West Kaul Avenue

Of Heros and Horses and Six-pointed Stars

Editor's Note: Far from Milwaukee's inner city, the Kaul Ave. neighborhood is a small pocket of poverty tucked among the suburbanlike stretches of Milwaukee's northwest side.

Last spring, after four people were slain in that area, we wondered what caused such violence in a part of the city not widely known for it.

Journal Sentinel reporter Crocker Stephenson and photographer Gary Porter rented an apartment near the heart of the neighborhood, and Stephenson spent more than a month getting to know the people there.

What they found was a tight-knit community, poor but resilient, with heroes and villains and a fine line between the two.

This is the first of three stories. The names of some of the characters have been changed, at their request, to protect their identities.

A 12-year-old girl sits on a flight of green-carpeted steps just inside the doorway of a worn-out building. She rests her chin on her knees, watching an early morning rain pour down on the street outside.

She has black beads woven into her braided black hair. Her eyes are dark and sullen.

The rain sweetens the air, but the lightless hallway in which the child sits is stuffy and sour. Beads of sweat collect above her lips. Her skin glows in the shadows.

"Ain't nothing to do but sit in the hallway till it stop," she says. "Nothing to do till it stop."

Early last May, in the space of less than a week, four people were shot to death in and around a small residential neighborhood just north of Silver Spring Drive.

In one incident, two men simply blew each other away during an argument over money. In another, a woman executed her sleeping lover because, she later told police, he had given cigarettes to her young son.

But it would be the death of one man, a 24-year-old drug dealer everybody knew as Silk, that would haunt the neighborhood for the rest of summer.

Rufus Lamont "Silk" Cassel was shot May 6 in the 5900 block of N. 63rd St., near the heart of an area sometimes referred to as the Kaul Ave. neighborhood: eight blocks bordered on the north by W. Kaul, on the south by W. Bobolink, on the east and the west by N. 60th and 64th streets.

One hundred thirty-eight buildings, 420 housing units and 1,028 bedrooms, it is as close to affluent Mequon and to spacious Menomonee Falls as it is to King Drive.

This is a portrait of that neighborhood and of some of the forces that over the summer of 1996 shaped the hearts and minds of the 1,289 people who live there.

In the months that followed Silk's death, neighborhood kids began wearing T-shirts with a color photograph of Silk reproduced on the back with the slogan: "R.I.P. SILK."

In the photograph, Silk is thin and handsome. His long hair is combed back. His beard trimmed to a mere shadow. His head tilts slightly to right, as it does in many of the photos that fill his mother's albums. He looks directly into the camera but doesn't quite smile.

He is wearing a gold necklace and a pendant: a two-inch crucifix affixed to an anchor and the wheel of a sailing ship.

It was among Silk's favorite pieces of jewelry. He would be wearing it the night he was shot. Afterward, his mother would take the necklace to a jeweler and have it cleaned, and it would hang around his neck at his wake.

Over the course of the summer, Computer Portraits in Capitol Court mall would sell about 100 T-shirts with Silk's picture on the back, as well as 8-by-10 portraits of Silk, and key rings with Silk's picture on them.

"I'm just letting myself know that's he's in a better place," says a 14-year-old girl wearing a Silk T-shirt. "That he's up there looking down on us, protecting Six Trey."

Six Trey is the nickname Silk gave to the stretch of 63rd between Kaul and Bobolink. Memorials to him are painted on the sidewalks up and down the street.

Most just say R.I.P. SILK and are decorated with the number 6, or a pitchfork, or a six-pointed star, symbols of the Gangster Disciples.

On the back of Hassie Branson's right hand, in the fleshy area between her thumb and index finger, is a tattoo: a six-pointed star and the numbers 7 and 4.

The numbers are code, one that has become well-known on the streets, and correspond to letters in the alphabet. Seven represents "G" and four represent "D." Gangster Disciples.

Like most of her tattoos -- Hassie has perhaps eight, including a tiny heart-shaped tear beneath her right eye -- this one is self-inflicted, accomplished years ago with a sewing needle wound with thread and dipped in indigo-colored ink.

Hassie slips the hand beneath the head of her infant son, Benji, and lifts the child from his crib. Ill almost since birth, Benji has already spent a week in the hospital. Though 3 months old, he weighs less than 10 pounds.

"Hello, Benji," Hassie coos. "Hello, Benji."

Hassie, who is 24, and her husband, Bernie, who is 26, live in a two-bedroom apartment in the 6200 block of West Kaul. They have five other children besides Benji -- Bernie Jr., Pooh Bear, Cortez, Mike and Latasha. All are under the age of 7.

It is midafternoon, and the heat is stifling. Hassie hands Benji to Bernie, then marches her five oldest into the bathroom. She fills the tub with cold water, and the five climb in, squealing with delight.

