When my father, Nat Frazier, the legendary attorney was shot and robbed outside his office downtown late one night, I gave up my life as a reggae musician. Was in a hot skanking reggae band at the time named, The Disciples of Justice. Played bass guitar, sang backing vocals, and it was all I thought about night and day. Originally, our band was called Cognitive Distortion until one day my father took on the case of a 17-year-old kid named Jamal Fernandez. Jamal killed two white police officers in self-defense at a police station one hot summer night years ago and was put on trial for his misdeeds My father, ‘Pops,’ as I call him, was Jamal’s lawyer.
Pops did his magic: he helped Jamal avoid a conviction for murder though Jamal was still sent to jail for 10 years on lesser charges. And so, after that trial and all of it, my band was renamed ‘The Disciples of Justice’ in honor of Jamal. Pops became a legal legend in the city after that trial and though more than a few hated the ground upon which he strolled each day, he forever commanded respect in the city. A young black kid was being beaten by white, racist police officers and Pops struck back hard. Got some semblance of justice. No way anyone ever thought that could happen. My father, a black lawyer, stood up; no one would ever forget that.

On the night Pops was shot, my band was jamming at the River Club in Alexandria, VA, about a 15-minute drive outside the city of Washington D.C. The River Club was a smoky, spacious gritty dive that we played all the time and this night, one of the most destabilizing nights of my life, had been strangely enough, one of our best shows ever. Two hours of boisterous rock steady beats, leading a jammed packed electric throng of weed filled partying maniacs into a frenzy of rhythmic chants, call and response, and unexplained euphoria. The entire show was thick and mystic, like some sort of religious experience where the already converted and committed, give in even stronger to their god. And their god that night, and every night was us – ‘The Disciples of Justice.’
After the show, as we sat back stage staring at one another and laughed ourselves into a state of endless jubilation, an Alexandria City police officer strolled into our space, and it all came to an end. The night of all nights. Show of all shows. Lost in music.
“Funk Frazier?”
Almost hopped up and ran when I saw the badge and the gun. He hadn’t come to arrest me.
“Yes.”
“It’s your father. Nat Frazier.”
And so it began.
Pops had been mortally wounded and was in a coma at Howard University Hospital just across the bridge in Washington D.C. Was so disjointed after speaking to the police officer that I left my guitars at the club and just got going. Didn’t even say anything to my band mates or anything.
When I got to the hospital, Pops was in surgery. My mother and other family members were holding that familiar vigil, the one you hear is coming one day but you just say, no way, not me, never. But here I was and here they were. We hugged and held hands but mostly we just sat quiet. Read every magazine in the waiting room maybe twice but really, I just turned the pages.
After surgery, after they tried to put Pops back together, they brought him to his room in the hospital’s intensive care unit. We were allowed one by one to go in for five minutes and sit with him. My mother was allowed to sit there all day and all night if she wanted to do so. When I came in, all I saw was what I knew of him: Nat Frazier, a man who made his bones talking, lying motionless on some hospital bed, as if he was made of wax. At that moment, I wanted Pops to rise from his bed and call me “a stupid fuck” like he did once because I was riding my bicycle with no hands in the middle of the street and almost got run over by a postal truck.
Say something fucked up about my music. Come on, Pops. Insult me. Call me a pothead for hanging out every night pretending I am one of Bob Marley’s Wailers. Cuss me out. Like I know you want to do. Do it!
Nothing. Silence.
“The bullet passed right through his brain. Parts of him are scrambled about,” one of his doctors said not long after I arrived. It was just us. The doctor, my mother, and me.
“Is he there? You know…I mean.” I asked.
My mother stared at me in confusion.
“Yes. But we are not yet sure how much.”
“What do you mean?”
“That is all I can say for now.”
Then he was off. Blunt talk. Watched him walk down the hall. Wanted to run and tackle his ass and choke something better out of him.
All of us there and who came there then settled into the rhythm of it. Came to the hospital, stayed most of the day. Others came. My mother was always there. She basically moved in. If she needed me to do something I did it for her. Check out her house, water her plants, pay some bills, whatever it was she needed done, I did it.
My father’s lawyer friends paraded through the hospital. Even the many judges came to stand before the man who gave them all hell each time he stepped into their courtrooms. My father was that famous in the city. Most people said he was ‘the best lawyer’ the city had ever known and most certainly, the best black lawyer. You had a problem, a serious problem, a criminal charge, a lawsuit you wanted to file, a difficult divorce, a deal you wanted to close, an estate problem, a relative caught driving drunk, call Nat Frazier. How many times had I returned from a gig after midnight, and he would be up working or downstairs in our home talking to a client who he had told to come by the house late? Hundreds.
