SOME PEOPLE ARE LUCKY

THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE WHO ARE LUCKY

By Devin Wilson

There are some people who are lucky, they have a plan, they know exactly what they are going to do with themselves. But most of us have no idea, merely coasting through life, never realizing our goals. However, there are a few of us who get lucky, find our niche so to speak. For years it felt as if success was just out of my reach, as if something was holding me back, but I couldn’t figure out what. And when I finally did, the irony was almost heart breaking.

March 24th, 1998 was the first day of the rest of my life. The morning wake-up call sounded just like any other day waking me from a deep sound slumber. Amazed I found sleep at all the night before, I stretched out looking up at the ceiling waiting for my roommate to clear the bunk before jumping down and standing in plain eyesight, while the prison guard made his rounds for morning count. For me that count would be the last; I was at the end of this long, laborious nightmare. No more stone walls, guard towers and locked cages. The years had finally added up and it was time to break the doors open, I couldn’t wait for the count to clear. My heart was racing a mile a minute in anticipation of the moments to come.

“Clip, clop…., Clip, clop,” the guard’s boots struck the floor as he shuffled down the corridor looking in cages, counting inmates. “Clip, clop… Clip, clop,” he neared, looked in and moved on. By this time, I nearly knew who all the guards were, some by name others by sight. Most Wisconsin prisons are in the northern part of the state, in small and mostly European populated towns. In fact, the only minorities in these towns were inmates at one of the prisons.

I couldn’t believe it; my release day was finally here. It was almost a lifetime ago, I walked through those doors, shackled down looking ahead at a ten-year sentence. New inmates were subject to countless health and education tests. At the end of such a test one of the staff member pulled me to the side asking, “What’s a black boy like you doing in prison?” He was a heavy-set hillbilly with blond hair, blue eyes, and country accent. He was holding my test in hand amazed I tested post high school. I was there for murder, but he was right, I got myself involved in a lifestyle I had no business being a part of.

I grew up in Milwaukee, within the confines of the inner-city. And just like most of my friends I was the product of a single parent household. As a child I didn’t run with the bad kids, I hung out with the athletes, kids who had dreams of making something out of themselves. I often worried about my future; not that I worried something would happen to me, I knew I’d live pass the age of twenty-one and prison wasn’t in my future. What I worried about was I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself, what career choice I would pursue as an adult; all I knew was I wanted to be successful. However, my life by all accounts was privileged, and even though my father wasn’t around my mother was well established in the medical field. I wanted for nothing but her time because she was almost always at work.

As a teen my life took a turn for the worse. I began looking up to and admiring the wrong role models: drug dealers, gang members, and killers. And even though I started to admire the wrong types, I still worried about my future, what type of life I’d have, until a middle school teacher advised me to join the military and make a career out of it: there it was my fail-safe plan. I wasn’t going to make it as a pro basketball player, and I had no idea what I wanted to do so the military became my goal... until the lifestyle I was trying to walk led down the path to a dark slippery slope of darkness and despair. There are things you know you have no business doing but somehow or another you get caught up in them and find yourself in too deep. And on a cold winter night, I found myself surrounded by a mob of angry gang members with only one thing in mind, my demise. Gunshots rang out, thunderously shattering the stillness of the city. A young African American male needlessly lost his life by my hands. The nightmares of my actions plagued me, not because of the consequences of the prison sentence I was facing but for my actions. At first, I rationalized to myself ‘it was either him or me,’ I didn’t understand the magnitude of the pain I caused his love ones; the shame and guilt of that would come later.

“COUNTS CLEAR!” The doors broke and we were free to leave our cages for the mess hall. Breakfast was the only meal of the day the guards didn’t regulate which hall ate when. Most of the inmates would try getting more sleep, not even half the population came out. Breakfast rotated the same two meals, either pancakes, meat and oatmeal, or meat, toast, and eggs; the meat was either bacon or sausage. “Darkus Kelly… 262……,” My heart nearly jumped out my chest, my name and inmate number exploded over the all-call. “Report to control.” It was time, it was finally time. I can’t begin to explain the excitement of the moment. I stopped counting years, months, weeks and days years ago, I had been counting the seconds. There were times I lay on my bunk and felt as if this day would never come.