Once in a while, a child escapes from the bathroom to go racing through the living room, slick as a seal and dripping wet. Bernie Sr. shakes his head and smiles.

"A bigger place is what I need," he says.

Nearly half of the people who live in the Kaul Ave. neighborhood are under the age of 18.

Here, neighborhood news circulates in a plasma of children's gossip. What reaches adults is often spiked with the distortions of a child's world view.

Adults who didn't know Silk had at least heard of him from their kids, and what they heard, if they didn't think about it too deeply, sounded generous, even heroic.

Kids idolized Silk, and not merely for his car, his clothes, his guns and his jewelry -- all of which they noted and discussed -- but also because, in an area troubled by gangs, violence and drugs, Silk appeared to be fearless and decent.

Silk looked out for them. He bought them ice cream, broke up their fights, retrieved stolen bicycles, grabbed young troublemakers by the hand and brought them home to their mothers and grandmothers.

He knew their names, carried them around on his back, asked them how they were doing in school.

Silk had lived in the neighborhood as a boy and had moved back during the early stages of his career. Neighborhood kids had watched him emerge from a skinny teenager forced by his mother to wear itchy silk shirts -- the source of his nickname -- into a likable young man who in their dangerous world commanded authority and respect.

"Silk was a gangster," says 9-year-old Mercedes Lewis, who is sitting in the shade of a maple tree at the corner of 63rd and Kaul.

The corner is considered a safe haven for neighborhood kids, who congregate there in the late afternoons waiting for Norm Jewell, a 28-year-old maintenance worker at Kohl's Food Stores, to come home from work.

Norm has lived on W. Kaul for 2 1/2 years. In exchange for a reduction in his rent, he manages his building and the one next door. Norm shares his apartment with two cats -- Aries and Gemini -- and the pieces of a hundred broken bicycles he has collected over the years. On summer evenings, Norm sits on the stoop outside his apartment and uses the pieces to fix broken bikes. Kids bring him their flattened tires, bent rims, broken chains and floppy seats. They know Norm will fix them.

If there's nothing to fix, they'll just sit and talk or Norm will take them riding. People in the neighborhood call the corner "Camp Norm."

It's almost 1 p.m. Mercedes and a couple of his friends have been sitting on the corner waiting for Norm since noon. Norm had promised to take them to the State Fair that afternoon.

While they wait, they discuss, among other things, Silk, whom Mercedesadmired.

"I didn't like him because he was a gangster," Mercedes says. "I liked him because he played with me."

The conversation drifts to the night Silk was shot.

It was just after 7 p.m. Mercedes and a half-dozen friends were playing outside when the gunfire erupted, and they all sprinted into Mercedes' apartment. There they waited, crouched away from the windows, listening first to the terrible moment of silence that seems always to follow a shooting, then to the shouts of frantic parents looking for their children, then to the wail of police sirens and ambulances.

News that it had been Silk who had been shot spread through the neighborhood quickly. After a while, the kids left Mercedes' apartment to check in with their parents and to see what had happened. Mercedes, who had known Silk for years, stayed inside.

"I didn't want to go see nobody shot," he says. The thought he could someday be shot occurs to Mercedes on a regular basis. It leaves his stomach churning.

"I think about that a lot," he says. "I don't think about it every night. I just think about it when it happens."

As Mercedes and his friends talk, a silver Mercedes Benz stops at the corner. Its windows are rolled down and rap music is blasting from its speakers. Four people get out and disappear in the doorway of a worn-out building. The kids get up and move closer to Norm's stoop. The Mercedes drives away. Moments later, a battered white van pulls up. The vehicle is 12 yearsold and has 125,000 miles on it. The door swings open, and out steps Norm.

"You guys ready to go?" he asks.

Since the beginning of the summer, the Bransons have been trying to put together enough resources to move. The size of their apartment is only a part of their worries.

There are 15 apartment buildings on the north side of Kaul Ave. between 60th and 64th. All but one was built in the same year -- 1962 -- and 11, including the Bransons' building, are identical models: two apartments on the first, two on the second, a slab of concrete outside the first floor units and narrow balconies along the second floor.

The buildings stand shoulder to shoulder in a line unbroken except by a vacant lot just west of the Bransons' building and by narrow driveways that run between the buildings to a single vast and often litter strewn parking lot in the back. The parking lot is considered dangerous. Almost no one leaves a working car there.

None of the buildings has a back door, and on warm days, life inside is driven onto the sidewalk out front, where it unfolds in a chaotic din of playing children, transient hustlers, domestic disputes and ice cream trucks.

Police and neighborhood residents alike call the strip of buildings on the north side of Kaul "Shooters Row," and at first glance, they form an intimidating squall line of blight.

