SANTE TRAILER PARK IS A SMALL TRACT OF LAND TUCKED back in the trees off Highway 74, near Gastonia. Unlike Reed’s Trailer Park, tall pine trees stood in statuesque pride throughout Sante Park, providing plenty of shade in the summertime and protection from the elements in the winter.
I was sad to leave Reed’s, but I was pretty good at making new friends. One of the first kids I met in Sante Trailer Park was Mike McBride. Mike was a few years older than me and had a little brother, Stevie, as well as an older sister, Theresa, who had a son named Chris. All four of them lived together with their mother, Bernell, in a small one-axle camper parked between two trailers. The camper was so tiny that I wondered how they could all fit inside to sleep. A neighbor allowed the McBrides to run a drop cord from their trailer to the camper so Mike’s family could have electricity. Mrs. McBride served the family a lot of macaroni since that was an inexpensive meal. I never met Mike’s dad.
Despite their poverty, the McBrides were some of the richest people I had ever met. They may not have had much money, but they were rich in love. The family members loved each other and worked together. Mrs. McBride was devoutly religious and wouldn’t tolerate any cursing in her presence. Although she was very poor, her kind and loving demeanor was a picture of dignity. She modeled a truth to her family—and to me—that it is not what you have materially that matters but who you are as a person.
Mike, Stevie, and I loved to go camping—which was ironic, considering that they lived in such a tiny camper—along with two other brothers who lived on the hill behind the trailer park. We thought the brothers were rich because they had an inground swimming pool.
Sometimes Mike and I played football behind the nearby convenience store or rode bikes to the Diane 29 drive-in theater to watch a movie. We crawled under the white wooden fence and found a spot where no cars were parked. We took a speaker off the pole and placed it on the ground beside us so we could hear the movie. We watched movies like Return of the Living Dead and Back to the Future, along with plenty of B movies. We were just boys, living every second of life the best way we knew how. Thanks to Mike and his family, I was beginning to think that Sante Trailer Park might turn out to be a good place to live after all.
My sister, Patricia, had already moved out and was living back in Reed’s Trailer Park with Steven Burgess, a twenty-five-year-old man who had courted Patricia with cheap gifts and empty promises. Mama saw an opportunity to get rid of Patricia, so she signed marital rights documents granting permission for Steven to marry Patricia, even though she was only fourteen years old. I didn’t know Steven, but I noticed that Patricia was crying when he escorted her out of the courthouse where they were married. The tears streaming down her face did not appear to be tears of joy.
ONE SUNDAY MORNING MAMA DIDN’T WANT TO GO TO CHURCH, so I went outside to play. Later that morning, on a whim, I walked over to a vacant trailer and opened the back door. I peeked inside and discovered Mama lying on a dirty mattress with Tim Allen, a man she’d recently met in the trailer park.
A clean-cut, slender man in his midthirties, Tim lived in the trailer park with his dad, Charles. Tim had diabetes and depended on insulin, but he was a strong, hard worker nonetheless. It didn’t take Mama long to get Tim’s attention. They quickly became a serious couple, and since Mama and her previous husband were divorced when she went to prison, Mama and Tim soon got married. The three of us moved into a trailer together.
Despite our awkward first encounter, Tim seemed to be a pretty good guy. In the early months of our relationship, he actually reminded me of Carroll, the best of Mama’s previous husbands. Tim was good to Mama, and he tried to be a great stepdad, treating me as his own son. I enjoyed doing things with him; we laughed together and had lots of fun. Tim discovered that I enjoyed building clubhouses in the woods, so he often brought home boards and large pieces of cardboard that I could use in my clubhouse. As far as I was concerned, Tim was awesome. I even thought we might be a real family—whatever that was.
One of the things I most admired about Tim was that he and his dad, Charles Allen, were so close. Having lived my entire life with an absentee father, I had never before seen the sort of strong father-and-son relationship shared by Tim and Charles.
Both Tim and his dad had drinking problems, but when Tim and Mama married, Tim used the occasion to challenge Charles to give up the booze. They agreed to stop drinking alcohol completely. Tim held up his end of the deal, but Charles struggled to stay away from alcohol. Whenever he could, he slipped away from the trailer park and found a drink.
One summer day, about six months after Tim and Mama got married, the three of us were driving up Highway 74, toward the Dixie Village Shopping Center, when Tim spotted Charles sitting at a picnic table on the other side of the busy highway. “Look at that!” Tim said with obvious disappointment in his voice. “There’s my dad, and he’s drunk.”
