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CHAPTER 1

A small commotion kicked up when Ezra Hawkins entered the sanctuary. Church folks laughed, hugging deep and glad-handing as they greeted him with effusive good mornings. The happy sounds from happy people washed over the gentleman from Georgia like the ripples of the bent creek he played in as a boy. He took his usual seat on the end of the center-front pew and laid his Bible on his lap.

Surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows, polished hardwoods, and various and sundry dignitaries, he knew his mama, the late Julie Esther Hawkins, would be proud to see her son on the cover of the July issue of Ebony magazine. Be it not for her husband's sister, Miss Julie's boy would've been slinging roasted duck sandwiches out at the Lake Club over in Greensboro. He was now, by the grace of God, an esteemed member of the U.S. House of Representatives, a living legend and civil rights icon known the world over. But here in Ebenezer Baptist Church, the place he called home, he was simply known as Brother Hawkins.

He was overcome with a sudden rush of joy when he saw her coming his way. At just over five feet eight, her slender yet curvaceous frame filled out a tan linen dress to perfection as she strutted across the altar. Perfect, too, was her shock of coral brown hair, swooped up and pinned into an elegant bun just above the nape of her neck.

"Good morning, Congressman," Victoria said with a bright, expectant smile.

He leapt up and wrapped his arms around her.

"I am so happy you could come," he whispered in her ear. "I didn't think you would make it this morning."

She kissed his meaty cheek and said, "There is no place I'd rather be."

An usher made room on the already crowded bench. A pianist opened with a selection, as the mayor smoothed the back of her dress and took her seat.

Hawkins, still beaming, leaned over and said, "And where is the good doctor?"

"'Good' is being generous. He's probably walking the fifth hole over at East Lake by now," she said with a shrug.

It was the kind of indifference that came with a decade of marriage, two children, and the rigors of running the city, Hawkins figured. A trivial remark, yes, but one he did not miss.

"Indeed," he said with a slight grimace.

"We're fine. I promise," the mayor assured him. "If they outlawed golf clubs, my husband would gladly do twenty years in the federal penitentiary."

After the call to worship, two selections from the Mass Choir, and a reading of the morning announcements, the Reverend Dr. Benjamin P. Melham took to the pulpit. The air-conditioning unit was on the fritz, Melham explained, and a repairman was working on it. The pastor apologized for the heat as a team of ushers dutifully handed out cardboard fans emblazoned with the face of a decidedly black Jesus.

Hawkins had been on the search committee when the bookish-looking preacher from Osceola, Arkansas, turned up at the annual Southern Christian Leadership Conference meeting a few years back and put his name in the running. The son of a junkman and part-time preacher, Hawkins found the young minister mesmerizing at the time, and the trial sermon a few weeks later drew two dozen new members.

Melham opened his sermon this morning with a prayer and a piece of Scripture. Dressed in a flowing black cassock with royal purple and silk piping, as usual he took his time getting to the point.

While the preacher rambled on, Hawkins stared down at his Italian leather wing tips. The gone years weighed on him like a wool suit in a high sun. There was the summer of '64 in Mississippi, and that Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge the following year. Then came Memphis and the sanitation strike. He had been with Dr. King in the pulpit at Mason Temple that fateful night in '68.

But knowing that you are going to die, if not the particular moment, is like being inside the mind of God, Hawkins thought. Brother Martin, rest his soul, likely found some consolation in that, but it was the kind of comfort that eluded Hawkins now. A season of grieving would be upon them again, he knew. Whether it would be hours or days, he treasured these last moments all the more.

He had loved only two women in his life, Victoria, his protégée, and another she couldn't get him to talk about. He'd been married to his work, he'd often explain. When her father, his closest friend and confidant, passed on to Glory twenty-odd years back, Hawkins readily fulfilled his promise to stand in his stead. He'd given her away on her wedding day and sat in the front row as she was twice sworn in as mayor of Atlanta.

Time was drawing short, he thought to himself, but Pastor Melham was hitting all the right notes now. Sister Epatha Flowers, her fatty girth spilling off the pew, was filled with the Holy Ghost.

"What a friend we have in Jesus!" she exclaimed. "Make it plain, Pastor! Yessuh! Yessuh! Tell it, son!"

As the sermon came to a close and Sister Flowers had finished falling out, Hawkins bowed his head. He prayed the same simple prayer before every speech, the one his mama used to say would cover everything.

I am yours, Father God. I receive the fullness of your grace.

Despite the broken air-conditioning unit, praise filled the dense air. There was little relief to be had from the large standing fans humming from the corners of the sanctuary, and Hawkins was sweating profusely by the time Melham was halfway through his lengthy introduction.

"I bring to you my brother, our leader, and our friend, Congressman Ezra J. Hawkins," Melham said with outstretched arms.