On March 24th 1998, I walked out of the large brick warehouse a free man with nothing to my name but the clothes on my back and a release check just shy of ten grand. My boys, PJ and Little Ride were there bright and early waiting for me at the front door. I didn’t know them from the streets, we met behind walls, fighting the same struggle, time. My friends from the streets had long disappeared; all I had left was my family and memories of a city full of life and prosperity. I couldn’t wait to get back to Milwaukee. I was free but my struggles were just beginning.

I was seventeen years old when I left the streets and now I was twenty-four. My failsafe was no longer in reach, the military was out so I was trapped not having any idea what I wanted to do with myself, and now it was worse. I was grown with no idea what it meant to be an adult and with yet another strike against me, I’m now a felon.

The first six months were brutal. I found a crew to run with who were not felons, but had sights set on legit work. Time and time again, they got the call backs while I was left waiting. And even more heart-breaking, time and time again they’d screw these jobs over, pulling no calls and no shows. It got to the point while completing applications, the moment I marked ‘felon’, I instinctively knew my application would be dismissed and one of them would get the call back for a job they’d screw over. In the back of my mind, I cursed the employer: that’s what y’all get for passing over someone who’s eager to work just because of their past. Nevertheless, there I was a grown ass man trapped in mother’s house.

A lot of times blessings come in mysterious way. My big sister introduced me to an unorthodox job opportunity, a paper route. Never in a million years would I have thought of this as a means of income. It was seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year. Requiring about an hour and a half of work daily, paying anywhere from a hundred twenty-five to a hundred fifty dollars weekly. Copping two routs landed me at roughly three hundred a week which was decent enough at the time. My supervisor was a cool ass brother out of East St Louis, D.C Woods.

About a year into my groove at the newspaper joint, D.C pulled me to the side on a business opportunity. He knew my background and he liked my attitude. He was trying to start up a small business and was looking for a little muscle to move furniture. To me, what he was talking about was small potatoes, but what the hell I wasn’t doing anything else. We started picking up household appliances off roadsides, repairing and selling them. Everything was going smoothly until someone reported us, forcing us to shut down. But D.C was determined. He didn’t let anything set him back. I was ready to give up but not him, he pushed forward, renting a store front and re-opening the business from a hustle. He told me his dreams, which I dismissed as a little bit too far-fetched. But over the years, one by one and against all odds I watched his dreams come true. Meanwhile I sat on the side lines doing the very minimum just making ends meet.

One day out of the clear, D.C pulled me to the side, just like years ago at the Newspaper job, informing me I could advance if I wanted before handing me a small black book in conclusion, “Where we are in life is by our own design.”

His words fell on deaf ears, but I heard them clearly in my dream that night, finding myself running in a race and for some reason when I took the lead instead of reaching for the finish line I began to run in place, losing the race. I woke up bewildered and upset the following morning as I prepared for work. It was only a dream, I pushed it to the back of my mind, as I drove off until almost reaching the job sight. Visions of the dream swooped down on me like Déjà vu. I pulled up to work speechless, this was the block where I dreamed the race took place. I stared at the store, thinking about my dream, and D.C’s words, “Where we are in life is by our own design,” and the little black book he had given me.

I opened the book and the first words I read, “Life is a race and where we finish is up to us.” I understood but I didn’t understand, but I knew it was time for a change and it was all up to me. I slid into that store a new man, D.C most have noticed because I didn’t have to negotiate a new position in the business. He took one look at me and before I could say a word he smiled and said, “It’s about time.” He pulled me off deliveries that very day and started training me on the technical side of the business.

The next ten years were not uneventful, there were more downs then ups but the irony of that was the downs created the ups. Employees stole from us and nearly drained the business but from these pitfalls we learned and grew. It was at our worse, the heavens found a way to turn the tide in our favor. After surviving the storm, D.C called me to his office for a surprise meeting, making me partner with a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus, used to refinance my home and off set my retirement.

There are some people who are lucky; they know exactly what they are going to do with themselves. For years I fell short of my goals wondering why. As it turned out I was my biggest obstacle.