Promise Kept (Perry Skky Jr.) (11 page)

You called?
said Mercy.

Of course he called, that’s why we’re here,
Goodness uttered back to him.

My angels had style.

You’ve got to know that we’re here all of the time, Perry.

My mouth wasn’t moving but I thought,
Yeah, but you don’t do a good job of it. You’re supposed to be my angels but I get in more trouble…

But aren’t you still here, dude?
Mercy said.

Well what’s going on with you?
I asked.

That’s for you to figure out,
Goodness said.
Just keep your heart pure. If you’re not feeling it don’t force it. You’re doing the right thing.

But I’m letting down my girl; I haven’t even talked to my parents. I just don’t feel like God can use me.

Because you want Him to, He will, and though Savoy is a jewel you guys are young,
Goodness said.

Why am I so hot and cold with her?

Again, that’s for you to find out. That book is right in front of you. It’s a road map to life. Pick it up, get in it. What, do you want me to pick it up and come across your head with it?
Mercy said.

You’ll be alright Perry.

Yeah man. You’ll be alright.

Then I heard knocks on the door.

“Hey man, come on, come on. Open up, open up.”

What was that all about?
I wondered. Unable to explain the moment I got up and walked to the door. Saxon said, “Sup, I want to go to Spelman’s party and check out your cousin. Come on and ride with a brother.”

“Dude are you kidding? I’m chilling. I am not going to no party.”

He begged and pleaded and got on my nerves until the next thing I knew I was standing in a block party for Spelman and Morehouse. It was crowded and a beautiful shade of black folks everywhere. And just when I was about to turn around and tell Saxon that I wasn’t feeling the environment I ran into Savoy.

“My brother told me he was coming to this thing with you. I couldn’t believe it. You didn’t want to hang out with me, but you wanted to party.”

I should have asked him if he told his sister about the two of us going out, but I was still so baffled by my encounter with the angels that I wasn’t thinking straight.

“Well, you go on and have some fun. Allen and I are sure gonna.”

And then the basketball star from Tech that had violated her at the end of last year began putting his hands all over her.

“Wait, wait. What’s this? You know what he’s all about. Come on, Savoy. You don’t want to be with me?”

“Well, at least he knows what he wants. And he has apologized ten times over for being too forward. He never stops calling me, so why shouldn’t I give him a chance? I thought we had something before but I guess I was wrong. I guess we’re both running from love.”

I
don’t know Lord; I guess I am a little angry at you. Here I am trying to do it Your way and I still feel empty. One day I’m happy, the next day I’m pissed. I lose my girl; I don’t hang out with my friends; I try not to be tempted. I mean, it’s just one thing after another. It’s a circle that I am sick of being a part of.

I don’t know why I was so angry. We were in the middle of Spring ball and on the field I was throwing down, but the reporters were all in my face, talking about how much of a screw-up I was. I wasn’t even legally able to drink, how could the media think that college guys could handle all of their negative criticism? The fact that Coach Red wasn’t taking up for me wasn’t making me feel any better. Though he wasn’t on the bandwagon with the press, he certainly didn’t take a stand and have my back. All I knew was to show up on the field. But when Saxon showed up to make those same cuts, either he wasn’t fully healed from his injury earlier in the year or the guy just didn’t have it anymore. I couldn’t believe it when he got up in my face and I was just doing my thing.

I didn’t know what his problem was. Did he still have a beef with me or was he upset with his poor performance? Maybe it was both. I didn’t want a confrontation, so I left. I got in my car and just wanted to drive. I had no particular destination, but I headed east on Interstate 20 out of downtown Atlanta. My cell phone rang and it was Payton. We hadn’t talked in a while even though she’d been trying to reach me, and a big part of me didn’t want to talk at that moment. Honestly I didn’t have anything to say, but if she was calling then maybe she did.

“Hey sis, what’s up?”

“Awh! I’m so glad I got in touch with you.”

Sometimes when she had panic in her voice it just was annoying, I mean was it really all that or was she just exaggerating? And without just getting straight to the point, she talked round and a round about how many times it took her to get in touch with me.

“Look, I have football practice. I know Tad is up there working out too.”

“I know, I know. I’m just saying it seems like if you saw that I called you that you would get right back to me,” she said with an attitude. When I didn’t respond she said, “Okay, okay. I’m just stressed because it’s Dad.”

I’ve always known my father to be a rock. So never had I known my sister to say that.

“What’s going on with him?”

“He won’t go get his colon checked.”

“WHAT? Girl, you trippin’.”

