The good people—and there were many—often walked those paths with the others, but the good people always ended up at different destinations.

Charlie Mann knew North Philly’s paths. He’d seen the harm that came to those who walked them with bad intentions, and he’d reaped the rewards that came to those who overcame the obstacles. It was precisely this perspective that allowed him to see the neighborhood for what it was.

When he reached the end of the dirt path and approached one of the many pockets of new development spurred by former Mayor John Street’s Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, he thought of the complaints he’d heard from those who couldn’t understand the need to revitalize poor neighborhoods and allow the poor to stay.

Mann understood, though. He understood that the worst consequence of poverty was never seeing one’s name on a title, that using Laundromats cost three times the amount of owning a washer and dryer, that the threat of eviction could drive a man to the corner that would orphan his son. Charlie Mann understood because he had lived it.

He reached Ninteenth and Montgomery Avenue and walked up to an old house with a crooked screen door and peeling paint. Before he could knock, a man came to the door wearing a tattered robe and a grin. Half of his hair was cornrowed. The other half was standing on end, waiting for his niece’s nimble fingers to finish the job.

“Charlie Mack!” his old friend said, calling him by the nickname that he’d given him as a boy.

“Wussup, Lighty?” Mann said, his face creasing in a genuine smile as he reached for a handshake with one hand and hugged the man with the other.

After the greeting, Lighty stood aside and opened the door so Mann could come in. He directed him to a chair and limped to a couch on the other side of his sparsely furnished living room. It was starting to get cloudy, and the humidity was bothering the nub that remained after he lost his lower left leg to Gulf War shrapnel.

“I heard about what happened at the church on Sixteenth Street,” Lighty said, sitting down with a heavy sigh. “That better be the reason you called me at six in the mornin’.”

“My fault,” Mann said, slipping easily into the language that he’d grown up speaking. “I ain’t mean to call you this early.”

“You damn right it’s your fault. If I ain’t know your mom I woulda slammed that door right in your face.”

“Your door don’t slam, Lighty,” Mann said, pulling down his hood with a sideways grin. “It’s barely on the hinges.”

“Don’t get smart wit’ me! I’ll still do ya.”