Mama and I looked across the road and saw Charles staggering around the table. Tim reduced the car’s speed as though he was going to stop, but then decided against it. “I’ll come back and pick him up after I take you two home,” Tim said. He drove past Charles in the direction of Dixie Village.
I could see Charles looking toward us and waving as we drove away. His eyes were glassy. He may have been drunk, but he recognized us, and by the look on his face, he must have realized that Tim was sorely disappointed in him.
Tim drove on to the store, where we purchased the items Mama wanted, and then we headed back toward Sante Trailer Park. As we passed the spot where we’d seen Tim’s dad, Tim peered across the highway, searching for Charles around the picnic tables. But Charles was nowhere in sight.
Tim was disgusted. “He’s probably passed out on the ground beside the picnic table,” he said. We continued on home, and Tim dropped us off at the trailer. Then he hurried back up the highway to get Charles.
But it was too late. By the time Tim arrived at the picnic area, Charles had already stumbled out onto the highway, apparently staggering back toward Sante Trailer Park. He was struck by a car and was killed instantly.
It was a few hours before Tim returned home, sharing this horrific news with Mama and me. He was devastated and beside himself with grief mixed with regret. “I could have helped him,” Tim cried over and over again. “I could have rescued him. I could have saved him! But I didn’t.”
Tim loved his dad more than I could even understand. The decision to pass by his dad was one that Tim would regret for the rest of his life.
TIM HAD A TEENAGE SON, CHARLES, NAMED AFTER HIS grandpa. Charles Jr. lived in Bessemer City, North Carolina, with his mother, Kathy, Tim’s former wife. Charles and I were both thirteen, and we became instant friends. I spent most of my time hanging out with him the summer that his grandpa died. We did all sorts of things together—camping, hiking, boxing, and most of all, chasing girls, though we weren’t quite sure what we’d do if one of the young ladies returned our interest. Still, we had fun.
As the Fourth of July 1986 drew near, Tim was still grieving the loss of his father, so Mama allowed me to spend the weekend with Charles at Kathy’s apartment in Bessemer City. Meanwhile, my oldest brother, Charlie Barber, whom I barely knew, visited Mama and Tim.
While Charlie Barber was with Mama and Tim, he and Tim got into a fight. The two of them exchanged strong words and threats, getting into a raging argument that spilled all over the house. Charlie Barber decided to leave, but on the way out of the yard, he picked up a brick and slammed it against the top corner of the windshield of an Oldsmobile Delta 88 that he had seen Tim driving. The windshield shattered where the brick had hit, but it held together due to the safety glass. Charlie Barber hustled into his car and roared away.
But what Charlie Barber didn’t know was the Olds Delta 88 was not Tim’s car; it belonged to Tim’s recently deceased father, Charles Allen. When Tim saw what Charlie Barber had done to the windshield of his father’s car, he was furious and vowed to get even.
I came home from Bessemer City that evening, and when I saw the broken windshield, I ran inside the trailer. “Mama, what happened?”
“Charlie came over, and he and Tim got in an argument,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
Mama gave me a brief synopsis, but it was obvious she was in no mood to talk about it. Apparently, she and Tim had gotten into an argument, too, with Mama sticking up for her flesh and blood. She didn’t say much; she simply left the trailer without telling us where she was going. We later learned that she went across the trailer park to Grandpa’s trailer. Grandpa had recently moved to Sante to stay close to Mama.
About that time, I heard Tim thrashing around in the back bedroom. He stormed out to the living room, and when he saw me, he said, “Come with me; let’s go for a ride.”
I could tell that Tim was upset, but I didn’t have any concerns. We all lived with anger in the trailer park. That was nothing new.
Tim and I went outside, and I pulled open the big, heavy passenger door on the Olds Delta 88 and got in. I closed the door and sat there wondering where we were going.
Tim got in the driver’s seat and placed a fifth of vodka on the seat between us. He cranked the Oldsmobile’s motor and drove out of Sante Trailer Park. “Let’s stop by the store and get a Mountain Dew,” Tim said in his usual friendly voice.
A Mountain Dew? Gee, thanks, Tim! I was excited because that was my favorite soda, and it was rare when I got one.
Tim pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store and parked in front of the entrance, leaving the engine running. I waited in the car while he went inside and bought two twelve-ounce bottles of Mountain Dew, one for him and one for me. He hopped back in the car and handed me the Mountain Dews.
We headed west on Highway 74, passing by Sante Trailer Park, traveling instead toward Crowders Mountain. Wherever we were going, we weren’t going home.
Tim was driving fast, and I was a little nervous, but the Carolinas are NASCAR country, so driving fast was the norm. I wasn’t too worried.
Then Tim said, “Pour me some liquor in that cup,” as he pointed to a cup on the floor.
