Summary

In September 1969, 71-year-old Deacon Cuffy Jasper Lambkin of the Five Ends Baptist Church, known as Sportcoat, shoots a 19-year-old drug dealer named Deems Clemens at the Causeway Housing Projects. Sportcoat is also the baseball coach of the boys’ team at the projects. The shooting confuses the residents, who had thought of Sportcoat as being a generally peaceful and kind man. They discuss it, which allows McBride to introduce us to some residents: Veronica Gee, the wife of the minister at Five Ends says that Sportcoat had rheumatic fever. T.J. Billings, or “Bum-Bum” as she is called, says that there are ants in the housing projects which have caused Sportcoat to be cast under an evil spell. Izi Cordero claims her ex-husband, Joaquin, was involved somehow, though many know she is only saying this to get him into trouble...