Michael's Story

A ten-part series about a young man paralyzed by random gunfire, and the family and community that support him.  Originally published as a series in the Nashville Banner in December, 1997.

Over the next 10 days, Nashville Banner senior writer Leon Alligood will examine the life of a young quadriplegic named Michael Dixon.

Paralyzed by a stranger's gunfire, Michael has found meaning in his tragic circumstances through the love of his family.

This series, told in chapter format, will look back at the nightwhen Michael was injured, and look forward as he chases new dreams.


Finding Hope

Outside his window, the seasons were on the cusp of change. Winter's gray bleakness was yielding to spring's riot of colors, and Michael Dixon was ever so thankful.

Soon he would go outside, Michael thought to himself.

Just do nothing but sit in the sun and feel its warmth envelop him like a mother's hug. He would ask Shirley, his sister, to take him to the grassy area behind his apartment complex and just let him sit there, mild breezes washing across his face.

For now, until the new season firmly established itself, his view remained limited to the small, one-windowed room of his townhouse apartment. It was a view he knew all too well, because it was the only view he had. To the right was the 25-year-old man's "picture wall." Hundreds of photos of his mom, his four brothers and four sisters, his late father and former co-workers were pasted there. There were snapshots of him, too, images frozen from a time when he played basketball, hung out with friends, normal stuff.

Surrounded by the photographs was a framed painting of a crucified Jesus, the wounds on his hands, feet and side tinged with red. Just below the ceiling was a fading paper banner, about 10 feet long, with the messages:

"You are always in our thoughts" and "Best wishes Mike, we all love you."

To the young man's left was the window. On sunny afternoons, yellow light cascaded into the room; on cloudy days the window was a rectangle of slate
gray sky. Either way he was the constant in this sparse tableau, a prisoner in a room without bars, in a body without feeling.

How long had it been since he left this 12-by-10 room for any other reason than to see a doctor? Four months? Five months? He could not remember.

It had been a long winter, his fourth since the shooting. Each seemed longer, colder, more gray than the last, but, finally, spring had returned once again.

Hope was in bloom.

"I'm blessed," Michael told his sister.

"Yes you are," Shirley agreed. "Yes you are."

Four years ago, on a muggy night in early July, Michael Allen Dixon was shot three times in the neck by a deranged gunman. Simply, it was a case of mistaken identity. The shooter, bent on revenge, was looking to shoot someone that night. It wasn't supposed to be Michael.

The three hollow-point bullets from the man's 9 mm Luger splintered Michael's spinal cord at two locations, leaving him a quadriplegic.

The damage was instantaneous, occurring the very moment the projectiles splintered his vertebrae.

Essentially all that could be done at the hospital
was to stabilize him, treat the wounds and introduce him to a life where he's as helpless as the day he was born.

From his waist to the top of his head and from his shoulders to his elbows, Michael has feeling. If Shirley nicks his chin during his morning shave, he winces. If a fly alights on his nose, it tickles. He can pivot his head from left to right, but that's the sum of his voluntary movement.

From waist to toes and from elbows to fingers, he can feel pressure, but he cannot voluntarily move any of his extremities. To scratch his nose or drink a Coke or brush his teeth requires the assistance of another human being.

Even to breathe he needs help. By his bed is a squarish machine with dials and gauges on its face. A blue plastic tube, about an inch in diameter, stretches for several feet from the machine to a white plastic tube that juts out of Michael's throat, just below his Adam's apple. The machine is a ventilator assist, model LP 86. It senses when Michael is about to take a breath and boosts the volume of air entering his lungs. The gentle whirring and clicking as it comes to life every few seconds is background noise to which he and his family became accustomed long ago.

Michael was robbed, without cause or provocation, of the basic privileges of being human: to walk, to run, to talk without waiting for a machine to deliver the breath to do so, to feed yourself, to gesture, to throw a basketball, to take care of personal needs in privacy, to embrace loved ones, to lift palms in praise, to be alone. All this and more was snatched from him in an instant.

The ripple effect of the violence extended to his family, including his mother who raised nine children while working up to five jobs to make ends meet, his devoted sister who sacrificed her life's plans to become his primary caregiver, and his other siblings and cousins, nephews and nieces who have been affected by his suffering.

Not too long ago, Michael's injuries would have been fatal, but trauma medicine has made considerable progress in the treatment of gunshot wounds.

Of course, one wonders what that says about a society where progress comes at the pain of man's inhumanity to man.

Michael certainly wondered. Modern medicine saved him, but for what? To lie in bed for the rest of his life, his muscles withering, his isolation growing more acute, his sanity slipping as he falls further into obscurity?

"I don't think so," he countered.

Before paralysis, Michael's dream was to break into the gospel music recording field. This had been his goal since high school. He wanted to be a producer, to make rafter-shaking, foot-stomping gospel songs. He had a plan on paper, a five-year schedule to get his business off the ground. "But God had different plans for me and I'm just gonna have to depend on Him to see me through. That's what it's all about, just waiting on the Lord to see how things turn out," he said.

It had taken four years for Michael to accept the person he had become, to adjust his focus from activities he could no longer enjoy to thinking about what he could do. For the first time in a long time, he allowed himself to dream of the future, his future.

On an early spring day in May, he announced a five-goal plan: Get a job so he can start paying his own way, find a new place to live, wean himself from the ventilator, buy a van so Shirley can take him wherever he wants to go, and fall in love.

In no particular order. On a hot summer night four years ago, a man with a gun lay in waiting for someone who meant him harm.

"Who that?" the man shouted.

But the man in the shadows did not pause for an answer.

Sadly, the physical laws governing the trajectory of a bullet operate even under the unsteady hand of a man who is liquored up, crazed with irrational fear.

The shooter found a target.

This is the story of the consequences of that single act of violence, of how one man struggled to find hope despite overwhelming adversity. Of how one family found the strength to sacrifice beyond measure.

This is Michael's story.


Shots in the Dark

The summer evening that ended in gunfire and chaos began with video games and fast food.

It was guys' night out. Michael Dixon, 21, was the oldest. Patrick Greer, 17, and Stacey Dixon, 18, were with him. Although Patrick and Stacey were Michael's nephews, sons of older siblings, their relationship was more buddy-buddy than uncle-nephew. Also along for the ride was 11-year-old Joseph Hegwood, a neighbor of Patrick's.

Michael was driving that night. Three months earlier he had purchased a white 1993 Mustang GT, with a five liter engine and five speed transmission, not a muscle car, but it had enough zip to suit him. The interior was red with plaid cloth seats and hanging from the rear view mirror were the tassels from his high school and college graduation caps.

