Was This Fate?

By Charles R Jackson

What was supposed to be a birthday celebration, turns into a homicide, creating a storm. But in the storm there is peace and an assignment is uncovered. In, "Was This Fate?", Charles learns about patience and perseverance. More importantly, he uses his experience to become a powerful agent of change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles R Jackson Jr
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986261072

Book preview

Prologue

Judge: Mr. Jackson, how do you plead to the charge of murder?

Charles: Not guilty, Your Honor.

This was the charge I was facing, and it was for real!

CHAPTER 1

I grew up in a small town called Reading, in southeast Pennsylvania. I’m the fourth child of five. My father worked in a steel mill, and my mother was a nurse’s aide. My mother had been married before she met my father, two of my brothers were from that marriage. My other brother’s father passed away when he was a baby. Lastly, my youngest brother and I share the same father. Life growing up with my family was good. We took trips together and did all the basic things that families do. I was loved by my parents. They instilled good morals and values in my brothers and I. We were an average family as far as income was concerned.

In elementary school, I was a class clown. I can remember my teacher telling me to come up to the front of the class so that he could paddle me. I would be cracking jokes while he was trying to teach class. I can remember my butt cheeks being on fire and then sitting back down was like throwing gasoline on the fire. I didn’t like going to school but I knew I didn’t have a choice and I had to go. School had its ups and downs, just like anything else in life. I lacked the discipline to stay focused on what was being taught to me. At the time, I thought it was crap and didn’t understand what any of it had to do with me.

I made it to junior high school and made some new friends. One of my close friends had moved to Reading from South Carolina, his name was Jeff. We would do all kinds of things together, like playing football and basketball. We got a BB gun and would shoot any kind of bottles we could find. One of our neighbors had built a go cart, so we would take it to this big ass hill, that was near our house. We decided that we were going to build our own. We needed the materials to build it. First we got the wood, then there were the wheels which we stole from a supermarket shopping cart. We fought like hell to get those wheels off! The seat came off of some chair that we came up with and the steering wheel was made with a rope. The rope was nailed to the front axle so when you pulled the rope to the left the go cart went left and if pulled to the right, the go cart would go right. There were no brakes. The hill that we found led right to a high traffic street. The way we avoided that street was by pulling the rope hard to either the left or the right. This would cause the go cart to spin out. That was our version of brakes. The go cart had to be kept in the house so we would go back and forth between his house and mine. If we left it outside, someone would steal it. Getting the materials to build it wasn’t easy, so we always kept it in one of our basements. Eventually, other kids started building their own go carts.

My life as a kid was pretty normal. We did all the things that teenagers do. My high school years consisted of chasing girls and hanging out with friends, nothing out of the ordinary. I graduated from high school and got a job working in a paper mill. I worked in the shipping and receiving department. Two older white guys trained me. They showed me the ropes on how the shipping department operated. It wasn’t long before I was putting material on the dock to be shipped out. I worked a few other factory jobs, one of which was where I fell and hurt myself and ended up with an insurance settlement. I invested in real estate with the insurance money, and I purchased a house that needed some work done. I began to invest in real estate, buying houses that needed work done.

I had flipped four houses before meeting Scott. Scott was a franchise owner of McDonald’s and GNC stores. Scott and I hit it off from the start, and he immediately hired me as Director of Transportation and Security. I was making sixty thousand dollars a year, which was a lot of money for a young black man with just a high school diploma. After working with Scott for over a year, other business opportunities started to fall on my lap. I decided to reside in one of the houses I had purchased, I had just bought the Lexus GS 300 and had a newborn baby. Life was good, and everything seemed to be going fine.

I woke up the morning of August 31, 1996, hopped in the shower, and then pulled a suit out of the closet to get dressed for the special occasion—my birthday! I was going to celebrate at a club called Alexander’s in Allentown. I called my brother Cory and told him about my plans to go out, and made arrangements to pick him up at a sandwich shop across the street from the barber shop I was planning on getting my haircut. I made more phone calls to friends to see what their plans were for that night. I didn’t want to have a whole entourage, just my brother, myself, and maybe one other friend to celebrate with me. I decided to go to Ruby Tuesday’s before getting my haircut and picking my brother up.

I remember that meal like it was yesterday, not realizing it was going to be my last good meal for a very long time. I had the steak and rib combo with french fries and an ice-cold Molson Ice. After eating at Ruby Tuesday’s, I