"Nothing, City. It's just, you always think you've been through something harder than somebody else."

"Follow me," I told him and walked behind the house. I pointed to the work shed. "Be quiet, okay? Just listen."

We were still as could be. Then there was thump from the shed. Then another one.

"What's that noise?" LaVander Peeler asked.

"A white man and this book. You heard of a book called Long Division?"

"No. Should I?"

"It's the realest book I've ever read in my life, man."

"The most real?"

"It's the most real book ever, man. For real, it's about tomorrow and yesterday and the magic of love. I'm serious. A version of me is in the book and Baize Shephard is in there, too. You might be in there, too. I haven't finished it so I don't know."

"All things considered," he said. "I believe you."

We started walking back to the porch. I was leading the way. I realized it was the first time that LaVander Peeler had ever followed me anywhere. When we were under Grandma's cottonwood tree, LaVander Peeler tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around with my fists balled up.

"City, why'd they do that to us?" he asked me. "My father just told me that the difference between me and President Obama is that President Obama never took his eyes off the prize. President Obama was clutch when they did things to him they'd never done to another president. He didn't cry or cause a scene. He was always perfect when it was most important."

"But you were perfect," I told him. "You know what I mean? You were better than them. You were better than me. You coulda won that whole thing. For real." He just looked at me. "I mean, if they gave you a real chance, you coulda won. You know that." He started tearing up again so I put my hand on the top of his back. "You know I hate you, right?"

"I know that," he said.

"But I can't even lie to you, man. You're the smartest person I ever met in my life, other than my grandma."

"But I didn't win, City." He was grimacing and gritting his teeth like someone was giving him a shot in his neck. "All things considered, the point was to win, to beat them."

"You weren't running for president," I told him. "Look, I'ma show you this white man after church, okay? It'll make you feel better about yourself when we free him. Say something."

LaVander Peeler wouldn't say a word.

"You gotta promise that you won't let me drown at this baptism, though. I have a weird feeling about it. Wait. Can I ask you a question?"

"If you want to."

"What did you see before the contest that made your eyes water up? It's like you knew what was gonna happen before it happened."

LaVander started scratching his chin and looking at my chappy lips. "I don't want to say."

"Why not? It's over now. Just tell me."

He looked up and over at Grandma's chinaberry tree. "I heard the woman who ran everything tell someone on her headset..." He started trailing off.

"Tell someone what?"

"She told someone to change the final order and let the tall one beat the Mexican girl because the fat one was going to be difficult."

"Wait." I thought about what LaVander Peeler said. "So does that mean that they were-"

"City, all things considered," he interrupted me and wiped his nose. "If you don't know what that mean, you really are dumbest, fattest h.o.m.os.e.xual on earth."

CANCELLATION.

Uncle Relle, LaVander Peeler, and I met Grandma two blocks from the church. The sun was beaming and the grills of Cadillacs, Impalas, and Bonnevilles made the usually dusty Ryle Boulevard look like a conveyor belt of cubic zirconia. Grandma commenced to rubbing gobs of Vaseline all over my forehead. She said I didn't need to look tired and ashy on the most important Monday of my life. Then she kept saying not to be scared, that Jesus would make sure everything would be okay if I just believed.

When we got to the church, Grandma took me to a special room and told me to change. Hanging on the back of the door were three plush maroon robes. I'm talking about long fluffy towel-type robes, with the plushest belts imaginable. One had a piece of masking tape on the chest part with "City" written on it in black marker. The other two had pieces of tape that said "Ren" and "Reygord." I figured those roguish jokers had found some way to skip out on this whole baptism thing.

My dashiki, shirt, and slacks were off when all of a sudden the door opened. In walked the rogues, Ren and Reygord, eating thick slices of cuc.u.mbers.

I was glad that I was out of my dashiki before seeing them. Not only because I looked straight crazy in the outfit Mama made me wear, but also because those jokers were wearing dirty camouflage shorts and yellow V-necks that had their names airbrushed on them.

"Y'all ready?" I asked them, and covered my thighs and skin-sacks with my robe.

They just kept eating on those thick slices of cuc.u.mber.

"Y'all ready for this dunking?"

