Excerpt of Broken by William Cope Moyers

Prologue
October 1994
There was a sharp rap on the door, followed by a muffled but unmistakable command from a voice outside in the hallway.

"We want the white guy, just the white guy. We know he's in
there. He comes out now and there's no trouble for anyone
later."

I was the "white guy." I knew in that instant that my
family's desperate search to track me down had ended at this
decayed two-story apartment in a violent pocket of Atlanta's
inner city. Terrified, I rushed around the room, trying to
warn the other crack heads to sit still and keep quiet.

"Don't panic," I whispered. "They'll go away." But nobody
was listening because everybody was as high and as scared as
I was. We bumped into one another as we tried to find a way
out, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. We were
like wild animals trapped by a wind-whipped forest fire.

Who was out there banging on the door? Was it my father? My
mother? My wife? My mind flashed back to the morning four
days earlier when I left my house in suburban Atlanta. I
remembered kissing four-month-old Thomas and two-year-old
Henry good-bye. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I told
Allison I needed to run some errands before dinner. I drove
to the parking lot on the corner of Boulevard and Ponce de
Leon, approached a drug dealer with a thick scar running
from his left ear to the corner of his mouth, and paid him
one hundred dollars for six marble-sized rocks of crack
cocaine. I held them in my hand and thought, "These will
keep me going for a day or two." They were gone in four hours.

The knocking became a relentless pounding that shook the
door frame. I thought about escaping out the back porch door
to the vacant lot and just running, running, running. But
where could I go? They would find me, just like they had in
Harlem and St. Paul. I'd been running for five years. Now I
had run out of options.

I sat down at the old wood table in the kitchen, the place
where the deals were made, the pipe was fired up, and the
crack was consumed. I couldn't run anymore -- my legs felt
weak and shaky. I couldn't hide -- there was no place left.
I couldn't think, but I could still react, and with the
instincts of the addict I did the only thing that was left
to do. I reached into my sock and pulled out the cellophane
cigarette wrapper with the rocks carefully stored inside
like precious stones. My hands were shaking and I noticed
for the first time that the tips of my fingers were scorched
and blistered from lighter burns. I loaded the pipe, flicked
the lighter, and inhaled deeply.

The sizzle of the crack and the euphoric rush exploding
inside my head were suddenly all that mattered to me. The
banging on the door was like thunder on the horizon. I heard
the warning, but I didn't feel threatened anymore because I
was back in my element, that faraway place where nothing on
this earth could touch me. The rush hijacked my brain, and
the knocking, scurrying, and fear disappeared. The memories
of wife and children were gone. I was gone.

I tried to grab on and hold tight to the high, and for a few
moments time stood still. I was a Roman candle on the Fourth
of July, bright colors and showers of sparks. This, I
thought, is what it's all about -- stopping time, going
higher and higher, explosions of light and heat, one after
another after another. The rapture filled me for a minute or
two, and then it began to fade, the sparks died down, the
flame became a dying star far, far away.

I folded my arms over my chest, longing for comfort, for
peace. I was so sick. So sick and tired of it all. In that
moment I realized the hopelessness of my situation, and in a
sudden, brief flash of clarity, I asked myself: Now what? I
stared at the filthy wood floor littered with half-empty
beer cans, cigarette butts, and used syringes. The answer
wasn't here in this room anymore. It was all over. I was done.

I stood up and made my way past BJ, the Old Man, and the
other addicts with whom I was living and slowly dying for
the last four days. My steps were deliberate but out of my
control as I walked into the hallway and out the front door,
flanked by the two armed off-duty policemen who were part of
the intervention team hired to get me out of the crack house
and back into treatment.

A hard, steady rain was falling as we approached the gray
van parked on the curb. The sliding door opened, and I
collapsed into the backseat.

My father was sitting in the front passenger seat. Turning
around to look at me, he saw a thirty-five-year-old crack
addict who hadn't shaved, showered, or eaten in four days. A
man who walked out on his wife and two young children and
ditched his promising career at CNN. A broken shell of a
man, a pale shadow of the human being he had raised to be
honest, loving, responsible. His firstborn son.

Silence.

"You're angry," I said. I didn't know what else to say.

"That's hardly the word for it." His voice was harsh and
cold, like the rain outside.

More silence.

"There's nothing more I can do," he said. "I'm finished."

All these years later, he tells me that's where the
conversation ended. But whether I imagined it or not, I
heard him say something else.

"I hate you."

And I remember looking in his eyes and speaking my deepest
truth.

"I hate me, too."