Darren couldn’t place the look on his face, didn’t know if it was pride or shame he was witnessing. This was a point his uncles had often debated ferociously, whether forgiveness made black folks saints or stooges. The year Darren stopped going to church—claiming at twelve to be too old for Sunday school—William, back in the house in Camilla on some short errand his brother had allowed, sat Darren down at the kitchen table and said, “This family has flourished under the teachings of Christ, son; we have made a life based on fellowship and service and forgiveness.” Clayton actually snickered at the kitchen sink, where he was rinsing turnips that he’d grown in the garden himself. That word was dangerous, Clayton said. It gave white folks the idea that impunity was theirs for the taking, for in a world where forgiveness was forever being served like an all-you-can-eat buffet at the Lunch Bucket in town, what was their incentive to pass fair laws, to police with integrity, to refrain from spitting on folks on the street?

“It’s not 1966, Pop,” Darren had said, just to show he could keep up.

“No, it’s 1986, and you see that Alabama cracker that Reagan’s trying to put on the federal bench?”

“Sessions will never be confirmed,” William said, lighting one of the Lucky Strikes he smoked until his death. He had always kept a large box of matches on their kitchen table for this purpose, and it was the first time Darren noticed that Clayton had kept in place this reminder of his twin brother.

“The point is they have the gall to appoint a Klan-loving fool. Forgiving them for everything before the Voting Rights Act is what makes them think they have the right. We done we-shall-overcomed ourselves right into this mess.”

“But you marched, Pop,” Darren said. This conversation felt like a greater sacrilege than the talk of him skipping out on church. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you have to forever hold them to account. Look away at your own peril.” He set the wet turnips on a washcloth. “Forgiveness has a limit.”

It was a luxury black folks couldn’t afford, Clayton said.

William looked at his nephew. “Darren, maybe I need to head back to Sunday school with you since I don’t remember where in the Bible it said that.”

Clayton, he said, mistook his Christian faith for weakness. “I know who I am, who my people are. I know the power of our grace, of our faith. Real forgiveness has no limits,” he said, before allowing that, yes, Clayton was right, that “it’s only possible when the pain of the original offense has ceased.”

“Well, good luck with that,” Clayton said caustically as he filled a pot with tap water for boiling. “How long you and Naomi been married now?”