To listen to Najee Harris is a whirlwind of phrases, tangents and curse words. There the 247Sports Composite's No. 3 overall prospect sits, a man-child running back his family long ago assigned the nickname “Baby Huey,” and he bucks every stigma placed upon him through a winding and secretive recruitment.

It’s a December morning in the Army All-American office in New Jersey, and the recruit labeled an “enigma” by many is explaining how he wants to explore the world. This trip is the first time he’s ever been more than a skip further east of Alabama, where he’s headed to continue the long run of freakishly-sized Crimson Tide tailbacks; at 6-foot-2, 224 pounds Najee certainly qualifies.

When asked about his family vacations growing up, Najee struggles to recall the last one he took. It happened in seventh grade about 30 minutes away from his home in the Bay Area of California. They played paintball. Najee, scatterbrained at times (he missed his initial flight to get to New Jersey, and a month later forgot his pads one day at Army practice), did not correctly suit up in defense of the flying pellets.

“I thought it was paint hitting you,” Najee told 247Sports. “I didn’t know it was a paint ball, so I had a tank top on. That got me fu**** up. I didn’t know. That sh** was hurting.”

That’s Najee. An occasional barrage of profanity exploding in the air like those colored paint balls do against a barrier, he addresses subjects with candor and directness rarely found in an 18-year-old. Najee may have dodged recruiting questions with an unparalleled skill – much to the frustration of those in recruiting who consumed Najee updates with vigor – but in other areas this “enigma” is translucent.

The conversation shifts from Nick Saban to burrito shops, and Najee is clearly in his zone. He stands up to tell another story.

He points to the walls of this standard office breakroom, cutting the space into a third to leave six by eight feet of space. Najee then points to the corner: “There was a bed, a bed and then that’s the door.”

At one time, he can’t remember exactly when, that area held his dad, sister and two of his brothers. It takes a minute, but he recalls the building was called “The Soup Kitchen” in Richmond, California.

“The food was downstairs,” Najee said. “There’s like ants crawling over the food and hella homeless people. … We stayed there for almost like a year, probably. But I stayed in hella shelters before. When that didn’t work we stayed at a family member’s house. We stayed in the car.

“Staying in a house is the best thing.”

***

“Najee, how many places have you lived?”

“What the hell?” Najee says. His expression matches his exasperation at the absurdity of the question. Then he starts to count on his fingers, muttering while he tries to get the order straight.

“Richmond, Antioch, Pennock, Hercules … It was just everywhere in the Bay Area. I stayed in Oakland for a little bit at a friend’s house, I stayed in Pittsburg. I stayed in hella places. Let’s see … a lot.

“You’d have to ask my mom.”

Tianna Hicks doesn’t know either. When asked what she considers Najee's hometown, she can only reply “he was raised in the West Coast.” Born in Martinez, California – a place Najee never actually lived – he bounced around with his family throughout childhood.

Ping-ponging within the Bay Area, to Seattle and back, Najee was a child raised in upheaval.

“Sh**, I’m about to move again,” Najee said when asked if he’s ever felt steady. “Yeah … Fu**. It’s not steady. You’ve got to be ready for anything.”

Najee is the youngest of five children of Tianna and Curt Harris – Najee also has four half-siblings from Curt’s side.

Jamal Gregory, Najee’s uncle and Curt’s brother, remembers Najee as quiet, yet competitive, in his younger years. A standard family activity for the clan would be watching movies and eating a special dinner, normally pizza.

The traces of ordinary ended there.

Tianna had her children young and hadn’t earned her high school diploma early in Najee's life. Curt never held a steady job and Tianna said he abused drugs and went through numerous addictions. That caused issues and financial strains that resulted in frequent moves. Najee can’t remember staying in one place for more than a year when he was younger as the family bounced from apartments, to homes of family friends, to shelters.

Even in the rare comfortable housing situation, home life provided little safe harbor.

Both Tianna and Jamal said Curt was verbally abusive toward his children and Tianna. Tianna said the abuse went further than vocal barrages. She said Curt's whoopings of the kids would be “bad beatings.” Tianna would then step in, leading to fights between the pair.

“Najee didn’t see me with bruises as much as my older children had, but it was still a lot,” Tianna told 247Sports. “They witnessed a lot of stuff.”

Curt, who currently lives in Seattle and hasn’t spoken to Najee “in a while,” admits he cursed at his kids and said he had a lot of “frustration” that would lead to fights with Tianna and those whoopings. “I regret that today,” he told 247Sports. He also said there were times Tianna got mad and started slapping him, but he’d “never” hit back.

“I came from banging, straight up,” Curt said. “My mentality was a fire lighter – one minute I could be this, one minute I could be that. I was very aggressive until I was like 21, 22, 23. … I didn’t give a fu** back then. It takes a while to give a fu**.

“It was truly a freaking nightmare, and I wish it didn’t happen.”

