provisions of his childhood, Mr. Goines may have seen his family's social status and his role as the only son as a source of pressure, rather than privilege. He surely was not the first child who chose a different direction, despite a parent's desire to share an inheritance.

“You could almost wonder, given that he was able to write a bunch of books in a short time—and high on heroin while he did it—there was a possibility that he could have been a pretty gifted kid,” Cole said. He suggested to me the possibility that Mr. Goines's poor grades and apparent disinterest in school was related to a learning disorder, such as dyslexia, a point Marie Richardson once raised in reference to her brother. The psychologist dismissed the idea Mr. Goines expressed in his “Private Thoughts” letter that he couldn't write without heroin as “junkie logic,” no more than the typical indication of drug dependency. This would have suggested that Mr. Goines was genetically predisposed to becoming a heroin addict.

With a little more guidance, if not from his parents, maybe from a neighbor, priest, or counselor, Cole said, Mr. Goines may have committed himself to another course. But Cole sees the novelist's achievements as remarkable, nonetheless: “What does it say that in the midst of heroin addiction, and a lifestyle in which he sort of compromised his soul, that he was able to find some sense of purpose?”

The psychologist's assessment of Mr. Goines's writing reflected his view that all presentations of American culture are relevant. Dr. Cole's comment resembled a quote from the European publication
La Liberte' de l'Est:
“What is great about Goines is that you feel you've become more intelligent once you have read his stories of pain and grief. His stories almost have an ethnographic value.”

The more painful and violent elements of the Donald Goines legacy struck on the morning of March 28, 1992. Mr. Goines's namesake, a grandchild by his son, was one of three people to be murdered in nearly a week filled with Detroit tragedies. A
Detroit News
story bearing the headline “Another child, 2 adults killed” appeared on the front page of the paper with a photograph of the three-year-old beneath the words. “Donald Goines III became the sixth Detroit child slain in six days when someone opened fire about 3:30
A.M.
on the 9200 block of Grandville, police said,” the story detailed. “Also killed were Donald's godmother, Tanya Smith, 24, and an unidentified 26-year-old man. Smith's boyfriend, Earl Sheppard, 26, and an unidentified 24-year-old woman, were wounded. Witnesses and relatives said the boy and four adults were in a car in the driveway of a home owned by Smith and Sheppard when someone opened fire. The car lurched forward, breaking through the driveway gate and coming to rest in the backyard.” Police had no immediate suspects or motive in the shootings. The child's parents, Donald II and Latonya Williams, were at home when the incident took place. It wasn't long, however, before the horrible news reached his father, and Donald II informed his mother, who carried a photo of her grandbaby in her purse. “My son called,” Thelma Powell (formerly Thelma Howard) told the paper. “He said, The baby is dead.' I don't think I can remember another thing he told me.” As in the Goines and Sailor killings, according to Detroit police, no one was ever arrested for these crimes.

In an unrelated episode, one of Mr. Goines's younger relatives was shot several times as he traveled a low road to fame and financial comfort reminiscent of one Mr. Goines had once tested. Apparently, he was attacked as a result of his affiliation with a flamboyant Detroit drug dealer called “White Boy Rick,” who gained a considerable profile in the 1990s. The young man later relocated and began following in the footsteps of the author and a few other Goines men who had begun careers in the media.

What will likely be the most lasting impact of Mr. Goines's writing, however, extends beyond any of his relatives and descendants. It will be the realism with which he captured and portrayed the struggles and small, occasional victories of those who encountered the most tempting and often difficult challenges of being people of color in urban America. Rap artists, such as Nas, who recorded the lyrics “My life is like a Donald Goines novel” for a 1997 song, filmmakers like John Singleton, and thousands of teenagers, many of whom are still discovering Mr. Goines's work, strive to duplicate his authenticity. They strive to display the swagger of Earl the Pearl, the cunning of Eldorado Red, the fearlessness of Kenyatta. College-course instructors and admirers, such as Robert Skinner, point to Mr. Goines's writing as creativity with a great deal more depth than what was attributed to it during his brief career.

“I think it's safe to say that any discussion of noir fiction or the African-American crime story is incomplete without including Goines,” says Skinner, an author and librarian at Xavier University in New Orleans. Skinner says Mr. Goines's close identification with the concerns and struggles of his characters is apparent.

“There's no book that I've read that illustrates this better than
Daddy Cool,”
he continues, “which I understand is an important cult favorite in Europe, where Goines … still has a considerable audience.
Daddy Cool
is a real urban tragedy in which concepts of ‘love' are twisted by the environment. That Daddy Cool is killed at the end of the story isn't the ultimate tragedy—it's the fact that the one person in the world that he loves unreservedly, his daughter, is so corrupted by the pimp she falls in love with that she turns on her father and protector.

“There's a great deal more that can be said about Goines. I think he continues to have an audience among African-Americans because he has created strong, black protagonists who have risen above white oppression in the only way they can, and who control their own destinies within a hostile environment.”

*   *   *

At Detroit Memorial, I find myself the only visitor a short time before its attendants close their gates to the public on a Thursday afternoon. When I arrive, I quickly navigate the circular paths that lead to my target area. I'm looking for Section 38, Marker No. 2014. But I've chosen a bad day to look for Mr. Goines's burial site, and there probably won't be any good days until the spring begins and the weather breaks. Hardened snow crunches under my feet as I walk through the empty cemetery. I look carefully, but nearly the entire ground is covered. Across the expansive acres, artificial flowers and wreaths laid at grave sites blast a colorful contrast against the snow. The striking difference between death and life is apparent in the complete stillness of my surroundings, where birds chirping is the only recognizable sound. I pace in various directions around Section 38, finding no signs of grass and not knowing whether the stiff areas that I step on are headstones or sheets of ice. I kick randomly at spots that I have a weak hunch might be the marker I need. At one point, I stop and wait, feeling that I may be psychically led to the site, but it doesn't happen. I take a last look around, attempting to absorb some energetic vibration. Then I see a car that I believe has been sent to search the grounds for people like me before the cemetery closes. At this point, I know I have to leave. I crunch my way back through the snow, feeling a little disappointed but not discouraged. Wherever the particular spot may be, I know Mr. Goines's remains are at rest. I hope the same can be said for his weary spirit. I get into my truck and drive past the tall monuments and religious idols toward Detroit Memorial's gates. It hasn't been such an unsettling visit. I'll be back again one day.