The door to the meat market flew open. A gust of wind from the cold Chicago streets blew the papers from the counter to the floor. I hurried in following a customer, slamming the door behind me. Alabama, the middle-aged owner of the meat market, sticks his head out from the back of the store.

          “Don’t be slamming no damn doors round here boy!” he barked, ducking back to the rear of the store. The shop was an old storefront, once a pet shop. An old German couple owned it first. Sold it when the colored’s moved on the block. It was small, the ceiling leaked, the basement flooded when it rained too hard, and the place reeked of stale fish, a scent that Alabama never could get rid of. He didn't give a damn. It flooded, was over priced and stunk on hot days but it was his.

          “Sorry about that!” I yelled back. I gathered the papers from the floor, caught sight of my reflection in a mirror above the counter. A five-foot, ten-inch, one hundred sixty-five pound man with skin the color of bronze, his hair in a low cut with a thin part up the middle. I put on my apron and stepped behind the counter.

          “Good morning. What can I get for you?” I asked the portly, dark-skinned woman I had followed into the shop. She reminded me of an old slave mammy.

          “A dollars worth of luncheon meat and two dollars worth of hog head cheese,” the woman replied.

            I wrapped the meat in butcher paper. “Is that all?” 

The woman flashed a toothless smile. “Yes put that on my bill.”

            I placed the two items into a paper bag and handed it to her.

 "Thank you," she said and out the door she went. ....Alabama.... joined me chewing on a cigar.

          “I got bad news son!”

          “What is it, old man?”

          “I got to let you go. I fell behind a few months on the mortgage and the bank is foreclosing on the place.”

          “You owe a lot?”

          “I owe enough.”

          “Ain't nobody you can borrow from?”

            Alabama.... begins laughing. “Why don’t I ask my rich uncle?” he replied in a half joking half-sarcastic tone.

          “Why don’t you borrow the money from Jack Black? He always loaning colored folk money for businesses and such.”

          “Don’t you start with that shit again you know I don’t tolerate no devilment!”

          “It ain't like you doing no gambling. Ain't no different than going down to one of them white folks banks.”

          “First they give you a loan, and everything sweeter than a Mississippi sissy eating sugar cane, next thing you know they running numbers up out of here. It ain't no more Alabama Meat Market it’s another Jack Black policy station!”

          “I don’t see the problem – ain't that the same thing the banks done did?” 

          “But the banks ain't forcing me to go against my morals.”

          “Nah they threatening your livelihood.”

          “That may be so, but there comes a point in every man’s life when it comes down to that one decision. That one decision that will alter that man’s life and the lives of the ones he loves. Right at that moment in time you have to decide what kind of man you are. The one who accepts things the way they are – or the man who stands up for what he believes in and dies for what he believes in, if that be the case. What kind of man are you going be?”

          I stared back through cold, unflinching eyes. Spoke in almost a whisper.

          “I’m going be a problem!”

                                                           ***