They left Patrick's residence at 814 Taylor St., about 8 p.m. on July 10, 1993. The foursome was joking around, having a good time. It had been several months since the uncle and nephews had been together because Stacey lived in Linden, a two-hour drive from Nashville.

First stop was the arcade at Fountain Square. They fed quarter tokens into an arcade's shoot-em-up machines, firing imaginary guns, rockets and bombs at animated bad guys, having a great time trying to earn the highest score.

After an hour, their supply of coins dwindling, the foursome moved on.

Michael drove around Nashville, stopping at the Pizza Hut at 2700 Gallatin Road so he could introduce his nephews to friends at the restaurant, where he worked part-time. His full-time job was at Lockheed Inc., where he had worked for eight months, but he worked the pizza job to boost his savings.

By 10 o'clock the four guys were buying burgers in the drive-thru at a McDonald's nearby.

Every tale of woe has a defining moment, where the autopsy of the ensuing tragedy makes it clear there were two choices: Take one course and all is safe; take another and all hell breaks loose.

If they had gone back to Patrick's to eat their burgers and fries, there would be no story to tell, but that was not the case.

Although the hour was late, Michael, Stacey and Patrick decided to visit Patrick's girlfriend, who was staying a few miles away at a house on Seymour Avenue. Joseph was just along for a ride with the big guys, so he didn't care.

As he maneuvered his car into traffic on Gallatin Road, Michael had no premonitions, no feeling that danger was about to strike. Although he did not know the exact location of the apartment they were going to visit, he was familiar with the area because he had delivered pizzas there. If it were unsafe, his boss at the restaurant would not have sent him there, he figured.

"You know which house?" Michael asked.

They knew the way, Stacey and Patrick said.

James Kenneth Pleasant hit the ground every time headlights came down the street.

"Down!" the 36-year-old commanded his 20-year-old nephew, Terrance Pleasant, as a car passed by the duplex at the corner of North 12th Street, and Seymour.

He had called the younger man, nicknamed "Poon," to his house that summer evening because James smelled trouble brewing and he wanted backup, just in case the opposition stacked the deck. The two men had stationed themselves on the front porch.

By the time the nephew arrived, James had been drinking from a bottle of Seagram's Seven for several hours and would continue drinking as the twilight waned. Later, there would be allegations that the older man also sniffed cocaine on at least one occasion that night.

In James' lap was a 9 millimeter Ruger P85, loaded with a clip of 115 grain, jacketed, hollow-point bullets. Nearby was an AK-47 with more than 100 rounds of ammo. Inside the house were three rifles: a Marlin 444 lever action, an Interstate Arms .386 semi-automatic and a Marlin 25, a bolt action .22 caliber. He was prepared for anything.

Pleasant had been in scrapes before. His rap sheet, although not lengthy, did include an assault charge several years back. He expected similar charges to come from an altercation earlier in the day when he pistol-whipped a teen-ager because the young man had allegedly raped Pleasant's daughter.

The man first tried to persuade the teen-ager's grandmother to take action against her grandson, but days went by and nothing happened. Then, by accident, Pleasant came face-to-face with his daughter's alleged rapist.

He would later tell police that he didn't mean to hurt the young man, but his emotions got the better of him. "You know how fathers are," he would explain.

For striking the teen, Pleasant wasn't worried about the cops coming to arrest him. He expected as much. What bothered him was the prospect of retribution from the young man's relatives or friends.

Trouble was on its way. He just had this feeling.

It was a short drive from the McDonald's to North 12th and Seymour.

Patrick was in the front passenger seat. Stacey was in the rear seat behind his cousin and Joseph was seated behind the driver's seat. Michael turned onto Seymour and drove slowly down the street. The girlfriend's house was on the right, but the nephews weren't paying attention and they passed the apartment.

Michael drove on for a short distance, stopped and began to back up. The car had stopped directly in front of James K. Pleasant's house.

It was a hot night. One, if not both, door windows on the white mustang was rolled down. From the shadows of the duplex at 805 N. 12th, they saw a man peering at them, walking toward them.

He shouted: "Who that? Who that?"

Michael saw the glint of the gun's reflection in the street lights. He saw the face of the man who, 11 months later, he would still remember clearly enough to pick from a police photo lineup.

"That dude's got a gun," he yelled frantically. Acting on a primal fear, Michael slammed the shifter into first gear and stomped on the accelerator.

The six-cylinder engine responded with a roar and the car picked up speed.

The first shots ripped three-inch long holes in the driver's side door as the barrel of the revolver followed the car's getaway. As Michael stepped on the accelerator, the back window exploded into thousands of small rough-hewn spheres as bullet after bullet pierced the glass. Stacey laid on top of Joseph in the back seat to shield him from the gunfire that crisscrossed the air inches above their heads. Patrick hunkered down in the front seat.

Suddenly, the car veered and the growl of the engine subsided.

Michael had been been hit by three bullets, two of which had pierced the driver's side headrest. Unconscious, he slumped onto Patrick and the now-driverless car slammed into a late model Dodge parked on the side of the street.

"Michael got popped," Patrick shouted, cradling his bleeding uncle.

"Let's get help," Stacey screamed.

The two teens and the younger boy exited the crashed car. Stacey yelled for Joseph to follow, but the frightened youngster ran into a nearby house. With bullets still being fired at them, the two older boys fled to a nearby fast food restaurant on Gallatin road. That's where police officers found them minutes later, shaking, crying, cursing the man in the dark who had shot their uncle.


A Mother's Prayer

It had to be another mistake. Michael couldn't be shot. That thought ricocheted through Dorothy "Dot" Dixon's mind throughout the two-hour trip from Perry County to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

It had to be another mistake.

Two months earlier she had prepared to make this same midnight journey. On a night in May 1993, a man named Michael Dixon was killed in a traffic accident and it was an item on the local 10 o'clock news. Two of Dot's daughters, Shirley and Marilyn, nicknamed "Shirl" and "Mert," assumed the worst for their youngest brother.

They tried calling Michael's apartment but got no answer. Shirl said she'd call Michael's employer, just in case he was working late.

Mert alerted their mother.

For an anxious hour, Dot walked the floor. "I prayed to the Lord that it wasn't true," she remembered.

The phone rang in her little blue house and Dot clutched it on the first ring. Michael was OK, Mert said. He was at work. It was just a weird coincidence that the man in the auto crash had the same name and was of the same age.

