FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: This life story begins in 1973 (kind of) part 56

I jumped out of the Nova and opened the car door for Corrina. She had waited a few seconds, allowing me to be a gentleman.

Cori Leigh, as her mom calls her, gave a quick hug, said “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and kind of skipped to the front door. I stood at the end of the herringbone brick walkway and watched her ascend the brick steps. She opened the door but turned back to me, offered one last wave, blew me a quick kiss, flashed her million-dollar smile, and then disappeared within.

It was the perfect ending to a memorable night.

I stood alone for a moment – it’s funny how alone you feel in such moments – me and the antique light pole, its dim light shining on the shiny black dashboard of the red Nova. I reluctantly made my way back to the car after a few moments and soon was back on the Roanoke Road heading home, feeling as peaceful as I did that eight-year-old day I was looking up at the world through shiny and calm, yellow water in Mud Creek, life hanging in the balance in the slow motion of a dream.

It was such a warm feeling sharing that story that, as I rounded the dark curves of the two-lane southbound road, it almost made it worth nearly drowning.

Cheyenne,” I said, turning my attention back to him as we rode along, “there’s somethin’ else you need to know about that near-drownin’.”

Cheyenne waited patiently as if he was aware that I often got into the moment and forgot he was riding shotgun with me.

“You never met your Uncle Chase,” I said, glancing at him, “but there’s somethin’ really strange about it all that I’ve thought about a great deal through the years. You know how some people in life seem to have only one purpose?”

The question was rhetorical. Chase’s role was one of the many hidden treasures in the story, but I knew I was trying to discover its depth myself as I went along.

Chase was a unique character, for sure. He adds almost as much local color as Doocy and some of the other chain gang members of the summer of ‘73.

He was as nice of a man as you would ever want to meet, generally. He was the skinniest of all of the nine cousins – never had an ounce of fat on him – was dishwater blonde, soft-spoken; and when you talked to him, you would have to lean up close to hear him and sometimes have to say, “Chase, say that again.”

When life would take me to Houston years later, he would end up coming out there and working on the brick jobs with me and his dad, my Uncle Dallas. Both of them were laborers, like Doocy and Willum. Chase drove the forklift a good bit. I always loved being around him.

“Cheyenne, I say that he was the kind of person who seemed to have been on this earth for one major reason,” I said. “I may have overstated that jus’ a bit, but his savin’ my life was definitely a star in his crown, in my book.”

I went on to explain how Chase became a criminal pretty early in his life. I’m not sure exactly when it started, but by the early twenties he was getting in trouble, in and out of jail. But he was a genius, too. He could sweet talk any of the guards in the jail or prison because they saw him just the way we did. He was so quiet-spoken that even the guards would have to lean in and say, “Chase, come again, I didn’t hear ya.” He would get in good with the guards until they trusted him.

Who wouldn’t? Chase was as nice of a young man as you would ever want to meet and was innocent of any and every charge ever brought against him. Any of the prison guards would have been honored to take him home with them to meet their daughter.

But history tells us something different.

When Chase drank, his personality changed – although I never saw it.

He was always quiet, nice, and polite.

But authorities in Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Mississippi – perhaps others – are on record as seeing Chase otherwise.

Many of those same authorities also saw his genius firsthand.

Once, he got ahold of two wires, short-circuited the lock on his cell door, and escaped.

Another time he talked his prison guard friend into letting him outside the gate to pick some wild berries growing on a huckleberry vine.

“I want to get a sack full for you to take to your wife,” he said softly.

“Say it again, Chase,” said the guard, leaning in.

“Oh,” he said a little louder, “Those huckleberries out there are ripe just right. I think your wife would like a bag of ‘em. They make the best cobbler.”

Sure enough, the guard let him out, turned his back, and – when he turned back around – the nice, quiet-spoken, skinny young man had disappeared.

Even though the guard loved the young man, he didn’t have any choice but to call for the hounds and turn them loose.

Chase knew the hounds would come, so he had saved the muscle rub he got every night after a hard day’s work in the quarry. He planted that muscle rub all along his escape route, and that sent the dogs’ sense of smell into oblivion, and they started running in circles howling.

That was up in Virginia, and that added just one more state to his list of suitors.

“But one thing about Chase,” I said, “as far as I know, he never hurt anybody. He did get shot once when a bartender got mad at him and grabbed his gun from under the counter. Chase took off out the door and across the front of the joint. The bartender was so mad he ran to the door and shot and got a few buckshots in him. But the bartender had forgotten he had parked his Cadillac out front, and he busted out his own windshield and splattered buckshot all in the hood.

“Chase lived a charmed life, you have to say that for him. I’m glad that with all that he never hurt anybody.”

“Think of it this way, Popman,” Cheyenne said, “What would your life look like today if not for Pee Wee, Red, Corrina, Doocy – all of ‘em, especially Doocy and Corrina, of course. Then add in Chase—Even somebody who did one thing that most folks besides you and Grandma Louise had long forgotten, back when you were eight, that shaped everything about you.

“Life stories are funny that way. It’s almost as if your life is a map with a huge circle drawn on it, and all along the way there are red X’s for the key moments, for the times things happened or people stepped in, changing your life on a dime, as you would say.”

“That’s right,” I said, “I guess there’ll be a lot of those red X’s at the summer of ’73. And there’s definitely one beside Chase’s name, too.” I paused, then thought of something. “Oh,” I said, “I never did tell Chase’s last name. His last name was Freeman.”

“Free-man?” Cheyenne responded, a little confused. “I never heard of our having any ‘Freeman’s’ in our family.

“Well, we didn’t actually,” I said. “It was Chase’s alias. He had to change his name to stay a step ahead of all those folks in uniforms lookin’ for him. So he chose ‘Chase Freeman. He always told me, ‘Billy Ray, as long as they’re chasin’ me I’m a free man.”

“Wow,” Cheyenne laughed, “he was something, wasn’t he? He had his faults, but you couldn’t question his wit, genius, and quick-thinkin’.”

“That quick-thinkin’ saved my life, Cheyenne,” I said, wistfully. “That makes him a hero to me, for sure.”

“Hmmm,” he said, and I could see him tossing some of these life miracles around in his head.

“One more thing,” I added, “The prison guards didn’t know him as ‘Chase Freeman,’ though.”

“What’d they call him?” Cheyenne asked, curious.

“Huckleberry,” I said, “jus’ Huckleberry.”

“I guess he never got those huckleberries to the guard’s wife,” Cheyenne said.

“Nah, I guess not,” I said, “although there was a rumor that the guard found a sack of huckleberries on his front porch a few weeks later. I knew when I heard it that the rumor was true. Nobody but Chase.”

Cheyenne smiled, “Yep, Chase Freeman.”

Coach Steven Bowen, a long-time Red Oak teacher and coach, now enjoys his time as a writer and preacher of the gospel. And, after a ten-year hiatus, he’s also returned to work with students at Ferris High School as well.

In addition to his evangelistic travels, he works and writes for the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl Road and Ovilla. Their worship times are 10 a.m. Sundays and 7:30 pm. Wednesdays. Email coachbowen1984@gmail.com or call or text (972) 824-5197.