Mr Brown, A Mentoring Tale
Brotherman

 

As Rodney Allen was walking himself to school, he strained to catch a glimpse of the downtown skyline only a couple of miles away. He had to do this everyday in order to get enough light to form a composite sketch of where he was going in his daily journey of walking from his project to the bus stop every morning. Because the project super hadn't fixed the streetlight for two years, he made this trek in the pitch black of night, walking on a sheen of frost that made every step seem as if one was wearing tap shoes in an ice skating rink. And when he would strain his neck muscles to see the skyline, balancing himself with his hind ligaments while taking perilously slow steps, he would look at the luminecence of the big city, it's beautiful buildings in their off white glow, and remind himself of what he didn't have.

The bus stop and the steep hill that lead up to it was a pain in the a$$ to get to in warm weather, but on cold January days it was so bad even cars couldn't come up it. In order to get there, you had beat a path across the decripit thicket on the side of the road leading up to it, which long ago had it's vegatation sucked out by garbage, vermin , excrement and remains of unsolved and unnoticed murder cases. It's maze of grayish- brown thorny branches looked like something out of a surrealist black forest fantasy.

At the top of the hill where he would wait for the bus, the streets lights would flutter and morph into various shades of reddish off-white, distorting the reality of what you saw, never giving one a second of peace. The colors on the hill that came from these various shades of off white would only light so much as to leave enough shadows, unseen avenues and pockets of darkness to keep you on your toes for every crinkled leaf, far away scream, busted carburator and any other not quite right sound that would give an active imagination the slightest notion of peril. Every school day Rodney would go through this routine by biting his lip and willing himself long enough for the drab county bus to come to take him to a private school across town. And when the bus would come, he would sit in the very last row and pull out one of his many scowls, the emotional force shields that separated him from the rest of the world.

On a cold January day, in the middle of the second year of his arduous scholastic journey, his routine was altered. Sitting in his seat was a tall, lanky man, wearing a light brown overcoat, smoking a corn cob pipe and looking way too overdressed to be riding on the county bus. He wore exquisite black lapel Cartier shoes, which were extended over the seat in front of him in order for him to stretch his legs while reading. He wore an immaculate Pinstriped black suit with a matching vest, of which hung over a shiny gold cross. His hair was elegantly long and manelike, with streaks of gray that added a sophistication to his demeanor. His smooth as marble brown skin was in contrast with the drabness of the bus, and belied the middle age apperance that his body and mannerisms evoked.

Throughout that whole half hour trip, Rodney gave him his most menacing prepubecent stare, hurt because he had the temerity to take his seat. But his scowling facial contortions were to no avail, as the man kept on reading and smoking his corn cob pipe. That the man was smoking on the bus puzzled Rodney, cause they had six signs that said you weren't supposed to, but he just kept on smoking without the bus driver or the passengers saying a word. He would be at the same spot the next morning and the morning after that an so forth, just reading and smoking. Pretty soon as a week went by and another, Rodney's interest in him turned from that of intimidation to one of a casual observer. Why was this sharp dressed motherf*cker riding the bus?, he thought. What was he doing? What was his bag? What was his hustle?( for the deeply cynical Rodney saw oddities and deviants of his street norm solely as the form of people who were trying to play a con on him. A survival mechanism? yes, but also a very elaborate way for him not to feel.)

Then came a Friday that was one of the toughest of his very short life. He had started the morning getting beaten by the streets neighborhood thugs, who took his cap and his lunch money, leaving him on the side of the road. He had spent the school day being excoriated by his teachers for his poor grammar and mercilessly made fun of for his shoddy clothing. Sitting in the bus stop to go home that Friday afternoon, he was at the end of his mental rope as any 12 year old boy who has ever had mental rope could be. The traumas of his projects, along with his " culturally deficient " standing at school, had worn on him like a pair of untreated ulcers. The mental well that he had often called on to get him through the day was running real dry. It was at this state that the mysterious, well dressed man saw him, as he plopped his body in a seat five feet away, with streaks of caked salt under his eyes and snot bubbling out of his nose. As the bus went on it's route and the luxury houses in the University Place suburbs began to slowly blend into black Tacoma, the man offered him a tissue, but he shook his head . He tried to shoot him a glare, but his face, tired from snot and crying or possibly from all of his masks, wouldn't let him.

About three minutes after they crossed into Tacoma, the man opened his mouth.

