“Then it suddenly occurred to me that, in all the world, there neither was nor would ever be another place like this City of the Angels. Here the American people were erupting, like lava from a volcano; here, indeed, was the place for me – a ringside seat at the circus.” — Carey McWilliams
January 31, 2010
Markeis Carmichael was born one month after his mother walked out on his father.
Jeffery Carmichael couldn't stay out of jail, and she worried about the influence he would have on her son.
But as Markeis became older, Sandra Cason, of Carson, feared that her son was too much like his father. He hung around the wrong crowd, resisted her authority and, ultimately, stole a car at gunpoint.
When the teenager went to state prison, Markeis made an unusual request: He wanted to share a cell with the father he had never known.
To Sandra, it was a terrible idea. All he would learn was how to be a career criminal. It was the culmination of everything she had been trying to avoid when she left 16 years before.
But it turned out to be for the best. When Markeis was paroled, he came home a different person. No longer angry. No longer a menace to the household or to the community. A storm had passed, largely thanks to the two years he spent getting to know his father -- warts and all.
Paradoxically, the time Markeis spent with his father brought him closer to his mother. The heroic image of the man he had built up in his mind began to fade away. For the first time, he understood why she had left.
Markeis and his mother told their story in a series of interviews over the past year. His father shared his side of the tale in letters and in a brief, recorded phone call from the Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad.
Soon after Markeis was born, Sandra met and married Greg Cason. A longshoreman, he was able to provide a comfortable, middle-class living for Sandra and her children. But to Markeis, he was always Greg – never Dad. His real father was the guy who came around with little gifts when he was on parole.
"His dad would have a Popsicle," Sandra said. "It was cherished. Like, 'My dad bought me this.' And I'm like, 'You didn't say that when I bought them damn Jordans"' -- the pricey shoes.
Through much of the 1990s, Jeffery was out on parole on a vehicle theft case. But Sandra resisted letting Markeis spend too much time with him.
"You miss your dad when he's gone," Markeis said. "Even though he wasn't in your life, you yearn for him to be."
His father returned to prison periodically for violating parole. But in Markeis' mind, it was as much his mother's fault that he wasn't around.
"That presence was gone," he said. "Somebody's gotta be blamed for it, and she was a likely candidate."
In 2000, Jeffery was convicted of robbery and given a 14-year sentence. He has been incarcerated ever since.
As a teenager, Markeis began to rebel. His mother got tough. But the more she cracked down, the more he resisted, until much of his time was spent in the company of gang members.
"It was a phase," Markeis says now. "The people I was hanging around were doing everything you can think of. It wasn't nothing to them to jack somebody's car. I didn't want it to be nothing to me either."
He ran from police. He was shot at and jumped. He spent 11 months in a juvenile facility for joyriding.
Sandra and Greg have three other children, none of whom have ever been in any kind of trouble. She tried desperately to get Markeis back on track. She called every social service agency she could find. She tried getting him into counseling.
At one point, she took him to a preacher to have the demons prayed out of him. Markeis humored her – "I was like, 'Man, what are you doing?"' he said – but even the exorcism didn't work.
"It's amazing the havoc that one little kid can bring to a household," Sandra said. "I would drive over a bridge and think I should jump. I just asked, 'Whatever's gonna happen, let it hurry up and happen because this kid is driving me crazy."'
After Markeis turned 16, Greg and Sandra talked about whether to get him a car. Nothing fancy, just a Hyundai.
"I don't want a Hyundai," Markeis said, and started planning to get something better on his own.
According to a police report, Markeis got into the passenger seat of a white Ford Mustang as it was exiting a car wash in Long Beach.
He pointed a gun at the driver, a 21-year-old Signal Hill man, and told him to get out. He sped off.
Within minutes, a police helicopter was overhead. Markeis bailed out of the Mustang, and ran through backyards near his mother's house before surrendering to police.
It was no surprise to his mother, but it came as a shock to his father. He said he had never told his sons about his criminal activity, so he was stunned to find Markeis following in his footsteps.
"I didn't know he was going down that path," Jeffery said. "I'm the one that messed with cars. I was like, 'What made you start messing with cars?' That blew me away."
