Deacon King Kong

The novel’s point-of-view makes another shift, from Elefante to Bunch, one of the higher-ups in Deems’s drug circle. He discusses how to retaliate against Sportcoat with one of his associates named Earl, telling him to go to the Cause Houses and hurt Sportcoat. Bunch doesn’t want to kill Sportcoat, just frighten him in punishment for trying to kill Deems: “[C]lean up the old man. Bust his eye out. Break his arm. Set fire to his clothes. But don’t ice him. Just soften him up like it’s a mugging gone sour” (68). Afterward, their crime organization will donate to Five Ends. Bunch views his criminal activities as one of the only ways to lift the Black community out of poverty.

The chapter begins with a third point-of-view switch, this time to the perspective of a colony of ants that infest one of the buildings in the Cause every fall. It follows them from their origins in New York City in the 1950s, their establishment in the refuse of the city’s poorer and industrial areas, and their yearly migration through Building 17 of the Cause. Deems, who lives in Building 9, has always taken it as a point of pride that he and his friends stop the ants from getting into their building. As he’s lying in bed recovering from his shooting wound, he tries to figure out with two of his friends why Sportcoat, who’d always liked and mentored him, would try to shoot him. Deems also reluctantly agrees to let Earl take care of Sportcoat, although he’s getting tired of the price he pays to Earl and the commission he gets from Bunch. Deems is thinking about asking their supplier (and mobster) Joe Peck to get them better protection than Earl and Bunch provide. He resolves that he’ll let Earl “handle” Sportcoat but then try and separate his dealing from Bunch.