Pops made magic every day and he treated his clients like they had met in nursery school. That is why people, ordinary people, had begun to come by the hospital to check on him. Men and women, from all parts of the city, some still in their work clothes, some carrying bouquets of roses or plates of food, and many tearing up on their way out. They would hug my mother. Hug me. And then cry. I felt like a grief counselor.

At the beginning of the third week Pops was in the hospital, I read in the newspaper at the hospital that ‘The Disciples of Justice,’ my band, was again playing at the River Club in Alexandria, VA. Hadn’t spoken to anyone in the band since the night of the last gig.
Was in a fog. My mother told he they had been calling looking for me to see how things were going but she was too distracted by everything to remember to tell me. But with everything so stagnant with my father, I told my mother I was thinking of going to see them perform. She just nodded; not a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’
I came to the River Club wearing dark shades and a baseball cap. Didn’t want anyone to know it was me. None of the regulars. Didn’t even tell my bandmates with a phone call or anything. Just eased into the audience and hung in the back, in the dark of the club. It worked. I was invisible. ‘The Disciples of Justice’ put on their show, and I sang along silently to every word. The audience was into the show like always and I was feeling exactly what they were feeling. It was strange.
Eventually, as the show wound down and the music got louder and louder, I drifted further to the back of the club and then out into the night air. Somehow being in the audience felt spaced out even though I was locked into ever beat, every verse, ever chorus they sang. Like I was watching myself but not really.
Outside, small groups of people were hanging like wet clothes. Cigarette smoke, cans of beer being tossed back, loose chatter, couples paired up close in the dark of night. No one recognized me. Cool. But then –
“Hey Funk? That you?”
Looked up and it was Raheem. Raheem Tompkins who worked security at the River Club and who I had known for years. Had seen him earlier but he was working the back door. Was disguised anyway. The idiot in me almost said, ‘Nah, bro, wrong dude.’ But Raheem was super cool. Like a roadie for us.
“Yea man. It’s me.” We embraced. He understood. He didn’t out me or anything.
“How are you man? And why aren’t you playing, tonight? I mean…I heard about your father but…You know…”
Silence. We locked in. It was awkward. Like the feeling you get if you get on a city bus and have no money to pay. You wait to see if the driver will wave you on for free.
“You wanna go get a drink?” It is all I had in my brain.
Raheem and I went to a tiny drinking hole across the bridge in Georgetown, in the city. The first liquor hole open that had lights on was ours. We bought a tray full of Tequila shots and just began taking them. Suddenly, I was back in college. Wet my hand. Salt. Tequila. Lemon. A ritual. Salt. Tequila. Lemon.
Running into Raheem had been a godsend. Was numb now. My thoughts clear. The madness of the hospital, static of days, endless visits by family, and my father’s friends and enemies. Was out on a ledge in a symbolic way ready to jump. Tequila got me back inside the building. Wanted to be again. Go on.
“Who did that shit to your, Pops, man? Them fuckers need to get got.” Raheem finally asked.
“Who knows? Lot of jackers out here. One thing for sure, nobody has even dreamed a sniff of them. “
“Really?”
“Been calling the police everyday asking them but they have nothing.”
And it was true. Nothing. Heard more on the streets than I had heard from the police. And the chatter was crazy.
Word was when the two individuals who robbed and shot my father confronted him outside his office, he nearly talked them into abandoning the dirty deed of robbing him. Not sure how that became “a” story but that sounded like Pops. Calm and cool. Volcanic lava could be coming down the street and Pops wouldn’t panic. People joked that Pops could convince a lottery winner to donate their winnings to a charitable cause they found objectionable.
In the end, the thieves didn’t buy Pop’s slick chatter of theater and rhetoric, it was said. A struggle ensued and he was mortally wounded in the scuffle. The bums vanished. People claim to have heard all of this, but no one really knew really. If they did, the shooters would be in jail.
“You still gonna play in the band?” Raheem asked as the tequila got even deeper into our brains. Raheem’s question was the first time I began to ask myself if I would play again.
“You know my father never wanted me to take up music. He didn’t say what he wanted me to do but he made it clear he thought music was not a good path. Especially reggae music. Said it was the music of weed smokers and lazy muthafuckas.”
“Well, it is.” Raheem laughed. “I can attest to that. But did he say anything else about it, I mean, about being a musician?”
“Nope. He would just say ‘why music, son?’”
“What you say?”
“Nothing. Thing is he didn’t want me to play music, but he paid for everything. My first guitar, my lessons, he even drove me back and forth in the early days to my lessons. When I studied music in college, he kept quiet. Nothing. But all along, he was against it. I knew how he felt.”
