I prowled around in the Escape. Windows down, I listened to the empty south-side streets, insects shooting through the headlights, and when I saw maybe two dozen people gathered on an empty lot, I parked and got out. On the rubble by a broken wall, some south-siders were having a party. Laughter bounced off the nearby houses, where lights glowed behind drawn curtains. I’d already had occasion to observe the stark social division between the south side’s homeowners and the sort of vagrants at the party, even as people elsewhere in Retreat saw them all as part of one communal problem.

I recognized some faces from the ride-alongs, and they nodded at me. This wasn’t anyone’s home, and everyone was welcome. Rusted tire rims had been fashioned into grills, and a cook, his gut overflowing a tank top, barbecued some scrawny pink meat. It smelled pretty good. Whenever another piece was ready, the cook impaled it on a stick and handed it out, then tossed some scraps to one of the stray dogs lurking nearby.

“You look hungry,” he said to me. “Bring something for my barbie?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Won’t hold it against you. What’ll it be?”

“What kind of meat is it?” I asked.

“All kinds.”

He laid a carcass on the grill and the smoke took flight.

“Maybe in a little while,” I said.

At the edge of the barbecue light, a couple slow-danced to LeAnn Rimes, whose voice persevered through the fuzz of a radio. I watched them, crisp shadows on shuddering orange, her cheek flat against his chest, his nose buried in her hair. Between songs, they lazed on a blue bench seat torn from an Oldsmobile and shared a cigarette. I sat on the ground in front of them, and they introduced themselves as Lorie and Mitch. About forty, they wore matching blue jumpsuits. When Mitch heard I was a journalist, he was eager to talk about Lorie’s disability. She’d been with a maid service for almost five years, until the chemicals messed up her system. Now she got sick all the time—“the little hairs in her nose are gone”—but no one at the company would take responsibility.

“Some of the chemicals aren’t even legal,” he told me.

A stray stepped between Lorie and Mitch on the bench seat, circled a few times, then flopped down so they had to make room. Lorie French-smoked the cigarette, eyes elsewhere, as if bored by her own story.

They’d been on the south side about two years, Mitch told me. They liked it here.

“It’s not like we don’t have problems,” he added. “The other day, this fucking rat ate a hole in our tent and ate all our stuff.”

But there were a lot of people in similar situations, he said. You could get by thanks to nights like this, friends like these.