Before Dot went to bed, she bowed her head, thankful her Michael, sweet boy, obedient son, was well and safe. She easily surrendered to sleep.

But now on this July night, as the dark, rural countryside gave way to shuttered suburbs and finally to amber-lit Nashville streets, Dot sensed a weight of imponderable immensity settling over her and hers. In the two-hour drive, it seemed she aged 10 years.

Dot hardly recognized the form on the hospital bed as her "baby." Michael's face was puffy, his eyes closed in a coma. His long, lean arms lay at his side, positioned unnaturally parallel to the rest of his body, like he was at attention even though he was lying down.

A machine monitored his heart rate and every few seconds a ventilator breathed for him. Bags of liquids, clear and dark, dripped into tubes that led to IV needles that pricked his skin. Hanging by the bed another bag collected urine from a catheter.

If he lived, the doctor cautioned, Michael would likely be a vegetable. The damage caused by the three bullets that pierced his neck had done irreparable harm to the spinal column, and brain damage was probable.

"Just a vegetable," she repeated to herself again and again.

For almost two days, there was no improvement. Michael remained in a deep sleep, and Dot stood by his bedside as long as the nurses would allow. She wouldn't leave the hospital, despite pleas from her family to take a break.

She would not desert him, was her constant reply. Dot spread her love equally among her four girls and five boys, but this child was the youngest of her brood and she had taken a special joy in raising him because she knew he was the last: her last baby, her last kindergartner, her last Perry County High basketball player.

She talked to her comatose son, told him what was happening at home, how everybody there was praying he would recover, how people from Michigan and Ohio, where several of his older siblings lived, were praying for him. When she wasn't talking to Michael, her mind was preoccupied with thoughts of him, of things he had told her.

They were in the kitchen in that little blue house near the Tennessee River.

Michael had just informed her he wanted to go to college in Atlanta and her heart was breaking.

Atlanta was seven hours distant from the oak hills of Perry County. Atlanta was a big city of skyscrapers and urban sprawl and muggings, murder and mayhem. She worried that he wouldn't be able to live in a nice neighborhood or make tuition payments.

Dot succumbed to empty nest blues. She cried, always out of Michael's sight, always careful not to let her sadness cause her son to alter his plans. One day she gathered her strength and told him, "Son, I'm behind you and whatever we have to do to get you to Atlanta, we'll do it."

Relieved to have his mother's blessing, Michael sat beside her at the kitchen table and revealed his grand plan. One day, after he graduated from college, when he got a job, Michael was going to buy a house and move her in with him.

That's not all. He wanted to open a crafts shop for her, let her sell ceramic figures lions, puppy dogs and praying angels. Maybe used clothing, too.

"Dot's Place" it could be called; payback for all the sacrifices she made in raising nine kids. Michael had seen how she rarely bought a new dress and her shoes had holes in them, yet in his closet hung new clothes and the latest sneakers. He remembered when all five of the boys were still living at home, how Dot would raise a fuss about how they looked in public, how she would scrub their jeans on an old-timey wash board to remove grass stains.

"If a mama is a mama, she wants her kids to look better than she does," she would say.

"You work too much," her youngest son told her often. All of her kids did.

And it was true. A single parent since Michael was 3, Dot worked as many as five jobs at a time and still managed to keep house.

Sometimes she would enter her home past midnight, at the end of her second-shift factory job and collapse into bed. But by the next morning she was rejuvenated, attacking the day with vigor.

"I know what I have to do and I don't expect nobody to pay my bills," she told her kids again and again.

Resolve and faith and plenty of brow sweat got her through some hard times, she reminded herself and her family as they sat in the waiting room between visits to see Michael.

"This too shall pass," she said.

On the second day of Michael's coma, Dot and Mert retreated to the hospital chapel to pray. Dot knelt before a cross, holding her hands out as if to embrace God as words of supplication poured from her broken heart like water spilling from a dam.

Suddenly, she sensed a glow, a radiant light beaming on her face.

Dot opened her eyes, but saw only the lights in the chapel. She closed them again and the bright light returned.

"Mert," she said, gripping her daughter's arm excitedly. "He's gonna be all right. He's gonna make it."

Five days. Wait five days, the doctors said, and if he did not come out of the coma, then the family should consider removing the ventilator, letting him die.

Later on the second day, Michael opened his weak eyes.

No one was surprised when the first word he mouthed was "Mama."


Making a Decision

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.


Into the Depths of Depression

Marilyn McCoy stayed in her car, the gun by her side. She scanned the crowd outside 805 North 12th St., for a glimpse of James Kenneth Pleasant, the man accused of shooting her brother, Michael Dixon, leaving him paralyzed from the shoulders down.

Marilyn, "Mert" to family and friends, had come to ... to what? Scare Pleasant? Harm him? Kill him?

In her confused state of mind, she didn't comprehend her intentions. All she knew was that her baby brother's life had been compromised by three shots in the dark.

According to eyewitnesses and police, Michael's shooting was a case of mistaken identity. Pleasant had been expecting trouble and when Michael stopped his car in front of Pleasant's house to turn around, the man started firing a 9 mm Ruger.

While Michael lay paralyzed in a hospital bed, with a machine helping him to breathe, Pleasant was out on bond, hosting a Labor Day party in his front yard.

Mert remembered the face of the alleged assailant from court, but she didn't see him in the holiday crowd milling outside the man's duplex.

He had to be there. Where was he?

From her vantage across the street, she scanned the faces again and again and again, but didn't recognize Pleasant. Frustrated, Mert lost her nerve and sped away, averting a second tragedy for a family who had enough tragedy to deal with already.

Pleasant probably never knew his home was being watched that day, much less that he was spared a confrontation because of a haircut. Mert caught a glimpse of him later, when cooler thoughts prevailed, and realized the 34-year-old man had indeed been outside his house that afternoon, but he looked different after a trip to the barber.

"You wouldn't think that a haircut would change a person's look so much, but it did," Mert remarked later.

After that incident, three months after Michael Dixon was shot, no one in his family talked of retribution. Dot, the matriarch, encouraged her sons and daughters to pray for the peace of Philippians, a "peace that passeth all understanding."

Mert put aside her hatred by immersing herself in the care of her brother, who moved into her home after leaving the hospital, but, try as she might, she never could forgive the man she sought that day.

The ramifications of his new life became acutely apparent when Michael was discharged from the hospital. There were reminders everywhere of how changed he was.

