People are surprisingly hard to kill despite how fragile we are as human beings, and the fact that I was unfortunate enough to do so at the age of thirteen was horribly stunning.  There were no bullets or knives.  No bombs, or weapons employed of any kind.  However, his blood is on my hands.  The shame and the fault are mine.  I’ll take them to my grave.    

Willie Lee Lacey was a man who’d worn many hats in his short sixty-six years of life, lived many lives.  At six years old he became a cattle rancher when his father told him to bring him a calf.  It took little Willie all day, but with his brothers watching, he got it done – without a rope.  He was a soldier in the U.S. Army in WWII, and fought overseas.  “Not much different from living in the south as a black man,” he used to say.  “Once you’ve seen your brother burned and hung as people from miles around party under his body, it’s all the same.”  “Don’t ever volunteer!”

He was the father of six children who loved him, all by one woman who he abused.  Not all of the hats he wore were pretty.  He came home one day to find everyone and everything gone.  A house, where once a home had stood.  They never came back despite his efforts.

A part time Mr. Fix It and pimp, he once, as word had it, pulled a wooden plank from a six foot fence to beat a whore called ‘Classy May’.  Brutal, tough and loved, Willie was also my grandpa.

He carried a huge folding buck knife, smoked a collection of pipes and rarely ever spoke.  It was as if God had given him a sack full of words, and he was just about out of them.

His woman’s name was Beaulah Charle Moore, a five foot dynamo with all the sass and pop that the fates could fit into such a small space.  She cooked everything from scratch.  That was the Belzona, Mississippi, in her blood.  She drove as if her name was Jeff Gorden just three points out of the lead, and had a name for all nine of her wigs!  That woman could peel the bark from a man at twenty yards, just talking.

To see the rendering of people’s lives, their experiences, passions, defeats, their regrets, calls for a vision that I didn’t own as a thirteen year old.  I also didn’t know that when people love you, they give you a part of their souls.  I didn’t know what I had, to respect it, that I was standing on sacred ground.  I was a simple kid who wanted to be somewhere and someone other than where and who I was, only to find that when I got there and put on those clothes, that it was cheaper to just be me. But who the hell was that – I?  Foolish.

My grandparents lived 1½ blocks away from the beach in paradise – Pismo Beach, California – one of three black families within a thirty mile radius.  It was as far away from Watts, California, or Compton, California, in every way and as on many levels, as it could be, only find a military base and you’ll find a black community.  Close that base and we move on, like the Romany gypsies.  But grandpa had anchored himself with a job in the city’s parks and recreation department.  At sixty and with little education, it was far from ideal.  However, after twenty-five years of service, he was forced to retire at the age of sixty-three, a legend in the area.  

However deep the scars of life ran in the man, he seemed to have found a measure of peace, a way of shifting into a position that didn’t stress him to the point of snapping, with all but one of those searing brands – that being the murder of my mother, his daughter.  I imagine that he saw my sister and I coming to live with him as a second bite into the apple of her life.  A chance to rectify a measure of his pain, and close the wound by sacrificing for her children.  A connection denied to the two of them in her lifetime.  But hope blinds us to the fact that patches are but scars, and that new, only means that it’s new to us. 

A murder in a family freezes people in a photograph of their pain.  To toss away the photo and move on is to forget – to say that my love for you is too heavy.  I must lay it down here so that I can survive.  For some it’s doable, for other families… not so much.

I was just hitting my teens at the time, however, I had a full mustache like Carl Weathers, and I passed for much older if I didn’t smile.  Once, while with my step-mom, the clerk asked me if it would be cash or credit?!  I could buy beer, get into adult clubs – and adult trouble.  About that time I also found I could charm (lie) the panties off an adult woman.  Game over!  You couldn’t tell me anything!

I’d stay gone for weeks.  I hustled my way to an Interceptor 1100 motorcycle and could be found anywhere from the bay area to LA at thirteen years old.  Fearless?  No, too dumb to be afraid!

My G-pops would be out looking for me with tears in his heart, anger and confusion clouding his vision, embarrassed by my actions, yet trying.

I’d eventually slink home, and he’d put it on me something tough, trying to make me fear him more than I loved running the streets.  My batteries spent, drained, out of love and respect, I’d take it.  I had no other options, not in my mind at the time.

Okay – brass tacks, as they say.  Women and girls have sway in the hearts and minds of men and boys.  Facts!  It’s how grown men find themselves dressed as princesses in wigs and full make-up, voguing like they are a star on AMC’s ‘Pose’.  It’s how women find themselves giving their all to a man with zero ROI (return on investment).  I was no longer at the wheel, but rather being driven physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually.  Gone!

I came home that last time to find my grandpa had suffered a heart attack and a mild stroke.  Bea also told me that all of his children were in town, and had been riding around looking for me, that my bags were packed and in the trunk of their car, and that currently they were all at the hospital, simply waiting on my return to hit the highway.  My family was putting their foot down.  Hard!

I showed up in the hospital room and Willie was sitting up smiling and laughing with all of his children, save mom.  I hadn’t seen my aunts and uncles in years.  They’d come together for the first time since my mother’s death to defend their father.  But when they looked up and saw me, every face fell, my grandpa’s crumbling into tears as he pointed at me, stammering through his grief, “I tried to -”  

“Just go!” they all yelled repeatedly at me.  “You’re killing him DeLaine!  You’re killing him!”  

It was as if my mother had died all over again for him in that moment.  If she had ever touched your life, you would know you could find her in my eyes.  I’d ruined far more than a moment for them.  Oddly, I never saw myself as a cause of so much pain, and I had never felt more alone, guilty, or so much shame in my young life.  

Willie Lee Lacey would pass away eighty-three days later, asleep on the couch, at the age of sixty-six.  We would never speak again.  Every time someone spoke my name he’d cry.  I was never able to apologize, or heal his heart.

It’s crazy the things you learn about yourself after the use for the information has seemingly passed.  We all want and need to be loved, but to do so is to be trusted by another’s heart.  It’s not the love you give that breaks your heart, it’s what you do with the love that you take – are given.  It’s in that space that you make or break those you love, even unto yourself.

Now, I seek to invest in people through conversations that will last a lifetime, and I dedicate my pen to all of my mother’s people.  I do this hoping I can give something I never recognized in my life, so that they will know it when they see it – hope.  Give yourself a chance to win by not giving up now. 

 Always me… DeLaine Jones

Mr. Jones has served over three decades for a crime he committed when he was seventeen years old, a juvenile. He can be contacted at:

DeLaine Jones #7623482
Snake River Correctional Institution
777 Stanton Blvd 
Ontario, Oregon 97914-8335