In fact, the quality of the buildings varies greatly and depends largely on who owns them and how they are managed.

The Bransons, who pay $425 a month in rent, live in one of the most wretched.

Their building is infested with mice and cockroaches. The front door has been kicked in so often it no longer stays shut. The roof leaks, and a rust-colored strip of pocky plaster runs the length of the Bransons' living room ceiling. On rainy days, the Bransons put out buckets to collect the dripping water.

Only one window opens. It doesn't have a screen. Nor does the door that leads from the living room to the balcony. Doors have holes, walls have holes, windows have holes. The stove, when it works, catches on fire. The Bransons must bring their food to a neighbor's kitchen to cook.

The sharp scent of marijuana smoke drifts through the Bransons' open window. It is commonly believed by those who live in the building that the people who occupy one of the apartments on the first floor are selling drugs.

When Bernie talks about them, he moves away from the windows. He lowers his voice to nearly a whisper.

The other day, as Bernie was standing in the building's front yard, a man from that apartment came out and told Bernie to go back inside.

"He told me, 'This is our building now. We don't want to see you out here no more.' "

Bernie is 6 feet, 4 inches tall. He weighs 240 pounds. He went back into his apartment and told his wife, "It's time for us to move."

By the time he's ready to leave for the fair, Norm has eight kids, rather than just the three he had planned on, waiting to come along. Norm, saving up to buy a home, has just sold his car for $725. He will use some of the money to take them all.

"If I were to die, I bet you wouldn't see kids walking around here with my picture on the back of their shirts," he says. "I really don't care.

"Three, four, five years from now, each and every one of these kids around here is going to have to make a decision. They're going to have to decide what direction to go in their lives. Someone is going to become the next Silk. Someone is going to become the next kid that shoots Silk. Some are going to decide to do the right thing.

"That's when what I do is going to matter. When some kid decides to do the right thing."

Norm buys the kids lunch. Takes them to the pig races. Takes them on the giant slide. Challenges them all to milk a cow.

It's almost dark before they get home, tired and happy. Especially Silk's 9-year-old cousin, Jonathan. He has seen and patted the embodiment of his dreams: horses.

"They was so big, I could have stuck my head in their noses," he says.

"You ever see 'Black Beauty' -- the movie 'Black Beauty'? I wish I had me a horse like that," he says. "I'd keep him in my back yard. I'd be riding it all the time."

"You ain't even got a back yard," one of the kids says.

Jonathan considers this fact, then says, "That's why I'd move. I'd move to someplace nice, somewheres where there's a lot of grass."

Baby in a Broken Room, Flowers in a Vacant Lot

Editor's Note: Last spring, in the space of less than a week, four people were shot to death in and around a small residential neighborhood a few blocks north of W. Silver Spring Drive and just west of N. 60th St.

Curious about what was causing such violence in a part of the city not widely known for it, Journal Sentinel reporter Crocker Stephenson and photographer Gary Porter rented an apartment in the Kaul Ave. neighborhood. Stephenson spent a month getting to know the people there.

This is the second of three stories that together create a portrait of that neighborhood. The names of some of the characters have been changed, at their request, to protect their identities.

In Part I, we met -- posthumously -- Rufus Lamont "Silk" Cassel, a drug dealer who was shot to death in May. He was idolized by neighborhood kids, and his death would haunt the area for the rest of the summer.

We also met Norm Jewell, a maintenance worker who in his spare time is helping the kids who live around Kaul find their way safely to adulthood.

And we met Hassie and Bernie Branson. Desperately poor and living inwretched conditions, they have six children, all younger than 7. They have resolved to move away from Kaul.

Over the course of the summer, the story of how Rufus Lamont "Silk" Cassel was shot evolved into legend around the Kaul Ave. neighborhood.

Some said Silk was unarmed and shot by two men attempting to rob back the money he had won off them playing craps. Others said Silk had been trying to break up a fight between the gamblers. Still others said Silk had stepped in front of a gun and had taken a bullet for a friend.

Police reports, court documents and testimony presented at various hearings tell a different tale:

A dice game had been going on for hours in the 5900 block of N. 63rd. While there had been several participants, the two key players had been Silk's friend, a convicted drug dealer named Lamar "Peanut" Walton, and an 18-year-old people called Dada.

Thousands of dollars had exchanged hands, most of it ending up in Dada's pocket. Dada was up by more than $4,000 when police arrived on the scene and the participants scattered.

It would have been difficult at best -- and dangerous, to say the least -- for Dada to have walked away from the game holding so much of Peanut's money. The arrival of the police must have seemed to Dada yet another stroke of luck.

His luck, however, was about to change.

Dada had been forced to leave his car behind. He returned to retrieve it, accompanied by his younger brother. The boy later told authorities that someone handed him a gun and warned that there could be trouble.

