Man Without a Country
They all hung out at The Pavilion. It’s not there anymore. Steven’s dad owned it – just a little bar at the beach with a few guys and a few beers. They’d kick back after a day of building houses, knock back a few Bud’s and shoot a couple games of pool.
That was Steven Mack, back before he came to East Carolina. All his buds call him “Mack”, or “Truck.” I call him Steve. I don’t know him that well. But his friends do. His friends are the people he grew up with, that handful of iron loyalty you rarely see anymore.
Steve grew up like some of us did. He didn’t have a particularly happy or loving childhood. Sometimes that’s just the way it is. Steve says it’s all about how you take it. “My grandmother, she’s probably the most influential person in my life,” he says. “She taught me good values, she shared her beliefs with me, and she told me to read every day. She helped me get through the hard times.”
Most of his childhood was spent with his dad, building houses, out early in the morning watching the sun rise over the ocean in Emerald Isle, North Carolina. High school was a breeze for him; it was another escape from home. Good grades didn’t follow him to college though; his friends tell me that though he gave college a try, his heart just wasn’t in it. So he went back to the beach for two years to build houses and cabinets. He preferred the sweat on his brow and the calloused hands of a builder. There was good money in it, and no studying. He worked with good guys, salt of the earth beer-drinking breeze-shooting kind of guys. The kind of guys who learned to respect a man like Steven.
But his heart wasn’t in building either. “That just wasn’t the career path he wanted,” childhood friend Kyle Jones says. And then that moment of change, that moment of inspiration came to him. He was sitting out on the beach with a beer and his thoughts and the breaking waves, watching the tide ebb and flow, the water gliding and uniting at the horizon with a blazing North Carolina sunset. His dad had moved away, all his friends had gone, and, he says, “I just realized I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life breaking my back.” He came to East Carolina University for the second time in two years, but this time with a renewed passion for his long-shelved loves – reading and writing.
“When he came here, he started writing down his thoughts,” Kyle tells me. “He started listening to music; he sort of had to figure out where he was going…” His voice trails off. “I think it made him stronger and more determined.”
Determined for what, I wonder. Who is Steven, really? Where is he headed and how will he get there? I rounded up three of his best friends, including Kyle. I asked some hard questions and I got some hard answers.
“He’s passionate about the truth,” roommate Kyle Lutz tells me. “If you’re wrong, he tells you, and he knows what he’s talking about. He helps edit post-production footage for my class, and he’s brutally honest if he knows I didn’t put effort into a trailer….He’s honest and intelligent - if I was on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, he would be my phone-a-friend,” another longtime friend, Chris Montazue says.
“If truth is his passion, what does he want out of life?” I ask Kyle. “He wants to be heard,” he replies. “He wants to write about the truth of things and he wants people to care. He recognizes that right now isn’t the time, but he’s a damn good writer and he knows he’s working towards that moment; that moment in time where people begin to respect and care about what he’s saying.”
“Where do you see him in ten years?” I then ask Kyle. “Honestly, I can see him locked up in some third world country for telling the truth,” he responds. “He gets along with almost everyone, but the way he sees life and the world is the way he’s going to write it, and sometimes that isn’t what people want to hear.”
Kyle Jones and Chris tell me something else. He won’t be in the United States, they say. “He’ll be in Bali, or Australia, or Africa, traveling and freelance writing about interesting things that no one knows about.”
I ask them to describe Steven’s personality. “He’s laid back and easygoing,” Kyle Jones says. “He’s one of the kindest people I know; he’d help anyone. I think he gets that from his dad. I remember once we stayed over at his house at the beach and we woke up and his dad cooked breakfast for everyone there. And that’s the kind of guy Steven is. He’d do anything he could for you.”
Chris tells me Steve makes friends with everyone. “We have parties, and we always have a few random stragglers that we don’t know show up at three in the morning. Mack walks right up and introduces himself, offers a beer, and just starts a conversation.”
Kyle Jones has known Steve since childhood. I asked him about Steve’s best and worst character traits. “He’s always out to help. He’s very loyal; he’d never stab you in the back.” On the other hand, “sometimes he’s a little too complacent. He might not step up if something bothers him or offends him.”
Kyle Lutz told me about an incident when a roommate borrowed Steve’s car and brought it home an hour after he’d promised to have it back; making Steve late for work. “He didn’t make a big deal out of it at all, even though he got chewed out at work. I think he let it roll off a little too easily.”
I sat down across from Steve later that day. We talked and I jotted down words and phrases on a notepad, The conversation drifted. Steve cracked the occasional joke. But after a while we got quiet – just sat with our thoughts for a few minutes. A line from Billy Joel’s Piano Man came to mind: “He’s quick with a joke, or to light up your smoke, but there’s someplace that he’d rather be.”
I really think that’s Steven Mack, in a nutshell. He’s quick, and easygoing, and he’ll crack a joke, but he what he really wants to do is be out there writing, telling the truth, and letting us read it and come to our own thoughts. I think his friends know that. I look up from my coffee and see Steven, gazing at scrawled notes on a piece of paper, deep in thought. Still waters running deep.
Filed under: Classmate Profiles, Spring 2008