Odell Tucker

There they all are in those eighth grade pictures - children, really. Right now, I'm looking at Johnny Boatman, Odell Tucker and Johnny Jenkins. But there were others, in the other schools. I remember Boatman as an interesting guy, but, in retrospect, you can see his future in his face, in that picture. That's not true of Odell. Look at his picture and what you see is a happy, funny kid.

What I don't understand is how they went from those pictures to hood-dom. That must have been some rite of passage. One that most of us missed out on.

Did they all go to see that Marlon Brando biker movie and get transformed? Did they suddenly see the light in a dark theater?...

Townsman: "What are you boys rebelling against?"

Brando: "Whaddya got?"

Or did they hear their ancestors calling them from Shiloh, Chickamauga and Redoubt Number One in South Nashville, telling them to get free?

The metamorphosis didn't take place overnight. But over the Hillsboro years, one by one, their pictures drop out of the Annuals.

The time we all remember is the week before graduation. We don't know what happened. We can only imagine...

There was no moon that night. The only light was from the houses that lined the streets. Maybe he told his mother he'd be home, soon. Maybe he didn't. He had nowhere special to go. The thing was to get out and ride.

He found the roads where the houses thinned out and opened it up, all the way, a few times. He felt safe and confident in the darker-than-dark night.

On his way home, he decided to make one last run down a road that was long, but lined with houses, half-hidden by trees. At the end of the road, a car was backing slowly out of a driveway. Black on black. Night on night... He racked it all the way back, leaned into the wind... and graduated early.