The Creation, Death, and Resurrection of Theodore C. Andrews III

By Trey Xavier

Theodore Andrews III, had been indoctrinated into a life of crime. He didn't believe that there was any other feasible way to exist. He was raised in the life from birth and loved the life. As he matured he began to realize he had been living a lie. However he knew no other way to live. At least he trusted no other way to live. The death of the only woman he loved and a life sentence in prison set him on a transformational journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669879367

Trey Xavier

His life experience. After living the life of a career criminal, drug addictions, and serving 27 years in prison for bank robberies, gives him a unique perspective on politics, relationships, and the justice system. Because he is an African American, this experience is tenfold. This author is now a cinema production student had a prestigious University.

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Copyright © 2023 by Trey Xavier.

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: 07/07/2023

Xlibris

844-714-8691

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CONTENTS

Intro

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Outro

INTRO

Excerpt of BPH Closing Statement

Monday October 17, 2021

11:05 AM

...There’s nothing at all I can do about my past. I can’t change it. I’m not proud it but I am proud of how far I have come. Realistically, there’s no way possible for you to determine if I will reoffend. I pray that you will base your decision on my achievements, my actual disciplinary record, and my age. Please take into consideration that I’m a reasonably intelligent man. I have done the math. The life expectancy of an African American male is approximately 71.5...I’m 63.5 years old. Whatever the case I do not intend to squander the short time I have left on this planet.

If you find me suitable for parole today, I guarantee, I will make you proud to say you had a hand in giving me another chance. Thank you

Commissioner: Thank you Mr. Andrews the CO will escort you to the waiting room while we make our decision.

CHAPTER ONE

Mama! Mama! Theodore yelled, his penny loafers clattering along the hallway floor. They killed him. They killed him mama!

Theodore C. Andrews III what in God’s name are you talkin’ ‘bout? his grandmother answered.

Theodore slid across the diner’s linoleum floor like a vaudeville performer making a grand entrance. They killed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. mama. He took back off down the hall followed by everyone, cooks, waitresses, customers, even officer Ingram the White policeman who walked the neighborhood beat.

Midway down the hall Theodore spun off toward the storefront beauty parlor owned by his aunt. They killed Dr. King Auntie, he yelled for all to hear they killed Dr. King!

Theodore didn’t know as much about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he did the popular hometown hero Malcolm X who had been assassinated three years earlier, but he knew Dr. King was a very important man the way grandma Pearl would go on and on about how she marched with him when he had come to town. Plus, His picture hung in the diner in line with the local celebrities who had eaten there.

Ms. Pearl’s living room now filled with men and women in aprons and bibs, autoworkers in overalls, women with partially died hair, some in curlers. They were all transfixed by the television broadcast. Some were in tears, murmurs abound. Lawd have mercy.... So much love in that man... Not a violent bone in his body.

Jake! Theodore thought. Off again he ran through the hall and up the stairs to the second floor. He straightened his bowtie, patted his little afro in shape then knocked on the door. A secret knock he took pride in knowing. Not many adults in the city knew that knock, let alone a 10-year-old kid.

The rectangular slot slid open, and a pair of eyes peered down. The slot closed as abruptly as it had opened. It’s Lil’ man, a muffled baritone announced.

Theo? Let him in, a voice answered from somewhere in the back.

The door opened to Theodore’s Magical Wonderland. A unique theater. His vaudeville slide and Paul Revere shtick wouldn’t go over with this crowd. They were the epitome of cool in his impressionable eyes. Pimps in sharkskin suits and felt hats, hookers with long eyelashes in dazzling silk dresses, bookies, professional gamblers, hustlers who wore enormous diamond rings. They had names like Texas Slim, Kansas City Kitty, Grave Digger Jones. Most were giving audience to a high stakes poker game that had been going on for days now.

