Make Tracks

By Sheldon McCormick

A cruel past, bourne of frustration, racism, abuse, womanizing, violence and hearbreaks, torments former high school and college champion sprinter, distance runner and fencing great Gilbert “Make Tracks” Courtney. He especially grieves the abortion of his unborn son by an embittered, vengeful ex-fiancee with a long grudge. The troubled Make Tracks channels his swirling, unbridled rage and emotions over her evil act into helping an inner-city community youth athletic center. Through his self-unaware charisma and leadership drawn from his past athletic successes, as a law student in college and a few tough years in a big city law firm, Make Tracks inspires his pupils with much-needed bravery, fortitude, confidence, self-worth and hope amid a rash of armed robberies and drive-by shootings in early 1990s South-Central Los Angeles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669841432

Sheldon McCormick

A Los Angeles, California native, McCormick began his writing career while a student at Foshay Junior High School (now the Foshay Learning Center) in 1971. He was a writer for the Los Angeles Sentinel, the Compton Bulletin and several other publications. He was editor of the now-defunct Los Angeles Balance News newspaper in the late 1980s. McCormick received his Associate of Arts degree in journalism from Los Angeles City College May 22, 1986. He is the author of eleven other novels and has written commentaries for his Facebook page.

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Copyright © 2022 by Sheldon McCormick.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 08/23/2022

Xlibris

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

About the Author

IN MEMORIUM

Dedicated in loving memory to my dearest parents Ouida McCormick (1930-1982) and Leon McCormick (1924-1991); Troy Henderson, my beloved cousin (1960-2021); friend and Los Angeles City College journalism professor Ron Burton (1922-2020); Beulah Calvert; Gemmel Moore; Timothy Dean; Margie Sturgis (1925-1989); Michael Frierson, Jr.; Barbara Kelly (1946-1977); Wanda-Combs Moore; dear Rosemary Almada (1957-2013) and to every victim of evil, urban violence, racism and generations of young people and the innocent taken before their time.

TRIBUTES

This novel is dedicated in honor to Deborah Lacey, Evelina Barajas, Tavis Smiley, Joan Adrienne, Valerie Shaw, Pamela McInnes, Janet Nairn, Dr. Joy DeGruy, Oscar DeGruy, my beloved siblings, Christine Gerstenberger, Marshay Crane, Armida Bolton, Jerome Watts, Riley Bostic, Pat Harvey, Dr. Rosie Miligan, John Miligan, James and Katie Tatum, Dr. Melina Abdullah, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, Lula Wallace and all of the victorious men, women and young people, both past and present, who never gave up.

Special tributes to Jasmyne Cannick, Kamala Harris, Joseph Biden and the good people of both South Los Angeles and the City of Compton, California.

CHAPTER ONE

W ITH BOTH LONG, strong hands on the steering wheel of a green, four-door 1980 Toyota automobile with his head held up in Black ghetto hoodlum defiance. His half-heavy-lidded toy dog dark brown eyes below sailfish dorsal (back) fin eyebrows with outward pointed ends shifted the former left, then right. His tadpole-looking mouth was partially opened, bearing his teeth. It complemented his mastering, calculated dominance, especially over females, and remained after he did something violent and violating to her. The lean-necked street tough wore a hooded athletic jacket.

The somewhat worn car sat parked on a street corner along an inner city thoroughfare, where a residential area and business complex met this mid-morning somewhere in Southwest Los Angeles. Palm trees potmarked the city scape, with a few trees potmarked the immediate neighborhood. The driver, Doughnut, 27, rubbed his short, wide-nostriled nose and thin mustache with his right index finger, then looked off to his right, paused and became excited.

Look, check it out, Pork Chop, he told his unseen companion in the back seat. Fresh game. The sound of a round being chambered into an unseen gun followed. A slender, five-foot-nine and a quarter-inch tall African-American woman emerged from a nearby law office building. Dark-skinned, in oval, warrior queen marked face. She projected strength, self-confidence and assurance, certainty, courage and leadership. A serpent’s satisfaction after biting a victim burned in her brown, penetrating eyes.

The fresh small of green grass from a nearby lawn and a blooming flowerbed brought a smile to her face. A distance away, a pair of dark, ruthless eyes glared at her. Certain of his target, his eye widened with direct action. The muzzle of a bolt-action, sixteen-inch-barreled shotgun overshadowed the unseen man’s vision. It fired an echoing blast.

A flash of soul-deep fury, grim determination and focus with the same intensity of the shotgun blast tore from Gilbert Make Tracks Courtney’s eased, observant, medium-spaced sepia-tinted eyes behind horizontal keg-shaped specs. Bald with black, semi-curled, sweat-dampened hair along the sides and back-center of his stocky head, he dribbled the basketball, glared at the hoop, then moved forward, with style and grace, dodged, twirled around one of his fellow Black male basketball players, then made a jump shot and sent the ball right through the hoop. His other players were amazed, called a time out and caught their breath.

