During a blizzard.

Dressed up I think for the Women's World Cup.

2010 picture.

One of the most revealing pictures of Pierre, locked on my expression during a walk in Gwynns Falls.

On the deck, photos above and below. He smashed a hole in the railing so he could go eat compost.

With Beau on right at Betty Hyatt Park.

Betty Hyatt Park in autumn.

Chillin' with "The Pack," including Casey, Olivia and Beau.

Amusing looks at the peculiarities of Demand Media Studios

Excellent look at how to create strong passwords

An appreciation of my top travel books list

The problem with 'Eat Pray Love'

Baby Boy's 21 years in the 'hood

The corner where Baby Boy met his end, the morning after.

“Pop-pop.” Pause. “Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.”

Without saying a word to each other, Lamont and I began moving. I heard him pick up the phone and report to 911, “There’s been a shooting at the corner of Pratt and Durham streets.”

I climbed cautiously to the roof deck to peer out on the corner, which was strangely empty. No pedestrians, and few parked cars, given that many Hopkins students were gone for the holidays. I looked over neighbors’ roofs to see if anyone was fleeing yet another police raid at 1811 E. Pratt. Nothing.

No sign of smoke or glitter that it could be fireworks, either. Lamont was right: The sound was louder, sharper, more human directed.

We walked together downstairs, out the front door and rounded the corner onto Pratt. Already an ambulance and numerous police cars were on the scene, and officers were beginning to tape off the crime scene.

A prone figure lay utterly still in front of Pratt Street Liquors, on the drug hot spot we’d been complaining about for years.

“It’s Baby Boy,” said Robert, a neighbor. Without thinking, I began walking toward the figure. A police officer ushered me back and began unrolling tape. Dozens of neighbors gathered on both sides of the scene.

Medics hovered over the victim. He didn’t waggle a foot or a hand, like NFL players do to signal they are OK after a bad hit. Deputy Major Bill Davis of Southeastern District came over. He confirmed it was Baby Boy. “Pretty bad,” he replied when I asked how he was doing.

“I’ve known him since he was a little boy,” I said in shock, still hoping it wasn’t him. The victim was loaded into a gurney, his face largely obscured by an oxygen mask. That smooth forehead topped by bristly black porcupine hair. My stomach lurched. It was Baby Boy, unless there somehow was another similar-looking 21-year-old Lumbee Indian kid running the streets.

Lamont stood near the ambulance, his brow knitted in concern. I walked toward him, saying to Robert as I passed him, “I loved Baby Boy.” The words just came out. Robert shrugged. “We watched him grow up. That’s why we called him Baby Boy.”

Kinlaw Craig Jones was declared dead on arrival at Johns Hopkins Hospital, around 12:30 a.m., Dec. 27, 2009.

***

James Jones, left, and Kinlaw Craig Jones, right, enjoy an ice cream on Ann Street. My 1998 photo shows Craig's open expression and crinkly-eyed grin.

Baby Boy and his brother, James, lived with their grandfather, who was said to pass the time “huffing” (sniffing) glue, at 109 S. Ann St., one block up. I asked Baby Boy his real name one day, and learned that his family called him Craig, his middle name, not Kinlaw. I called him Craig thenceforth, to keep the street a little bit at bay. His father and mother also lived in the neighborhood but did not raise him or James under their roof.

They were among 10,000 Lumbee Indians, originally from the Carolinas, who now live in East Baltimore. Kinlaw is a common Lumbee surname, along with Locklear and Jones.

Craig had gotten lead poisoning as a child, and as a result was short in stature, but still strong and clever. That combination caught my eye. I thought this kid might be able to help solve a problem.

I asked Craig the father for permission to hire Craig the son to run a new circuit to my refrigerator. The rehabbers of my house had left the fridge on the overall kitchen circuit, and it blew constantly. I couldn’t myself crawl under the heating ducts the 60 feet or so back to the crawlspace area under the far end of the kitchen. Craig looked like he was small enough to squeeze past the ducts, brave enough to essentially tunnel in dirt dating from the 1840s, smart enough to follow my instructions.