On TV, the weatherman would predict perfect weather for a walk in the park.

Or there would be an advertisement for a movie he'd like to see. Or Michael would get a card from a former co-worker and wish he could just get into his car to go see them.

But, without transportation, Michael was stuck. Even if his 1993 Mustang, the car he wrecked as he tried to flee the shooter, could have been salvaged, it would have been no use to him. With a portable ventilator and batteries attached on the rear, his wheelchair measures over six feet and weighs more than 300 pounds. Only a full-sized van, adapted with a lift, could transport him.

And, of course, someone else would have to do the driving.

Getting across the room was now a major hassle, much less trying to go across town.

So he stayed in his room at Mert's house, watching TV, talking on the telephone through a headset receiver, listening to music.

These activities helped to pass the time, but they didn't make him forget that life was different.

Three bullets had robbed him of his body, but not his mind. He still had memories, an archive of "last times" the last meal he fed himself, his last day of work, the last time he hung out with friends in his hometown of Linden, the last girl he kissed, the last time he dribbled a basketball.

Life without basketball. That one stung hard.

Basketball is king in Perry County, a small county 20 miles off the beaten path of Interstate 40 and hard against the Tennessee River, which serves as its western border.

Six state championship trophies have been brought to Linden, the county seat, by the boys basketball teams from PCHS. Three were won in the mid-1950s, when small schools had to duke it out with larger schools to claim the top prize. Other state titles were added in 1976, 1977 and 1997.

Basketball was the only game to play when Michael was growing up. The county didn't field a football team, so if a young boy wanted to wear Viking black and gold, he dribbled and practiced layups year round.

But it took more than desire; the talent quotient was all important. Average players don't make it far in Perry County.

By accounts of former coaches and teammates, the Dixon boys were above average. Jimmy "Buck" Dixon, the oldest, was a leader on the never-say-die 1977 state championship team. In the semifinals they came back from a 12-point deficit with three minutes on the clock to advance to the finals, a feat that's still talked about as a Perry County highlight.

Robert "Bo" Dixon played on the 1979 team that was defeated in the sub-state tournament. A two-sport athlete, Bo later played baseball at Tennessee State University.

Terry Dixon was a senior on the 1985 squad that made it to the first round of the state tournament. Nat Dixon also played on that team and on the team that made it to the semifinals the next year. After graduation, Nat attended Columbia State on a basketball scholarship.

Then there was Michael, the youngest. What he lacked in Buck's and Terry's ball handling abilities or Bo's muscle under the basket or Nat's shooting skills, he made up for by being lightning quick.

"I loved to steal the ball, taking it away and sending it on down the court for one of our guys to make a layup. I loved what it did to the crowd when it happened, how they yelled," he said.

There were so many basketball games they meld in the mind, a seamless string of hard court appearances, starting in the fourth grade at Pope Elementary, then Linden Elementary and, finally, Perry County High. Between seasons there were hundreds of pickup games, one-on-one contests with buddies and solitary sessions dumping layups into an old lamp shade nailed to the side of the house.

But one game in December of 1989 stands out. Two weeks prior to the game, Michael had been injured in a car crash. Returning home from his girlfriend's on a wet Saturday night, his automobile soared off an embankment and rolled several times. Although he was catapulted free of the tumbling car, Michael landed hard against a tree. He suffered back injuries that doctors said would keep him out of the lineup for at least a month.

He was devastated. A month is an eternity in a high school season, so he determined to recuperate in half the time. Two weeks after the accident, number 25 was cleared to play.

Nearly a decade after the game, detailed memories of that night are stored in his mind: the steals he made, the blocked shots, the assists, the layups he made. It's as if his brain filmed the game in slow motion.

But it wasn't the points he scored or his defensive hustle that he remembered most.

"It was just being back on the court, just being able to play after such a bad accident. I had been given another chance and I was relieved," he said.

As the days yielded to months following his discharge from the hospital, the memory of that game haunted him. There would be no reprieve, Michael realized, from this new chapter of his life that had been involuntarily scripted for him.

He was a quadriplegic.

Like the fingers of early morning gray mist that settle on the Tennessee River near his childhood home, depression clouded his thinking. Before his eyes, he was disappearing from the world, as if he had died. Friends who had been loyal to call and send cards while he was in the hospital, no longer kept in touch. He was unemployed, dependent on a government subsidy to meet his daily needs.

It hurt that a rumor was circulating among his friends that he had been gunned down in a soured drug deal. He saw where they were coming from: one black man shot by another black man on a street corner, late at night.

The slanderous story was devastating to Michael, a devout born-again Christian who abhorred the drug scene. For people whom he considered friends to think he had become a dope dealer made him sad beyond words.

Meanwhile, Michael felt he was a burden to his family, forcing them to be as much a captive to his paralysis as he was. He couldn't help but see the frustration in their faces when plans had to be altered because no one could stay with him. He saw how tired they were from caring for him 24 hours a day.

The gray mist turned into a thick blanket of despair. He wanted to die, to succumb quickly, but realized even suicide was an unavailable option. To slash a wrist, one must first be able to grasp a razor.

Michael came to a conclusion: to lighten the load on his family the only way he knew how. He called them to his bedside and announced:

"I want to go to a nursing home."


A Sister's Love

Michael Dixon had become a burden to his family. At least, that's the way the young quadriplegic saw it, so he decided to move into a nursing home.

To Shirley Greer, her brother's decision was equal to saying he had given up hope.

And that was unacceptable.

"I know there are a lot of good nursing homes, but when a young man like Michael goes there, in my mind, it's only for one reason: to die. And I knew one thing, if I knew anything, my baby brother was not going to die being tended by strangers."

So she offered an alternative. Instead of living with their older sister, Marilyn, where Michael had resided for over a year and a half and where he increasingly felt he was a hindrance because of his need for round-the-clock assistance, Shirley said she would help her brother find his own apartment.

And she would be there to care for him. It wouldn't be easy. She was divorced, with two small children, and she had some medical concerns of her own that had forced her off a good-paying manufacturing job.

She could think of a dozen valid reasons why she shouldn't be there for Michael, but none held up under scrutiny. Her love for her brother was too strong.

"Michael's the youngest, but he's always been the wisest. When I've had problems, and I've had my share, he was the one I could talk to when I couldn't talk to nobody else. He always reminded me that God would provide," she said.

She offered him the same assurance.

"God has done brought us this far, and we're too far to turn back now," she encouraged.

If it had been anyone else who made this promise, Michael might not have listened, but he trusted Shirley.