Najee has grown into a happy, polite young adult. While in New York he insisted a pregnant woman on the subway take his seat. He may have kept reporters guessing at the Army All-American bowl in San Antonio, but he stopped and smiled for every picture request he received, especially when kids scurried up to meet the one of the nation’s top players.

But the Najee of a decade ago, in only the way Najee can describe him, “was a little a**hole.”

Witnessing plenty and without much of an anchor in youth, Najee, always large for his age, was a deviant. In kindergarten Najee couldn’t go a day without the school calling Tianna to calm him down. Once, he destroyed an entire classroom – tables, chairs – to the point the teacher had to pull the entire class out of the room for their safety. When the principal entered to talk to Najee, he kicked the principal in the stomach. Later, after they locked him in the room in an attempt to pacify him, he escaped and hid under a bus.

For many this could easily be attributed to youth and immaturity, but Tianna admits Najee had anger issues. A few years later in a Seattle park, a kid made fun of Najee. So Najee picked up a pool stick and let fly a furry of rasps leaving “hella marks on his back.”

Najee relates these stories with an abashed humor now.

A shift to somber reflection doesn’t take long, however.

“Everything has changed,” he said. “I had to grow up at a young age. … You’ve just got to live with it.”

***

A Bay Area kid Najee might be, but his narrative swing, and that of his family’s, began in Seattle.

Curt, a Seattle native, often took the family north to Washington in order to find safe haven for a few months, weeks or year at a time. In this case, shortly after Najee's kindergarten escapades, the family headed north again. There they stayed in a special assisted living shelter that provided housing, help to obtain jobs and a school for the kids.

For Tianna, this meant a chance to earn her GED and a medical assistant degree. For the kids, it meant a stay at “First Place,” a school that specializes in helping children through transition. Programs there included a bevy of after-school activities and a mentor program, both of which Tianna eagerly used.

“Up there (Najee’s) anger was still happening,” Tianna said. “They had mentor programs with other men, positive black men, he could see doing the right things. … Being at home wasn’t safe, and there was some abuse going on when I wasn’t there. The best thing I thought was to put them in an after school program until I could get home.”

That meant football.

Najee and his three brothers would play, while his sister joined the cheerleading team. Football had been a part of their lives before – Curt played at Grambling State University on scholarship and tossed the ball around in the park with the kids – but Najee's first organized sniff of it came as an escape.

He hated it, too.

In Seattle, his first week was “hell week.” The coaches had the players, including a six-year-old Najee, do bear crawls and work in a bull ring. “That’s how he learned to be so hard core,” Tianna said.

Life, at least partially, improved for Najee after that trip. Tianna said her medical degree changed everything. “(We were) slowly getting back to being human, almost.” But the family still moved in and out of homelessness. They had a Section 8 voucher, but Tianna said she and the kids kept following Curt, which left the family teetering from situation to situation. Curt said he was never gone for long – “the drug thing was on me” – and he’d drop food off in the days he went to the streets.

Hicks still remembers Christmas in shelters, sharing the holiday with six other families around a haggard tree. Other times the family slept in a van. A few times in a spacious Sierra, equipped with a TV and a roll-out bed, another time in a much smaller van and a few other times in a Dodge Durango.

Those occasions in the Durango came much later in life. Tianna didn’t want the kids to sleep there – she hated the nights in vans more than anything – and sent them to stay with friends leaving just her and Curt. But Najee refused. “If my mom is sleeping in the car, I’m sleeping in the car with her,” Najee said.

Perspective is everything in life, which is why Najee's contentment with seemingly basic comforts – subways, hotels and dorm rooms – is so evident.

“Staying in a house is the best thing,” Najee said. “I stayed in a house before and slept on a hardwood floor and it was perfect.

“At least you’re in a house.”

***

Najee is attempting to describe how he was discovered. He starts with camps, talks about his workouts, “I was doing sh** on my own,” and then, randomly, asks, “Do you know who Joe Mixon is?”

Mixon, of course, just finished his career as a star running back at Oklahoma.

Three years ago, Mixon was the No. 1 running back in America and hailed from the Bay Area. Najee, in Antioch for the first year as a freshman, had moved to a new city and established himself as a varsity stalwart.

John Lucido, head coach at Antioch, remembers a JV game early that season, where he spotted Najee sitting on the bench after halftime.

Why is the new guy sitting on the bench? Lucido asked.

Why do you think we’re up 28-0? the JV coach cracked back. Najee had scored enough already.

Najee ascended to varsity after that, which meant a late-season clash with Freedom High School and Mixon.

Mostly a defensive player as a freshman, Najee remembers his performance “as nothing special.” Only that he “forced a fumble on (Mixon).” He did more than that. Najee, in a double-overtime loss, helped hold Mixon to a season-low 59 yards. On offense, Najee rushed for 92 yards and his first varsity touchdown.

Afterwards, Mixon approached Najee and told him, “You’re going to be a great player.”

A little over a year later, Najee had a scholarship offer from nearly every major program in the country.