“That’s why you must get back up there. You will feel better.”
Get back up there? Couldn’t even process that yet. This was fine for me right now. Tequila. Should have done this before. Time had stopped sitting here with Raheem. Like playback on a recorder when you hit pause. I flagged the bartender and held up two fingers. Raheem smiled. I held up my shot, Raheem held up his. We wet our wrists and sprinkled salt. Our glasses clinked. Salt. Tequila. Lemon. Salt Tequila. Lemon.

There was a basketball court around corner from the hospital. The morning, after Raheem and I soaked our bodies and brains in shot after shot of tequila, I stopped at the court, and shot some baskets. Sweat out the liquor we used to say. Best way to feel better after a night of boozing is to burn it out your pores. Always kept a basketball in my car and I had seen the basketball court many times but this time I stopped. Needed to.
The court became my daily spatial escape. Was not playing music, not rehearsing, not even thinking about music, so it was the place. Every morning, rain, or shine after that first time, I would stop at the court, and shoot for an hour all alone. No one ever came either. Just me, my b-ball, the basket, and ‘Swish!” So basic it might as well have been a peach basket up there like when James Naismith invented the game.
Sound of a ball going through the nets or clanking off the rim relaxed me more than actual relaxing. The world disappeared. When I worked up a good sweat, I would then drive over to the hospital. Pops would be still right there. Day after day, week after week. This was my life suddenly.

My father was not Stonehenge or those famous giant rock heads on Easter Island. Had to talk to my mother. We had to get him out of the hospital. He was better off out of the place. If he dies, he dies but not like this. Lying still like he is Lenin in a tomb in Red Square in Moscow. He should not linger like this. Not Pops, not Nat Frazier.
Jamal Fernandez came to the hospital the Sunday that I came to this decision. It was great he came by because it had been years since I had even seen Jamal. He just showed up unannounced. He and I hugged. Squeezed each other like men and boys do when they win basketball tournaments. Like people do when they are broken, when they finally let down that outer layer of impenetrability.
Ever since the famous trial where my father had defended Jamal against charges of killing two police officers who were beating Jamal in a Hyattsville, Maryland police station, Jamal vowed he would never, ever again come to the Washington D.C. area if he ever got his freedom. He did eventually get released from prison and as he promised, he never came back to the city. That is, until the day he came to see my father lying still in some hospital bed.
And it was on this day, the day Jamal came to the hospital to visit, the moment he walked into the Intensive Care Unit room where my father had lain for two months without a word, Pops opened his eyes and started talking. Like on cue. Pops always knew when it was to enter a room.
“Wow. People. I am so sorry.” he said after looking around the room for a while.” My mother rushed to his side and grabbed his hand. “I must apologize to you folks for causing you so much grief, for making you disrupt your lives… How long have I been away anyway”?
A nurse rushed into the room and one of his doctors. Everyone stood and listened. It made no sense but then again, to me, it did.
Years ago, a friend of mine, Ronnie Mallard fell out of the back of a truck on the highway when it hit a bump. Ronnie was in a coma for nearly four months. No one knew what was going on with him. One day he just woke up and slowly put his life back together as best he could though he was never the same again. I remember walking by Ronnie’s house and his mother had a big sign on their door saying Robbie had awoken from his coma. Seeing my father wake up made me think of Ronnie.
“Did they catch those fools who robbed me?… If they do, tell them that watch was a gift from my father when I graduated law school and I would appreciate it if they gave it back… I will pay as well and not press charges. How are you, Funk? Are you still in that reggae band? I love your music; sorry I never told you…You don’t need to be a lawyer that is unless you want to be a lawyer but if you want to make music, make it. That is what we all do, is make music in our own way anyway. And Andrea, the love of my life. I love you dearly. I am so sorry I wasn’t more careful. There is enough money to last though, baby. I guarantee that. Call Stanley Carter, my lawyer friend, he knows where it all is. But anyway, I just want you folks to tell everyone that I had a great run. I got to do what I love to do. Stand in front of people and tell stories and make a living. How can I complain? How can I feel bad about such a life? And Jamal, so good to see you out free again, did I tell you what a pleasure it was to get to know you and your family?
Jamal smiled. Laughed. Everyone laughed. Pops went on and on for hours. Could not stop him from talking. His whole life. Talked about being born down in Texas, some tiny city outside Beaumont, Texas, that had no name. Used to go fishing with his father every Sunday before they moved to Washington D.C. in the 1950’s.
His doctors could not explain his sudden attentive and very active state verbally. They examined him over and over and could not explain why he was talking right out of a coma. I pressed them anyway.
