Deacon King Kong

Sportcoat visits Deems in the hospital with a voodoo doll that one of the residents of the Cause made for him as a “good luck” charm. Deems is angry with Sportcoat for shooting him and curses at him, which in turn makes Sportcoat angry. It’s implied through Deems’s description of Sportcoat that he’s sober, an unusual circumstance for him. In a final act of protest over what Deems has become, Sportcoat begins to smother him with the voodoo doll, pinning him down in the hospital bed and smothering him until he almost passes out. Sportcoat then leaves, saying that he’ll kill Deems if he ever sees him again.

Suffering intense alcohol withdrawal symptoms, Sportcoat shows up at Sister Paul’s nursing home. He meets with her and learns more about the connections between Elefante and the founders of Five Ends. Many years ago, Sister Paul was walking home at night and accidentally witnessed the encounter between Potts and Elefante’s father that Potts describes in Chapter 21. As she passed by the “accident” scene, Elefante’s father asked her to drive his truck so he could flee the scene—he jammed the truck’s pedal so hard that he’d broken his foot, and the other side of his body was debilitated by a past stroke. 

The elder Elefante begged Sister Paul to help him drive away because he knew he’d go back to prison if he was found in the truck that killed the man, and he didn’t want to be away from his family any longer. Sister Paul’s own father served prison time for trying to start a sharecroppers’ union when she was a girl, so she reluctantly agreed to help him. She helped him drive the truck away, and when she got him home, he offered to pay her $100 for her help. She refused the money, but Elefante’s father repaid her by giving the Five Ends founders a lot he owned to build the church on, even though the Italians who dominated the neighborhood generally refused to deal with Black people.

Sister Paul says that Elefante’s father forgave the mortgage on the lot in exchange for the church letting him put something in the back wall of the lot (the Governor’s Venus). Sister Paul saw him put the Venus in the wall and knows which brick it’s hiding in. In gratitude for all her generosity, Elefante’s father began sending cheese—which is what was in the truck he was driving on the night Sister Paul met him—to the Cause, which explains the origins of the cheese giveaway. Sportcoat hasn’t heard about the Venus, so this story of something hidden in the church’s wall doesn’t have any significance to him. 

Elefante and Melissa drive to pick up Sportcoat during the early morning hours, and the narration reveals that they’ve started dating and intend to get married. Melissa has become involved in Elefante’s search for the Venus, and Elefante is touched by her commitment to him and her cooperative, competent, kind personality.

Elefante’s ruminations as he drives lead to a flashback of him and Melissa going to visit Sister Paul after Sportcoat set up a meeting between them. Sister Paul is at first prickly and interrogative toward Elefante, but she softens when Melissa joins the conversation on his behalf. Sister Paul tells them her life story and about the past decades she’s spent in Elefante’s neighborhood, which makes him think about his childhood and adolescence there. As he and Melissa are leaving, Sister Paul asks him to send her some of the cheese that is sent to the Cause Houses. Mrs. Elefante has never explicitly acknowledged the gratitude she feels to Sister Paul for keeping her husband out of jail so many years before, but Mrs. Elefante continues to send the cheese to the Cause.

After picking up Sportcoat, the two men chisel into the wall with the Jesus mural on it. They’ve learned that the Venus is the oldest statue in the world, a fertility goddess figure. They find the statue, just as Sister Paul told them, and out of gratitude and respect for the older man’s help, Elefante calls Sportcoat “Mr. Sportcoat” (352). Elefante promises to reward Sportcoat for helping him, replace the money that was in the missing Christmas Club box (which Sportcoat asked him to help look for), and repair the wall, mural, and church. Sportcoat feels wonder and pride at being addressed with dignity and respect, and he marvels at the turn of events that have led him to sobriety and the respect of a prominent White man. Later, it is revealed that Sister Gee has secretly been watching the two men work together, in awe of their respect for one another.

The chapter opens on the day of Sportcoat’s funeral, almost two years after the events of the previous chapter. After helping Elefante with the Venus, Sportcoat disappeared from the Cause and no one saw him again. His visitation and funeral, however, are held at Five Ends and attended by the Cause community and people from all over the city. The Cause cheese is handed out at the funeral. Elefante has, as promised, gifted the church their Christmas money back and paid for improvements and repairs on the building and lot.

Potts and Elefante both come to the service; Elefante brings Melissa, whom he has married. Gathering most of the book’s characters for the funeral allows the narrator to relate what happened to many of them in the intervening years. Hot Sausage continues his secret relationship with the Five Ends parishioner. Soup is successful and doing well in his post-prison life. Sister Paul is still alive and attends Sportcoat’s funeral. Deems has left the drug business and is playing on a minor league baseball team with the expectation of shortly joining the majors. Likely because of the influence of Potts and Elefante, Sportcoat was never tried or imprisoned for trying to shoot Deems.

A garden now exists behind the church, something that Hettie always wanted so Sportcoat could take care of it. In fact, the garden is the task that kept Hettie coming back as a vision to Sportcoat, and she disappears after it’s done. Late on the night of the funeral, as the last mourners are leaving, Sister Gee pulls Sausage aside to find out what happened to Sportcoat in his last months. Sportcoat stayed sober in his last months, and the last time he saw his friend, Sportcoat waded into the harbor water with a symbolic jar of King Kong (which he claims he wants to drink, but doesn’t). Sportcoat and Hettie always wanted to swim in the harbor together but never did.

Sister Gee recalls this conversation with Hot Sausage as she’s on the ferry to see Potts, who has retired from the police force and divorced his wife, implying that she and Potts may begin a romantic relationship.