Earlier, he and Hawke had passed the Injun Tradin’ Post, the tourist trap where Stoke’s former fellow inmate at the Glades Correctional Institution, a Seminole Indian and local former prizefighter named Chief Johnny Two Guns, had shopped. He was reputed to have bought the fake Seminole tomahawk there that he had murdered his own mother with.

Turns out Two Guns’s late mom was a God-fearing soul, the choirmaster here for nearly fifty years. Small world, right? Full of some really good people and a whole lot of flaming assholes.

Not much of a church, he considered, looking back at it. It was a white frame structure of two stories. Some of the windows had fixed wooden louvers, and some had shutters that folded back. There were also a few stained-glass windows with lots of panes missing. The roof was galvanized sheet iron, corrugated.

Paint was peeling off the steeple, too, he noticed, and then a skeet bit him right on the back of his neck. Damn! He slapped at it, got the sucker, and saw the smear of his own blood in the palm of his hand. Memories. “Heat ’n’ Skeet,” that’s what the U.S. Navy SEALs used to call this backcountry.

Stoke, a former NFL linebacker built like two, had done some secret training not twenty miles from here. Blown up a lot of shit, including more than a few ten-foot gators with grenades dropped from hovering choppers right down their gaping gullets. Messy, but more entertaining than The Price Is Right or whatever that crap was they had on TV. Besides, gators ate dogs. And sometimes babies.

Scattered around here and there on the church grounds, somebody had placed big tin buckets of smoldering woody husks that gave off white smoke—homemade mosquito bombs. Stoke murdered another stinging dive-bomber and descended the creaking steps, trying to stand in the white smoke. But the stuff kept shifting away from him in a fluke of nature that made him smile. Sometimes nature was on your side, but mostly not.

Well, all he had to say to that right now was “Hallelujah.”

It was Stokely Jones’s wedding day.

He should be happy, he thought, sweat stinging his eyes. God knows he loved Fancha with all his heart; it was marriage he wasn’t so sure about. His one serious relationship with a woman before this was with a podiatrist from Tenafly, New Jersey. Big old gal, mostly bosom, had half the men in Jersey at her feet, he used to joke. She’d wanted to marry him, too. Morning of the wedding? He’d skipped.

Now, here he was again. Just being inside that church had made him nervous as a damn long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. He hadn’t even meant to propose! One night, out at her palazzo on Key Biscayne, looking at her beautiful face in the moonlight, he’d said, “You know what, baby? I worship the ground you will walk on in a future lifetime.”

Bam. Look at him. Here he was, at a specific church, on a specific date. Getting . . . he almost choked . . . getting married.

Grace Baptist Church was located in the town of Seminole, Florida, population 867, most of them black folks and members of the congregation. You had farmers, fishermen, and caneworkers mostly out here. It was the bride’s hometown.

Fancha’s family had emigrated to the States from the Cape Verde islands back in the 1980s. Settled out here in the sawgrass and muck for some unknowable reason. Maybe somebody in the family was a professional alligator wrestler, who knows. Compared to Harlem, where he grew up, this place bit the big one, all he had to say about it.

Grace Baptist was the church Fancha had grown up in, singing in the choir. Not exactly St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Or even the Abyssinian Baptist Church at 132 West 138th Street. Now those were churches. You walk in there and you can feel the good Lord saying, “This right here, this is the house of the Lord, sinner, and don’t you forget it.”

“Damn, it’s hot!” Stokely Jones said, dropping down on the bench next to his best man, Lord Alexander Hawke. Man flew all the way in from England with his little boy to be here. Cutest little kid you ever saw, dressed in his blue-and-white seersucker suit, short pants, white knee socks, and black patent leather shoes with straps to hold them on. He had his father’s jet-black hair and blazing blue eyes.

Didn’t miss a trick either. Nell Spooner had given him a mayonnaise jar with holes punched in the top and an insect inside to keep him entertained after he’d been through all the toys.

“What’s that in there?” Stoke asked the child. “A cricket?”

“No, sir,” Alexei said, peering into the jar at his new pet. “A grasshopper! Spooner says grasshoppers fly and crickets don’t.”

“Is that right? I didn’t have that information,” Stoke said, ruffling his hair and smiling at the boy’s proud papa.

Hawke, for some unknown reason, looked cool as a damn cucumber just plucked out of the Frigidaire. Had on a pure white linen three-piece suit, not a wrinkle in it, a beautiful blue silk tie, and, despite all the heat and humidity and mosquitoes on this late May morning, he had a big smile on his face.

“What are you so damn chipper about?” Stoke asked him. He’d gotten that word, chipper, from Hawke long ago and used it ever since. Liked the sound of it.

“Listen to that choir,” Hawke said.

“What about it?”

“It’s beautiful, that’s what. I’ve never heard music like that. Have you, Miss Spooner?”

“No, sir, I’ve not,” she said. “It is divine, isn’t it?”

Stoke said, “It’s divine, all right; that’s old-time religion you’re listening to now. Gospel music. Angel music. Sacred. Folks are just rehearsing in there now. Choir’s just getting their pipes warmed up. You wait. Whole building’ll be shaking, hands clapping, feet stomping, folks praising the Lord to the rafters when they cut loose, feels like the roof is going to fly off and sail away, I’m telling you.”

“I’m so glad you’re getting married here, Mr. Jones,” Nell Spooner said. “It’s positively wonderful.”

“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” Stoke said, nervously looking around. “Wonderful, just wonderful.”

Stoke pulled a drenched white handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his black suit coat and mopped his brow for the tenth time since he’d come outside. “I’m hot. How come you two aren’t hot?”

Hawke looked over at him and said, “Stokely Jones Jr., you look like a man who needs a drink.”

“Alex, what’d I always tell you? Only thing alcohol’s good for is helping white folks dance. Besides, you know I don’t drink.”

“You don’t get married, either. But you are today. Man’s entitled to a drink on his wedding day. It’s practically obligatory.”

Hawke pulled a shining silver flask from inside his breast pocket and handed it to Stoke.

“What’s in it? Don’t even tell me. I already know what it is. Head-strong, out-and-out, strong-bodied, ram-jam, come-it-strong, lift-me-up, knock-me-down, gen-u-wine moonshine!”

“That’s it, brother. Pure nitro.”

Stoke first sniffed at the idea, then unscrewed the little cap and sniffed at the contents. He wrinkled his nose, frowning at the lack of any smell at all.

“What is this stuff, anyway? Just tell me.”

“Take a swig, big fella. It won’t kill you.”

“If this doesn’t beat all, I don’t know what does. My own best man trying to get me drunk on my own wedding day,” Stoke said, and put the flask to his lips, tentatively lifting the thing.

He took a sip, swallowed, and smiled at his friend sideways.

“Diet Coke? It’s just Diet Coke, isn’t it?”

“Hmm.”

“All I ever drink, Diet Coke.”

“Hmm.”

“See? That’s what I’m talking about. That’s called taking care of business. That’s why you, of all the people in the world who would have cheated, lied, and robbed for this job, that’s why you got picked as my best man.” Hawke smiled.

“It’s an honor, Stoke. I love you like a brother.”