Markeis pleaded no contest to one count of carjacking in August 2002. He was sentenced to six years in state prison.
About two years in, he requested a transfer to Centinela State Prison in Imperial, where his father was incarcerated at the time.
When Sandra found out, she said she "freaked."
She thought it was irresponsible to put Jeffery and Markeis together. She called the prison several times to try to prevent it from happening.
At one point, a friend pulled her aside and asked, "You don't see God's hand in this?"
"I see the devil's hand in this," she said.
The friend was insistent: "Why don't you just get out of it for a change and let God do his thing?"
She couldn't stop it anyway, and she started to realize that perhaps Markeis needed to get to know his father.
For Markeis, the experience was not what he expected. The absent hero of his childhood looked a lot different when he was up close.
"He would tell me what was going on in his life when he was gone," Markeis said. "He was like a crackhead -- smoking dope, spending money on prostitutes. I'm just like, 'Really? You're spending your money on prostitutes and drugs?' I just can't see it."
He saw some positive traits as well. His father was a good talker, and his stories often made him laugh.
But the relationship they developed was more like that between two brothers, or close friends, than one between a father and a son.
Markeis was 18 and had already been in prison for a while when he arrived at Centinela, so there wasn't too much his father could teach him.
"If anything, I was more like the dad," Markeis said. "I'd be the one giving good advice."
Jeffery said he did get Markeis a job in the prison kitchen.
"He likes to be around me," Jeffery said. "It was tight. We were like best friends."
Due to violence between black inmates and Latinos, the black prisoners were on lockdown for about 11 months during Markeis' stay.
During that time, he spent 23 hours a day locked up with his father. There was little to do but watch television and lift weights - which they improvised by filling plastic bags with water.
When they were not on lockdown, Markeis played basketball and football. He shared with his father his hopes of playing professional football some day.
"You get to learn and grow closer to your son when you live in a bathroom cell with him for two years," Jeffery wrote in a letter.
As Markeis began to understand why his mother had walked out so many years before, some of the anger -- at his mother, and at the world -- faded away.
Sandra knew something big had happened when she got a letter from prison. In it, Markeis asked, "How could you have kids with someone like that?"
"It turned out to be a good thing," Sandra said. "When he came back home, he was a totally different kid."
Markeis was paroled in May 2007. That fall, he enrolled at Long Beach City College, where he played starting cornerback.
The following year, he was recruited by several schools. But when they learned of his felony record, most lost interest.
"With that type of a background, the coaches are taking giant leaps of faith," said Mike Reisbig, the LBCC coach, who has tried to help Markeis find a spot at a four-year school. "But I'm telling you, if I had young kids, and I needed a baby sitter, I would leave him at my house with my kids and all my possessions and they'd be there when I got home."
Over the summer, Markeis was hoping to play for Midwestern State University, a Division II school in Wichita Falls, Texas. He was told there was a cornerback there with failing grades, and that if he did not pass a summer class there would be an opening on the team in the fall.
"My fate is resting on his downfall," Markeis said at the time.
The cornerback failed the class, but Markeis still was not offered a spot on the team. He spent part of the fall working in the warehouse at a Walmart, but decided that was not for him.
"There were people there who would say, 'This ain't it,"' he said. "The people there seemed like they were working so hard for a little bit of nothing. They're working two jobs and going to school, and it's like, 'Why am I complaining?"'
Now 24, he is looking forward to a football combine - a showcase for scouts - in February. But if that doesn't lead to anything, he is preparing to give up on football and head to California State University, Long Beach, in the fall. Maybe he'll be a counselor, he said.
"There's somebody out there who's going to give me my shot," he said. "I just hope I run into them."
His father, meanwhile, spent the year in solitary confinement. Caught with drugs in his cell, he was given another five years.
"I'm a hustler," he said. "When you have no support from the street -- none, none, none -- you will do certain things. I regret it now."
He said he hadn't been in touch with his son too much lately, and was only recently allowed to use the phone.
Markeis said he "wasn't exactly surprised" to hear that his father had picked up another charge.