Courageous

By Corey Jay Johnson

Courageous is a story loosely based on the life of Avon "Flubber" Johnson Sr. In this story a young man from the streets of Baltimore is raised by a single mother and a family of proud hard working Carolina folk who have a lot of Faith and Pride. As he begins to stray away from the public school system at an early age, Flubber finds himself very much attracted to the street life of robbing, stealing, and drug dealing. He recruits a group of life long friends who take the journey with him as he becomes a notorious drug dealer and a infamous gangster with an uncontrollable drug addiction. After falling on hard times and hitting rock bottom, Flubber acquires a life-threatening disease that will cause him to deal with life …… on life's terms.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781682220580

Book preview

Epilogue

Chapter 1

1959 - Nicknames

For many years Avon Johnson and his brothers grew up in a decent home with a mother, but no father. Avon was the second oldest of four boys. He was always a loud animated kid. No matter where he was, Avon always stood out amongst other kids; if not for his size, then for his attitude and his loud mouth. At an early age, Avon decided to hang out in the streets because he was attracted to the independence, the fast life, and most of all the money. His friends called him Flubber. There are two stories as to why they called him Flubber.

One story is that Avon had big lips when he was a kid. So his childhood friends called him Flubber-lips. Later they shortened the name to Flubber. At first Avon hated the name. But then they called him F lub for short. He eventually got used to that name. It did not matter much anyway, because his close childhood friends were going to call him Flub whether he liked the name or not. Another story is that Avon got his nick-name Flubber from a movie that came on television when he was young. In this movie a mad scientist mixed together several chemicals and created a rubbery substance that could not be destroyed. The scientist called the indestructible product, Flubber. As a youth, Avon played football. He was pretty tough and a little big for his age. The story is that the other boys would bounce off of him whenever he carried the football because he was so hard to tackle. Avon would also get into many fights when he was young. No matter what you tried to do to him; he would always come back fighting even harder. So the guys called him Flubber . Avon had created this reputation that he could not be destroyed and that he was the toughest kid around. Whichever story is the truth, the nickname Flubber eventually became a term of endearment.

Although he was very young, Avon was very smart. Even his teachers told his mother that the lessons in school were too easy for Avon. He breezed through every class and every subject with no problem. That may have been the worst thing that could happen to Avon because eventually he became disinterested in school. To occupy his time, Avon would walk the school hallways going from class to class looking for his friends from the neighborhood. One school semester Avon found out that one of his friends had an empty seat next to him in a math class. Avon did not belong in this particular math class, but he would walk right in the door and take his seat just as class started. Avon attended this class every day. The teacher thought that Avon was one of her students. She marked Avon present each day, but she did not realize he did not belong in her class. Avon would show up and he would do the work all while pretending to be this other student. He only attended the class to be with his friend Bobby, who he knew from around the neighborhood. By the end of the semester, the student Avon was pretending to be had passed the math class; yet he had not been in class one day during the whole semester. Avon had gotten the passing grade for him.

Avon soon became even more bored with school and began cutting class full time. He and his friends would stay inside of the school building finding places to hide until the end of the school day. The school that Avon attended was Harlem Park Middle School. Avon and most of his friends attended Harlem Park during the time when schools were first being integrated. Because it was still new for black kids to be attending schools with white kids, Avon and his friends got into fights with the white kids on a regular basis. The white kids would mostly start fights with black kids when they were walking alone. Avon and his friends decided to stay together in groups. Soon, they were beating up the white kids who they caught walking alone. In the beginning, most of his friends would not cut class all day like Avon did. So Avon began hanging out with the older kids who were not afraid to cut class. Avon had twin cousins named Seamore and Shorty. They called one of the twins Shorty because he was so short. Avon began hanging out with the twins regularly. Although they were older than Avon, they would let him hang around them because he was big for his age and he seemed to be more mature than the other kids his age. At an early age Avon also hung out in pool halls with older guys. The older guys took a liking to young Flubber. The pool halls were intriguing to him. He would run errands for the older guys to earn the opportunity to hang around them. They even would let him get on the pool table and shoot with them from time to time. That’s how he perfected his pool game. While inside the pool halls he would overhear their conversations about the streets. Avon learned a lot more than just shooting pool hanging around the older cats. He learned a lot of game and street smarts.

Avon’s mother Lill found out from his homeroom teacher that Avon was not attending school. His mother was very upset. She would go out looking for him around the neighborhood. She hated the nick-name Flubber. Most of the time, she could not find him because she was asking if anyone had seen Avon, not Flubber. Lill was extremely upset one day because she knew Avon was not in school, but she could not find him anywhere. One of Avon’s brothers told Lill that she had to ask for Flubber if she wanted to find Avon because that is what his friends called him. Not many of his friends even knew his name was Avon because everyone called him Flubber. Eventually Lill would find him by asking if anyone had seen Flubber. When she did find him outside of school; she would make him go back. This happened over and over. Avon figured out that his mother was getting a phone call everyday from school about him hooking school because he was not reporting to homeroom class. Being the intelligent guy that he was, Avon decided to go to school every morning, but only to homeroom class. Then he would cut out of school right after homeroom. Avon was a smart kid. His plan worked for a while. But his mother was even smarter. She started coming by the school on random days of the week so Avon never knew when she was going to show up. Lill was no dummy.

