When I was 12 and my older brother Bruce was 19, my parents owned a convenience store called Don’s Quick Shop in Roebuck, South Carolina. My parents were talking about separating and decided to have a date night to sort things out.
That night while they were out, my brother asked me if I wanted to go to the drag strip with him, which was only a mile or two down the road. He was taking his motorcycle, and it was actually the first time he’d asked me. I wanted to go with him, but a movie was playing that night that I wanted to see. So we agreed I’d go with him the following night.
Going to the drag strip together never happened. Later that night, right at the end of the movie, I got a call from Bruce’s girlfriend, crying and hysterical. She said she had heard that a car had run into a motorcycle, and that Bruce had been killed in the accident. It wasn’t until later we learned the town drunk had killed him in a drunk driving accident. It happened near my parents’ convenience store, after the man had just bought another case of beer there. He bought the beer, got back on the road and killed my brother only a quarter of a mile from our store.
Our family had grown up with Christianity. I had been baptized, and my grandmother and I attended church every Sunday. But once my older brother was taken from me, I had a lot of hatred in my heart. I wanted revenge. I wanted justice for the way my family and my world had been torn apart. With two of my friends, I enrolled at the local martial arts center for their kung fu san soo, a hand-to-hand combat style used by Green Berets. I trained intensely for the next four years of my life. They didn’t know it, but I was training every single day so I could hurt the man who had killed my brother badly enough to put him in the hospital for what he had done.
Maybe they figured it out. The night before we were going to test for our black belts, the head instructor who was a policeman pulled us aside.
He said, “Hey, if you get into a fight now after this, you’re going to prison. If you get your black belt, it’ll be assault with a deadly weapon.”
One of those two friends knew I had done all this to go after the guy who had taken my brother away. So he and I quit together that night, while our other friend who had been training with us went on to earn four black belts.
Soon after, at 16 years old, I was still scheming to punish that man, since he’d gotten only like six months at a halfway house and no real jail time. So I lined up a bunch of beer bottles on the fence post for practice. Practicing on them with my nunchakus, again and again and again, with only one target before me in my heart.
My mother pulled up at that point.
She called out to me, “What’re you doing, honey?” And I said, “I’m pretending this is the head of the man who killed my brother right here, and I’m busting him up.”
She replied, “Come on over here for a minute. I want to talk with you.” So I went on over to her car.
“Honey,” she said, “I have to forgive him. You know I’ve got cancer, and they told me I’ve got two years to live. I have to forgive him to get into Heaven, and you’ve gotta do the same thing.”
And I said, “Yeah right, Mom,” because in my head I was thinking, that’s crazy. There ain’t no way I’m forgiving him.
Sure enough, two or three years later, she passed away from lung cancer when I was 19. My sister and I inherited the convenience store, and the house and 50 acres that our family farm was on. When I walked in the convenience store soon after, the lady Peggy who’d worked for us for 30 years spoke with me.
“Ronnie,” she began. “I just wanted to let you know, that man who killed your brother has been starting to come back into the store. And we don’t want any trouble.”
I said, “Look Peggy, I own half of this place now. If he comes onto this property and I catch him here, there’s going to be trouble.”
Sure enough, two weeks later, I’m at the gas station with my Ford Mustang Boss 5.0, and I was at the gas pump.
And he comes across the four-way in an old beat-up truck. He had a little tricycle or something stuck up underneath the truck. As he was coming across the pavement, the tricycle underneath was being dragged and sparking on the asphalt. I saw it, and he pulled up right at the pump in front of me. He got out of his truck. When he did, a bunch of empty beer cans fell out with him. Like in slow motion. One hit the ground, then the next, then the next — one, two, three — then by the time the third one hit, I was so mad. I was ready to just beat the hell out of this guy.
I thought, This is my chance.
He looked at me. He was like, “You don’t know who I am, do you?”
Staggering and slurring his words.
I said, “Yeah, I do,” and I called him by his name.
He said, “Do you hate me for what I did to your brother?”
And I wanted to get him right then, just hit him.
But then God spoke to me.
It was like the first time I’d ever heard God speak. The Lord said, “You’re not going to say that, what you want to say. You’re going to say this.”
And He put the words in my mouth.
I really felt like the biggest wuss saying them, but I told the man, “You know, my momma told me she had to forgive you to get into heaven. She told me I had to do the same damn thing.
“But it’d be a lot ******* easier if you weren’t driving around drunk the whole damn time.”
I got in my Ford Mustang. I was so mad I punched the steering wheel. Burnt tires that day getting out of the parking lot, leaving him behind. I was so angry.
But to be honest with you, after that, it kind of got off my mind. It was like I wasn’t really so angry anymore. God took it out of my heart.
Eventually I was like, cool. I’m not angry with this guy anymore. Maybe I needed to say that, or whatever.
Fifteen years later, I’m running the restaurant in Roebuck. This lady comes in. I didn’t know who she was, but as it turned out she was this guy’s wife. She came in the restaurant that day, and said, “Are you Ronnie Ray?”
“Yes ma’am,” I said. “How can I help you?”
She introduced herself, including saying who her husband was. “I was wondering if I could speak to you in private for a minute.”
And in my mind, I was like “Oh great, he must be in jail, needing some bail money … something’s going on with this drunk.” So I said, “Go on back to the restaurant’s smoking section. I have a couple orders I need to finish, then I’ll come on back and talk to you.”
I finished up the orders and went back there. She was waiting impatiently, and I sat down in the booth with her. She’s on one side, I’m on the other. She grabs my hand and says, “I need you to tell me what you told my husband, at the pump, fifteen years ago.” It was almost fifteen years to the day when she asked me this at the restaurant. She waited all that time to ask me this.
I said, “Why? I didn’t say nothing.”
And she went, “Please! You’ve gotta tell me.” She was clawing at my hands and everything, with tears coming from her eyes.
I said, “Why? What’s the big deal? What’s fifteen years ago at the pump got to do with it?”
She told me, “My husband came home from the store that day, crying like a baby. He pulled that liquor from underneath the bed, from behind the sofa, outta cabinets, places I didn’t even know he had it hid.
“He poured every bit of it down the sink. And he got saved the very next day at church. Then the following week, he got his two brothers, who were lifelong alcoholics, and got them to quit drinking. Then they got saved. They’ve all been sober for the past fifteen years.
“And they want to have a church revival in your restaurant parking lot.”
I just started bawling with her. Because my brother didn’t die in vain. What happened that night changed a whole generation of people. Maybe saved a number of lives because that man and his two brothers eventually changed their ways, because of what happened, because of what we said to each other that day at the pump.
I see that man at church now, and I hug him when I do. He’s a good Christian man now, and due to his faith, he’s probably changed so many people, I couldn’t count how many.
* * *
When I’ve shared this testimony before, it’s been said that maybe my forgiving him helped saved lives too. I can’t take credit for anything. But I know that trusting God, even if there was doubt at times, and being able to forgive in Christ allowed me to move forward in my life, with a clean heart. And that choice might’ve helped the community around us move forward also.
I’m grateful we could accept God’s guidance and love in making our lives a better place, even after tragedy, and I encourage you to do the same.
Heart of Flesh Literary Journal 