There was. Dada's car was blocked. Peanut and Silk were waiting.

Witnesses told police that while Silk held the brother at gunpoint, Peanut, also armed, forced Dada to the ground. Peanut began rummaging through Dada's pockets. A witness told police that Dada was on his stomach, his hands lifted in the air.

"I'm not going to move," he told Peanut.

Peanut found the money. Anything could have happened next. What police said happened was this: Dada's brother -- not two months past his 16th birthday, a tall, angular kid with a thin wispy mustache, a schoolboy who lived at home with his mother -- pulled out a gun and put an end to his childhood.

He shot Silk through the chest.

Witnesses reported hearing as many as 30 shots, although no one butSilk was injured. Norm Jewell, at home a block and a half away, went to his window. He had mistaken the thump-thump-thump of gunfire for kids banging on his door.

It's 6 p.m. when a handful of people begin to gather in a vacant lot in the 6200 block of W. Kaul Ave. for the monthly Kaul Area Neighborhood Development Organization meeting.

A few feet from the sidewalk, a table has been fashioned out of two sawhorses and a sheet of plywood. Laid out on the table are 10 flats of leggy flowers left over from the city's spring planting. Cannas, marigolds, geraniums, coleus and petunias. They give off a vaguely electric scent in the lingering afternoon heat.

The meeting is called to order by Bob Stein, a landlord who founded the group three years ago in an effort to protect his investments by organizing the neighborhood against drugs and crime, and to put pressure on both the city and unresponsive landlords to clean up troubled properties.

Stein's message is simple.

"You can't be afraid of your tenants. Neighbors can't be afraid of their neighbors," he says. "It's the fear, as opposed to the reality, that kills people, that hurts them."

On hand are representatives from various city agencies, including the police department, Department of Building Inspection, Department of City Development and Ald. Don Richards.

The group discusses various abatement efforts, trouble with tenants and with landlords, services available from city agencies, plans for future meetings. Among the literature distributed are the watch diaries of a private security force hired by KANDO to patrol the neighborhood at night.

One of the diaries, dated May 22 and written with a scrawling hand, reads:

"8:40 (p.m.) I had a guy off of the porch of 6228 (W. Kaul) tell me he's thinking of getting rid of some of the security guards.

"He had a gun in his hand and told me he wasn't going to shoot me but another one of our guards. I told him thank you sir for not shooting me as he left."

"Our neighborhood is becoming a ghetto," one of the KANDO members says. "A baby ghetto."

An unpleasant word, "ghetto," racially tinged and evoking images of entrenched poverty, cultural isolation and urban despair.

For years, we have preferred more neutral-sounding phrases, such as "inner city" and "central city," to refer to areas of severe poverty, usually black poverty. But such conditions are no longer confined to Milwaukee's geographically defined central area.

During the last generation -- and intensifying in recent years -- poor black people in Milwaukee have migrated north and west, some of them settling in the eight-block area sometimes defined as the Kaul Ave. neighborhood.

Poverty is not the norm in this part of the city. Far from it. The median household income in the city north of Silver Spring was 33% above the citywide median in the 1990 census, and only 9% of households were below the poverty line.

In the central city, poverty is well known, even expected. And there are community groups, government programs, church networks, all focused on dealing with the effects -- and sometimes the causes -- of poverty.

But poverty on the northwest side exists in isolation, in scattered pockets rather than broad regions. Here it lies north of the geographic boundaries of virtually every public and private anti-poverty program,beyond the reach of community-based and non-profit organizations, outside the awareness of many concerned citizens.

After the KANDO meeting, Stein distributes the flowers to whoever wants them.

A dozen or so plants go untaken, and Stein gives them to a group of neighborhood kids wanting to plant a small garden in the vacant lot. They attempt to dig holes with kitchen spoons and bare hands, but the soil is so compacted they can hardly scratch its surface.

Norm Jewell, who lives across the street, goes home and finds a post-hole digger. He and the kids, who beg him for a turn with the digger, gouge 12 perfectly circular holes in the hard ground.

The plants are added and their roots covered with the pebbly dirt.

"There," Norm says when they finish. "Now you've got a little garden."

In July, Hassie and Bernie Branson tell their landlord, John Bosanec, that they and their six children will move out of their building in the 6200 block of W. Kaul unless he fixes up their apartment and evicts the people they believe are selling drugs out of the apartment below.

"I ain't going to have my kids sitting around here, soaking this stuff up," Bernie says.

"I can't be living in the same building with no drug dealers. If they is dealing drugs, they got guns. Simple as that. I don't want my children being bystanders when the shooting starts."