"Shirl" had never given him a reason not to.

When Dot Dixon announced to her family that she was pregnant with her ninth child, many of the older kids complained. Shirley complained most of all.

"Mama, we don't need no more babies," she whined.

But from the first day he was home from the hospital, Michael and Shirl formed a special sibling relationship.

"I toted him on my hips long after he was past the toting stage. Mama would say, "Put that boy down and let him walk,' but I didn't mind carrying him," she remembered.

Shirl was his protector, as well. When he was caught doing mischief and Dot went searching for a switch, Michael would run to his big sister who would hide him at the risk of also being punished.

"There are still some things that he did that Mama don't know because I hid him. I just couldn't stand for him to be hurting."

Shirl delivered on her promise to Michael. In October of 1995, he moved into a townhouse duplex deep in a subdivision off Brick Church Pike. It wasn't the best solution because the unit was two-story, which meant he was confined to the kitchen and living room downstairs.

But it was his own place. On the evening Michael moved in, Shirl recalled her brother's face was beaming.

Big sister accepted her role as primary caregiver as a mission. At night, she slept on the floor beside his hospital bed just in case the plastic hose from the ventilator popped off in his sleep. She fed him and dressed him.

Having his power of attorney, she wrote his checks and paid his bills. She went to Kroger's for him. She read from the Bible to him and dialed the telephone for him and scratched his nose whenever asked.

She also brushed his teeth, bathed him, emptied the urine bag and applied a suppository, if needed.

"Awkward? Sure it's awkward doing all this. He's a grown man, not some little baby, but you just do it. I just pray out, "Lord get me through this one' and go on," she said, breaking into her rolling, raucous laugh that fills a room.

Shirl schooled herself in "the system," deciphering what benefits were available from insurance companies (later TennCare), the state and social service agencies. She became the proverbial squeaky wheel and encouraged others to champion Michael's cause.

Thanks to Shirl's prodding, visits from a home health nurse were approved. A nurse began coming eight hours a day, five days a week, to stay with Michael. That meant access to much needed physical therapy for his arms and legs, while also giving Shirl a respite to give her children some quality time.

From the state vocational rehabilitation office, Michael received a computer adapted with sip-and-puff technology. It allows the keyboard to be activated by blowing through a straw-like device.

Settled into his own place, a new Michael began to blossom. He began a serious discussion with doctors about weaning himself from the ventilator.

He had tried once before, breathing on his own for as long as five hours and 20 minutes. If he wanted to go back to work or start his own business, getting rid of the ventilator would help.

Shirl was changing, too.

"If I don't ever get to marry again, I don't care," she said. "I really believe this is where I'm supposed to be. I've got a peace about a lot of things that I've never had peace about before. This is my job, and it ain't easy sometimes, but we make it."

One summer day she stood by his wheelchair, alternately feeding him bites of a ham sandwich with one hand and potato chips with the other.

Suddenly, she nodded toward the television and exclaimed: "There's Chris, there's Chris!"

The image of Christopher Reeve, the actor who was paralyzed in a horse riding accident, was on the screen.

Reeve's injury and Michael's are similar, a break high up on the spinal column, yet he was directing movies and, according to the TV announcer, going to star in a remake of the Hitchcock classic, The Rear Window.

"Isn't that something! It's just amazing," Shirl said.

"Superman," Michael said, his eyes locked onto the small screen.

James Kenneth Pleasant, the 35-year-old man charged with attempted homicide for firing the bullets that paralyzed Michael, never had his day in court.

Before dawn on Christmas 1994, less than two months from when he was to stand trial, Pleasant's bleeding body was found outside of a home on North 6th Street. He had been shot multiple times and died during surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Detectives questioned two male suspects, but were never able to produce enough evidence to make arrests.

The Dixons learned of Pleasant's death late on Christmas afternoon as many of Michael's brothers and sisters were visiting for the holiday.

Marilyn, or "Mert," as family members called her, was immediately skeptical.

She would not believe the man who had brought so much pain to her family was dead until she viewed him in a coffin.

Two days later she entered the funeral home in charge of Pleasant's services and walked directly to the open casket.

She looked down, doubtful no longer, and silently pronounced him guilty.


Going home to Linden

For the first time since he was paralyzed by a drunken gunman four years ago, Michael Dixon is going home to Linden, to the little blue house near the Tennessee River where he was raised.

It's July 4, time for the annual picnic and pig roast, where the Dixons and two neighboring families, the Howards and the Thompsons, get together for "a lot of greetin', but a lot more eatin'."

It's also a time to celebrate the birthday of Dot Dixon, the matriarch of the family, who turned 59 the day before.

Excited and upbeat about seeing friends and family, Michael is anxious to get on the road, but at the moment, preparations aren't going as smoothly as he would like. Pandemonium reigns at his usually quiet apartment off Brick Church Pike. Kids are everywhere, crying, shouting, watching cartoons, constantly coming in and out.

"Taleesha, will you close that door," Shirley Greer, Michael's older sister and primary caregiver, commands her 5-year-old, a diminutive sprite with a dozen red, yellow and green hair ball clasps in her hair. That her mama calls her by her full name instead of "Leelee," her nickname, is a clue she should be quick in responding.

But seconds later, the door re-opens and kids spill in. Most are Michael's nephews and nieces, but a few of the younger ones are cousins' kids. They are all going to Linden with "Uncle Mike."

To them, he is "the man who can't move" so they understand that today's journey is significant. Michael is leaving his house, not just to go to church, the doctor's office or the occasional movie, but to travel two hours to Perry County. There, they have been told and they have seen in photographs, Michael once was a little boy just like them.

Because he does not own a vehicle that can accommodate his 300-pound wheelchair, Michael travels infrequently. When he goes to church or to the mall, he usually calls Metro Access Ride, a service of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, but trips usually have to be scheduled a day in advance, a process he considers a hassle.

Today, he is splurging, renting a lift-equipped Chevy van, but at $90 a day it's not an option Michael can routinely afford.

Hopefully, his transportation dilemma will end soon. For two years, he's been saving a nest egg, which combined with a grant from local agencies that provide assistance to physically and mentally challenged individuals, should be adequate to purchase his own vehicle. He's been looking in the classifieds for weeks, but can't find a van both affordable and large enough to accommodate a wheelchair lift.

But all that can wait. Today, he's going home.

Shirley, or "Shirl" as she is known, moves at a frenzied pace, packing salads and desserts into the van, making sure Michael has the dozen or so medicines he takes on a daily basis, checking to make sure she hasn't forgotten anything, but all the while, feeling she is missing something.

