Caesar and I get out of the Frankenstein and make our way to the back of the crowd. There are easily a couple hundred people here. Aside from a handful of TV reporters, I’m the only white face under the tent. That will make it easier for Peaches to see me, which I’m fine with. And just as I think of him, I spot Peaches on one side of the stage. In his pinstripe suit, Peaches looks like a respectable gangster. He is standing with a handful of other people, including what I think at first is a child in a red suit, a white flat cap, and sunglasses. Then I realize it must be Li’l Whizz. He’s all of four feet tall. Behind him, two enormous men dressed all in black stand with their feet planted and hands clasped before them, like ushers waiting for their collection plates.

The man in the gray suit and pink tie is working up a sweat as he talks, praising the work of various people in getting the new rec center off the ground. “And I would be remiss,” he says, his voice carrying easily without a microphone, “if I did not thank Mr. Antoine Daniels for his persistent patronage of this facility.”

“Nice alliteration,” I say to Caesar as the crowd applauds, Peaches nodding and smiling in acknowledgment.

“That’s Reverend Darby,” Caesar says, indicating the man in the gray suit and pink tie. “He preaches at Mount Zion Baptist over on Griffin.”

“How do you know him?”

“I went to church there when I was a kid.”

“I thought your family lived down in East Point.”

“They do. We moved out of Vine City when I was a teenager.”

He answers easily enough, but there’s something in his voice, a troubled undercurrent. He continues to watch Reverend Darby onstage, his face a placid mask. He glances at me, then returns his attention to the reverend. “The church wasn’t so welcoming when I got older.”

“Because you’re gay?”

“That and the fact I went to prison for attempted murder.”

“You were protecting your sister,” I say. “Her husband was beating the shit out of her, he deserved to get chucked out a window. And I thought churches were all into the whole forgiveness-of-sins thing.”

Caesar shrugs, his eyes still on the reverend. “To err is human, to forgive divine,” he says. “Let’s just say Mt. Zion is all too human.”