I opened the bottle and carefully poured the vodka into the cup, filling it halfway.
Tim nodded in the dark. “Now pour a little Mountain Dew in there,” he ordered.
I quickly obeyed and handed the mixed drink to Tim. He guzzled the drink in one swig. He extended the cup in my direction. “Again,” he said.
Like a passenger-seat bartender, I repeated this process several times before we reached Crowders Mountain. By then Tim had downed four full cups of the vodka and soda in rapid succession.
We took a left turn off Highway 74, in front of the property where Grandpa formerly lived. We passed Mountain View Agape Fellowship, the little white church on the hill, and zoomed past the old bus stop where I had stood and waited so often for the school bus. As we topped the next hill, Tim lifted his foot off the gas pedal, slowing the vehicle. He then turned the car into someone’s driveway and stopped.
We sat there in the dark for a few minutes, not saying a word, with the engine still running. Tim peered into the darkness in the direction of a lone trailer. His eyes remained fixed on the rectangular shape in the darkness. Finally, he whispered, “Load this gun.” He handed me his .22 caliber, nine-shot revolver.
Without hesitating, I loaded the gun and handed it back to Tim. I had no clue what he had in mind to do, but I wasn’t about to disobey his orders.
We sat quietly for a few more minutes, with Tim idly caressing the gun. After a while the front door on the trailer opened, and we could see someone standing in the shadows of the doorway. But all the lights were off in the trailer, which made it difficult to identify the person.
Tim hissed to me, “Ask him if he’s Charlie.”
What? He wanted me to ask the figure in the dark for his name? I shrugged, and obeyed. I yelled out the passenger window, “Hey! Are you Charlie?”
The man grunted and said, “Yeah, who wants to know?” He sounded a lot like my older brother, Charlie Barber.
That’s all Tim needed to hear. He backed the car out of the driveway and into the road, and then pointed the gun out the driver’s side window at Charlie. Before I realized what was happening, Tim fired off six shots. Whether he was too drunk to aim straight or just trying to scare Charlie, I’ll never know; but all six bullets tore through the aluminum exterior of my older brother’s trailer and miraculously missed Charlie.
Tim stomped on the throttle, and while peeling out with the tires spinning, he fired three more shots into the trailer. He looked like an outlaw, riding the back of a horse through a town and shooting up the saloon.
The big Olds roared off, and Tim slapped the gun down on the front seat as we headed back toward Highway 74. Just before we reached the main road, he steered the car off onto a side road, where we parked and watched through splintered trees as the police raced by in the direction of Charlie Barber’s trailer.
We sat there for a few moments in the dark before Tim pushed the gun toward me and said, “Load it again.”
Why, Tim? What are we doing out here? I thought but didn’t dare say aloud. This was the first time I had ever questioned Tim. He had always been such a good guy. But that night, at that moment, he wasn’t the stepdad I’d quickly grown to like and trust.
A voice whispered in my ear, You’re in danger. Get out of the car.
It was a familiar voice, one that I had heard on Vance Street in times of trouble and another time at a campground when I was ten. Whether it was intuition, the voice of an angel, or the Spirit of God, I don’t know.
I emptied the gun’s cylinder, then reached down and picked up some used shells off the floorboard. I loaded the spent shells in the cylinder, hoping that Tim was too drunk to notice. I snapped the cylinder shut and handed the gun back to Tim.
He shoved the gun back at me and yelled at the top of his lungs, “I saw what you did. Put some bullets in the gun!”
My hands were shaking, and I was getting more scared by the minute. I nervously emptied the used shells out of the cylinder and reloaded the gun with live ammunition from a small cardboard box Tim had on the seat. I handed the gun to Tim and sat motionless in the front seat while Tim finished off the vodka.
Tim lowered the cup from his lips and threw it on the floor. “Do you know how fast I am?” Tim asked, without turning toward me.
Before I could even respond, his right arm flashed in the darkness, smashing me in the face with the knuckle side of his closed fist. My head snapped sideways as I felt warm blood squirt from my nose, running down my neck onto my favorite shirt.
I wanted to scream, cry, or yell out, Tim! What’s wrong with you? Why did you hit me? But I was too frightened to say a word. We sat there in silence. I didn’t dare look at Tim for fear he’d deck me again. I stared straight ahead, looking at a faraway light on the hill. I was afraid to move.
I started to cry.
“Shut up!” Tim roared.
I tried to obey but couldn’t keep from sniffling. A few minutes later Tim suddenly raised the gun and shoved the barrel against the side of my head, mumbling something under his voice. Tim pushed on the gun, and I felt the pressure of the cold, hard gun barrel pressing against my skin and bone.