“How did this happen?”
“We don’t know.”
“Is it unexplainable?”
“No.”
“Well, what the hell does that mean?
“It is like water on Mars.”
“Water on Mars? What?”
“There is water on Mars.”
“Ain’t no damned water on Mars.”
“Yes, there is. Enough to fill up one of the Great Lakes. No one knows why or if there was once sustained life, but it is there. Water.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“Look, Mr. Frazier. I am not trying to deceive you. Science tries to explain things, or should I say, explains things but it can’t explain everything and maybe it shouldn’t. So, your father tonight, let us just say, proved the world wrong again, if only for a moment. I can’t really say it any other way.”
So, it went. Pops, over the next few days, talked. He would talk to me, my mother, the doctors, and anyone else in the room, for a few hours, and then he would sleep. Television crew that had been working on a documentary about him came by and recorded him talking. They were happy. The police came by and tried to get more information about the robbery.
Then, about a week after my father started talking, Pops finally died. It was the same day I spoke to Lincoln, my friend, the long-time leader of our band, ‘The Disciples of Justice.’ He wanted to know if I still planned to go on tour with the band out west that we had planned for months. Had been so out of sorts I had forgotten about the tour, the band, and everything.
When Lincoln called, I had no answer for him. Pops had a stroke, slipped into an even deeper coma, and then peacefully died. Was no shock either. Had always been told he might die suddenly, or he might just linger for months. That kind of helped that I knew he would die soon. It was a kick in the stomach but one I knew was likely coming.
Everyone came to Pop’s funeral. All the lawyers, judges, court workers, politicians, and good people of the city of Washington D.C. Pops knew everyone because it seemed at one point or another, everyone needed him or knew someone who needed him. He had delivered. Even the members of my band came in support.
After the services, and a memorial service attended by the larger Washington D.C. legal community, after the endless accolades of the greatest of Nat Frazier, Attorney at Law, I finally began rehearsing again with my band, “The Disciples of Justice.” Our rehearsals were the best we have ever had. It seemed as if the band had a new energy, a connection even more precise than in the many years we had been together. We were in a rare air, feeling the spirit of our mutual creation, unified, committed, and locked in on what our music had become in the many years we had played it.
But as it got closer and closer for the band to leave for the west coast and the tour, I began to get anxious. I did finally tell Lincoln I was going on tour but right after I told him, I immediately felt selfish. How could I go on tour now and leave my mother? Suddenly, music seemed trivial.
Right before we were to leave on tour, I rode over to my mother’s house in the middle of the night. Was probably 2:00 a.m. when I arrived, and she was surprised to see me. My mother woke up and made coffee. Felt like I was 4 years old and had a bad dream and stumbled into her room crying.
“Aren’t you about to leave on the tour?”
“I am not going to go. I need to stay here and help.”
“Help with what?”
“You know. With things?
“Things?
“You know, Ma.”
“And when did this dawn on you? This helping out?”
“I don’t know. For weeks. Been bothering me.”
“You woke me up to tell me this?”
“No. I woke you up because.”
“Because?”
“Look, Ma. Did you know there is water on Mars?”
“What?”
“Water on Mars. No one knows why the water is there, but it is there.”
My mother sipped her coffee and smiled.
“Son. Whatever you decide, it is fine with me. I will be okay. I miss and grieve for your father, but I am not going to make you not do what you do. And I am sure it is okay with your father if you think he would be displeased with you. But whatever you do, lock up when you leave. I am going back to bed.”
And then she went to bed and left me downstairs alone in front of two cups of coffee. One empty, and one still full. I could hear her muttering as she disappeared up the stairs, “Water on Mars…” and then she chuckled.

Before ‘The Disciples of Justice’ left for the trip out west, I went to that basketball court again by the hospital where my father had spent his last days and shot hoops for about an hour. Hadn’t shot since the day my father died. Had one of my best shooting mornings ever on the court. Could hardly miss. No matter what I tossed up it went in the basket. Felt like I could hear people cheering as I made baskets.
‘The Disciples of Justice’ left on their west coast road trip later that day. I was on the train. My band. Would be my last tour. Was getting out of music. Thinking of going to law school. Had not thought about it until the moment we left for the tour. Sounded like it made no sense but as I rode on the train, it felt right. Pops hadn’t ever suggested I become a lawyer like him. Not once. He just didn’t think music had a long-term plan to it.
Didn’t listen to any music on the train either as we traveled out west. Brought along a bunch of books about Mars. Wanted to know more about water on Mars and whether was there ever life on Mars. Planned to read them all. Other than play music and rehearse with my band, that is all I did on the tour was read those books.