Chapter 2:

Sly As A Fox

Avon’s mother Lillian Johnson was a strong sassy young mother of four boys while still in her twenties. Lillian had been in and out of several relationships that had all gone bad, leaving her with four boys by three different men. Lillian had one sister and two brothers. They all were raised in a three-story row house in Southwest Baltimore by their mother and father, Robert Johnson and his wife Mary Polly Dear (Smith). Robert and Mary had moved their family from South Carolina to Maryland for a better life. Robert Johnson grew up on a farm where he picked cotton when he was young, and he also did odd jobs as a carpenter. Robert Johnson swore to his wife Mary that he was going to take her up north to the big city of Baltimore to raise their first born children. Mary was pregnant and expecting twins at the time. Robert was good with his hands and could build just about anything. So before Mary gave birth to the twins, Robert went to Baltimore with his older cousin to find work doing construction. After working odd jobs here and there as a bouncer at a downtown club and a dish washer at a restaurant, Robert finally found a good paying job doing construction work. Robert’s first big contract took him to Florida for several months. Robert saved most of his earnings while working in Florida. After the contract was completed, he went back to South Carolina just in time to witness the birth of his twins, Rebecca and Isaac. Soon after the delivery, Robert moved his family to Baltimore. Robert and Mary later had two more children, Lillian and Johnny.

Robert invested his money from working construction into a home in Southwest Baltimore for his family. Some minor work needed to be done to the house. Robert decided to do all of the repair work himself. Robert would take in other relatives who followed him and Mary to Baltimore from South Carolina. Many of Robert and Mary’s family members believed in the same dream they had. They all wanted to have a better life for themselves living in the big city up north. Robert and Mary would provide a place to stay and food to eat for all of their family members. Some of their relatives could not find work in Baltimore, so Robert decided to open up a diner and hire his family to work for him. Robert eventually opened up two diners. Although he owned the two diners, he continued to work construction during the day.

Robert was about 6 foot, 5 inches tall. He had a very deep voice and always wore a fedora hat and suspenders. One night Robert was downtown near The Block when he saved a young lady from being raped by two men in an alley. The lady was a dancer in a club nearby. She told the club owner about her being assaulted by the men and how Robert saved her. The club owner asked Robert to be the bouncer at the front door of his club. The club owner liked Robert because he looked intimidating to the white patrons who frequented the strip clubs down on The Block. They gave Robert the nickname of Big Slim. He would sometimes wear a long trench coat with his fedora hat and it was rumored that he carried one pistol in each pocket of his coat at all times. Because Robert was working the two jobs, he could not keep a close eye on his diner businesses. The family employees were constantly stealing money from the cash registers at the diners. Robert eventually had to close the diners down, yet he would still take in family members from time to time. Robert loved his family and would protect them at all cost. He would rather they stayed with him instead of turning them away to go stay with someone else.

Because Robert worked so much and hardly ever was at home, his young daughter Lillian began hanging out after her curfew. Lill was a tough young lady and she could take care of herself. Most of the girls in the neighborhood were afraid of her. Even her older sister Rebecca was afraid of Lill at times. Rebecca once said that she could not say no to Lill because she was afraid that Lill would get mad at her. One time Lill got mad at a boy for calling her ugly. She hit the boy so hard that his nose started bleeding. The boy cried and ran home to get his older sister to fight Lill for him. The older sister came to the neighborhood looking for Lill. Another boy from the neighborhood pointed Lill out to the older sister. Even though the older sister was bigger, Lill sent her home crying just like her brother. After beating up the older girl, Lill beat up the boy who pointed her out. From that point on, Lill had a reputation as the toughest girl in school. Because she felt that Lillian was a country name; she told her friends to call her Lill for short.

Lill got pregnant at an early age and dropped out of school. After dropping out, Lill had a son and named him Anthony Johnson after his uncle James Anthony Rice. James was married to Lill’s older sister Rebecca. After having her first son, Lill went back to high school and graduated. But she would get pregnant once again. Lillian gave birth to her second son and named him Avon Johnson. Later, Lill had two more sons, Alvin and Stanley. Much later, after moving out, Lill had a daughter and named her Dawn Matthews, affectionally known as Muff.

Before baby girl Dawn came along, Lill had a habit of leaving her four young boys at home for her sister Rebecca and her mother Mary to babysit while she would run the streets. Rebecca and her husband James lived in the same house with Robert, Mary, Lillian, and the two brothers Isaac and Johnny. Rebecca and James had a son named Andre and a daughter named Barbara. They later would have another son named Gerald and three more daughters - Yvonne, Jacqueline, and Rosalind. In the evenings, Lill would go out to the local bars and the dance halls. She would hang out with her friends, smoking and drinking until late at night. Lill loved music and would frequent the clubs downtown and on Pennsylvania Avenue. She got to see some of the most popular black entertainers like Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway, and Jackie Wilson when they were in town. Lill hung out so frequently that she would sometimes get to meet the celebrities. Lill always told this story of how Jackie Wilson dated one of her girlfriends and no one knew about it. Before long, Lill was well known around West Baltimore by many people. Some loved Lill and some hated her. Either way, many knew of her. Lill and her father began arguing a lot because of her habit of staying out late at night. At times, she would not come home until the next morning.

