The Big House on the Prairie.

[Soapy]

Messy female characters - a Soapy staple

He really be on some Tyler Perry shit if we keeping it a buck. Not a single well adjusted Black woman in sight.

Ol’ boy lucky Keiyana went upside Irene’s head instead offing him in his sleep tbh.

just art imitating life

most of these characters are dramatized version of people I've come across

crashout

I was expecting she offed herself with how the last update ended, but I don’t know if this is better or worse

At least a dead girlfriend is good motivation. Take it from my experience Baby Book - they never get less crazy.

Get out before you’re intercepting passes with a hole in yo hand

man sat least its motivation

Baby Book might have to learn it the hard way

[Soapy]

The Big House on the Prairie
Chapter Six :: Wilderness, Part Two

Keiyana was assigned a public defender and was released on bail following a mandatory twelve hour hold due to it being a domestic dispute. I spent those twelve hours meeting with a bail bondsman, putting up the ten percent required to secure her bail. It didn’t dawn on me until later in life that the amount, $500, was the same amount my father had wired me right before I left. I went back to the station after that and just sat there. Not only did I have nowhere to go as going back to the apartment with Kyle and Irene wasn’t an option, it didn’t feel right leaving Keiyana either.

In a lot of ways, I blamed myself for what had happened. Keiyana had issues, issues that I had recognized were far beyond just the proverbial "she crazy" label that had been bestowed upon her since we were kids. Keiyana wasn’t just an "active kid" or "moody" or "dramatic", she had a mental health disorder. One that even after she was diagnosed, the environment around her made it so that she didn’t feel comfortable sharing that with others, not even me. I didn’t learn about her diagnosis and how she had stopped taking her medication until the bail hearing where her lawyer argued that she should be allowed to leave the state until trial, citing her lack of support system in Nevada and needing proper care to deal with her mental health issues.

She had wanted to go back to Prairie View and I didn’t. For me, going back would be failing, losing that rep. For her, going back was about survival. I should have listened. None of this would have happened if I did.

I often wonder why I never realized how much she was struggling and how serious her issues were. Maybe I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to accept that there was something "wrong" with Keiyana. She was the apple of my eye, my prized possession. She was attractive, popular and we formed the sort of of couple that other people reposted with "#goals". None of that meshed with bipolar disorder or mental health issues. I didn’t want to accept that the girl that I was ready to spend my life with, change my life with, had something wrong with her.

"All girls are like this", I had convinced myself, "Keiyana just a little extra with it, that’s what makes her special."

I had seen firsthand the impact that a woman could have on her partner, the good and the bad. My grandmother Cheryl, no matter her faults, was the reason why my grandfather ended up where he was. She was also the reason for a lot of my father’s faults. My mother Evelyn righted a lot of those faults in my father, or did her best to cover them up while she was here. I wanted to find my Evelyn and not my Cheryl. An acknowledgement of Keiyana’s struggles would have meant that she was a Cheryl and not an Evelyn.

The judge considered the argument but ultimately decided that the bail terms would remain and that she couldn’t travel out of the state until the matter was resolved. The first order of business as we left the courthouse was finding somewhere to stay. We booked a hotel using the credit that my father had given me on my eighteenth birthday. Keiyana didn’t speak much at first, staying quiet during the whole Uber ride to the hotel and just slept the rest of the day when we checked in. When she finally did speak, all she said was that she wanted to go home.

Things got really rough after that. She lost her job at the hotel, likely of Irene’s doing as she was the one that had gotten it for her through a friend. I still worked with Kyle at the car rental place, the only income we had coming in. To his credit, Kyle never said anything but it was still awkward as we continued to work together. There were no more happy hour hangouts though.

The state, knowing that Keiyana was desperate to go back home, used that to their advantage and pressed for a plea deal. She wasn’t eating, just sleeping all day in the hotel room, finding her in the same spot I had left her earlier that morning when I came home from work. I tried to keep her head up, keep her encouraged that Irene would likely at some point drop the charges. She didn’t.