The father gave his permission. I put an old T-shirt over Craig’s clothes, sent him along with a flashlight, a trowel for digging and the end of a length of 12-gauge wire, and he delivered the wire to an area underneath the fridge, where we figured out a way to haul it through the drywall. He backed his way out and stood in the basement by the crawlspace opening with reddish Maryland clay dust in his raven hair, on his face and the T shirt.

“Stand right there,” I said, and got a broom to brush him off. He took some cash in payment and nodded when I said to ask his mother if he could keep it, having said very little, and headed off.

The house where Craig grew up, 109 S. Ann St.

After that, Craig and his sidekick, Michael Cuffey—“Fat Mike,” tackled many more house rehab projects during summer vacations. We called Fat Mike “Big Mike” to his face to spare his feelings. He was a much taller and heavier Lumbee kid, like Craig with a mother battling addiction problems, and raised by his grandmother, Miss Linda, up on the 1900 block of Pratt Street.

They tore the plaster off the central stairway and wielded a Sawzall like a light saber, wearing their dust masks. That their edumacation hadn’t made great strides was on display when asked to do anything involving reading, writing and arithmetic.

“Here’s the wood vices,” I said to Craig. “Put them away downstairs in the drawer labeled ‘vices.’” He tried his best, but couldn’t spell well enough to figure out where to put them, and came back upstairs to ask for my guidance.

“You worked six hours at $5 an hour. What do I owe you?” Neither could say.

They excelled however at a few things, including buying rap and eating. Big Mike loved DMX’s rap album “Ruff Ryders, Ryde or Die Vol. 1” and carried it over every day in an ever more tattered CD cover to play while they worked. I tried to play them some more Old School music, while they waited stoicly for DMX to reappear on the boom box. Lamont was appalled when after unrelenting exposure I broke down and bought DMX myself, with his gangsta lyrics. We changed the main line of one of the worst offending songs to “I love my shelties and but where’s my corgis?” from the original lyric involving lovely "n" and "b" words.

Craig, Mike and I went for lunch most days that summer of 1999 (gauged by the release of “Ruff Ryders”) at the McDonald’s at Highland Avenue and Pulaski Highway in Highlandtown. “Give me some fries n-----,” Craig ordered Big Mike one day. The word made me wince. They listened respectfully but as if dealing with a senile old fogey to my explanation of why the “n” word was pretty bad. It just wasn’t bad to them, the music they loved swam in the word. They humored me enough to not use it in my earshot.

Big Mike was sloppy at the work, while Craig was methodical and determined. When we finished the stairs, I gave Craig other work whenever he came by. He did a flawless job cleaning the kitchen floor. I peaked at him once as he worked, and he was focused and meticulous. Often he asked, “Miss Jeannette, will you hold my money for me?” I put it in an envelope. This is how you bank in the city, when you are small and the kids on the bus might rob you.

It was obvious that Craig, then about 11 years old, would make an excellent drug salesman, being streetwise as he was, as well as under 18 and thus not eligible for adult sentencing. “Craig, you are smart and strong, and the drug sellers will want to have you sell for them,” I said one day at the Highlandtown McDonalds. “They are using you, you will be at risk and they will get away with making money off you. If you ever need money, come to me, I’ll give you some work.”

He listened and nodded.

By this time, he was less solemn and often quite jolly as we worked together. We drove off to get supplies for another project, and got in the drivethrough at the North Avenue Taco Bell. I made up a Ruff Ryders-type rap about what we were going to order at Taco Bell, and how it would compare to McDonald’s, and Craig giggled happily and just said, “More!” He was always laconic, and sometimes unintentionally adult. “Ain’t that a mother,” he said once to my complaint about something.

Lamont took him to soccer on two occasions, and we both noted he was far more willing than the true bad-to-the-bone street kids to try new experiences.