Theo loved visiting Jake’s every chance he got, rather to write down and deliver diner orders for gamblers or to drop off the daily numbers. He strutted pass the quiet poker parlor and whiskey bar to a chorus of Lil man’s and nods from the people. He reached the room where Jake sat on his throne overlooking a boisterous crap game. A woman cried, Lil Man, come blow on these bones. And he did. She tossed them. Eleven! A winner.

You better pay him too Matty, Jake shouted. Hey, Theo, my main man, what’s happening?

Theo whispered in Jake’s ear.

What?

The two of them disappeared into a room in the back. Judy, Jake’s number one girl, the finest woman Theo had ever seen in his life sat topless in front of a vanity mirror applying her makeup like a Motown star in her dressing room. She blew Theo a kiss. He winked in return.

You better watch him Jake, Judy chimed, I might be choosin.

Girl, I don told you about showin out every time this young player come around. Jake smiled and winked at Theo Can’t tust ‘em Theo, none of ‘em.

Jake turned on the television and confirmed Theo’s claim. Umh was his single response. There didn’t seem to be a real emotional investment like with Grandma Pearl’s crew. The same with Jakes patrons. After unplugging the jukebox and delivering the news. Some shook their heads in disgust but their responses were altogether different from Grandma Pearl’s crew. Crackers finally got him...All that non-violent bullshit... All that singin’ when they should’ve been swingin’.

One thing for sure all the gambling would be over for the night.

I’m covering all bets. Drinks are on the house, Jake announced. Y’all know all hell ‘bout to break loose.

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The atmosphere downstairs in the diner was like that of a wake before a funeral. Food was on the house. Customers saw Ms. Pearl do what many hadn’t seen her do in years: Cook. Her meals were legendary, the customers ranged from law enforcers, clergymen, to local politicians and celebrities, but none had seen her behind a grill in a long time. Ms. Pearl’s Diner was more of a culinary school for the young who followed her recipes to the tee.

Ms. Pearl spent her days leisurely in her private booth playing Tunk with her church friends for quarters and dollars. Ms. Pearl was more than a restauranteur, she was a community figure. She owned the building that also housed her daughter’s beauty parlor and Jake’s social club. She and her grandson lived in the back apartment. Her Ace, Lenny, across the hall.

God made a whole ‘lotta bigga fools than Pearl Anne McAlister, she’d say when ever angered. She used her maiden name McAlister with pride, Andrews for business.

Pearl Anne, born in little Rock, Arkansas in 1911, was what Black folk called high yellow. She could easily pass until she spoke. Her gold tooth, mannerism, and husky southern accent that was thick as molasse. No dispute. She was Black to her core. Jet black wavy hair with a thick gray streak left of center that ran straight back, she said it was her birthmark. That gray streak had been present since childhood.

Mrs. Pearl could not read or write, could scarcely sign her own name. Numbers were her thing. She recalled them like a savant. She loved politics and sports. She would have her grandson read the Free Press to her every night. What’s that they say ‘bout my Tigers? she’d often ask. They gon win this year. Gotta hunch. Nose been itchin’. Whenever Theo reached the racetrack section she’d break out her yellow number pad. Mrs. Pearl’s friends and associates would tell her their dreams and like a prophet she would interpret the dreams then instruct them on what numbers to play in accordance with a dream book she knew by heart. If a preacher on the radio or at church recited a chapter or verse multiple times she’d take that as a sign and place a bet on the number. She placed bets with Jake for herself and others daily. Everyone knew that’s how she bought her building on one of the busiest avenues on the eastside. She hit the number for $10,000 back in 1955, three years before Theodore was born.

Ms. Pearl was a highly respected woman. She had been married off at age 14 to a 26-year-old sharecropper named Theodore Andrews. She’d ran off from Andrews at age 17 and headed north with two children on her hip. One child she put through beauty school and the other through a prestigious vocational program, all on a waitress’s salary and tips. People said she was as pretty as Dorothy Dandridge in her younger days.