Hawkins rose to thunderous applause, adjusted his necktie, tucked the Bible under his arm, and ambled toward the pulpit. Pastor Melham met him at the edge of the stage. They embraced like brothers, gripping hands and heartily patting one another on the back. The organist unleashed a barrage of flourishes, his fingers dancing up the keys. Hawkins took to the lectern. He steadied himself, stared at his notes, and wiped his face with a freshly pressed, crisp white handkerchief.

On an ordinary day, he would simply read from his prepared remarks. He would wax poetically about his years as a movement man, the howling dogs and the water hoses, the countless days in various jail cells across the South.

Hawkins heard a popping noise coming from overhead and flinched. He quickly realized it was the air-conditioning system clicking and wheezing. Hawkins wasn't the kind to scare easily, but he measured his life in moments now.

According to the itinerary prepared by his congressional office staff, Hawkins was scheduled to fly up to D.C. that same afternoon. Delta flights ran every hour on the hour, and if he made good time, he could get a taste of Sister Lucille Ballard's buttermilk fried okra at the repast and still make the 1:50 P.M. departure. And then, the little colored boy from tiny Veazey, Georgia, the child who'd never had a pair of shoes that didn't belong to somebody else first until he was fourteen years old, would stand in the White House East Room and receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom the following morning.

If the Good Lord kept him long enough, he would get a seat next to Rep. Thad Pickett in the first-class cabin and bend his ear about how to revive that omnibus transportation bill the region so desperately needed. Hawkins had personally drafted a new amendment and was confident it would be sufficient to get the legislation to the president's desk.

But there had been a transient ischemic attack just the day before yesterday, the second in as many weeks. His physician warned that a major stroke could soon follow. Medication was prescribed to deal with his increasingly erratic heart rhythm, and Hawkins was advised to give up his beloved pulled pork sandwiches and anything deep-fried in Crisco. The blackouts were coming closer together now, though thankfully never in a committee meeting or on the floor of the House.

Hawkins opened his remarks with a glorious salutation, calling several of the congregants by name as he proclaimed his gratitude for their presence. There was little time, he knew. His chest was tightening again, so he decided, right then and there, to forget the four-by-six index cards and get right down to the crux of the matter.

He removed his suit jacket and draped it over an arm of the majestic center chair. He began to preach then, shouting and dancing, whooping and hollering, bending his knees and then swooping upward as if to take full hold of the heavens. His baritone voice climbed three octaves, shook, and broke.

"I said, glory!" he sang out in a high tenor, clutching his chest. "Oh, glory!"

He bombarded the congregation with an onslaught of soul-shaking declarations without concern for the physical toll on his body. Hawkins was preaching in rapid bursts now, sweating out the pits of his dress shirt.

"Joy!" he bellowed. "I said joy!"

"Joy!" the congregation answered in unison.

"Comes in the morning!" he exclaimed, waving the Bible above his head.

By then, the repairman had been on the roof for the better part of an hour. An embroidered patch on his work shirt read SMITTY if anyone had cared to look when he'd entered the grounds with a toolbox. The white cargo van parked in the side lot said he was from Atlanta's Best Heating and Cooling. Deacon Deray Garvin had been kind enough to escort Smitty up the rear stairs and unlatch the metal-hinged roof hatch. Perched high above the main hall, he lay prone with his belly pressed against the sloping gabled roof, attached to a harness, and went about his work.

He had never done a single religious thing in his entire life, so killing a man in church was just another job.

Smitty carefully applied the suction cup on the glass skylight and positioned the carbide tip. When he was satisfied with the cleanliness of the incision, he slipped his customized AR-15 sniper rifle and its sock suppressor from its foam-lined encasement. He quickly snapped its two major components into place, twisted the silencer around the muzzle, and clicked the preloaded 5.56 mm magazine into its slot. He could let off five rounds in 1.6 seconds, if on the off chance it became necessary, the floating mechanism minimizing any impact on his aim.

One shot, one kill.

He gripped the small black suction cup, twisting it slightly, and carefully removed the impeccably cut, four-inch glass disk. As if winding up for a pitch, he situated the butt stock high and firm in the pocket of his shoulder, right up against his jutting collarbone, and stabilized his elbow on the flat gabling. The handguard fell lightly into his slender non-firing hand. Resting his cheek on the stock of the rifle, he wrapped his firing hand around the grip. His callused forefinger now on the trigger, he peered through the ocular lens and waited.

Three miles away, in a split-level bungalow along the northwesterly edge of Candler Park, Hampton woke up with a dull pain in his neck. He fumbled around in the nightstand for a bottle of generic aspirin, but quickly decided going for water wasn't worth the trouble. Somewhere in the darkness, his cell phone was humming, and a stream of sirens swept by outside. Hampton let out a groan.

