THE FARM TEAM

The brood included Tony and Sharon's five kids as well as Jamal, now twelve. Tony had gone to court to get custody of the boy. There were accusations that the mother was abusing drugs and alcohol, and two of her other children had juvenile records. The judge had agreed that her home was not a safe environment for the child.

Tony was still convinced that leaving Denver was the right thing. But his initial attempts at farming had failed miserably.

The first place had been a true test of their pioneer spirit. There was no electricity or plumbing, and water had to be hauled from an artesian well. The family might have made it, though, if the landowner hadn't reneged on the purchase agreement after the Browns had already poured a large portion of their savings into the place.

They moved into a trailer court north of Alamosa and bought a second farm a few miles away. But after dogs killed their flock of a dozen expensive sheep, they couldn't afford to replace them and let the farm go. Tony felt bad about the sheep--not just because of the money, but because he had failed to protect them. So far, he hadn't turned out to be much of a shepherd.

The move had been hard on the kids, too. There weren't many blacks in the San Luis Valley, and the Browns' arrival had inspired new talk of big-city gangs, as well as stirred up some old-fashioned redneck bigotry. After they'd lived in the area for several months, one woman had said to Tony with mock surprise, "Why, Tony... it's good to see they ain't hung you yet." Still, he managed to shrug off such comments, and whenever he was turned down for a job, he chalked it up to ignorance, smiled and went on his way. Tony told his kids, "So long as they don't lay a hand on you, you have no reason to fight."

Such admonitions weren't easy for a young man like Elijah to follow in the Alamosa schools. Elijah hadn't wanted to leave Denver in the first place, and Tony worried that he'd just taken the boy from one situation where he was continually having to fight to another. But at least here they didn't fight with guns.

The younger kids had adapted more readily. Even Malika, who scrambled to hide beneath her blankets when the coyotes howled at night, only rarely mentioned missing the malls and her friends in the city. And cowboy Luqman was definitely in his element, although he too reported that some kids in his classes called him by racist epithets. "Just walk away," Sharon would console him. "It takes a bigger man to walk away than to fight over some words that don't mean nothing unless you let them."

And besides, for every bigot there were a dozen people willing to lend a hand. One of the first residents Tony had met was Eddie Espinoza, a gregarious businessman who owned a towing company. A few months later Eddie saw Tony hauling railroad timbers on his car, three timbers at a time. After Tony's second trip, Eddie handed him the keys and title to an old truck. "Pay me back when you can," he told a surprised and grateful Tony.

Sharon got a job with the school district's Headstart program, tutoring preschool children of low-income families. In the cities, such programs are filled with minority kids; in the rural San Luis Valley, the students were predominantly white. But the kids didn't care that their teacher was black, and neither did their parents.

One of Tony's proudest moments came when he was invited to ride with the local rodeo club in the annual parade. His borrowed horse side-stepped and pranced the length of the street as Tony waved and tipped his hat to the cheering audience. The Muslim Cowboy was home on the range.

But the family had lost their Denver home altogether--to the bank. Tony and Sharon had thought of their city house as insurance in case it took a while to get the farm up and running, as well as something they could sell to pay for the kids' college. Now it was gone and they were wiped out, without enough money to put food on the table. The family continued to pray five times a day, asking Allah for guidance.

In the meantime, Tony took his television to see what he could get for it. Inside the pawn shop, he was surprised to see a large black man, and even more amazed when the man gave his name, Abdul Shabazz. He, too, was Muslim, but the coincidences didn't stop there.

Abdul had been a halal butcher--the Muslim equivalent of a kosher butcher--in New York City, where his shop did a good business serving the needs of United Nations delegates from Islamic countries. But Abdul had two boys entering their teenage years, and he worried about gangs and the violence of the city. Abdul, too, had seen an ad for cheap land in southern Colorado. In 1986 he and his family moved to the San Luis Valley.

As it turned out, Abdul had also broken ranks with the Nation of Islam, as Tony had done twenty years earlier when he thought some of its leaders' teachings were racist and antithetical to those of the prophet. "I no more want to consider whites to be devils than I want them to consider me a black devil," he told Tony. In fact, he was now the spiritual leader of the nonviolent Sufi sect for North America and traveled around the continent on religious business. He'd even completed the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca several times.

Abdul told Tony that he'd settled on some land near Mosca, an eye-blink of a town about a dozen miles north of Alamosa, close to the spot where the Browns had pulled over to watch the sun on Mount Blanca. The land wasn't much, and he'd had to learn how to hook up his own electricity and plumbing, but the peace of mind was enormous, Abdul said.