I wouldn’t trust a White man to tell me the time of day. She would say to Theodore whenever a bill collector left. Theodore never gave much thought to the contradictory. Theodore knew, and Mrs. Pearl knew he knew, that although she claimed to be part Indian her father was in fact a White man. She loved him, smiled proudly when she whispered of him to Theodore. Old man McAlister owned the biggest grocers store in Little Rock. Pearl’s mother worked there for years. Her eyes would tear up sometimes when she spoke of her mother who died giving birth to her little brother. Give me a Kleenex Theodore. Got sumptin’ in my eye. Ms. Pearl kept a faded photo of old man McAlister and her mother in her nightstand clipped to a birth certificate: Pearl Anne McAlister, Mullato. Mother Negro. Theo’s middle initial C came from his great-grandfather Clifford.

Theodore C. Andrews had lived with his grandma Pearl his entire life, right there on the avenue in the back of that diner. Theodore never spent much time around children his own age. He didn’t mind. No children got to see or do the things he got to do. In fact, the kids who attended Marcus Garvey Academy thought of him as being kind of weird. None of the things those kids talked about interested him. He wouldn’t even allow them to call him Theo. Theodore C. Andrews III is my name, he’d say. Even the adult patrons of the diner called, Mr. Theodore when they wanted him to pour a glass of water or cup of coffee. Thank you, Mr. Theodore. Very few called him Theo. But to Jake and all his compatriots he was Lil’ Man.

Once Theodore and his grandmother were shopping and the store’s proprietor said to Theodore, Boy, would you help this nice woman with her bags? Ms. Pearl’s nostrils flared, and her light skin turned red. Theodore put dat dere down, she demanded. She looked the White man straight away like Matt Dillion in Dodge. She then smiled politely, gold tooth glistening. Mister, Pearl Anne McAlister don’t raise no boys.

The White man apologized and called on one of his young Black bag boys. When out and about similar experiences had occurred before, stares and whispers. This was different. This White man had thought Pearl was White and Theodore was her pet or something. In the back seat of the Buick Pearl’s anger still simmered. Theodore figured she was more angry at him for picking up that bag than the White man in the store who asked him to do so.

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Upstairs in the social club Theo sat quietly trying to decipher the coded language shared between Jake and his peers. One thing for sure there would be no school tomorrow, Theo thought. It would be like the time when the president got killed on TV.

A knock at the door brought everything to a hush. Not the secret knock, but one of supreme authority. The landlady. The doorman didn’t bother to peep through the slot this time he just opened the door. Standing there was Theo’s grandma, auntie, Lenny, and the White police officer Ingram. They walked in solemnly. Ms. Pearl. Mrs. Pearl. Mrs. Pearl, the gamblers tipped their hats and said polite good-byes exiting Jake’s place. Jake handed officer Ingram his usual yellow envelope, the officer said his good-byes turned and left with the rest. Theo and Lenny sat at the whisky bar while his grandma, Jake, and his aunt sat in the poker parlor whispering. While Judy packed her clothes Jake’s doorman packed liquor bottles into boxes.

What’s going on, Theo asked Lenny.

Umumuh, Lenny’s sentences rarely expanded two or three words.

Lenny, Mrs. Pearl’s ace-in-the-hole, as she called him, spent the whole of his waken hours dedicated to Mrs. Pearl. Unnoticed to many he sat silently in the shadows of the diner playing solitaire or reading his Bible. Theo thought Lenny to be the biggest man in the world at 6’ 7", massive hands and feet. Some believe that training with Joe Louis in the Brewster Projects back in the day left Lenny’s brains scrambled. Nevertheless, Mrs. Pearl rescued him from the Black Bottom flop houses. All he did now was dive her to church on Sundays and kept the Buick waxed. The two of them had grown so close they didn’t have to talk much. They communicated mostly through gestures and sly eye movements. With a glance up from her Tunk hand or an off-the-wall statement Lenny knew when to ask someone to leave the diner or leave Mrs. Pearl alone while she was gambling or taking care of business.

Lenny, Theo asked, "is this gonna be like last year when the White police