Her sister Marylin, or "Mert," finishes dressing Michael. She ties the laces on his black tennis shoes and adjusts the coat zipper on his tan exercise suit, then she squeezes a squiggly line of Crest onto a toothbrush and begins brushing her brother's teeth. He is seated in his wheelchair next to the hospital bed that occupies most of his apartment's living room. From the bed, "Little Man," a robust infant who is Mert's grandson, looks up at the two and coos.

Coming back inside, wilted from packing the van in the shadeless street, an exasperated Shirl exclaims: "Let's get out of here!"

The hog has been roasting over hot coals all night, sweetening the air around the Dixon house with tantalizing scents of hickory smoke and searing meat.

Late in the morning, a group of bleary-eyed men circle the pig and pronounce their deed is done. They stand in judgment of their handiwork, passing around steaming samples plucked from a hind quarter with a fork.

"Pretty good," judges Farris Thompson, a wet towel wrapped around his neck to cool him from the combined heat of the July sun and wood fire.

The men represent three families, the Thompsons, Howards and Dixons, two white and one black, who have called one another neighbors and friends for more than four decades.

In addition to Farris, there's his son, Randy. The Thompson homeplace is one hill over from the Dixons'.

Representing the Howards in the circle is Benny, who was raised a quarter-mile away. While their mother worked at the family's store, he and his late brother, Jimmy, grew up under the watchcare of Michael's maternal grandmother, Pearl Barber.

"We called her Mama Pearl. She practically raised us," Benny says affectionately. "She was the boss of all of us and when she died, Dot sort of took over."

Later in life, Jimmy would coach all five of Dot's boys, Mama Pearl's grandsons, in basketball at nearby Pope Elementary.

Two of Michael's brothers are part of the circle around the fire: Robert, known as "Bo," and Nat. Bo lives in Battle Creek, Mich., while Nat resides just across the Tennessee River in Decatur County.

"This whole neighborhood has just grown up together, black and white. We never thought too much about it," says Randy.

Benny points to a rusty basketball rim. "Them kids played right there all night long. When parents came by here and saw their kids were at Dot's white, black, pink, purple, whatever it was OK. They knew they were safe here," he says.

"I wish the whole world could be more like this place," laments Nat.

Had the world lived by the rules of the hills and hollows of rural Perry County, Michael would not have been shot, the group agrees. Somehow, the conversation always comes around to Michael, to what happened on that Saturday night in 1993 when a stranger fired a gun repeatedly into his car.

Each of the men around the fire remembers where he was when news of the shooting reached him. Nat says he received a frantic call from his sisters in Nashville and minutes later picked up his mother and headed to the hospital. The Thompsons and Benny Howard say they learned of the shooting early the next morning. Bo recalls he was contacted in Michigan just as he was about to leave for Sunday worship services.

"They told me it was a 9 millimeter so I knew it was bad. I went on to church and prayed," Bo remembers.

"He was the last one that anybody ever thought would be shot. I've been in some places where if something happened, well, I was just somewhere I shouldn't have been. With Mike, though, he was always at church, work, school, minding his own business, never messing with anybody."

There is a pause as the men consider this. In the fire, a log pops with a mild report and a fresh wind changes the direction of the smoke.

"It's just a sad, sad mystery to all of us why it had to happen," says Benny.

The white Chevy van turns off Highway 50 onto the county road in western Perry County that leads to the Dixon place. When the vehicle rolls to a halt in front of Dot's house, kids spill from every open door of the van, glad to be free.

Dot, wearing a red, white and blue shirt in honor of the holiday, moves to help her daughters, who ferry food from the van to a makeshift table already groaning from the weight of other dishes.

Michael is the last out.

Shirl punches a button to lower Michael's chair to the ground, then pushes him underneath a green canopy borrowed for the day from a local undertaker.

"Hey bro!" a familiar booming voice calls to him. It is Bo.

Nat is next to greet him, followed by aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces, as well as the Thompsons and Howards.

Michael's 92-year-old paternal grandmother, Jimmie Mae Dixon, requests a steady hand so she can rise from her wheelchair and nuzzle Michael's cheek.

"That's just what I needed," she whispers to him.

The pig is deemed a worthy sacrifice. Everyone eats and eats and, at Dot's insistence, eats some more.

"Ya'll got to eat this food," she says in false lament.

Even with her prodding, the table still sags from casserole dishes and cast iron pots of greens and new potatoes and half circles of uneaten cakes when guests start fading away late in the afternoon.

The Howards leave first, then the Thompsons, each stopping to say goodbye to Michael.

"You take care of yourself," says Benny.

The sun is low on the horizon when Shirl packs the rented van for the return trip to Nashville. Only the Dixons remain now under the green funeral home canopy, a mixture of old and young, mothers and children, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews and his grandmother.

Michael asks to say a prayer. There is a moment of silence before he begins, with the only sound the rhythmical whirring of the portable ventilator that helps him breathe.

His prayer is an eight minute benediction honoring the names of God friend of the oppressed, defender of the weak, the great judge, the one who blesses. Michael's voice is strong and his words float on the summer air.

By the time he utters "Amen," a thin bead of sweat has formed on his forehead.

Then it's his grandmother's turn.

"I want to sing you a hymn before you go," the stooped, white-haired lady says. She inhales a deep breath and launches into a protestant standard, her strong contralto voice belying the frailty of her body.

"Where He leads me I will follow,
"Where He leads me I will follow,
"Where He leads me I will follow,
"I'll go with Him, with Him all the way."

At the sounding of the last note there's not a dry eye anywhere.

"Thank you," Michael says to the woman, who touches his hand.

It is nearly dark by the time Shirl maneuvers the van toward I-40. The vehicle is quiet. Taleesha and her 7-year-old brother, Adrian, are asleep on the back bench.

"I prayed for a good day and I got one," Michael says wearily.

With that, he also closes his eyes, allowing the sound of the tires revolving on the asphalt to lull him to sleep, perhaps even to dream.

That would be the perfect ending to a perfect day, for in his dreams, he runs.


"Too blessed to be depressed"

The movement in Michael Dixon's leg took him by surprise. Suddenly, he could move the lower portion of his left foot, even if only a few inches and for a second or two.

"I wasn't working on it, something just happened," the quadriplegic recalled later.

Some would call it a fluke, just an aberration of a central nervous system that had been short circuited by three bullets in the spine. But Michael found comfort in these infrequent occurrences, when a finger or leg would respond weakly to his will. He believed they were signs from a higher order.

