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man of my name once played.
    “You shouldn’t be here, Tempest.”
    “But, Joshua,” Branwyn said. She rose to her feet and approached me carrying our infant son in her arms. “They’re gonna send Tempest back to prison and you know he never did what they said.”
    “But what can we do about that?” I asked after a perfunctory kiss.
    “We can’t let them take him. He saved my life.”
    The blood in my chest was churning. Tempest had saved Brownie and therefore made love possible for me. In that way he was as much father to my children as I, maybe even more so. But helping him would destroy the family that was more important to me than anything in this world…or the next.
    From across the room on the sofa I could see Tempest reading my mortal face. He stood up all in a rush and stalked across the room.
    “I ain’t here to blow you up, Angel,” he said. “I just come to say good-bye, man.”
    In one breath he called me divine and in the next I was his mortal brother. I don’t know if Tempest was aware of his deep critique of my newfound soul.
    “Sit down, my friend,” I said. “Sit.”
    As he moved back toward the sofa I lifted Tethamalanianti in my arms and kissed her neck. She giggled and called me Daddy. I kissed her again and handed her to her mother.
    “Take them out for pizza and ice cream,” I said to Branwyn.
    She looked in my eyes and said, “Come on, babies, let’s go get us sumpin’ good.”
    “Can Daddy an’ Uncle Tempy come?” Titi asked.
    “Later,” I said. “We have to talk first.”
    After they were gone I sat next to Tempest on our plush couch. Titi’s toys and dolls were spread on the floor around us and there was the sweet buttermilk odor of our baby in the air.
    “First you want to send me to hell and now you want me back in prison. Is that it, Joshua?” Tempest said.
    “I want to help you, Tempest.”
    “Really? ’Cause I know you got a good heart but you still on the wrong side’a the line.”
    “I’m not your enemy,” I said with an earthly quaver in my voice.
    “No,” he agreed, “but men don’t have to be enemies to be on opposite sides. Men don’t have to hate each other to throw their brothers down.”
    “Why run now?”
    “They stopped the work release program. Tomorrow morning at five-oh-two I’m supposed to be on a bus back up to prison. Back in a cage not fit for one man and there’ll be two others up in there wit’ me. If they gang up on me, there won’t be nuthin’ I can do. If they’re enemies, I’ll have to choose sides. Do you know what that mean, Angel? Do you?”
    “If you run and they catch you, your sentence will be doubled,” I replied.
    “And if I stay, I’ll become the sinner I always claimed not to be. The door to hell will open up and I won’t be able to deny my deeds. My soul will be sucked down into Bob’s hell and you’ll be ripped from Brownie an’ them beautiful kids.”
    “They’ll catch you sooner or later,” I said. “They’ll drag you back and the same thing will happen.”
    “Maybe not. Maybe I could make it down to Cuba or Brazil. Maybe I could hide in plain sight in East New York or sumpin’.”
    “But then both of us will spend every day in fear. Any minute we’ll be expecting the end.”
    “That’s the fate that all men face,” he said without a hint of humor.
    “We can make a better stand.”
    Tempest looked at me with anger and spite etched in his face.
    “You know I don’t deserve this, Angel,” he said. “I wasn’t born to this body and this body never did the crime they convicted him for. It ain’t right any way you look at it.”
    “But if you run you will be hounded.”
    “What you think they do to a brother every day up in prison?” he asked. “I didn’t know what to expect the first time I went up there. But now that I been there I cain’t let ’em take me back. It’s too much, man. There’s so much sufferin’ up in there that you cain’t tell if it’s you or somebody