They both looked at each other and started taking off their clothes. It was like they were having a contest to see who could take his clothes off the fastest.

"Y'all know about the white man behind my house?"

They both laughed. I liked that they were laughing, but it p.i.s.sed me off that they wouldn't talk to me.

"Hey, y'all. Hey." Still no answer. "Hey. You know how we can get out of this, don't you?" They looked at me and kept taking their clothes off. Both of them were down to their drawers. A heavy dose of Mama Troll's organ slid under the door. The twins looked at me, looked at each other, and took off out of the room and out of the church.

I was all by myself.

Deacon Big Shank knocked on our door. When I opened it, he said that when Reverend Cherry said, "Let us have our young candidates for baptism," I would walk out with my head down and my fists couldn't be balled up.

While Big Shank was talking, I faded out, still thinking about Long Division and all that had happened over the past few days. I tried to think about it all as if it had unfolded like slow-motion scenes in a movie or soap opera, but it didn't work. Then, I tried to think of another kind of movie music that would cover the slow-motion scenes, something like grainy guitar strums or light toe-taps.

That didn't work either.

The only music that fit the scene was Big K.R.I.T.'s single, "Something," or the whiny stuff being spat out by Troll's organ.

Then something else happened in that hallway. Deacon Big Shank kept talking, telling me how much he liked watching Family Feud with Steve Harvey on his new flat-screen TV. Deacon Big Shank was always talking about TV. That was one of the best things about him.

"Your granddaddy would've been some kind of proud of you, Citizen. I'm telling you what I know. He would have. Don't believe what no one else tells you. Your granddaddy knew some thangs that no one else ever knew. It's like he grew out and everybody else grew up..." Big Shank kept talking and my head kept nodding, but my mind was zoning out of his speech.

For the first time since all this mess started, I thought about what it really meant to die and what my granddaddy might have felt before and after he drowned.

I realized, standing there in that hall watching Big Shank's mouth move in slow motion, that stories-sentences, really-were all I had of my granddaddy. He died when I was two and I couldn't remember one thing about him. I heard that he took me everywhere, dressed me up in little suits. Made me a pimped-out leather brim when I was thirteen months. He never went to church a day in his life, but somehow took the church with him. He was the best bootlegger in Melahatchie and the second best in Scott County since it went dry. He loved all the old black sitcoms like Sanford and Son and Good Times. He wasn't scared of hardly anything and when anybody touched him or his family the wrong way, even if it was white folks, he d.a.m.n near beat the walk out of them. I heard that after he beat the walk out of someone he'd apologize and say, "I'm sho' sorry about that. I reckon I reacts like a demon when anybody touch me or mines." I heard he had a son named Ralph with a jump-off named Ms. Kyla Pace, and that Ralph had a number of children that my granddaddy never claimed. I heard that he hated to bathe and loved to eat and fight, like me, and that he loved thick, curvy women with big ankles and bigger mouths who liked Newports.

Deacon Big Shank was still in front of me, going on and on, and all of a sudden the truth kicked off its shoes and started clipping its toenails, just lounging in my fat head. The stupid truth was that even though Uncle Relle had killed some people in Afghanistan and LaVander Peeler's brother had killed a man, no one I'd ever really known had died yet, except for maybe Baize Shephard, and Long Division was convincing me that she might not really be dead at all.

If Baize wasn't dead, the closest anyone I'd known had come to dying was the white man in the work shed. And the scariest thing about it was that even if I had really known someone that died, at that moment, in that hall, death felt like the only thing in the world that you could do once. As scary as the contest had been, I knew something like that could happen again. Death, I understood, was the only thing promised, the only thing that could happen once after you were born. And no one could come back and tell you how it felt.

Or could they?

I figured that must have been the real reason everybody was swinging from Jesus's sack. I'd paid enough attention to Grandma and Sunday school to know the story of Jesus's resurrection. I figured that after he arose, with the help of his almighty powerful father, the Lawd, he knew what it was like to die, and probably started spreading his sentences about beating death to the whole town. Folks started following and loving and believing, not just to be saved or whatever, but to hear sentences about what it was like.

