Hit Man - Brian Hughes [4]
2 DETROIT
GRAND JUNCTION IS an American crossroads, a speck on the map in what is traditionally cattle and cotton country. Named after the intersection of two major rail lines, the Memphis and Charleston and the Mississippi and Ohio, it sits in rural Tennessee, an hour east of Memphis, on the edge of the land of the Delta Blues. For a brief period, during the American Civil War, it was of vital strategic importance in the bloody conflict between North and South. Those days are long forgotten. Travellers now barely notice as they pass through this tiny settlement of 300 souls. For most, it is not even a brief stop on the long road to somewhere else.
A baby christened Thomas was born poor and black in Grand Junction on 18 October 1958, the first son to Thomas and Lois Jackson. The couple already had two young girls. Despite being named after his father, Thomas would later say that he had no memories of the man, as his parents separated not long after his arrival. Lois married again and her turbulent relationship with John Hearns, whose surname young Thomas adopted, produced six children in successive years before Lois was, once again, forced to face a future as a single mother when John Hearns walked out on the family. The experience had a traumatic effect on Thomas, who watched the violent disagreements between his parents often spiral out of control. His mother’s subsequent decision to relocate her young brood to Detroit, Michigan, in search of better prospects of employment would have an equally significant impact.
It was the wrong time to move to the Motor City. Once the engine of America’s auto industry, the home of Chrysler, Ford and General Motors, Detroit was in near-terminal decline. In the words of TIME magazine, “In the auto boom after World War II, Detroit put the U.S. on wheels as it had never been before. Prosperity seemed bound to go on forever – but it didn’t …” Car production peaked in 1955, to be followed three years later by a recession that saw twenty per cent of the workforce unemployed. Automation and consolidation by the carmakers meant fewer jobs and major firms like Packard, Hudson and Studebaker closed down. The middle classes packed and headed for the suburbs, taking their taxes with them and so depleting the city coffers, while at the same time poor black migrants still arrived from the South, seeking work that was no longer there. Never pretty, large sections of the city began to take on the appearance of warzones. One of the few bright spots was Berry Gordy’s Motown Record Corporation, whose production line brought soul music to the world and put the city on the map for more than urban decay and crime.
Lois Hearns settled on Helen Street, one of the most deprived areas of the notorious east side, where she had to raise nine children alone. The area was, she admitted, “pretty bad,” and the move exacerbated the feelings of isolation which the timid Thomas felt. He retreated to the safety of his bedroom and chose to lose himself in the emerging world of television, spending hours watching cartoons and films. Lois soon noticed that there was one particular sport that her oldest son showed a great deal of interest in. She would watch with wry amusement as he sat entranced before the grainy images of boxing matches on their black and white set, before insisting that his younger brothers shadow box with him. His hero was Muhammad Ali, then in his incomparable prime and the reigning heavyweight champion, before his refusal to accept the draft to serve in the Armed Forces led to him being stripped of his title. Like many a young Detroit blood, Thomas