" Young man" he said in a gravelly, low voice. " If you build a fence too high, what you keep in ends up worse than what you keep out."

" Huh"? Rodney responded

" I can see through your bullsh!t, boy. You are a mixed up kid in a lot of pain. And if you keep going the way you are, your gonna be in bad shape."

" What the f*ck you care about me cuz. you a freak,motherf*cker!"

" Young man, i'm tying to help you!" he said while grabbing shirt collar. "Beneath all your bullsh*t, you got a good heart. Now tell me what is your problem, why you doing all this crying."

"I ain't cryin, man."

"Bullsh!t,answer my question."

" Kids make fun of the way I talk." Rodney whimpered softly. "They say im dumb. Plus I got robbed this morning." He wanted to cry but his tear ducts had ran out of salt and water.

Just then the man pulled out a black book in his book that said " grammar ". " If you are serious about bettering yourself, I want you to read this over the weekend. My name is Abraham Brown, I'm a smart man, if you let me help you, you gonna be okay, little brother."

"But you gotta read it " Mr brown said as Rodney got off at his bus stop "I will only help you if you read it."

He didnt read it on Friday and Saturday, but on Sunday night he picked up the book. " Let me read this and test him" he thought. He stayed up till 1:00 in the morning writing five pages of new words for him to look over. If he wouldn't show up, fine, he thought. It would just crystallize every notion about the male role model's in his life.

And Rodney stood at the bus stop that Monday morning with the papers wrapped in his right glove, knowing in his heart what was going to happen. He had pictured it in his mind; him walking up the bus steps, paying the driver, turning him around to see him not there, bitterly smiling and actualizing another letdown, another jive a$$ con, another bullsh!t deal. He visioned it all too clearly. Naw, a voice said in his mind, this motherf*cker aint gonna show up.

But he did. To his wide eyed astonishment, when he turned around after paying the bus driver, there was Mr Brown, only this time, he was wearing bi-focals. "What do you have for me, young man " he said with a sly grin.

They spent the whole 2 hour trip to his school correcting his paper and 2 more hours on the trip back pronouncing more words. Rodney's intellectual interest in Mr brown started as a way to test him, a sort of reverse psychology to see how genuine his intentions with him were. But It soon grew from there. Pretty soon he got an A- in his grammar test, then an A on the next one, Of which Mr brown smiled and said " Young man, we have so much more to do."

Pretty soon, every week was a new lesson. For 4 hours( the bus trip there and back), Mr brown would conduct extensive lectures, with rodney listening attentively. First, grammar, then english, math, and history when he was thirteen, then philosophy when he was fourteen. For his freshman year in high school he studied Will and Ariel Durant's history of the world. " You are a citizen of the globe " Brown would say. " you have a mind and a future beyond your meager project". Pretty soon he would begin to pick books for himself and their lectures begin to become more collaborative discussions about history, life, death, even metaphysics. Sometimes Rodney would notice passengers staring in astonishment at their conversations and a couple of times the bus driver would ask Rodney if he was a schitzophrenic, but he paid him no mind whatsoever.

As a few years passed, people noticed the massive changes in him. He cut his cornrows and started pestering his mother to get her to buy him discount slacks and sweaters at Value Village. He started wearing glasses, which inspired the neighborhood street punks to make fun of him, but he really didn't care. His grades skyrocketed, high enough to place him into honors classes.

Then on an early fall morning of his sophomore year at Curtis Preparatory Academy, Rodney broke the news to Mr Brown that he wasn't going to be bussed to school anymore. His mother had bought a brand new house in the neighborhood, a few miles away from the school itself.

" Wonderful " he said with sigh and a smile.

" Mr brown, we have got to schedule times for or lessons."

" Don't worry, you will see me when you need to see me."

" But Mr Brown, please we gotta schedule something."

" Young man, you have learned plenty on my watch. When the time comes, I will see you again."

" But I got so many more things to learn, so many things to do."

" Young man, I have taken you very very far. Now there are things that you have to do for yourself."

" If I'm not going to see you, at least let me give you some of your books back." he said turning to his backpack

" In due time."

And as he turned back up, Mr Brown was gone.

For a whole month he tried to find him. He reasoned in his mind that he just had to leave quickly and got off the bus fast, so he decided to call every single solitary Brown in the Greater Tacoma, Washington phone book. All 1,693 of them. Doing a 100 calls a day for seventeen days. But no matter where he looked he couldn't find a distinguished middle aged man named Abraham Brown. He got a Bill Brown that was a plumber, a Ray-Ray Brown that was a pimp, a Lucius Brown that sold penny stocks, and a T-bone Brown that was a bodybuilder who threatened to find him and beat him within an inch of his life if he called him again. But no distinguished Mr Brown.

