RUN! From Civil War to the NFL; The Jehuu Caulcrick Story: The Bullet Doesn't Pick and Choose
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Regular price $51.99
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RUN! From Civil War to the NFL; The Jehuu Caulcrick Story: The Bullet Doesn't Pick and Choose
Sale price
$42.99
Regular price $51.99
A boy in Liberia, Africa, we’ll call him Ghost, lowers his head between his knees, protecting his eyes and face from dust and debris falling around him.
The fallout of a mortar blast blankets his arms and bony shoulders. The debris takes a minute to settle. He flicks fragments of cement and gravel from between his Four-Wheel-Drives, the rubber sandals worn by the lethal Small Boys Unit of Liberia. He wears a t-shirt that will never be clean again. His elbows rest on bloody, torn jeans waiting for the next mortar to land.
It doesn’t take long. The next concussion follows the sharp whistle of the mortar’s lethal path, and the world in front of him explodes. He’s showered again in soil and remains, construction debris, rebar, glass, parts of the earth, and pieces of human beings. Bam, a shell lands and rubble busts to smaller pieces. The air fills with fragments and more dust.
He’s mostly gray now, the boy in Liberia, covered completely in dust, his black skin shows only where sweat washes away the filth. The blanket of detritus keeps the flies away and hides the tattoos and scars that marked him as a rebel. He’s a wraith crouching beside a hole in the ground. He doesn’t move. Clouds pass behind his eyes. Then a memory, another life, one where he has a family and a home, a toy, a bed, a front door. The memory squats in a corner of his crowded mind and fights to take hold, to plant a seed, to grow hope, but the ground is a burned-out, lunar, inhospitable place. Nothing good can live there. He ducks his head and whispers, No Hope, only Ghost.
A young boy from Liberia, let’s call him Jehuu, hurries through the front doors of a large (intact) brick building.
His new backpack bounces across his broad back (the old pack, the one he hauled around for two years, was discarded in the African bush months ago). He blinks up at the lights, down at the polished floor, grinning at the bright white sneakers at the bottom of his thick legs. He holds one shoe out to admire it, balances on the other, and thinks, New shoes. New clothes.
A hundred other children rush around inside the building, a beehive of energy. Adults, wearing important clothes, carrying important papers, are sprinkled among the children. They move to important parts of the building to do important things. The cacophony is confusing but engaging. A door slams down a deep hallway echoing off the tiled floor and antiseptic walls. He winces involuntarily, those hefty legs twitch, his hands drop to the side, a sprinter’s initiate. He doesn’t run…this time. Instead he relaxes his clenched shoulders, smiles, and moves down the hall to his classroom.
When he was seven years old Jehuu Caulcrick (Jay-you Call-crick) walked the Liberian coast with his family, passing through checkpoints armed with child soldiers not much older than him, blank faces, teeth yellowed by jungle-juice and heroin, AK-47s hanging off gaunt bodies. It was 1990, the middle of country’s second civil war in ten years. He walked for nearly seven-hundred miles, until he was nine-years-old.
When he was twenty-seven years old Jehuu carried a football for the Buffalo Bills in the NFL for one yard and a first down, his only carry in a five-year nomadic career as a professional football player.
In between, a lot happened.
The fallout of a mortar blast blankets his arms and bony shoulders. The debris takes a minute to settle. He flicks fragments of cement and gravel from between his Four-Wheel-Drives, the rubber sandals worn by the lethal Small Boys Unit of Liberia. He wears a t-shirt that will never be clean again. His elbows rest on bloody, torn jeans waiting for the next mortar to land.
It doesn’t take long. The next concussion follows the sharp whistle of the mortar’s lethal path, and the world in front of him explodes. He’s showered again in soil and remains, construction debris, rebar, glass, parts of the earth, and pieces of human beings. Bam, a shell lands and rubble busts to smaller pieces. The air fills with fragments and more dust.
He’s mostly gray now, the boy in Liberia, covered completely in dust, his black skin shows only where sweat washes away the filth. The blanket of detritus keeps the flies away and hides the tattoos and scars that marked him as a rebel. He’s a wraith crouching beside a hole in the ground. He doesn’t move. Clouds pass behind his eyes. Then a memory, another life, one where he has a family and a home, a toy, a bed, a front door. The memory squats in a corner of his crowded mind and fights to take hold, to plant a seed, to grow hope, but the ground is a burned-out, lunar, inhospitable place. Nothing good can live there. He ducks his head and whispers, No Hope, only Ghost.
A young boy from Liberia, let’s call him Jehuu, hurries through the front doors of a large (intact) brick building.
His new backpack bounces across his broad back (the old pack, the one he hauled around for two years, was discarded in the African bush months ago). He blinks up at the lights, down at the polished floor, grinning at the bright white sneakers at the bottom of his thick legs. He holds one shoe out to admire it, balances on the other, and thinks, New shoes. New clothes.
A hundred other children rush around inside the building, a beehive of energy. Adults, wearing important clothes, carrying important papers, are sprinkled among the children. They move to important parts of the building to do important things. The cacophony is confusing but engaging. A door slams down a deep hallway echoing off the tiled floor and antiseptic walls. He winces involuntarily, those hefty legs twitch, his hands drop to the side, a sprinter’s initiate. He doesn’t run…this time. Instead he relaxes his clenched shoulders, smiles, and moves down the hall to his classroom.
When he was seven years old Jehuu Caulcrick (Jay-you Call-crick) walked the Liberian coast with his family, passing through checkpoints armed with child soldiers not much older than him, blank faces, teeth yellowed by jungle-juice and heroin, AK-47s hanging off gaunt bodies. It was 1990, the middle of country’s second civil war in ten years. He walked for nearly seven-hundred miles, until he was nine-years-old.
When he was twenty-seven years old Jehuu carried a football for the Buffalo Bills in the NFL for one yard and a first down, his only carry in a five-year nomadic career as a professional football player.
In between, a lot happened.