Coupled with Bernie's fear for his family's safety is his disgust for the building they live in. Although he has repeatedly begged Bosanec to do something about the roaches, cracked windows, broken doors and leaking ceiling, things have gone from bad to worse.

The electric company has cut off service to the building's common areas, including the basement, which houses a washer and dryer. The Bransons wash their clothes in a portable machine they hook up to their kitchen sink and hang them on the balcony to dry.

The neighbor across the hall, deciding to make cookies one night, took two peanut butter jars down from her cabinets, only to find the lids had been chewed off by mice and their contents devoured.

Three-month-old Benji is still not gaining weight. A nurse visits him periodically, recommending changes in his diet. With the stove not working, Hassie has to use her neighbors' apartment's stove to warm his formula.

Benji smiles almost constantly, but his face seems withered. Asleep in his little white wicker crib, his hands pulled to his chest, he looks like a tiny old man laid out in a casket.

When Bosanec stops by to collect the month's rent, he drops off an unlabeled can of paint -- white, judging from a nail hole in the lid -- and a 17.5 ounce can of Raid Ant & Roach Killer, Country Fresh Scent.

Too little, too late. The Bransons refuse to pay him.

"I told him, 'John, I can't give you no money for a place that's not decent to live,' " Bernie says.

Residents in two of the other three units in the building join the Bransons in their rent boycott. Only the reputed drug dealers pay their rent on time.

For the Bransons, moving out will be tough.

There is little chance that they will get their security deposit back from Bosanec, and a new place will require both a security deposit and the first month's rent in advance.

School will start in August, and three of the Bransons' children will need clothes and supplies.

Most of their furniture, and some of their stored clothing, is so bug-infested that it will have to be thrown away.

Their largest source of income is Hassie, who receives $766 a month from Aid to Families with Dependent Children and $350 in food stamps.

Bernie, who was dropped down a flight of stairs when he was an infant, receives $470 a month in Social Security disability benefits. Bernie has had repeated back surgeries that have left him with a track of scars that extends from his buttocks to his neck.

"We'll figure it out somehow," Hassie says. "We sure can't stay here."

It is July 25th, and the 16-year-old boy who shot Silk, having pleaded guilty to one count of possession of a dangerous weapon by a child, appears for sentencing before Children's Court Judge Ronald S. Goldberger.

The boy tells the judge, "I apologize for what happened, and I'm kind of nervous right now. I can promise you that it will never happen again."

The boy's father, when asked if he had anything to add, says, "No. That's OK. All I can say is, this is tough on me."

The boy's mother tells the judge that her son "is a very big support. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

The judge sentences the boy to serve one year of probation and to perform 100 hours of community service.

Hassie's pal, Pinky, is over for a visit when the phone rings. It's the owner of an apartment building some 30 blocks to the east. She tells Hassie she will have a two-bedroom unit for $425 a month available near the beginning of August. She wants a security deposit but appears willing to let the Bransons move in for $700.

"Yes, yes, that'll be fine," Hassie tells the woman. "That'll be just fine."

She hangs up the phone and lets out a whoop.

"It's larger and it's better," she tells Pinky. "You walk down a big white hallway to your door. And it's clean. And bigger. Much bigger than this old place."

"This place is a slum you're living in now," Pinky tells her.

"That's right. It is. This (new) place has no roaches. I didn't see no roaches all the time I was there."

Hassie lifts Benji from his crib and holds him so that his feet just touch the top of the kitchen table. She sways him back and forth, so that it appears he's doing a little dance.

"Hear what I'm saying, Benji? We are moving to someplace else."

On the same day Dada's brother is sentenced in Children's Court, narcotics officers search an apartment in the building next door to the Bransons.

They seize one $50 bill, 33 $20 bills, 27 tens, 80 fives and 31 ones from the pockets of two residents. From the apartment itself, they remove, among other things, six crack pipes, a shoulder holster, 15 unfired shotgun shells, two scanners, a pager, boxes of sandwich bags, a test tube, a mirror and razor blade.

August 1st. Moving day for Hassie and Bernie Branson.

Hassie's sister and Bernie's cousin are over first thing in the morning to help them pack. Clothes, pots and pans, toys and keepsakes are placed in plastic bags. Bernie drains the water bed, takes the frame apart. The kids' bunk beds are dismantled. What is broken or infested is thrown out or given away.

By midafternoon, the apartment is in chaos. Everything is ready to go. But something is changed.

A few days before, Hassie and Bernie were beside themselves with optimism and hope. Now, Hassie sits at the kitchen table and opens a beer. She yells at her children for the slightest infractions. Bernie says almost nothing, then goes outside and works on his car, a 1981 Pontiac he bought from an uncle for $25.

"I don't know what's going to happen," Bernie says vaguely.

Night comes and passes. In the morning, the Bransons are still there.