The events of the next two seconds seemed to move in slow motion.
I lifted up my left arm so it was between my body and Tim’s arm while simultaneously turning my head to the right and back toward the seat. At the same time I heard a deafening loud bang! and saw a streak of fire burst past my face.
My left ear was ringing like a burglar alarm. My face burned from the gunpowder.
With adrenaline surging through my system, I grabbed Tim’s arm with my left hand and pushed his arm away from my head and down toward the seat. I turned to look at him while grabbing his arm with my right hand. I raised up, then threw my entire body weight down on his arm, eventually working my hands down to the gun and pressing it to the seat.
“Tim, please don’t shoot me!” I screamed over and over. This was crazy. What had I done? I had never had a cross word with Tim, and now he was trying to kill me? It didn’t make any sense.
Tim finally relaxed his arm. In response, I slowly released my grip after he let go of the gun. With the gun lying on the front seat, I thought about grabbing it and running, but I was too scared.
I wouldn’t have had time anyhow. Tim threw the car in gear and quickly backed out to the main road.
That’s when I noticed the bullet hole in the top right corner of the windshield. The light from the streetlight on the hill created a weird kaleidoscope effect in the spider web of broken glass surrounding the hole in the windshield. It scared me to think that the bullet that had shattered the glass could have been in my head.
Tim sped down Highway 74, accelerating as fast as he could go, barely negotiating the winding road. Then, while the car was still going, he yanked down on the gear shift, slamming the Olds into reverse. The transmission screeched with a horrendous sound of metal against metal, grinding the gears so loudly I thought the engine was going to explode. Just as it seemed the car was about to shudder to a stop, Tim slammed the car back into drive and stomped down on the gas pedal again. He repeated this several more times; it was as though he was deliberately trying to destroy his dead dad’s car—and maybe us too. The Olds was a warhorse, though, and kept going, so finally Tim turned left and headed back west on Highway 74.
He pulled into another driveway and stopped, but I was not going to give him a second chance to shoot me. As soon as the car stopped, I ripped open the door. The interior light came on, and Tim instinctively reached over and felt for the gun.
“I gotta pee!” I lied, as I jumped out of the car and started running. I had purposely left the car door open because I knew if the interior light was on, Tim couldn’t see me but I could see him.
I ran as fast as I could, trying to get away from the car, glancing behind me every few seconds, looking back over my left shoulder to see if he was following me. I could still see him leaning across the front seat, trying to grab the passenger door handle to pull the door closed.
I kept running down the median of Highway 74. When I saw the headlights pan across the trees, I knew Tim was backing the car up and heading my way. I dove onto the ground in the high grass of the median as he passed by.
When I was certain the car had disappeared, I stood up and ran some more. Every time a car approached from either direction, I hit the dirt, diving again into the median. I wasn’t taking any chances. After running several more miles, I finally made it to the convenience store near Sante Trailer Park. I ran to the phone booth and dialed the operator.
When a woman answered, I practically yelled into the phone, “Please, help me! My stepdad was trying to shoot me.”
“Slow down, son,” the woman said. “What’s your name?”
“Jimmy! Jimmy Wayne Barber. And my stepdad’s name is Tim. Tim Allen. Please! You gotta help me. He’s gonna kill me.”
The woman seemed unfazed. Instead of sending help, she peppered me with more questions. I tried answering as many as I could, but then I saw a car approaching. I hung up the phone and ran across the parking lot and up the street that led to our trailer. It seemed unusually dark; there were no lights on in the trailer, but when I crept up and tried the front door, I was relieved to find it was unlocked.
Tim’s car wasn’t in the driveway, but I couldn’t tell whether he was inside or not. A fearful thought darted across my mind: Maybe he parked up the street, and he’s hiding inside, waiting to get me. Despite my fears, I opened the front door and stepped inside. I turned on a light and yelled for Mama.
No answer.
I closed the door and stood in the living room with my back pressed up against the front door. “Mama?” I called again. “Mama! Are you here?” I waited for an answer, but none came.
I knew it was risky to stay in the trailer by myself, but I was so exhausted, my eyes were so heavy, and I just couldn’t run anymore. All I wanted to do at that moment was to lie down. I locked the front door and dragged myself to my bedroom.
My legs were covered with scratches, and my skin burned and itched from rubbing up against the tall grass in the median. The blood from my nose that had poured down the front of my shirt and shorts had dried, leaving dark stains. I was too exhausted to care. I fell onto my bed and closed my eyes. I knew that if Tim found me before I woke up, I might awaken in heaven, but I just didn’t care.