Deacon King Kong

by James McBride

Sportcoat was a walking genius, a human disaster, a sod, a medical miracle, and the greatest baseball umpire that the Cause Houses had ever seen,

Everything you are, everything you will be in this cruel world, depends on your word.

I reckon I’m like most folks. Most times I don’t know what I’m doing. Sometimes I feel like I don’t hardly know enough to tie my own shoes.”

And now heroin was here to make their children slaves again, to a useless white powder.

Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. The lies they tell each other sound better to them than the truth does when it comes out of our mouths.

The Star-Spangled Banner,’” she scoffed. “I never did like that old lying, lollygagging, hypocritical, warring-ass drinking song. With the bombs bursting in air and so forth.”

“Son, a blessing favors them that needs it. Don’t matter how it comes. It just matters that it does.”