They admired Make’s athletic skills and prowness. OoooWEE, Gil!, tall, broad-shouldered, strapping, allosaurus-faced Jesse Mets said to Make Tracks in between short laughs. His natural hairdo was disheveled. Still in rare form, my brother! Just like you was five years ago in that City Basketball tourney. Won that one, high school track and field. Heh, heh! Even the college fencing match back in the day. In fact, you was the first motherfucker to even do that! Amazing!

Make Tracks stood akimbo, his mouth ajared and indifferent to his own charisma, He remained modest. His stature stood a medium, six-foot-one-inches tall at age 36 and moderately rugged, with a steely handsome, official flair. Make Tracks gave the impression that he was the leader among others.

Yeah, added Butch, his and Make Tracks’ best friend said. At age 35, Butch was muscular as a middleweight boxer, five-foot-nine and a half-feet tall with black, widely aware eyes, bull moose-faced with full sideburns and mustache, receeding, braided head with five lower pigtails in back and a big, slightly-crooked grin with a gap in the upper front of it. And speakin’ of that there fencin’ thang. He sat down at a nearby bench and wiped his face with a white towel, then poked his thick index finger at the players. You impressed the holy hell outta ALL them white folks and compedators with your ballsy, footloose and bad ass moves. I ain’t never saw cotton choppin’ that smooth, man!

A humbled smile brightened the modest Courtney’s brown keg-shaped face, which looked like a combination of a giraffe and a sloth bear and the latter’s grin with semi-medium full lips. His moderate voice was Texas-accented, with an Eastern urban edge to it. A personal annoyance rounded out his expression from Butch’s comments. He answered the others.

What can I say, guys? I strive for excellence in things I like to do. One of them is sports. And practicing. That’s the only way a Black man’s gonna get somewhere. Do twice as good to succeed.

The other basketballers gazed at Make Tracks, nodded and agreed, even though a few of them harbored lingering inner city-inflicted doubted. Say, y’all, after we get showered up n’ everything, let’s head on over to the bar and grill. My treat.

Damn good idea, Butch answered his fellow basketballer. And after we knock off for the night, we can make plans for the community kids’ upcomin’ Christmas party.

Make Tracks visibly agreed and they all left the basketball court inside the sports park gymnasium. He remained energized by his inner ambition and haunted by unpleasant memories from his own past. Before his very emoted eyes was his schoolyard nemesis, the dark-complexioned, pony-tailed schoolgirl from fifth grade, fed up and irritated at Gilbert, then the boy, spoiled brat and schoolyard bully that he was.

I’m the boss of this here handball court, you worthless tar baby bitch!, he yelled back at her and threatened her. He took one step toward her and Edna punched him square into his right jaw. Millions of white, silvery, orange and red stars burst through darkness.

Ow!, his own kid voice rang out and echoed in his memory. Several skin-ripping wacks from a razor strap rang out louder as the vicious image of his brutal Southern stepdaddy flogged boy Gil’s sore red buttocks and his pants and underwear pulled down to his ankles. The child was deeply humiliated, traumatized, filled with disbelief at such torture and scared at the sight of his tormentor.

Stepdaddy was wide-eyed, balding, crazed with flaring teeth, rasping tongue, swollen square face and sadism. His pudgy lips and broad nose flared in rage. OOOUCH!. Little Gilbert sobbed aloud. OOOOH! Stop, please! That hurts!

His please for mercy enraged Stepdaddy more with each blow of the strap. You let some gal beat your ass and caused the damned teachuh to give you a pinks slip?!!! Told ya to keep you little pea brain on them books! Second time! Pink slip!

The beatings tore off skin from the boy’s rear and cause it to bleed, him to whimper. Stepdaddy barked in Gil’s right ear, Fuckin’ U.S. Marshalls, Army paratroopas fightin’ to get colored students in school all across the South tuh git uh education and YOU fuck off! His voice filled the entire two-story house that they lived in. I’mmo beat all the black off ya, you weak, worthless little punk! You ain’t nothin’ but a useless faggot fruit NIGGUH!

WHACK! WHACK! WHAAAK!!! AAAAAH!, Lord God, help me! His distant sobs faded away, replaced by the crackling flames of a Ku Klux Klan fiery cross. Along with a mean, skeletal-fedora-topped white man with two missing lower front teeth and a Western-styled revolver in his hand, seized a young Make Tracks by his shirt. The white supremacist warned with full, green, hate-filled, intolerant eyes and a rash Cornpone voice, You stupid little coon! You best forget about bein’ a lawyer n’ git your black hide back to harvestin’ tobacco an Old McClellan’s farm. Stay in your place, else you’ll git yer brains blown out!

The then-13-year-old Make was shoved to the grass, mud and a snail or two.