Michael Mattocks relaxes in his living room chair as his wife, Nikki (a.k.a.Tinika) and five boys walk out the door one by one and head to the market. Enthusiastically, he takes a moment to brag about his sons’ football status and reports: “My seven-year-old son’s team beat [them]20 to nothing. Gaithersburg Wolfpack! Our nine-year-old had a game yesterday. They won 19 to nothing. We had a busy morning – busy, but good.” A smile spreads across his smooth brown face; his eyes smile also, then reduce to a squint.
As a young boy, Mattocks had a “fascination with heavy duty equipment,” yet his dream of steering one of those colossal yellow trucks was overshadowed by homelessness and later by drugs and death. In 1983, during a random encounter at a shelter, an unlikely friendship emerged between a 7-year-old Mattocks and 20-year-old John Prendergast. Their friendship would span 25 years and find its way on the pages of “Unlikely Brothers: Our Story of Adventure, Loss, and Redemption.” Told in duet, the book follows Mattocks’ and Prendergast’s lives: one young man trying to survive the violent streets of D.C., another estranged from his family and on a search for social justice leading to Darfur. Prendergast is the co-founder of the Enough Project, a human rights organization, and former Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council.
“I grew up on North Capitol, one of the craziest neighborhoods in D.C.,” Mattocks exclaims. His mother, a single mom with seven children, struggled to make ends meet. “She’s a great woman,” Mattocks asserts. “Foster care actually tried to take us from her [but]she wasn’t having it.” By the time Mattocks was in the sixth grade, he found himself surrounded by the nationwide crack epidemic of the 1980s and 90s. Poor, he envied the dealers boasting of money and gold and began selling drugs.
A particularly painful memory for Mattocks is the death of his best friend. “He got killed in front of me — shot in the face. I was 13. I turned to drugs and alcohol. I thought that was helping me, but it was really destroying me.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last time Mattocks would be confronted by a violent death; his aunt, Francine, was beaten to death by her husband.