Michael's Story

On the fifth day after he was paralyzed by three gunshot wounds, Michael Dixon was transported via ambulance 300 miles south to Shepherd Center, an Atlanta hospital that specializes in the treatment of spinal injuries.

When doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center told him he was being transferred to Shepherd, Michael recognized the name.

Three years earlier, while he attended college in the Georgia metropolis, Michael worked part-time as a delivery driver for a take-out restaurant and one of his frequent stops was Shepherd Center.

While dropping off meatloaf platters and chicken dinners for nurses weary of hospital fare, he had seen several patients paraplegics in their wheelchairs, quadriplegics tethered to ventilators, those with brain injuries. Never in his worst nightmares did he imagine he would return to Atlanta under similar circumstances.

The first time he came to Atlanta, Michael was a college student. Now he was back for an education of a different sort: Quadriplegia 101, where he would begin to adjust to life without mobility.

Accompanying him were his mother, Dot, and sisters, Shirley "Shirl" Greer and Marilyn "Mert" McCoy. Their job was to learn how to care for Michael once he came home.

While the women wanted to do their best to help Michael, they were worried.

Each was a mother. They knew how to take away the hurt from a scraped knee or cradle a feverish child in their laps, but they doubted their ability to care for a grown man who depends on someone else to perform the simplest of tasks.

Could they lift him to change the bed sheets? Michael was 6-foot-1 and even though he had trimmed some of the 175 pounds he carried before the shooting, he was still hefty.

And there was the ventilator. What if the tubing became disconnected or the machine stopped or phlegm needed to be suctioned from his trachea?

Could they handle these and a thousand other situations that were sure to arise?

And if they couldn't become his primary caregivers, what then for Michael?

The unknown frightened them to tears.

Michael had always taken care of himself. Even as a little boy, he was independent. He wanted to tie his own shoes and choose the clothes he would wear. With four older brothers to emulate, he was the "little man" of the house, shadowing their steps until their patience wore thin and they would call out to their mother or sisters for relief.

"He would always be right there with you. You couldn't tell him he couldn't do something we were going to do," remembered Nat Dixon, three years older than Michael.

When he was about 5, Dot glanced out the window into the yard, where a perpetual basketball game was under way. There she saw Michael in the thick of an elbow-slinging, no-fouls-called scrimmage that involved the older Dixon boys and the neighbors' kids.

"Ya'll don't hurt him," she commanded from the door.

"You don't have to worry, Miss Dot, we can't keep up with him. He's too quick," one of the boys replied.

As Dot looked on, the smallest one on the dirt court handled himself well.

He would scoot through the bigger kids' legs and steal the ball, an athletic attribute that described him through his teens. Like his brothers, he would become a starter for the Perry County High Vikings.

As a teen-ager, Michael worked after-school jobs to earn spending money. He cleaned tables and washed dishes at a local Linden restaurant, the Rusty Fish Hook. One spring he and a buddy became partners in a car washing venture and made enough money to rent a limo for the senior prom, the first prom limo in the history of Perry County High.

When Michael chose which college to attend, he decided on the Art Institute of Atlanta instead of one of several two- and four-year schools that were recruiting him for basketball. Some friends questioned his decision, but he replied it was time to get serious about his future. A career in recording was possible; making the NBA wasn't.

Besides, he could play basketball anytime.

Sometimes, when the world becomes as unrecognizable as a Picasso come to life, with disjointed limbs and fractured faces who don't resemble anything familiar or cherished, a hideaway becomes necessary.

Dot had hers at Shepherd.

"You walked out of Michael's room and down a hall and in a little corner, and there it was, all glass. You could just look up to the sky. That was my secret place," she said.

Her family assumed she was going out to smoke. She had been a regular puffer for more than 25 years, but what her sons and daughters didn't know is since the first glimpse of her comatose son in the emergency room, just hours after he was shot, Dot Dixon had quit cold turkey.

"I threw them cigarettes aside and I haven't touched one since."

She retired to her secret place for various reasons, but mostly to marshal strength and to think. It was there, looking into the cobalt sky over the Atlanta skyline, that she made the most important decision of her son's life.

Social workers had dropped subtle and not-so-subtle hints. They questioned whether this family rural Tennessee was in over their heads. Could they properly provide the long-term care needed by a quadriplegic? Would a nursing home be more appropriate?

Months of training by the hospital staff had bolstered the Dixons' confidence. Dot made herself clear to the naysayers. Her family might not be rich, have PhDs among their ranks or live in houses of splendor, "but we got loads of love," she argued.

"Even if I have to live off of milk and bread, you're not going to take my child away from me. You have to try before you fail. How do you know I can't do it unless I try?" she asked.

Shirl and Mert agreed. Those who questioned the Dixon women's abilities fell silent at their persistence. More than four months after he was gunned down, Michael prepared to leave the hospital.

Going home sounded good.

"Mama, I ain't gonna cry no more," Michael said one day to his mother.

She stroked his still hand.

"Well, honey, if you're not going to cry, no need in me crying. You're a big man now," Dot leaned and said softly to her son.

Vengeance was the Lord's. Mert had heard the phrase all her life, but not until Michael was paralyzed did she comprehend the patience required of that Biblical promise. As she and her sister and mother learned to care for Michael, Mert waited for the retributive hand to fall on James Kenneth Pleasant, the man charged with Michael's shooting.

But nothing happened. In fact, it seemed to the Dixons that no one was really interested in seeing justice delivered.

Days after the shooting, Pleasant's bond was reduced from $50,000 to $1,700.

Meanwhile, the defendant's lawyer and the district attorney assigned to the case began a paper dance of depositions and discovery. A trial was at least a year away.

Mert simmered at the thought of her brother's alleged assailant walking around free like nothing happened, while Michael struggled with an uncertain future.

She tired of waiting on the Lord or the justice system. On Labor Day, 1993, Mert got into her car and headed for the corner of North 12th and Seymour streets, the address of Pleasant's duplex.

On the seat beside her was a gun.

As she drove, her mind replayed the image of the man police had charged with the shooting.

Mert parked near Pleasant's home.

There was a party in progress. People were having a good time, talking, laughing. Mert sat in her car, her fingers touching the gun, her dark eyes searching the crowd for the face she had memorized.