That whole freshman year Mr Brown just got stuck in Rodney's mind. Just who the hell was this guy? Why when every time he tried to ask him a personal question would he just shy away and tell him to stick to studies? Why didnt anyone notice him on the bus? Who was his friends? Who was his woman? Just what was this suckers bag anyway?

But he wasn't really mad at him, for he more than prepared him for his scholastic task at hand. Where most of the students at the academy saw ennui and dissilusionment, Rodney saw opportunity, peace, quiet, harmony and the luxury of nature. He knew that knowledge was a way for him to get out of his circumstances and he took every opportunity and relished every chance he had in his nice secluded neighborhood. And for a decade afterwords, Rodney would let out a slight zen giggle every time he thought about him.

Nearly 10 years after their last encounter, Rodney was in a drastically different place. He lived in the sixth floor of a 10th floor apartment right in the middle of Tacoma's bohemian district. To his left window was the back of the same skyline he saw as a boy, only brighter, closer and whose off-white lights he often indulged in by sleeping with his window curtains open. To his right was the lights of the greater Tacoma area's island suburbs, several miles across the water. He would spend hours at night in bed looking at all the lights, as if there were something bequeathed to him. The apartment itself, a small one bedroom number, bespoke everything that one thought of in a writers pad. Scattered papers containing theories, riffs, and future great Ideas. Books that were everywhere as if they were post it reminders for him to read.

On a unusually warm may day in Tacoma, Rodney mailed his graduation invitations, to his momma, his aunts and uncles, and a special one postmarked to

Abraham Brown
whateverstreetyoazzison
wheverthef*ckyouare, world 00000

His graduation was an extensive seven hour ceremony. At about hour six, he finally received his diploma; smiling on the stage as he wore a black and yellow cap and gown with gold tassels to show that he graduated with honors. Afterwords, his aunts stormed his apartment with huzzahs, advice and plate after plate of exquisitely fattening food. When the last of his aunts left and after forcing a bowl of turkey stuffing and some beets into his already packed refrigerator, Rodney took a shower and went to bed.

At about three o'clock he wakes up to a noise that sounded like someone was getting something in his refrigerator. He raises his head with his neck to hear, but after a minute of hearing nothing, he deems what he heard as a figment of his imagination and goes back to sleep. A Minute later he hears the sound of a drink pouring and freezes. Startled he wakes up gets his sweat pants when he hears " Boy your aunt Ramona can sure cook some greens "

" Who the f*ck are you, what do you want and how did you get into my apartment?!!!?"

Just then his desk light turned on. "I have my ways " said Mr brown.

He was sitting in Rodney's desk, drinking a minute maid, munching on aunt Ramona's hotplate of fried chicken, biscuits and greens, and wearing his trademark sly cheshire cat grin, the same grin he always wore when he knew he had proven a point. Nothing changed about him, not a scintilla. He had the same brown overcoat, the same black suit, the same strand of gray hair and the same black lapel designer Cartier shoes. " You are doing good for yourself, boy " he said between bites of greens.

" Look, I got a lot of love for you man, but you got some explaining to do."

" Listen, all ill tell you is that the creator has his ways. He knows, does and acts on things most folk don't understand. And when he saw you struggling, he sent me to help you, to push you in the right direction. You had the drive, boy. Hell, you lasted as long as you did in your situation by just winging it. You just needed guidance, somebody to push you further."

" But why did you leave?" Said Rodney as he sat on the front of his bed.

" My mission was to guide you, not give you all the answers. You had to learn things for yourself. To fail, fall down, get up and try again until you succeeded. And you have done very well for yourself."

" Well, how can I thank you?"

" You have thanked me by your actions. But your battle isn't over yet, young man. You got many more rivers to cross. We'll meet again someday, but you are in a good place now. You are on the right path. I'll see you."

" But when?"

" Like I said when I left, in due time."

And just then, as he turned the desk light off, he was gone. Leaving Rodney sitting on the bed with nothing but the butter colored light of the Tacoma skyline illuminating his room. Just then he got into bed, put his hands behind his back, smiled, closed his eyes and felt blessed.

 

 

Copyright © 2003 Brotherman
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"