I made the decision right there in that hall that I was definitely going to die during my baptism. I just knew it. And after or while I was dying, I'd find some way to come back and save Pot Belly like I said I would, and then I'd tell Grandma and Mama how to beat death so they could be equipped and not be all surprised when it happened to them. And I'd bring special gifts for Shay, MyMy, Gunn, and maybe even LaVander Peeler, who at that point was probably going to have his own TV show on VH1 called "All Thangs Considered," where his eyes watered up a lot and he said "All things considered" fourteen times an episode.

SAVED SAFE.

I felt a push in the back and heard more of Troll's damp organ. "I said, let us have our candidates for baptism."

The back yard of the church was packed with heads everywhere. Some folks had on church clothes, but most had on work clothes. Just Reverend Cherry, Uncle Relle, and me had robes on.

The people parted and we had to walk through the middle. Gradually, they formed this humongous semicircle. All those eyes were tearing my insides up. Grandma was right there near the front. She was crying and trying to hold in tears when I looked at her. I tried to fake-smile, but I couldn't. My d.a.m.n cheek started quivering all fast. Then I saw the water hole in the ground. Reverend Cherry and Uncle Relle were in the water hole, below everybody else and dressed in the same robes I had, except theirs were plush white instead of plush maroon. Folks stood on both sides just watching and humming the refrain to "Precious Lord." I walked all the way to the front and saw that Uncle Relle and Reverend Cherry were sitting on the steps of the water hole.

"Brother Relle, is you ready?"

Uncle Relle shook his big head up and down. I wanted to beat him through the ground for agreeing to help with this. I swear I did.

"Wait, y'all." Everyone looked at me like I was crazy, but I didn't care. I swear I didn't. "I want my Grandma to help," I said. "Doesn't that make more sense?"

Grandma just stood there smiling and lightweight crying. I loved the smile and all, but it really wasn't helping me out of my situation. Cherry put his hand on my shoulder.

"Little City," he got right up on my ear and acted like he was whispering, but he was saying it loud enough, with his drippy deep voice, for everyone to hear. Troll's playing got even lower and damper.

"Everything need order," he said. "And order, in this here real communified world, order come from tradition, and it's always been two men that do the dunking and take you to that other side. Now, it's the men's fault in this community that every time we goes to dunk a head, 'tain't no hair of the birth daddy. And that's something we gon' have to take care of, but right now, one of them gots to be me and one gon' have to be Brother Relle."

I looked at LaVander Peeler while Cherry was talking and thought about what he said back in Jackson about my mama not being able to keep a man.

"My mama and grandma been doing what daddies supposed to do," I told him. "Plus, you were there when my granddaddy drowned. Who you trying to fool?"

Uncle Relle was recording it all on his camera phone and smiling big as he could.

"Little City," Reverend Cherry said. "That's where your little smart self is wrong. I wasn't there. My sh.e.l.l was there. Inside that sh.e.l.l was a coward, Little City. Sure was. That sh.e.l.l done filled up with something I ain't ever knowed was possible." He kept talking right up on my ear, but he was still looking at the crowd.

"And when you refill a sh.e.l.l with a substance altogether different, the whole thang changes. It was that sh.e.l.l that watched Tom Henry go in and try to save that white boy. That sh.e.l.l knowed Tom Henry was a drunk skunk and didn't have no faith that Jesus would make a way for him. You see what I mean, Little City?"

I shook my head side to side, but he ignored it. "But now, that sh.e.l.l done become a man with a warm right soul. Big soul. See, look here," he said. "Real man let his core shine from the inside out and he ain't got no fear." He started looking out to the crowd and pointed at his chest. "Real man, Little City, is the Lawd's no-fear vehicle."

Everyone started clapping and 'w'h.e.l.l'ing and 'amen'ing.

"And the only thing I can do about what that sh.e.l.l of me already done did when it watched Tom Henry do what he knowed to be right...is save part of Tom Henry right now."

"What do those sentences even mean, Reverend Cherry?" I asked. Then I whispered, "I'm serious. That sentence doesn't even make sense."

Reverend Cherry ignored me and raised both his hands toward the clouds. Folks started clapping. Grandma set it off. Not disjointed claps on top of one another, but really organized claps, with a second between claps. Like this: Clap.