Najee’s rise as a prospect coincides with the closest thing he’s ever known to steady.

There were still changes. Tianna allowed Curt back into the children’s lives again early on in their time in Antioch, which eventually put them in a hotel again. Tianna said Curt didn’t even stay around a month before taking off. “I thought we were supposed to be together (as a family),” Hicks said, explaining why Curt stayed in her life for so long. Curt said he moved to Seattle for work at that time, but Hicks never returned his calls once he made the move.

Thanks to a few people in the Antioch community, Tianna was finally able to lock down an apartment. Curt hasn’t been in the picture for Najee in a few years.

Of his dad, Najee doesn’t have much to say, only mentioning his time in Grambling with “he got kicked out.”

They haven’t communicated in a long time – Curt said he speaks to his other children – and Curt said he’d like to eventually have a relationship with Najee.

“We had a lot of fun, too,” Curt said. “We did a lot, it wasn’t just anarchy. I regret all of it. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet. … I’d tell him, the reason I haven’t been talking to you is I haven’t been talking to nobody, my mom or anybody else. When I go into my shell to get myself together, I tend to cut everybody off.

Najee's home in Antioch is a modest space. Tianna, Najee, his sister and one of his brothers share the two-bedroom apartment. Najee and his brother stay in the living room, which is cut in half with a divider. The bed, where Najee sleeps, is visible from the door.

It’s not much, but it’s theirs.

“I don’t have no thing,” Hicks said. “It’s better than a hotel or a car.”

Najee arrived at Alabama as an early enrollee earlier this month, but how he got there was a process cloaked in intrigue. Committed to Alabama for 18 months, Najee seemed to waiver in his commitment at the last minute taking officials visits to Michigan and California.

Ultimately, he ended up on a plane to Alabama but not before spending stymying reporters and causing message board panic.

Najee, ranked as the No. 1 overall player in the country at the time, is an interesting recruiting case study. In a world of Twitter announcements and Top 10s, Najee rarely granted interviews. He doesn’t have a Twitter account.

Despite his relative openness about his past, the attention that came with recruiting suffocated him. It’s why the narrative of mystery surrounded him so often. In San Antonio a camera-toting reporter begged Najee to answer just one question, to which Najee responded with a smile, ‘Why? I’m the enigma, right?”

Untraditional in many ways, Najee certainly bucks convention with a few of his thoughts.

On the idea that Saban puts players in the NFL: “He’s the coach. Everybody puts players in the league. I think it’s the players that really do it. They’re the ones working out, they the one playing. Coaches coach, players play. You can go to Kansas and get in the league.”

On recruiting rankings: “That don’t mean nothing … I don’t even know about it. I don’t. You’re going to wake up the next day in college and you’re not going to be nothing. Literally, nothing. You have to start over again. It’s just something to draw more attention to this stuff.”

On prescription medicine and its potential side effects (a story from the pharmacy, via his mom): “What the fu** you trying to give me something that could get me addicted for? …. No, for real, they trying to get me addicted!”

That last case, which happened recently after a tooth procedure, came when Najee heard the pharmacist say one of the side effects could be addiction. So Najee, in only the way he can, refused the medicine.

“He looks like he’s about 25 and sometimes acts like he’s 13 or 14,” Lucido said. “But there are times we have those mature conversations. When he wants to know something, or he’s interested, he’s very mature.”

***

Uncle Jamal used to sit around the living room with Najee and his siblings and tell them, “I don’t know which of you guys is going to make it, but one of you guys will.”

Najee, with this latest move to Alabama, has done just that. He’s not the only one. One of Najee’s sisters has her dream job at Macy’s, his brother is a junior college basketball player, another brother owns a burrito shop and one of his brothers is an up-and-coming Bay Area rapper.

“It was like a flower trying to grow through concrete,” Jamal said. “But he blossomed.”

Tianna will move to Alabama with Najee. She wants to be close to her baby boy as he plays his games at Bryant-Denny Stadium. To Najee, a scholarship at one college football’s premier programs is just another move.

“Mom, this is what you trained me for all my life,” Najee told Tianna before leaving. “To be independent and handle my own business and that’s what I’m ready to do.”

It’s why he works out three times a day during the season. It’s why he played his senior year with a partially torn meniscus. It’s why, even after 7,948 yards rushing in high school and every award possible, he still says of himself: “I’m not good at running back.”

It’s why, at the Army Bowl in San Antonio, he asked his offensive coordinator for the playbook at 10 p.m. on the night he arrived in the city (late because he missed his plane) and stayed up until 2 a.m. studying it for a game that doesn’t even matter.

It’s why that little kid who shared a barebones Christmas with strangers plays video games with children from the block. It’s why he checks in weekly on a high school classmate who contemplated suicide.

Najee, the fast-talking, linebacker-evading, curse-word spewing enigma, is everything his 18 years have shaped him to be.

“I don’t look back,” Najee said. “I just keep going.”