What We Hold in Our Hands

Editor's Note: Last spring, in the space of less than a week, four people were shot to death in and around a small residential neighborhood a few blocks north of W. Silver Spring Drive and just west of N. 60th St.

Curious about what was causing such violence in a part of the city not widely known for it, Journal Sentinel reporter Crocker Stephenson and photographer Gary Porter rented an apartment in the Kaul Ave. neighborhood. Stephenson spent a month getting to know the people there.

This is the last of three stories that together create a portrait of that neighborhood. The names of some of the characters have been changed, at their request, to protect their identities.

In Parts I and II, we met Rufus Lamont "Silk" Cassel, a drug dealerwho was shot in May. Lionized by neighborhood kids, Silk was shot whileholding a gun on a 16-year-old boy.

We learned about the Kaul Area Neighborhood Development Organization,a small group of residents and landlords working with city officials to stand up to the violence, drugs and decay that threaten their neighborhood.

And we have followed the Bransons - Hassie, Bernie and their sixchildren - an impoverished family struggling to move away from Kaul.

How to contact civic groups

If you want to learn about community organizations working in your neighborhood, one good way is to contact your alderman.

Milwaukee residents can reach their alderman by calling 286-2221, at City Hall. Or they can call the crime-prevention office of any of the city's seven police districts. In other communities, call your city, village or town hall, or your police department.

Another method is to ask your neighbors, especially those who areknowledgeable about what's happening in the neighborhood. The more thatneighbors are in touch with each other about community issues, the greaterthe chance of making a difference.

I am visiting with Dauna Totsky, who with husband, son, daughter, grandchild, two birds, two hamsters, one ferret and two dogs lives in the 6000 block of N. 64th St.

The ashes of a third dog rest in a beige plastic urn on the mantle in her living room. She takes down the urn and places it in my hands.

"That was a good dog," she says.

Dauna is 61 years old and has lived in the Kaul Ave. neighborhood for 34 years -- longer, probably, than anyone else. She's raised five kids in her little gray cottage, which she and her husband bought in 1962 for $24,000. In the early 1980s, the house was valued at $75,000. Today, it's assessed at $56,000.

She talks about growing up in Saukville, about pets, child rearing, flowers and cars. As the conversation drifts, I find myself admiring an antique clock that hangs on the wall near her front door.

Dauna, following my eyes, stops in mid-sentence.

"Do you see it?" she asks.

"What?" I say.

She reaches behind some decorative carvings at the top of the clockand pulls out a chrome .25-caliber handgun.

"And I keep a rifle upstairs," she says.

For the next week, Hassie and Bernie Branson continue to insist they and their six children are about to move from their tattered apartment on Kaul Ave.

But their belongings remain packed in bags and boxes and stacked around their apartment. The children take shifts staying with aunts and uncles, while Hassie and Bernie sleep on a mattress they drag out each night and unfold on the floor in their living room.

One day, Hassie asks me if I want to go see their new place.

We drive over to the building, about 30 blocks to the east. Hassie goes in to talk to the owner, while Bernie waits in the car. The street is lined with trees. There's a church school, and a playground beside it. Pretty houses sit on neatly kept lawns, decorated with flowers.

"This is a nice area," Bernie says. "It's a nice area, you can tell."

When Hassie comes back to the car, she has good news. The apartment is still available, and the owner is willing to prorate her rent.

I ask them why they haven't yet made the move.

"We don't have the money," Hassie says.

"Why?" I ask. "What happened?"

"We don't have the money."

It's Bernie who tells me what's going on.

A couple of days before they were to move, Hassie's stepfather had aheart attack. The next day, he suffered three strokes. The Bransons hadbeen counting on Hassie's mother to help them buy school supplies. Instead, Hassie ended up sending her mother $400.

Last night, Bernie says, Hassie drove down to Illinois to visit her mother and stepfather. He had been unable to speak, though he was able to squeeze Hassie's hand. Hassie sat with him for hours.

Afterward, Hassie's mother told her she didn't know when she would beable to pay the Bransons back.

For the second month in a row, the Bransons refuse to pay rent on their Kaul Ave. apartment. They figure that if they can hold out untilHassie's next round of checks comes in the mail, they'll have enough tomove with by the end of the month.

When the Bransons get home, they find their phone has been disconnected.

To prepare this series of stories about the Kaul Ave. neighborhood, the Journal Sentinel rented an apartment to use as an office at the corner of N. 63rd St. and W. Florist Ave., a block south of Kaul Ave. and about 100 yards from where Rufus Lamont "Silk" Cassel was killed.

The day after we moved in, a 20-year-old man, Danny Conner, was sentenced to life in prison. He would not be eligible for parole until five days before his 86th birthday.