When he first moved to the valley, Abdul had heard the same muttering about gangs and crime that the Browns had faced. And while he still avoided Alamosa as much as possible, the level of acceptance in Mosca, although gradual, had been better than he'd hoped for, he told Tony.

The administrators of the tiny Sangre de Cristo school district, which included only a few hundred students, had been willing to work with him, Abdul said. At his request, a room had been set aside where his children could make their prayers during the day; they were allowed absences during Muslim holidays. In turn, Abdul made sure that his children's behavior was above reproach. They were respectful and addressed adults as "sir" or "ma'am." They wore no clothing that could be construed as gang-related, nor did they listen to rap or affect inner-city black mannerisms. If the school had a problem with one of his children, Abdul was there as quickly as possible to deal with it.

Tony had found a spiritual mentor. And when Abdul called one day to tell him the property next to his place had just gone up for sale, Tony thought the vision of heaven that had appeared on Mount Blanca must truly have been a sign from Allah.

The Brown family moved to Mosca in April 1991. Although another man had been interested in the property, he'd withdrawn his bid after visiting the site and seeing all the rabbitbrush and piles of trash. Tony had been able to convince the owner to take a minimal down payment, with monthly installments and a final balloon payment in 1995.

The family brought three old trailers onto the land, setting them up side by side and knocking holes in the walls to create a home. Tony and his boys constructed a single roof to shelter the structure.

In a small room Tony established his library, lining up the volumes on black history he had purchased as a teenager, as well as classics like Hemingway's Garden of Eden, Theroux's The Mosquito Coast and a collection of Dickens. Places were reserved for the encyclopedias, the nature books, the children's stories and books of special reverence--the Koran and The Shepherd's Guide Book.

The Browns began to make a farm by clearing out the rabbitbrush. An old-timer stopped by to show them how to do it: First burn the plant, then chop it to the ground, then dig out the roots so the chicos can't spring back to life. It was hard work, and even the smallest child was expected to pitch in. But Tony and Sharon made sure there was plenty of time for play.

During that first summer, twelve-year-old Jahad, a nephew from Denver, was living with the family; his mother was worried that she wouldn't be able to keep him away from the gangs. Two other nephews, young brothers, also were visiting. The boys quickly fell in love with the wide open spaces where they could run free during the day. The nights were filled with campfires, hot dog roasts and ghost stories. A favorite was the tale of how great-great grandma Clara Murrell, whose parents had once been slaves and became farmers, was chased across a cemetery by a mysterious fog.

During the hottest days of July and August, Tony would call a halt to the work, and the extended family would go to the cooler climes up Mount Blanca to fish and hike and splash in the streams.

Finally, it seemed that the Browns had a sturdy foothold, and Tony began to see himself as quite the cowboy. One day he decided he needed to learn to throw a lariat from an old nag. The only "cow" he had to practice on was Chippy, a two-year-old Holstein bull the family had raised on a bottle. After a couple of misses, the three-quarter-ton bull bellowed a warning to quit. Tony didn't take his advice.

Chippy became annoyed and rushed the horse. Tony fell, catching his right foot in the stirrup as the horse ran. He shook himself free, dislocating his knee in the process.

Tony was through being a cowboy for a while. And Chippy, who only grew more ornery with age, was turned into 1,200 pounds of steak, roast and hamburger.

At the end of summer, when it came time for the visiting cousins to return to the city, they begged to stay. Although Jahad remained on the farm, the younger nephews went back home. After they left, the household was subdued for weeks. Denver was getting too dangerous, even for young boys.

Still, life wasn't all that easy on the farm. A dog killed three young calves that Tony had purchased on credit, hoping to start a herd. And the winter of '91 was particularly bitter, the temperature hovering at forty below during the day. The pumps froze and the five new sheep and the colt, Crescent, had to have water carried to them from the house. But the Browns got through it with perseverance, faith and the help of the Shabazz family and other locals.

Tony was particularly taken with an old-timer named Wayne. In 1930, when he was sixteen years old, Wayne had single-handedly driven 27 horses from Oklahoma through the plains of Kansas and eastern Colorado, over the Continental Divide and down through Mosca Pass to the San Luis Valley. There he built himself a simple cabin where he'd lived for more than sixty years without electricity or running water. Now eighty, Wayne still saddled his horse on even the coldest mornings to ride out and check on his livestock. To Tony, he was the epitome of the pioneer spirit. Anytime he got discouraged about his own hardships, Tony would think of Wayne and find the courage to go on.