“No wait, Perry. This is serious. This is a big deal. He just turned fifty and he’s supposed to go get it checked; actually he should have had it checked at forty. So he’s already ten years behind and he won’t go. Colon cancer is the fastest growing disease among African American males.”

“Girl, you know how strong Daddy is. And isn’t that thing hereditary?”

“That’s my point. Granddaddy had colon issues.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“So anyway, will you just call him and talk to him?”

“I can’t convince him to go see no doctor, you know how stubborn he is.”

“This is our father and I know you’re at Tech and life is great and all, but take your head out of your butt and care for someone else for a change. You need to be focused on Dad’s behind, okay?”

“Wait, why it got to be all that? You trying to make it seem like I’m something special or whatever. You know me better than anybody. Why you gon’ front on me like that?”

She was quiet, and the more I thought about it, the more pissed I got. “Well, shucks. If you going to accuse me of having a big head and all of that stuff then why don’t you just handle all of that then? Keep me out of your scheme to get Dad to go to some doctor.”

“Perry, wait, wait,” she said, but I hung up.

For real, I had my own issues. My dad was a grown man. If he didn’t want to go to the doctor then that was on him. I’m sure he was fine. He didn’t have any signs of having an irritable bowel, and the way mom talked about him stinking up the bathroom didn’t seem like he would have any problems with his colon. Though I didn’t know what the symptoms would be like, being that I wasn’t that educated on the disease. I just was feeling a little bit overwhelmed. I had never hung up on my sister before. But shoot, you grow up and you grow apart. I pressed harder on the accelerator and instead of driving at 70 mph like the sign had requested, I was going 90. My sports car could roll, and I started weaving in and out of Atlanta traffic. One guy put his middle finger up at me and that just made me press the accelerator even more. Was I losing my mind? Was I trying to crash? The clouds ahead were dark, and in two miles I was in rain. The traffic ahead of me was backed up. All I saw was red lights. I was going too fast to brake effectively and my car started skidding to the left. I grabbed the steering wheel tighter but lost control and went over to the right. To avoid hitting the eighteen-wheeler in front of me I skidded off the median and down an embankment. I opened my eyes, I took deep breaths. I couldn’t believe I had come away unscathed. My car had stopped literally inches from an oak tree. I wasn’t even stuck in the mud. I gained my composure and drove down to the left, which put me on some side street. I was in Covington.

I realized I was near the cemetery where my grandparents were buried.

In my mind the Goodness spirit said,
Alright, do you want to end up here now?

Then Mercy came on the scene and said,
I thought you wasn’t going to say anything to him. Obviously that is what he wants. Let him be stupid.

I couldn’t even remember where we put my grandparents. I hadn’t been back out here since we put my grandmother in the ground, but as the raindrops hit my face I found their place and dropped to my knees, remembering when my father had his dark night and wanted to take his life. Maybe depression was hereditary.

Stick with God!
Goodness said.

He don’t think God cares,
Mercy replied.

I looked up at the sky and pictured my grandparents way up over me holding hands and saying,
We know this ride of life is crazy boy, but just hold on.

“I don’t know if I can,” I said honestly and then placed my head in the grass. I wept.

God’s grace got me back to my apartment and even though I was emotionally drained, when I got in the door Lance and Deuce got all up in my face. It reminded me of when my dad got home and Payton and I would out-talk each other, both trying to get his attention. Whatever they were excited about destroyed my foul mood. I had no time to be bitter. I had to hear them out. So I said “Okay, okay. One at a time,” almost laughing at their jovial expressions.

“Don’t talk too loud,” Deuce said.

“Yeah, yeah. He might hear us,” Lance said.

Now both of them were acting real weird. Only the three of us lived here, and I did not feel like fooling with anybody. I had told them both to talk one at a time, but they kept talking to each other and talking to me at the same time. So I turned around and acted as if I was walking back out the door and Lance pulled me back into the room.

“Alright, alright. Deuce, you tell him. You left early from practice, man.”

“I didn’t leave early from practice. Coach dismissed us.”

“He dismissed us from practice but we had meetings. You weren’t the only dude who left so he wasn’t tripping or nothing. You’ll never guess who walked out on the field and showed everybody that he was back in full form.”

“Back in full form,” I said, completely confused. All of a sudden a dude that I hadn’t noticed came forward from the back of the room.

“Collin!” I said, real excited.

“Perry, hey!”

I shared an embrace with Collin. The last time I had actually seen him in our place he was fighting for his life. He had left Tech after being released from the team. Lance, Deuce and I never thought we would see him again and here he was. I stood back to stare at him and then said, “So what, what you doing here?”