Craig and James showed up one snowy evening to borrow our snow shovel and make money shoveling. They returned happy with a fair showing of earnings, but soaked to their knees. We gave them some of Lamont’s much too big clothes and belts to hold up his pants. While their clothes tumbled in the drier, we made them hot chocolate and hung out in the dining room. The brothers were like stray cats, they had found us and picked us, and for that night at least, they were with two adults that got along well and didn’t “use” and spoke kindly to them. After a similar visit, Craig asked to lie down for a while. After a few hours, I tried to shake him awake. Something about life exhausted him that night, and he wouldn’t wake. After a while, I just threw a blanket over him and let him stay. Somewhere in the back of my mind was whether he needed to be formally fostered, but he had a mother and father of his own, right in the neighborhood.

Craig’s grandfather, known as Mr. Bob or "Pop Pop," moved out of the neighborhood, over to Erdman Avenue. I still saw Craig in and out of the neighborhood. Granddad, a solemn, high-cheekboned, quiet and very Indian-looking man, came down with throat cancer. I delivered Craig to him one day, in a grim public housing project. He couldn’t talk. He did gesture for me to look at the baby pictures of Craig and James, framed on a shelf, with their black eyes and bristly hair looking like papooses in a tintype from an early American settlement.

Somewhere around 1999, Craig’s grandfather died, and Craig lost his tether of stability. In August 2004, he committed an armed robbery. We didn’t see him for a while while he was put away. He returned a summer or two later, much more muscled and ripped and tattoo’d. Was that Craig sitting on the parking lot barricade beside the Ann Convenience Store? I walked by with the dogs. He put his head under his T shirt, hiding from me. “Craig is that you?” No response. “Craig, I know that’s you.” He stayed under the shirt.

He was on the bookstore corner a few days later with a giant thug pal of his. “Hi Craig.” This time he kept his head unhidden. “You know what you’re like?” He looked off into space, humoring me. “A salmon, you know what that is?” Shake of the head, no. “It’s a fish that comes home to the place it was born, year after year.” He looked a bit amused.

He built his rap sheet. August 2006: drug charges. June 2007: Implicated in the notorious killing of a U.S. Marine home on leave a few blocks north of here, on the border of the Washington Hill and Butchers Hill neighborhoods.

He was out again, racking up drug charges in November 2007, July 2008 and August 2008.

The prosecutors who work with us in East Baltimore wanted a community impact statement for Baby Boy at a sentencing hearing held Oct. 21, 2009. They made a plea for input at our community association meeting in September, if memory serves, noting that they had caught him with a driving violation and gotten him back in jail on a relatively small charge. And they wanted to put him away for longer. No one ever wrote a statement for them, and I’m sure the prosecutors were very disappointed. Craig’s drug trading was far more discrete and less blatant than that of other dealers. He walked quietly in the shadows of the trees on Ann Street, to and from his deals. We wanted the more blatant, cheesy dealers put away first. In retrospect, we probably should have suggested that Butcher’s Hill take the lead on keeping him in jail; he dealt drugs in our area, and probably was our worst homegrown criminal, but he got tangled up with serious violence only off his home territory.

If he had been kept in jail, he’d likely still be alive, and have a chance at redemption.

I saw him alive the last time this past summer, as I rounded the corner of Ann and walked with Pierre up Pratt. He was on the corner of Pratt and Durham, the south side, steps away from the north side, where he would be executed later. He stood with some of the other hoodies, them sullen and vacant as ever in my presence, Craig alert and aware but relaxed. I was happy as always to see him, because of our history before his grandfather died. We exchanged smiles and a soul shake. “How you doin’,” he said, his voice and accent now thoroughly street, like his one-time muse DMX.

He was on his road to his ultimate fate. Yet it was still a horror to see his poor still body, to watch him depart with strangers in an ambulance, to read later in the paper he had been shot in the head and shot repeatedly as he lay fallen.

The Baltimore Sun reported in City surpasses '08 homicide total:

The man, identified as Kinlaw Jones, was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 12:30 a.m. Sunday, Agent Donny Moses said. Jones had a long criminal record, according to electronic court records. He was convicted of drug distribution in December 2008 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, with nine years, seven months and 21 days of that sentence suspended.
In June 2008, he was acquitted on charges of attempted first-degree murder, pleading guilty to assault and possessing a deadly weapon with intent to injure. For that conviction, he received five years in prison, with four years and about four months suspended. He was charged with violating his probation in October 2009, receiving a two-year suspended sentence.