Conner ran a drug house in the central city. He was convicted of persuading a 13-year-old girl who worked in the drug house to murder Ameritech worker Albert Thompson. Conner thought Thompson, who was sitting in an Ameritech service van when the girl tapped on the window and then shot him in the head, was an undercover police officer.

During my first few weeks in the neighborhood, one of the most common questions people asked me when I told them I was a reporter was, "Aren't you afraid people are going to think you're a cop?"

"One week, everything is going pretty good," Bernie says. "The next week, everything is caving in.

"I get so much pressure on me -- I be sitting on the couch late into the night. Thinking. Figuring things out. I be thinking good things, too. Like if I had a lot of money, how I'd build a park, or playground or campground. I used to think those same thoughts a lot when I was a boy.

"My dreams ain't never come true. It seems every time I seem to be getting my life together, something pulls me down. They say you got to crawl before you can walk. Well, I've been crawling for a long time. I just want to know when I'm going to be walking again."

Bernie digs through a plastic container, then shows me a Polaroid photograph taken of him on his wedding day. He is wearing a white tuxedo.

"I looked pretty good on that day," he says.

I ask Bernie where he thinks he'll be 10 years from now, what his plans are for Hassie and their children. He shakes his head and smiles.

"It ain't promised that 10 years from now I'm going to be living," he says. "Time ain't promised to nobody. It's you just out here living until He say it's time to go."

It's a perfect late August afternoon. Bright. Clear. Cool.

A dozen rows of folding chairs are set up on the grass beside Silk's grave at Valhalla Memorial Park.

Silk's mother, Shirley Harris, has invited family and friends to a graveside service to dedicate Silk's headstone. It's a slab of emeraldblack granite, imported from Norway, with gold inlay.

A picture of Silk, wearing his favorite gold chain and pendant, is engraved on the stone. Beneath the picture are the words "My Caring and Sharing Child." The stone is decorated with flowers, their blossoms stained blue -- the color of the Gangster Disciples.

Cars choke the cemetery roads that lead to the grave. Family and friends fill almost every chair. Fifteen or so young men -- most wearing Gangster colors and symbols -- stand away from the group, amassed in the shade of a nearby tree.

There are prayers and poetry and gospel singing. Then Faith Cross-Orr, a cousin of Silk's from Des Moines, Iowa, steps up to the podium. She is a small woman, dressed plainly, fighting back tears and shaking with rage. She directs her remarks to the men standing beneath the tree.

"You can throw down your beer and your liquor here," she says. "Whatever may happen, whatever you may do, you can't bring him back.

"You came to his funeral, you come here today, in a show of support and respect. But where were you when he was killed? Where were you then? You are so fond of saying, 'I've got your back.' But I am interested in the man who can stand out front."

More poetry, more prayers, more songs. At the end of the service, the men who stood beneath the tree gather in a circle around Silk's grave. They pour one bottle after another of Hennessy cognac -- Silk's favorite drink -- onto the grass. Then, raising their right hands abovetheir heads, offer a Gangster salute: a pitchfork formed with thumb andtwo fingers.

Most leave the grave still clutching the programs they were handed whenthey arrived. On the back, the program says:

"We hold in our hands the power to lift each other up to new heights of humanity -- or to let go, plunging mankind into an abyss of destruction. The choice is ours to make."

Norm Jewell is wearing a light blue work shirt and a shiny pair of dark blue pants. There's a blowtorch on his kitchen counter beside the sink. There's a sander on the arm of his couch. The steps leading to the basement of his Kaul Ave. apartment are paved with tools.

It's the end of a long day. The neighborhood kids who hang around his place have gone home. Norm has fixed their bikes. Shown a few how to toss a football. Quizzed a few others on geography.

Now he sits on a chair in his living room, juts out his chin and gives his goatee a thorough scratching, then drops his hands to his side.

Norm grew up in the Sherman Park neighborhood, lived in the same house for 20 years. He can still tick off the names of every person who lived in every house on his block. Some, including his parents, still live there.

He could too, he supposes, if he wanted to. But his home, for now at least, is here on Kaul. It's not just where he lives, but it's where he's made a life. He knows how important he's become to the kids who live around him, and he cherishes that, just as he cherishes the memory of Tiny, Iggy and Mike -- three guys in his old neighborhood who took the time to make a difference in his life.

"To this day, I can remember Tiny coming over to the house, asking me if I wanted to play a game of hoops. He was having a lot of fun. And he was making an impact on my life.

"The impact was that I felt important. I felt important. That's all. I felt important. That day was Norm Jewell day, as far as Tiny was concerned. I went to bed that night thinking, 'This was my day.'

"To show a kid how to throw a ball properly, that's just a small thing, but it matters so much to a kid. And kids remember. If you give a kid the sense that this is their day, that they matter, that they are special, that stays with them. They go to school the next day holding their heads up a little higher."

