Partners

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Tee Ray and his son lived on the back porch of an old shotgun house, one in a long row of identical houses packed along Irvine Street in a section of town known, both affectionately and derisively, as Little Angola. The house was owned by a bruiser called Thick, or Mr. Thick as he preferred, and he really didn’t want anyone living on his back porch, regardless of the paltry rent they paid. The rooms inside were rented too, for a few bucks here and there, to people so poor that Tee Ray and Jameel were at times thankful they lived outside. But winter was coming, and Tee Ray knew they had to move on. They had scratched out an existence on Mr. Thick’s sagging boards for two months, each day vowing to find another place.

But Tee Ray wasn’t working. He had been laid off from his job delivering seafood to high-end restaurants out in the suburbs. Another job had fallen through. Jobs were scarce in Little Angola. He was thirty-three, and according to the newspaper half the black men his age or younger were unemployed. Eventually, most drifted into drug trafficking. From there, they went either to prison or to the cemetery. Tee Ray was determined to avoid both. His life revolved around Jameel, who had just turned fourteen and was headed for the streets. Headed? He was already on the streets, and if they didn’t find a more stable place to live, the boy wouldn’t have a chance. His mother left him years ago; not that it mattered. She and Tee Ray had not bothered with anything close to marriage, and when the kid was four she disappeared.

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