These days, getting out of bed before noon was an accomplishment. Hampton was satisfied if he could start a day with clean underwear, which at the moment seemed unlikely. The laundry was piling up and he was content to remain bare-ass in bed anyway. At least it was Sunday, he thought with some small bit of relief, and that was enough to allay the slight pang of shame tapping at the walls of his belly. Hampton exhaled, and gently rubbed the crick in his neck, his pale bony fingers pressing against the tender knot at the top his spine.

His open laptop glowed from a corner table across the room. The thought of another half-finished and overdue feature story stung like warm whiskey tumbling down his throat. He still had a paying job at the Atlanta Times-Register. Though, at the moment, even that was like a drunken sea dog that had the nerve to burp and beg for more. He used to tell himself that Atlanta was going to be a stopover on his way to the big leagues. A man like him, at least with his academic credentials, belonged in D.C. or New York. That wild-eyed dream was now wasting away in a bucket of hopes he had yet to live.

He was thirty-nine and, while he was stuck covering the Dogwood Festival in Piedmont Park, younger and lesser reporters had Pentagon press badges and tossed back their copious goblets of wine on live TV at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner. Others posted thousand-word columns on much-ballyhooed political blogs and watched their pedantic ramblings go viral. He hated watching them spew their vagaries under the klieg lights from cable news studios, while he was marooned in Atlanta "covering Dixie like the dew."

Just as he'd settled in and learned to love, or at least tolerate, the Atlanta Braves, everything fell apart. Getting reassigned to the weekly Sunday Living & Arts section was due punishment for his many foibles, he reckoned, but the bills were springing out of the cracks like kudzu. Debt collectors representing various doctors, medical facilities, and credit card companies chasing maxed-out balances still called sunup to sundown, six days a week. He'd been sued twice that he knew of, but had never answered the summons. The rent was current and the electricity was still on, and for now that had to be enough.

Such were the spoils of war, the dregs of a costly divorce. The three-paged, double-spaced final decree had left him penniless. He'd tried in vain to convince himself that the two-bedroom house with its outdated kitchen, complete with matching gold harvest appliances and water-stained linoleum tiling, was a temporary setback. But right now, Hampton wondered if he might not be better off banking a union-backed pension like his father, who did thirty-three years on the assembly line at the Chevy plant back in Michigan.

His father shook his fist in the air and called him all kinds of no-good sons-a-bitches the day Hampton told him he wanted to be a journalist. Hampton was more than happy to get out of Flint and even happier to escape his father's whiskey-fueled tirades.

He buried his head under a pillow when his work-issued smartphone buzzed again. He muttered something indiscernible and fought off the impulse to answer it. Whoever it was and whatever they wanted could wait.

It's Sunday, damn it. We're closed.

A few months back, his managing editor, Tucker Stovall, unceremoniously dumped him from the statehouse beat, suspended him indefinitely from his weekly political column, and took him off the editorial board. Hampton thought it was the beginning of the end. The drinking had been too much, the girls too young and pretty. One more false move, Hampton calculated, and he'd be lining up for Styrofoam plates of pork and beans down at the Union Mission. Then came the car accident that nearly took his life.

"Think of this as some paid time off," Tucker said. "When you're ready, we'll get you back into the thick of things."

"You want to fire me?" Hampton shouted, gripping the cushioned armrests of his wheelchair. "Be a gawd-damn man, why don't you, and fire me!" "It doesn't have to come to that," his editor said evenly. "You were, after all, sleeping with an intern."

Tucker calmly shut the glass door and closed the blinds.

"You don't need me to tell you how good you are," Tucker said. "Don't let your career end here. Take the assignment and do what I know you can do with it."

Lying in bed, unsure of the time, still ignoring his cell phone and cooking up yet another excuse for yet another blown deadline, Hampton could hear Tucker admonishing him in his head:

Take the assignment and do what I know you can do with it.

Hampton was sitting up now. Only his mother called on Sundays, and he wasn't in the mood for that. She'd been asking about his physical therapy sessions, and he didn't have the heart to tell her that he hadn't kept an appointment in a good long while. Inman, his golden retriever, tugged at the bedcovers.

"C'mon now. Cut me some slack."

Hampton eyed the empty wheelchair stationed at the foot of his bed.

Inman sat on his haunches and whined. Hampton gave in. He slipped on a house robe, maneuvered himself into the wheelchair, and rolled himself to the kitchen. Inman followed him. The morning feeding used to be Claire's job. The marriage had been short and the split hasty, but his ex-wife had been kind enough to leave the pooch with him.

Hampton poured a mound of dry food into one dish and filled a second with cool tap water. Inman watched intently now, his tail wagging with delight. The dog's marvelously light brown eyes, the way he loved him better than anyone else, made Hampton feel as if there was at least some good left in the world.

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Excerpted from "Paper Gods"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Goldie Taylor.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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