The next summer the two young nephews, plus three more cousins, joined the Browns. The new kids were the three eldest children of Sharon's sister Rose, who wouldn't let them play in the front yard of their northeast Denver home for fear they would catch a bullet.

It was another summer of rabbitbrush, campfires and fishing trips. The big event, though, was training Crescent to take a rider. Tony offered a $50 prize to the successful bronc-buster, and Elijah, Jamal, Jahad and Ali all took turns climbing on her back and getting tossed into the dust while Sharon, the girls and the younger boys (Luqman had to be restrained from taking a turn) cheered from a haypile. Finally, Crescent stood quivering but accepting under Tony and allowed herself to be guided around the corral.

At summer's end, there were again tearful goodbyes for the cousins going back to Denver. Tony felt like he was sending them off to war; he promised the kids they could return as soon as school was over. To himself, he started thinking about not only bringing those children back to the farm for good but starting a group home where inner-city kids could escape the city.

If he could only get the poultry operation going, it would pay for everything. He might even be able to purchase that land behind his property, the one with the reservoir that, although dry now, sat on top of millions of gallons of good water. Then he could plant potatoes, raise chickens, produce eggs and build his group home without having to take one red cent from the government--or listen to the government tell him how to raise kids.

In January 1993 Tony's extended family grew by three. Alliyah, Amatullah and Khalid were the children of a niece who'd become a drug addict, and her boyfriends had physically abused them. Tony convinced his niece to give him custody until she could straighten out her life.

And his flock just kept on growing. On a cold night in February, one of Tony's ewes was having trouble giving birth. Given the family's financial situation, every lamb and ewe was precious. The ewe had already delivered one lamb, but after several hours of labor she was exhausted and didn't seem able to get the next one out. Tony knew that unless he helped she would die.

With the temperature dropping, Tony carried the ewe to his kitchen. Bringing The Shepherd's Guide Book down from the shelf, he read what he had to do. Donning rubber gloves which he covered with Vaseline, and thanking Allah for his experience with Luqman's birth, he reached up inside the ewe and pulled out the afterbirth that was blocking the birth canal. A few minutes later, first one, then another lamb emerged in the warm kitchen.

The family cheered and laughed as the new lambs tried to stand on the linoleum floor. Tony smiled along with them. He was proving to be a good shepherd...of sheep and children.

May 20, 1994, was one of the proudest days in Tony Brown's life. He was walking the half mile to the back of his property, east toward Mount Blanca, east toward Mecca. He often headed back there when something was troubling him or he wanted to feel especially close to God. And on a day like this, God seemed to move with the wind, caressing his face.

Depending on the haze, Mount Blanca sometimes seemed far away, but today the mountain looked close enough to touch. Large, high-peaked clouds floated serenely across the blue sky above the valley. A prairie falcon swooped low across the rabbitbrush, trying to scare up a meal.

"Isn't that beautiful," Tony remarked. Crescent, who was just beginning to show the result of her mating with a neighbor's thoroughbred stallion, snorted in answer.

It could have been as gray as the day when Tony first entered the valley and he still would have been happy. Today Elijah, a tall, good-looking man of eighteen, had graduated from Sangre de Cristo High School.

It had not been easy. The previous summer Elijah, who had gone to Alamosa with several friends, had run down and beat up a white kid who'd called him "nigger." The beating was severe enough that Elijah had been charged with assault. But fortunately, the courts had been satisfied with sentencing him to the scare of a night in juvenile detention and then a visit to the prison in Canon City.

Elijah had wanted his father to accompany him to the prison, but Tony had declined. "If that boy had put a hand on you, then I would back you all the way," he told him. "But all he did was call you a name. You're going to face worse than that in the years to come, and if that's the best you can do, I won't be able to help you."

A sobered Elijah had returned to school that fall and dedicated himself to his studies. He was soon elected homecoming king of Sangre de Cristo, and more awards followed. Elijah excelled as a shooting guard for the high school basketball team, and though he had not been offered a scholarship, he planned to play for Adams State College as a walk-on in the fall. Given the chance, he was sure he would eventually win a scholarship to play, and from there, he dreamed of an NBA career. But he'd also major in business so that someday he could help turn his father's dream of a poultry farm into a major industry.