One night her father Robert got fed up. He stayed up late in his bed and waited for Lill to come home. He heard Lillian come in the house around 11pm. When she got in the house Lillian told Rebecca that she was going to bathe and then she was going right back out. Her father overheard the conversation between his daughters through the shallow furnace vents in his bedroom wall. Robert got out of his bed and went upstairs to approach Lill. He told her that she was not going back out at this time of night. Robert demanded that Lill stay home and take care of her responsibilities with her sons. Lill having a stubborn personality did not want to listen to her father. She began arguing with him saying he was not going to stop her from going back out. Robert told Lill that if she went out that door, he was going to kill her dead. The argument became very heated. Rebecca stood by listening, as the argument escalated. Rebecca was afraid that something bad was going to happen. Rebecca knew that Lillian was bold enough to defy her father’s wishes. Rebecca was afraid that her father may be angry enough to shoot her stubborn sister if she went out that door. So she immediately went upstairs to her bedroom to wake up her husband James who was resting for work in the morning. Rebecca told James that he had to go and talk to her father Robert before he got his gun. James did not want to be involved and he definitely did not want to be in the middle of a gun fight with his father in-law on the other end of a pistol. But Rebecca begged James to go and talk to her father. James finally got out of bed and went downstairs. First James tried to talk to Lill about not leaving back out the house. Soon he realized that Lill was not paying him any attention as she smoked her cigarette and drank straight from a bottle of white liquor she had sitting on her dresser table. He could see that Lill was determined to go out against her fathers’ wishes. James then decided maybe he would have a better chance at going downstairs and talking to his father in-law whom he had great respect for.

Robert Johnson and his wife Mary stayed in a living room that Robert turned into a closed in bedroom on the first floor right near the front door. Robert figured that Lill had to come down the front curved staircase and walk down the long hallway to the front door past his bedroom in order to leave the house. He was confident that he would hear her if she was going to leave out. Robert stood by the front door with his gun in his hand. James slowly approached Robert in the hallway. He pleaded with his father in-law to put away the gun. Robert said with a loud deep voice that he would put his gun away as soon as he knew Lill was in the bed and was not going back out. Lill yelled down the three flights of stairs that she was going out of the house whether he liked it or not. Her father Robert yelled back that he was waiting at the front door with his gun and if Lill walked out that front door, he was going to shoot her. James got on his knees and began to Pray. James surely did not want his father-in-law Robert to shoot his very own daughter Lillian.

After several minutes had gone by, Rebecca came down the front staircase and told James to come back to bed. Robert asked Rebecca was Lill in her room with her sons. Rebecca told her father that Lill had taken off her shoes and had quietly gone down the back staircase that led to kitchen. Sly as a fox, Lill had gone out of the back door without her father even knowing. Robert Johnson was so upset that he dropped his nickel plated pistol on the floor. He went into his bedroom and slammed the door. James picked up the gun and knocked on his father-in-law’s bedroom door. Robert Johnson answered him with his bold country bass voice, Yeah! James said, You left your gun sir? It shouldn’t be left out here in the hallway. Robert yelled back through the door, James, you keep it. I got another one just like it. James carried the gun upstairs with him and Rebecca. I guess Lill out smarted her father that night. But she surely was not crazy. She knew her father meant what he said. If she had walked out that front door while he was standing there, he was going to shoot her. She knew she was still defying her father’s wishes. That was the kind of young woman Lillian Johnson was. She never liked anybody telling her what to do. So she went out the back door just because she could.

Eventually Lillian and her sons moved out from her father‘s house. Robert was not the kind to turn his back on his family. But Lillian knew that she had to leave if she was not going to abide by her father’s rules. Lillian and the boys were welcomed to come by her father’s house anytime they wanted to. In fact, while Lillian worked, the boys would spend most of their time with their Aunt Rebecca and their grandmother. As her boys got bigger, it was no surprise that her second oldest son Avon would have the same mentality as she had growing up.

Chapter 3

1961 - Big Avon

After months and months of chasing Avon around the streets; Lillian decided to stop chasing him. She gave in and allowed Avon to do whatever he wanted to do. She saw something in him that she saw in herself at his age. She knew that he was not the type of person to stay inside of the house. Lillian could identify with her sons’ desire to be out in the streets. She remembered the run-ins she had with her strict father over those same issues. Lillian did not want to have the same relationship with her son that she had with her father. So she sat Avon down one day and told him that he could run the streets and do whatever he wanted to do, as long as he did three things. He had to always respect her, be honest with her, and he