Mama's Boys

Larry's jaw dropped. The biggest hero in his life was Jackie Robinson. He'd never dreamed he could come across like that.

Go look at the sidewalk at 3710 Jordan Drive. It says, FREE IVERSON, SIMMONS, WAYNE AND STEVENS. I took a stick and wrote that in wet cement. That's the four black kids got put in jail.

Allen come home one day with a lump on his head and a headache. Fight had started at the bowlin' alley between whites and blacks over somethin' said. He told me his friends had pulled him out, he hadn't done nothin'. "They didn't want me gettin' in no trouble," he said. "They my niggas." He'd just quarterbacked the football team at Bethel High to the state championship and was doin' the same with the basketball team. Next thing I know they're arrestin' Allen and three other black boys.

All his life, every day when I left for work in summer, I'd tell Bubba Chuck, "You watch your sister and be good. God see everything you do." And that's what came right back at me now. Allen said, "Mama, how can that be? If God see everything I do, why'm I gettin' charged with this?" My grandmother told him, "Don't question God," and he never complained a word after that.

That trial was the first time he wore a suit and tie. I made him wear one to court. He hates 'em now. They remind him of then. You can't expect guys who grew up like he did to be in a suit and tie.

He didn't cry when they took him off in handcuffs to jail. I didn't either—wasn't gonna let my son see that. But my tears got in my eyes after they took him. I cried every night he was in prison. Day he walked back through the door, we clenched so hard, I felt like I was goin' up to heaven.

He'd changed in jail. He'd seen the world right in front of his eyes, and he knew what people could do to you. But I liked the change. When he came out, he took no s—-.

Larry came out of the locker room ashen. It had been another one of those nights when his star had played as if he didn't understand that a team was a family.

He looked down the tunnel. There stood Allen, hugging and kissing his mother, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, childhood friends, old coaches and teachers—the reunion that awaited him after nearly every home game.

Larry turned to greet his own family. Allen's face lit up when he saw Larry's wife and two kids. He came over and gave Shelly a hug, L.J. a high five and Madison a squeeze.