The Bransons' landlord -- John Bosanec -- agrees to meet me at a McDonald's near Kaul Ave.

"Aren't you going to pay for my drink?" he asks when he arrives.

"You can buy your own," I tell him.

We sit down.

In 1993, the state Department of Justice sued Bosanec, alleging unfair rental practices at his two Kaul Ave. properties and at a third property on N. 39th St.

The suit alleged that Bosanec, who lives in Colgate in Washington County, accepted deposits from prospective tenants, then rejected their rental applications without returning their money.

It also alleged that he rented apartments without telling tenants about almost 100 uncorrected housing code violations and that he promisedto make repairs but never made them.

The lawsuit would be old news -- Bosanec eventually agreed to pay $5,000 in civil forfeitures and was ordered to refund $700 in securitydeposits -- except that a description of the properties contained in thesuit could have been written that afternoon.

Roaches. Cracked windows. Broken appliances. Non-fitting door jambs.Water leaks. Peeling paint.

It's not his fault, Bosanec says.

To run those buildings on Kaul Ave., he says, "you have to be a bigot."

"Those people are animals," he says. "You have to train them where to(defecate), where to eat, how to clean up their slop."

As he leaves the restaurant, Bosanec tells me, "Next time we meet, you pay for my drink."

Two days later, police search the common areas of the Bransons' building, but find nothing. An hour or so after they leave, Bosanec arrives.

I arrive at the building a few moments after he leaves.

A small group of residents is gathered at the front door. They confront me as I try to go in. Bosanec, they say, had just told them I am a police informant. I try to tell them I'm not, but not everyone appears convinced.

"You aren't going to be afraid to come back, are you?" Hassie asks as I walk toward my car.

"No," I say.

But I am.

I have been back to Kaul Ave. only a couple of times since that day. People who once opened their homes and their confidences to me now greet me with distrust and suspicion. I make them uneasy. I am no longer welcomed.

I think about what KANDO's Bob Stein said, that "it's the fear, as opposed to the reality, that kills people." It has, for me, become both a rebuke and a warning.

Hassie calls me once in a while on a borrowed phone to let me know how she and her family are doing. One morning, after gunfire erupted in the apartment below her, she called to ask that I not use her real name or the names of the people in her family. I agreed.

Near the end of August, the Bransons -- now $850 behind in rent -- are ordered to appear in small claims court to answer an eviction complaint filed by Bosanec. Although they have cobbled together enough money to secure the apartment 30 blocks east, Hassie decides to go to court anyway and contest the eviction.

"He (Bosanec) has no right to one single dime for that place," she says.

She arrives at court without a lawyer, but with a new, self-inflicted tattoo on the calf of her right leg. It says, "Thug."

The hearing lasts just a couple of minutes. She's asked two questions: How many people live in the apartment? Can they be out within a week?

"They don't let you say nothing," she says later. "I was going to tellthem how the roaches is, the mice is, the holes in the wall. I was fixingto talk, but they just stamped the paper and cut me off."

Hassie sits on a wooden bench outside the courtroom. After a few moments,she says, "That's OK. I came to court to show him I'm not scared."

Norm, engaged to an elementary school teacher, is considering remainingin the neighborhood -- for a while, anyway -- once he gets married. His fiancee, he says, seems willing to give it a try.

Silk's friend, Peanut, is awaiting trial in connection with the shooting. Charged with being party to the crime of armed robbery and possession of firearm by a felon, he is free on $10,000 bail.

Stein and members of KANDO continue to work with the city to improve the neighborhood. Among their next projects: implementing a plan developed by the city that would use fences to break up the parking lot and distinguish the properties along Kaul Ave.

The city has filed foreclosure actions against Bosanec on the two buildings he owns on Kaul. Two years delinquent on his taxes, Bosanec owes the city $10,446 on the Bransons' building and $9,612 on the building next door.

The garden that Norm and the kids had planted in the vacant lot onKaul struggled for a while, then died. It wasn't that it was trampled and it wasn't that it was neglected. It's just that the soil was too rough to sustain it. It never took root.

The world is vast and full of contradictions. Even a small piece of it, a piece as small as eight city blocks, can be difficult to grasp, and it is tempting to attach too much meaning to a single event, good or evil, great or small.

Silk's death, the death of a garden, a girl confined by rain to the lightless hallway of a shabby building. KANDO, Norm's playground, the Bransons' struggle to find a decent place to live.

No one thing can stand for the whole.

A block from the withered garden, Bob Stein bends down to collect the pieces of a broken bottle shattered against a curb and drops them in a recycling bin nearby.

It's a small deed, but like all the others, both hidden and revealed, it matters.