Homicide put several of its aces on the case, including Detectives McGraff and Joseph C. Landsman, the model for Jay Landsman on "The Wire," whose findings are reported in the Baltimore Sun's Cockeysville man arrested in deadly Pratt Street shooting:

According to charging documents, witnesses identified Antonio Edwards, 26, of the 6000 block of Clovercrest Way in Cockeysville as the man who shot Kinlaw Jones in the 1800 block of E. Pratt St. Witnesses said the men were arguing when Edwards pulled out a gun and shot Jones several times, then stood over him and continued to fire, Detective Joseph C. Landsman wrote in charging documents.

So that is our story from our version of “The Corner,” where many who visit my deck -- fellow publishers, carpenters, others -- look down on Pratt and Durham and see the predictable way the trading down there is going to turn out for everyone. Even the police were appalled that he died at 21, the 235th fatality of 2009. Officer Zayas, who covers our local beat, had recently warned Baby Boy of a drug turf battle on Pratt Street and to stay a few blocks away for a while.

I agree with what Lamont wrote on my Facebook page:

“I used to take him to play soccer when he was really tiny, I mean really tiny. He was a good kid. Its disgusting to see him like that. The people who led him down that road should take a look at themselves and be ashamed, though I know they won’t.”

Kinlaw Craig Jones, Oct. 27, 1988-Dec. 27, 2009

Coach Wes and the Hampstead Hamsters

Lamont "Wes" Harvey poses with the Hampstead Hill Academy soccer team, from left: Anthony, Kameron, Zoe, Eric, Christopher and Brooke.

Had fun shooting Lamont coaching one of the local charter schools in Baltimore, Hampstead Hill Academy. The kids wanted to call their team the Hornets, but I nicknamed them the Hamsters for the heck of it. The most charming part of the dynamic, which wasn't really clear until I got home and looked at my photos, was his dealing with a young player with a lot of heart named Anthony, a third-grader who claimed he was a year older to get a chance to play.

Anthony, at right, tries to dribble against opponent Kevin in red pinney, playing for Patterson Park Charter School, while teammate Alex lunges forward.

Kevin readies one of many shots.

Kevin's got plenty of confidence to provide his view of a play counter to the coach's. "Kevin's complaints and comments were remarkably sophisticated," Lamont says. "Most were to the point and had just the right amount of justification, while being only slightly weighted towards Patterson so as to appear neutral. The picture of Kevin is an incident where he was clearly fouled, but I explained that I allowed it to play on because he still had possession and it resulted in a shot on goal. Blowing the whistle would have rewarded Hampstead by stopping the play."

One of my favorite photos ever, as Anthony (right) yowls over a Hampstead missed shot, and Alex (blue socks) and Kameron (white socks) slump dramatically. "Alex had a break away, and hit the post, just barely missing a chance to tie the game," Lamont says.

Alex challenges Kevin.

My favorite action shot, with six players trying to get in on the action.

Lamont coaches as Kameron readies a throw-in.

Lamont makes a point, lit by a lowering autumn afternoon sun.

Anthony and Alex try to hold back a rival player.

Anthony rubs his eyes in embarrassment as Wes makes an emphatic point, while Alex looks on.

Zoe tries a shot. "Hampstead's success often depended upon the willingness of the boys to use Zoe up front," Lamont says. "Though Alex and Kameron were the driving force of the 4th-5th grade team, when they included Zoe in the attack we were able to beat Wolfe and Patterson. "Anthony and Christopher were pretty fearless in their challenges. It took a bit of work to get Brooke to challenge the boys. My solution was to have Brooke take our goal kicks, this kept her involved."

After all the drama between the coach and the youngest player, remember the top photo to see Anthony's ready smile as he poses with his coach. Here it is again:

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