“Your grandmother passed away this morning.” Rebecca’s voice was calm as night.

“Does that mean she’s dead?”

“Yes, Horace, it does.”

“Is she in heaven?”

“Oh, yes. I believe she is.”

Ruthester let out a wretched sigh and blew her nose. Rachel looked at Rebecca, annoyed.

“I’m all right. I’m fine, really,” Ruthester said as she turned away from her sister. She stood and walked out of the room.

Rebecca did not hug him, only clutched each shoulder, squeezing him firmly, and got up following her sister. It was Rachel who took him in her arms and whispered: It’s all right, Tiger.

From that moment they had stepped into the void left by the death of Retha Cross. They cooked, they cleaned and cared for the two womenless men. Becoming, in a sense, Horace’s mother.

Now Horace stood naked and mottled in their midst, ashamed and cold, but the voice told him to walk up to the altar. He did.

The minister rose. A dark-hued, bald-headed man, he was slight of build, yet in his black suit he seemed to emit an aura, not of holiness, but of wisdom, wry and canny.

That’s Reverend Barden, Horace said. He was the last preacher we had before Jimmy.

No shit? mocked the voice. I thought it was Malcolm X.

As Barden flipped through the large Bible on the lectern, Horace stepped closer. He remembered the Right Reverend Hezekiah Barden with warmth—there had always been something overwhelmingly honest and sincere about that stalwart, though he was as firm and as direct as any hellfire-and-brimstone preacher. And he made no bones about being one.

Barden began: “Lead me, guide me . . . Along the way . . . Lord . . . if you lead me . . . I will not stray. Notice, brothers and sisters, what the songwriter said: ‘I will not . . . stray.’”

Barden turned to the choir. “That was a good selection, children. Yes, indeed.”

Together the congregation moaned, Uh-huh.

“Lead me. Guide me.” Barden took his handkerchief out of his breast pocket with a gingerly gesture, but did not wipe his face, smoothing the handkerchief out instead atop the huge book. “Now some people don’t want to be led. They don’t want to be preached to. They think they got too much sense. You all know it’s true.”

There came muffled chuckles from the congregation.

“And then you got folks who know they’s doing wrong, but you see, they won’t go on and admit it and turn from wrongdoing and to right. Oh, yes. Well, brothers and sisters, I can’t turn my head.”

Oh, no, said the congregation.