Clap.

Clap.

What y'all doing? Everybody else joined in and the claps sped up a little bit. Clap. Clap. Clap. It got faster and faster. ClapClapClapClapClap. After a while, it started sounding like burning trash, twigs, plastic, and skin, but way louder. Uncle Relle and Reverend Cherry grabbed me on both sides and pulled me to the middle of the pool.

Save me, Grandma, I said, I think. Please save me. LaVander Peeler!

They just stared and clapped. The claps were all on top of one another and I couldn't hear Troll or anything. All I heard were claps and Reverend Cherry.

Ouch. I told them. Quit. I looked down at the Lord's rusted tears around my shoulders. I should have been cold, but I wasn't. I knew what was next.

Reverend Cherry and Uncle Relle crossed my arms across my chest, in the shape of an X. "In the name of the father," Reverend Cherry boomed, "we shall deliver this vivacious child to a land of the Lord's tears, majesty, and freedom! He will be one of your greatest soldiers, Lord."

My head flew back. One dunk.

"And in the name of the son, we invite him home. Free him from his anger!"

My head flew back again. Two dunks.

"And with the Holy Ghost, we anoint this hyper baby in your tears, the Lord's tears, and let them tears rid him of all the physical worries of his life. He need nothing anymore, for his soul is now and forever with You, Lord. We sacrifice his sh.e.l.l and pray for blessings of his soul. Keep him safe from Your children!"

My head flew back again. Three dunks.

The third dunk felt way longer than the other two. I opened my eyes and saw all these blurred squiggles floating around. I wasn't drowning yet, but water was making its way into my mouth and it tasted like rusty rocks. I couldn't believe how nasty Jesus's tears tasted. I started choking and my heart began beating the h.e.l.l out of my chest, so I reached both of my hands between Reverend Cherry's and Uncle Relle's legs and pulled hard as I could on their soggy skin-sacks like they were cow t.i.tties.

As soon as they let go, I came up moaning, fiending for breath. My heart didn't slow down. It sped up, got ignited by that hot energy, and started screaming to the rest of my insides. It really did. Then my body followed my heart. It ran toward the semicircle of people. They got closer together and kept clapping. I ran back toward the water. I didn't know what I was doing.

I just wanted to be free.

Uncle Relle grabbed the hood of my robe. I slid out of the robe and kept running, swinging, and screaming.

I saw formless shades of liquid brown that looked like a bowl of mashed oatmeal, peanut b.u.t.ter, chocolate chips, burnt b.u.t.ter, and cane syrup. And after a while, I could see regular stuff again. I saw Uncle Relle wobble to his cell phone.

I ain't going. I said. I ain't going.

Reverend Cherry was after me, too. I ran back by the pool and grabbed Uncle Relle by the nubs and pushed him in the way. I think I was still yelling and screaming. I looked over at Grandma and LaVander Peeler and they were both smiling, but Grandma was crying, too.

Good tears.

Troll was steady playing that organ, bringing the dampness like it was going outta style. Grandma, I ain't going, I think I said. I ain't going, Grandma.

The semicircle of clapping folks started getting closer to me. There was nowhere for me to go. The sweat was steady gushing out, sloshing around my inner thighs, dripping off my forehead.

I ran over where Troll was and got under the bottom part of her organ. She was pumping the h.e.l.l out of her feet, and I was right there next to them, breathing hard as a fat asthma victim, trying to ball myself up and go through the bottom of the organ. Troll's wet music was smacking the h.e.l.l out of my ears and chest, and she was literally kicking me in the hip, she was pumping it so hard. She had these dry, sand-colored, knee-high stockings that tried to cover the lightened blotches on her old legs.

A hand reached down. It was Grandma. I could tell by the stained silver ring on her pinkie. But part of me figured she was a demon with a hand that looked like Grandma's and when I looked at her whole body, it would be all splotched up like Troll's legs.

"That your hand, Grandma?"

She started fanning me, like she would do to her friends after they caught the Holy Ghost. All this chalked-up foundation was dripping off Grandma's chin like gobs of Tootsie Roll spit.