Michael and his sister, Shirley, who is his primary caregiver, have prayed for a miracle. When they attend services at Grace Interdenominational Church, just down Brick Church Pike from Michael's apartment, they ask for special prayer by the pastor. The brother and sister believe God answers "Yes" and God answers "No," and sometimes the answer is "Have patience."

Whenever he experienced these fleeting periods of movement, Michael believed the Almighty was just reminding him to be patient.

"When I was in the hospital after the shooting I thought I could beat it in a month or two, but one year became two and then three and now four. I'm still fighting it, but I have faith that someday I will walk again," he said.

Although his current doctors are encouraging, other physicians have been less than optimistic. Medical validation isn't necessary for Michael to hold to his beliefs, however.

According to the Bible, he noted, "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen."

Michael, who grew up in Perry County, became a student of faith when he was baptized in the Tennessee River at the age of 17, years before a gun-wielding stranger fired the three bullets that splintered his spinal column.

But, he acknowledged, since being paralyzed four years ago by a stranger's gunfire his faith has been tested.

Before the shooting, Michael had a good-paying middle management job at Lockheed Support Systems, a subcontractor of the United States Postal Service. Using the money he saved from his day job, plus delivering pizzas at night, Michael planned to build a nest egg so he could do what he always dreamed of doing becoming a record producer.

After the shooting, the young man found himself scratching out a life from a government subsidy of about $7,200 a year.

Victims of violence may petition the state for compensation for injuries related to personal crimes. In Michael's request to the Division of Claims Administration, his lawyer requested $1.2 million for loss of income, $5 million for permanent disability and $3 million for future medical expenses.

He received $7,000, the maximum award available.

The dismantling of his personal finances was just the beginning. Like Job of the Old Testament, Michael found his faith being tested at all turns, with little inconveniences often proving to be just as frustrating as not being able to walk.

For instance, keeping up with his possessions. Nothing seemed to be put in the same place twice.

One day he asked the home health nurse, who stays with him eight hours a day, to find a particular photo album inside a drawer. It wasn't there, but in a stack of papers in a corner of the room.

Another day he asked Shirl to look up the telephone number for a cousin in another state. She couldn't immediately find it because it had been filed under "U," for "Uncle James' kids."

"One of the hardest things I have to do is make out a simple grocery list," he added. He has been to the local Kroger only once in the past four years.

"I don't even know what's out there," Michael lamented.

Early in his paralysis, such minor interruptions in his life used to test his sanity, but one day, as if the mustard-sized seed of hope he sheltered inside him suddenly decided to germinate, he decided the little things weren't going to bother him anymore.

"I'm too blessed to be depressed," he announced in mid-September. "I've got the support of my family and I've got the love of my church. It's just a waste of my time to dwell on things that I can't do anything about."

Bolstered by newfound optimism and determination, Michael made two important decisions. He declined to have an operation that would widen the opening for his breathing tube. Although the operation would have increased his comfort level, it would have made the tracheotomy site more permanent.

"I don't want it to be permanent. I am ready to get off of this machine," he complained.

That led to his second decision: to begin anew his struggle to breathe without the assistance of a machine.

Over a year and a half earlier, Michael had begun to wean himself from the ventilator, building his endurance level slowly in 15 minute increments.

After several months he was breathing on his own for up to five hours and 20 minutes at one time.

"It wasn't scary, but it's sometimes like when you can't get a full breath.

You have to be relaxed. I try not to force my breathing," he explained.

However, exceeding the five hour, 20 minute level eluded him, no matter how hard he tried. His frustration and anxiety levels grew as his self-confidence plummeted.

"It did something to me subconsciously," he remembered. When he ended his effort, Michael was struggling to stay off the ventilator for even 10 minutes.

The young man wondered if he would ever have the strength to permanently disconnect the breathing machine. A scenario where he was tethered to the device for the rest of his life was too depressing to ponder.

Shirley and other family members encouraged Michael to make another attempt.

Now that his confidence had returned, he agreed.

"I just can't take breathing on a ventilator for the rest of my life as the final answer without trying again," Michael said.

Late one September night, the young man closed his eyes and said a prayer.

Then he asked for the ventilator to be turned off, its gentle whirring silenced.


Wheels for Michael

For months, Shirley Greer and her paralyzed brother, Michael Dixon, had been scanning the want ads.

If Michael's lot in life was ever going to improve if he was going to start a business or, even more fundamentally, if he was ever going to leave his townhouse apartment on a regular basis he needed wheels.

To be specific, a van, one big enough to be retrofitted with an electric lift and with enough headroom to accommodate his wheelchair.

They weren't easy to come by. Shirley dutifully looked through the classifieds and told Michael about the prospects, but often the price or the size of the vans in question made them unsuitable.

Late summer eased into fall and Michael remained just as homebound as ever.

The only time he left his apartment was for trips to the doctor, to take in a matinee movie and on several Sundays to attend church services at Grace Interdenominational Church. An ambulance took him to the doctor, but he depended on Metro Access Ride, a transportation service for wheelchair-bound individuals offered by the Metro Transit Authority, for the trips to the theater and church.

As good as it felt to get away from his apartment, he considered the whole process a hassle. The passage of four years had not made him forget how easy life had been before a stranger shot him three times.

In his previous life, he could turn the ignition on his white Mustang, and the world became one road after another to be explored.

Now he had to call ahead and schedule a time to be picked up at home and a time to be returned. It was not a process without faults.

One evening Michael and the home health nurse, who comes five days a week to give Shirl a break from her caregiver duties, went to Rivergate Mall via the Access Ride van.

For the return trip, Michael said he and the nurse arrived early at the pickup point outside one of the mall's entrances, but the van never showed.

Hours went by and stores were beginning to close.

"We were where we were supposed to be. They said we weren't, but we were," he charged.

Fortunately, a couple from Russellville, Ky., came to the rescue of the distressed young man. They owned a lift-equipped van because their son used a wheelchair. Since their son was not with them that night they offered to give Michael and his nurse a ride home.

Since that episode, Michael always made sure he was home before nightfall.

"I don't want to have to go through that again," he said.

In early October, Shirl was glancing through the used car advertisements and circled one for a full-sized Chevy Mark III van. It was a 1993 model, the same year as Michael's Mustang.

She showed the ad to her brother. The size was right, the price was affordable. "Let's call them," he said.

