Discovery Of Gold

​

Georgia Legislature. Following the Discovery of Gold, it Became Illegal

for Cherokees to Mine Gold, Testify against White Men, or Hold Political Assembly. 1829.

                                Constable, John. Hadliegh Castle. 1829.

 

I was eight when we started

working on a thousand

square-foot addition

to our house. My dad brought in guys

he knew from his Chino

Y.A. Chaplainhood.

Guys who got out and stayed out

for a year he would bring by. One of them

was Julien. During an interruption

in digging by hand a sewer

trench beneath our house to the future

half, Julien saw me dunking

on the basketball hoop dad had gotten

me from a garage sale. I had lowered the rim

to 4 feet, low as it would go.

 

I couldn’t dribble, I couldn’t shoot.

I just held the ball and ran

and ran and leapt into the air,

slamming the ball through hoop

and chains. I’d hold on

long as I could, kicking,

imagining a crowd cheering on

my beautiful imagined body,

until fingers gave out

and small sneakers hit the driveway.

Then I’d do it again.

I was super-good at basketball.

 

Julien clapped for the ball. I couldn’t pass,

I couldn’t throw. I didn’t want to look

stupid either, so I carried the ball to him

and two-handed I handed it to him.

He squeezed the ball to test

the pressure, then he dribbled beautiful,

dribbled between his tall legs

and started shooting free throws

as if with cheat codes—to me:

the hoop still only four feet high.

 

I was super-good basketball.

I asked him how he did that.

He asked if I wanted to learn,

and I did, so he raised the hoop

to regulation height.

 

He showed me to hold

the ball, to be fluid and move,

how a dribble is so much more

than just a hand to strike with

an orange surface, and how

shooting the ball was more than pushing

a thing away. So I did, over and again,

until I was laying up balls like a flu,

hitting free throws as if I was Bruce Lee

and Cochise’s green Power Ranger baby.

 

I did that until I was old enough

to help with the addition.

 

After homework I dug ditches

until we filled them with sand

and rebar, pipes for water

over pipes for sewage, and screed it all with cement

and then we put up the walls

I picked up nails, and caulked

every, every seam, and some days

I saw my friends too. But first

came insulating and wiring

and more plumbing and dry wall

and picking up black screws.

 

My basketball paled and cracked

and flattened from the sun and years

and years and years

and years.

 

By the time I was 16, Julien had six

children from four different women,

and he was bringing back songs

and ceremonies, and I was fighting Bros

in their white, lifted, Ford F150s

for throwing soda cans at me

working their mouths around injun

the way they did with Skol

faggot or nigger. My dad tried to convince me

to quit fighting: if I was ever hurt,

what would all these Y.A. guys do

to these stupid mixed-up boys?

 

They loved me through their love for my dad.

 

Julien just broke up with his then girlfriend.

A seventh baby, and fifth woman. He couch

surfed, his checks garnished of everything,

no matter how much he tried to be there

for his girls, all seven   girls.

So when his old cell mate, Frankie, called my dad

saying Julien was spending time in his old territory

in east L.A., my dad called and sat down with Julien.

            ~                                              ~

Frankie had since moved to Texas,

started a company to make custom computers

for companies. He offered Julien a job

if he would leave the LAC, and would pay

enough Julien could afford his garnishments

and after a few months Julien would be even

able to afford to move his twins and their mother

out with him and his lighthouse of a smile.

 

But he would have to leave his tribe,

leave everything he’d worked for with them

behind and he’d have to abandon his other girls

which all he loved behind, with their mothers

whom wanted nothing anymore to do

with his wandering smile. Julien came around

to leaving everything behind, to sleep in a bed,

for Texas and the women who would have him.

            ~                                              ~

He recorded a C.D. of lullabies for all of his girls

for while he was gone. He packed up his Ford Torus,

and drove out from a Riverside couch to Texas.

 

We got a call that he’d died at one in the morning.

 

A drunk got on the 10 the wrong direction

doing 80. Killed Julien instantly. He never made the border.

 

At the funeral, my dad pulled every mother

Julien had made to the side, and told them

each to support the other. Put away all

dirt and teeth. Care for all of these girls,

these sisters.

            ~                                              ~

Frankie pulled me aside and told me

how Julien always loved me like a brother,

loved I never asked what he went to the Y.A. for.

Frankie told me all the ex-cons dad helped out

loved me for never asking after their pasts.

And yet Frankie said I needed to know Julien’s.

            ~                                              ~

Julien went into the Y.A. when he was 13.

He was part of a gang, and he tortured

other gang’s members–children, men

–in his boyhood bedroom. They called him Spike.

Bic lighters, four-inch galvanized steel nails.

A man who had a tongue roughly split by Julien

turned State’s Evidence. The longest part

of Julien’s trial was trotting out evidence,

photographed burns, cuts, tongues and eyes marred.

 

Julien was angry for a long time in the Y.A.

and earned himself years of extra time.

 

When my dad came to the Y.A.,

bringing ceremonies with him,

helped Julien to set down his rage.

Julien quit fighting, lifting weights,

and started playing basketball.

With good behavior, he bought

his extra time down and was free

at 25, seven years after

he was supposed to be released

            ~                                  ~

Frankie held my shoulders, said, you remember.

You always remember how much people can change.