Keiyana pleaded out, accepting a six-month suspended sentence along with mandatory violence counseling, eighty-hours of community service and summary probation. In exchange, she was allowed to carry out her probation in the state of Texas. The exodus was over, we were going home.

Next release: 8/5/2025

[djp73]

Still saying UNLV

[Captain Canada]

I mean, all things considered, that's not a bad sentence. Take her ass back to Texas and get them meds going.

[Soapy]

Still saying UNLV

kanye shrug

I mean, all things considered, that's not a bad sentence. Take her ass back to Texas and get them meds going.

One can hope.

[Soapy]

The Big House on the Prairie
Chapter Six :: Wilderness, Part Three

I didn’t collect my last check from the car rental place and they didn’t send it. We took the first flight available back to Houston, charging it on the credit card my father had gifted me on my eighteenth birthday. Kyle had packed up our things for us, equally an act of kindness as much as just wanting to put the ordeal behind us. He met us at the airport and gave us our luggage, avoiding eye contact with Keiyana which didn’t prove to be difficult as she wore shades and a hoodie, paying no mind to the desert heat.

The return home was from triumphant. Keiyana hadn’t told her parents about the arrest with them finding out about it when her probation officer did the first check-in. This pretty much permanently fractured my relationship with her family, who justly blamed me for my part of the situation as well as damaged my relationship with Uncle Sam. It was never the same after that. I might have been his mentee but his relationship with his niece, his actual blood relative, superseded that.

It wasn’t triumphant at home either as I hadn’t returned as the prodigal son, just someone that had been through some shit. In a lot of ways, my return was an admission of failure and that despite my disdain and judgement towards my father for his shortcomings, I had my own as well and wasn’t any better. I didn’t have job, my only acquired skill of cleaning out cars, reading odometers and answering the phone to tell people to use the website to book a rental didn’t have much value in a town like Prairie View that didn’t have a single car rental company. I spent those early days back in Prairie View in my room, trapped in my thoughts, enwrapped by my guilt and drowning in my sorrow as I mourned the death of my mother, my relationship with Keiyana and her family as well as the end of my football career.

Unlike Winston Churchill, my Wilderness period only lasted a few months, thanks to my brother Evan. He wasn’t particularly athletic, the kind of kid that preferred to watch a stream of other people playing video games instead of being on the field. While I was away, he had signed up for tackle football for the first time. My ego didn’t allow me to attend the first few games, not wanting to be seen by the town. Whether boredom or a sense of brotherly duty that finally crept through, I made it out to one of his games. He, quite frankly, sucked. He was equally scared as he was unathletic. The only thing worse than seeing him on the bench was watching him when he came onto the field for his mandatory participation snaps. As soon as he got into the game, the opposing coach would undoubtedly run right towards him.

Evan was just Evan, he hadn’t earned a nickname yet but he was still a Gurley and still a Book. The family name might have been driven through the mud in the past few months, fairly and unfairly, but the name was still legendary in those parks and having a 'Book' be the kid that no coach wants to play didn’t sit right with me. I began training him, partly for him, mainly for me. It gave me purpose, something to do, something to look forward to each day. I would love to say that we got closer during those sessions but we didn’t. It was clear that Evan didn’t love football nor was he good at it or ever going to get good at it. I never asked him, another testament to the fractured relationship that was never repaired but I always thought he signed up for football that year as a way of perhaps continuing the legacy that I had abandoned. He was trying to forge his name, becoming his own man only to end up following the same steps that I, and my father before me, had taken. This wasn’t his path and he knew it. He quit just four games into the season.

Even after Evan quit, I still continued going out to the park and getting some work in. It was a way to get me out of the house, out of my head and to feel good about myself. The more I worked out, the more I began feeling myself and recognizing the man that was in the mirror. I wasn’t ready to go back to playing football, not emotionally, but physically I was getting there. Did I want to play again? No, not really, not at the time. I just didn’t know what else to do.

