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Milford wondered later whether the conversation and the events it prompted would have happened at all if his sister hadn’t just come from church. She wasn’t usually one to get all up in other people’s business, but that day she was full of hellfire and shalt-nots and sundry other words of the Lord. She’d dragged Milford to the First Zion Holy Sword Baptist Church a couple of times right after he got out of prison. Despite its grand name, it was just a little bitty storefront off Claiborne Avenue, set at one end of a litter-strewn parking lot, always stuffy because the two ancient window units were no match for seventy or eighty people hollering and praising Jesus and occasionally falling on the floor. The preacher was a firebrand, though, a former Freedom Rider who had his eye on a city