The number belonged to Jay and Lisa Ward. They were a young couple from Hendersonville who in less than a year went from zero to six kids. In November 1996 they adopted five brothers, ages 5 to 14, from a Siberian orphanage. Two months after bringing their new sons to America, Lisa learned she was pregnant with a daughter.

Suddenly, the van they owned wasn't big enough. So the Wards upgraded to a larger vehicle and placed the Mark III on the market.

And Michael bought it.

After so many months of frustration, striking the deal was anticlimactic. It was almost too easy.

"This has got to be from God, just no way around it," said Shirl.

The Wards, including the five boys and their baby sister, accompanied the van to Michael's apartment off Brick Church Pike. When they arrived at dusk on an October evening, Michael waited for them inside the apartment, sitting in his wheelchair.

As the Wards signed a bill of sale, their boys crowded around, fascinated by the young man who was tethered to a breathing machine. Michael told Mrs.

Ward to pull down the blanket that covered his chest and she would find the money in an envelope.

"You can count it on the bed," he told her.

The woman formed small stacks with the bills as the boys looked on in silent, wide-eyed wonder.

"That is a lot of money," whispered 14-year-old Vova in a thick Russian accent.

It was a lot of money, most of it the fruit of Michael's frugality, along with some assistance from Nashville agencies that help wheelchair-bound individuals. In some respects, however, Michael considered his deal the bargain of the century. It was hard to explain to the Wards, to anyone, just how much of a life changing force this vehicle represented. It meant freedom, mobility, opportunity, all the things that were abruptly taken from him by the paralysis. Is there an unfair price for such emancipation? It was priceless, he thought.

Leaving the van's key on the bed, Mrs. Ward ushered her troops to the door.

"Paka," several of the Ward brothers cried out to Michael.

"What's that mean?" he asked.

"It means, "See you later,' in Russian," Mrs. Ward explained.

"Paka," replied Michael, beaming like he had just won the lottery.

He did not see his van up close until the next day, when Shirl rolled his wheelchair to the driveway.

Michael would not go for a ride in his new vehicle until the lift was installed, which could take 90 days, according to a spokesman for the Tennessee Division of Rehabilitation Services. The state agency is arranging for the retrofitting.

Perhaps the van will be ready by Christmas, he thought. A present to himself might be a trip to church, or a Kroger expedition, or a visit to his mother's home in Linden, two hours to the west.

The destination did not matter to Shirl, who will do the driving.

"I'm going to take him wherever he wants to go," the sister said.

For the first time in a long time, Michael once again felt like he was going places.


A Thanksgiving to Remember

Thanksgiving dawned at Michael Dixon's apartment with the sounds of pots clanging and dishes being stirred as his sisters, Shirley and Marilyn, and mother, Dot, worked together in the small kitchen.

There was a ham to bake, greens to boil, sweet potatoes to mash. The downstairs quickly filled with the delectable odors of a feast in the making.

Throughout the morning, other family members assembled in the living room, awaiting word that the holiday dinner was ready.

Michael sat in his wheelchair, a planet around which this little galaxy of siblings, nephews, nieces and cousins rotated.

To his left was his nephew, Stacey Dixon from Linden. He sat next to the single window of Michael's living room-cum-bedroom, flipping impatiently through the holiday choices of ball games and parades on the television.

To his right was a niece, Johnnie Sue Greer, and her roly-poly baby, Quinton.

Seated next to the TV was the oldest of the Dixon brothers, Jimmy "Buck" Dixon, bleary-eyed from a late night drive to Nashville from Cleveland, Ohio.

Michael was in high spirits, reminiscing with Buck, laughing at the antics of his niece's son, enjoying the room full of company.

This was the fifth Thanksgiving since the July 1993 shooting, when a stranger fired three shots that splint ered Michael's spinal column and left him a quadriplegic.

It's a holiday that lends itself to taking stock of one's life, tallying the pluses and minuses, the hopes fulfilled and dreams dashed. Recent Thanksgivings have yielded only regrets, but as scents of baked ham and steaming vegetables drifted from the kitchen, combining with the chatter of family members, Michael pondered his present station in life and arrived at an optimistic conclusion.

"I'm blessed," he said.

Last spring, the 25-year-old man decided on a set of goals, five objectives to give his life new meaning and purpose. They were: purchase a van equipped with a wheelchair lift; secure new housing; get a job; wean himself from the ventilator; and fall in love.

The summer and fall had been productive.

Parked outside in the gravel drive was his van.

His van, he liked the sound of that. Soon, a wheelchair lift will be installed on the maroon 1993 Mark III and Michael will be mobile at will, with the help of Shirley, who will be doing the driving.

Also, he had made progress to breathe without assistance from a machine. By Thanksgiving week, Michael's daily ventilator-free breathing sessions had broken the hour mark. He felt optimistic about being ventilator independent.

One goal accomplished; another on the way. Two out of five was not bad, he thought. The new living quarters, the job and finding a girlfriend would come later. He was confident of that.

Michael entered the November holiday with only one major regret: that he never had a face-to-face meeting with his assailant.

On Christmas Day of 1994, 35-year-old James Kenneth Pleasant, the man charged with shooting Michael, was himself brought down in a pre-dawn exchange of gunfire. He died in surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the same hospital that saved Michael when he was shot. Pleasant's death came two months before he was to stand trial.

"I just wanted to see him, to talk to him. I just wanted to ask him why he did what he did. That would have provided some closure for me," the young man said.

"Now he's six feet under and I'll never get my chance."

Several times in recent years, when depression settled over his life like a thick blanket of gray, Michael questioned why Pleasant "got the easy way out," while he languished in a body that no longer responded to simple commands.

But on this Thanksgiving Day, surrounded by family, Michael never felt more alive, more eager to live up to his potential. If questions remained about why fate treated him so unfairly he kept them hidden from view.

Outside his living room window, the seasons were on the cusp of change once again. Fall was yielding to winter, dreaded winter that often held Michael captive inside his small apartment.

But this winter was different, not only because he had transportation, but because he was different. The four and a half years since the shooting had left an indelible mark on him, as well as his family.

This single act of violence nearly took his life, compromised his career plans, robbed him of independence and stripped his faith to the core.

This irrational act by a deranged gunman broke a family's heart and tested their allegiance to one of their own.

Yet, through faith, simple faith, they have persevered.

Michael discovered an inner wellspring of courage deeper than he ever imagined; his family found the strength to sacrifice beyond measure.

They have claimed the promise of hope and cling to it tightly.

Michael's grip is the tightest of all.