Next release: 8/6/2025

[redsox907]

"All girls are like this", I had convinced myself, "Keiyana just a little extra with it, that’s what makes her special."

Famous last words

[Soapy]

"All girls are like this", I had convinced myself, "Keiyana just a little extra with it, that’s what makes her special."

Famous last words

this boy relating to baby book too well

Games are almost here, I can taste it

if needed

[Soapy]

The Big House on the Prairie
Chapter Six :: Wilderness, Part Four

The recruiting process the second time around was a lot less fun and required a lot more work on my end. It also taught me that while my ego might have paled in comparison to my father and grandfather, it was still there.

The way that my first recruitment had played out had a left a bad taste and impression on a lot of college coaches so when I began reaching out to various coaching staffs, Texas’ at first, my text messages were promptly and rightfully ignored.

The season had just began for these coaches so even the ones that did get back to me — SMU, Miami, Georgia Tech — the responses were tepid at best. They told me they were glad that I was focusing on football again, asked me what I had been doing. I lied and shamefully blamed the break on the death of my mother and needing some time to process it al. It was a half-truth since my mother’s death did factor into the decision to step away from the game of football but it still felt a little dirty each time I would go into my rehearsed speech about how I was rededicating myself to the game of football.

Jeremiah, my best friend, was a freshman receiver at Baylor. Simply put, I always thought I was better than Jeremiah as I had used him as the standard when I first started playing football and by the time I was nine or ten, it was pretty clear that I had passed him. If we were playing football on the street or at a tournament, Jeremiah was never picked before me.

"We got Baby Book," whoever got first pick would undoubtedly yell out.

Jeremiah was a solid athlete in his own right, just born with the same physical limitations that hindered his father, Uncle Sam, athletic career. He was fast but not quite fast enough, quick but not lightning quick and had decent size due to his hard work in the weight room but just didn’t have the frame you would ideally want in a receiver at five-foot-nine.

When I reached out to him and told him to ask the coaches if they’d be interest, I was fully expecting them to roll out the red carpet. Baylor was among the dozens of schools whose letters I had ignored so to me, I was humbling myself by making myself now available to them.

They didn’t view it that way. They were interested, sort of. They said they’d like me to visit the school not to wow me, as I was accustomed to, but to instead undergo a workout and they would determine what the appropriate next steps would be. It was a huge blow to my ego but not a deadly one.

"They’re tripping," I thought to myself and made sure to set a reminder to watch their next upcoming game.

It was going to be a glorious hate watch and the first football game I had watched since my mother had died. They were playing Oklahoma State and since Jeremiah was redshirting that season and wouldn’t be playing, I had no qualms about rooting against Baylor. Instead, they routed the Cowboys 24-10 and their top receiver, Kole Wilson, was scorching Oklahoma State’s corner. I had known Kole, he was from Katy, Texas which was about a thirty-minute drive from Prairie View. I had come across him a few times on the camp and 7-on-7 circuit. He was nothing special, not to me at least.

"I got to be better than these sorry ass corners at Ok State."

That was my thought process before reaching out to the coaches at Oklahoma State. Similar to Baylor, they had offered me but I hadn’t really kept in contact, deeming my talent to exceed the likes of Oklahoma State. The response was tepid, as usual, but they slowly became more communicative as the weeks of the season went by and their record continued to dip.

The prospect of playing in the Big 12, where I knew I’d get plenty of chances at a cornerback at snagging interceptions and making a name for myself, was suddenly appealing after turning up my nose at them previously and labeling myself an 'SEC player’. The SEC, at least the top of it, didn’t want me anymore. I would deal with that later.

Next release: 8/7/2025

[redsox907]

Gonna be a Cowboy huh

After what happened in Vegas with Keiyana I didn't expect him to return anywhere near the state. A revenge tour against every Texas school as a OK State Cowboy makes sense