“I don’t know, I just thought about a lot of the stuff we talked about. Never quitting, always finishing a job. I went to Alabama and thought about my life.”

“So, what did you find?” I said, placing my hand on my hip and looking at him sternly. He choked last football season and then because of his poor performance he wanted to take his own life. Now he was back.

“I know I haven’t come full circle and Coach Red hasn’t given me my scholarship back, but I’m here as a walk-on. I went out there and he started me from the ten—and I went out there and kicked it through the upright. I moved back to the twenty—through the upright. Moved back ten yards until I got to the sixty—and again I kicked it through the upright.”

“Yeah, Perry. He kicked it through every time.” Lance came over as fired up as he could be to tell me the story.

Deuce came over and said, “Man you should have seen it. We all were tripping, none of us could believe it. The boy has been practicing down there in Alabama. He is bad!”

“Though the semester is almost over I’m going to be going to school this summer, but I can continue training, so since nobody lived in here…”

“We’d be glad to have you back; you don’t even have to finish it. Dang man, it’s good to see you.”

“It’s something, Perry, when you get a second chance,” he said to me. “Trust me, I know what you’re talking about. I just want to do it better this time.” Collin looked at the three of us and confessed, “I don’t want to let any of y’all down, but I don’t want to let myself down either. I felt like the only way to go forward in life was to face my past.”

The four of us decided to go down to the Varsity to stuff down some hamburgers and French fries to celebrate. When Lance and Collin got up to go, Deuce got up out of his chair and said to me, “What’s up, man? I’ve been seeing Savoy out with the basketball dude. You put her down? You know Jailyn’s been talking.”

“Just cause everything is alright in your camp doesn’t mean I can keep mine together. Be excited things are good for you, it is what it is for me and Savoy, you know?”

“Whatever, man, play that on somebody who don’t know you. I know you like that girl, and her brother is so hot about her hanging out with the guy who sexually assaulted her.”

“I don’t have nothing to do with that. I tried to check her on that and she put me in my place. You only got to check me once, you know what I’m saying?”

“Come on, Perry, if you was doing your thing with her she wouldn’t even be tripping like that. Why you be pulling away? You do the same thing with me. We supposed to be boys and yet you keep this thing sea level, we ain’t going ocean deep no more, it’s like that?”

I bit my lip. I was real uncomfortable Deuce had called me out. I didn’t know why I was pulling away from everybody I cared about—my sister, my girl, my boys—but before I could get on the defensive Deuce lightly jabbed me in the shoulder and said, “But you know I’ve been praying for you, right dog?”

At that moment I was all choked up with emotion. He was praying for me. Maybe prayers are what allowed me to get back home. Maybe our prayers for Collin are what allowed him to get himself together and come back to Tech and show out. Maybe praying more was what would help to straighten out all of my insecurities. I just shook my head.

“It’s cool man, why you think I was hitting the bottle? To be honest, man, I know where you are. You’ve got a lot going on, Perry. It’s hard to walk in my shoes, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be like trying to run around in yours. There’s a God up there that loves the both of us and if He can help me keep it on the road don’t stop giving Him a try.

Sometimes it’s just like I’m going in circles and nothing gets better, but that’s just it. You’re going and you haven’t stopped. He’s the wind that is pushing you forward and when He gets ready, He’ll straighten your course out. You’ve just got to trust Him.”

I bit my lip again. I couldn’t even look at my friend, but his words of wisdom ran deep, and silently I said,
Yeah, I’ve just got to trust Him.

The week flew by. After all of the hard practice learning the new schemes the offensive coordinator had planned to incorporate next season, it was time for the Spring ball game. The only things that I had been focused on were my studies and the trio combination that proved to be a deadly one for the defense. Not only was I studying my playbook, I was acing my courses. But the biggest thing that proved to be powerful was getting into the Bible. My mind was starting to clear up. I really claimed the passage,
Greater is He that is in me than he who is in the world
. Every time I took my eyes off of God and started focusing on myself and my problems, my drama things spiraled out of control. I kept Him first and I was able to keep my eyes on the prize and be an overcomer. I was running circles around the defense. Coach Red had me running from the slot, running from the exposition and the Y. Wherever I was posted I was dominant. The throws from my roommate, quarterback Lance Shadrach, didn’t hurt at all either. Deuce had even run an eighty-yard play. When the game was over I dropped to my knees. Too many cameras were on me but I prayed, not for show but because I was thankful.