For now, though, Tony was satisfied that the first of his kids had made it safe and sound through high school. He couldn't have been prouder. In fact, all of his kids were doing well. Although not a great student, Malika was becoming quite an artist. Jahad and Jamal, the sixteen-year-olds, were sticking to their studies (in part, Tony had to admit, because they needed to earn Cs or better to play sports). Thirteen-year-old Ali had gone from Cs and Ds in Denver and Alamosa schools to straight As; he was already planning to attend the Air Force Academy. The littlest kids were good students at the elementary school, where Alliyah had just been awarded Student of the Month. And Luqman, well, Luqman's grades were good enough for a cowboy.

Not only were more and more kids coming to visit--after picking up her preschooler just down the block from a drive-by shooting, Rose was sending all five of her kids this summer--but adults were moving to the valley, too. The number of Muslim families in the area had grown to five as the Browns and Shabazzes invited relatives and friends to escape the cities. Tony's mother was living on the farm. A great-aunt had spent her last year there and was now buried in the family plot, along with the father of a nephew who had taken Tony's advice to leave Salt Lake City. The family frequently prayed over their graves.

And every time he could, Tony went back to Kansas City to pray over the graves of his father and Clara Murrell. It had taken a lot of years to find a way to repay his great-grandmother.

As he walked over his property, Tony gave praise to Allah. Although the kids he'd raised would probably move away to pursue their dreams, he and Sharon knew that one day they would return with their children. "We helped clear all this land and built this farm," he could hear them say. He might even leave a patch of rabbitbrush so that his grandchildren would know what it felt like to work.

But Tony still had a problem he couldn't pray or work away: A Denver Juvenile Court judge had issued a bench warrant for his arrest because he had refused to send Jamal to visit his mother in Denver.

On June 9 Tony sat in the small basement courtroom of Judge David Ramirez of Denver Juvenile Court. In another courtroom, a jury had just begun deliberating charges against gang members Steve Harrington and Shane Davis for the execution-style murder of Tom Hollar and the vicious beating of his wife.

Tony had repeatedly defied the court's order to bring Jamal north. Finally, Ramirez had found him in contempt of court and ordered his arrest, and the Alamosa cops complied. Already that morning, Tony had angrily demanded the $1,000 bond he'd had to post in order to get out of jail. He needed the money to make his mortgage payment and feed his kids. As far as he was concerned, the court was making him choose between Jamal's life and the welfare of the ten people counting on him down in Mosca.

Bitter and frustrated, Tony had lashed out at Magistrate Dan Edwards, who was sitting in for Ramirez, telling him to give back the money and Jamal's mother could have the boy. Tony now regretted how it sounded with his son there to listen, but it was the truth...there was more riding on the outcome of the case than one person's welfare.

Edwards had ordered a second hearing that afternoon, asking that representatives of the Denver Department of Social Services and attorney Kathryn Bradley, Jamal's guardian ad litem, make their recommendations as to who should have custody.

While Jamal waited in the hallway with his cousins, Tony told Edwards that he would bring his son back to Denver on July 25 for a month-long visit, if Jamal's mother agreed to provide a drug-free environment and not associate with any known gang members.

Bradley then testified that despite his "insensitive" outburst that morning, Tony "has been doing a good job...the boy hasn't been in any trouble, goes to school, and wants to live with his father and visit his mother." In view of the mother's past history, she continued, if the court had to choose between the parents, the boy should live with his father.

The mother's attorney accused Bradley of being unfair. His client's problems were history, he said. She had tested clean for drugs and had no gang members living in her house.

And besides, the attorney argued, Tony was running a work camp for children "on some kind of commune down there."

When the lawyer finished, Edwards asked everyone to leave the courtroom so that he could have a private discussion with Jamal. A few minutes later he reconvened the court and announced that Jamal would continue to live with his father, providing he visited his mother for a month during the summer and on school holidays.

Edwards then sentenced Tony to six months in prison but stayed the sentence unless Jamal failed to appear for his month in Denver. He also ordered Tony to apologize to his son for his "despicable" outburst that morning.

Tony had no problem apologizing to Jamal. He loved his son--that was why he wanted him out of Denver. But agreeing to bring him back was to place him in danger. And if something happened to the boy, it wouldn't be the judge or the lawyers or the social workers who would have to live with the guilt for the rest of their lives. It would be Tony Brown...the good shepherd of sheep and children.

Tony took Jamal and his cousins home to Mosca. He must return the boy in July or face six months in jail. It is a choice he will have to pray over.

In sha lah. As God wills...
end of part 2