King of Ashes

After their parents opened the crematory, Roman had to cook for himself and his younger siblings. Now, he decides to prepare a casserole that they enjoyed as children. Neveah confronts him for concealing the reason their family is being targeted and demands to know if it affects the crematory: “I don’t know if you noticed, but the shop is my whole life! I don’t hardly have any real friends. I don’t have a real man. It’s all I’ve got. You and Daddy and Dante saw to that” (70). Roman is alarmed when she removes the hot dish from the oven with her bare hands, but she retorts that years of working the crematory’s ovens have deadened the feeling in her fingers.

Later that night, Khalil informs Roman that he has arrived in Virginia. Roman gives $100,000 to a financial adviser named Sasha Billings who specializes in cryptocurrency and asks her to invest it in a high-yield stock.

In the middle of the night, Torrent calls Roman and Dante and asks them to come to the crematory. Two Black Baron Boys, Splodie and Yellaboy, open the trunks of their cars and haul out “[t]wo live figures with pillowcases on their heads” (73). The gangsters explain to the horror-stricken Roman that Torrent wants him to kill these two people to ensure that he won’t go to the police. Yellaboy leaves, instructing Splodie to kill the brothers unless they comply.

The captives are Getty and Cassidy. Dante cannot bear to participate in his friends’ murders, so Roman drags Getty into a cremation box by himself and beats the man until he lies still. Then he pushes the box into the oven. Roman tries to convince himself that someone can do bad things and still be a good person, while Getty screams and thrashes inside the box. To protect Cassidy, Dante sneaks up behind Splodie and kills him by striking him in the head with a hammer.

The brothers burn Splodie’s body in the crematory’s other oven. Roman tries to tell himself that the horrors he and his brother committed that night are for the greater good because they were protecting themselves and Cassidy, but he knows that the night’s events are only “the latest in a long collection of terrible deeds” he’s committed (80). Roman urges Cassidy to leave town forever, gives her $1,000, and promises to help her create a new identity for herself. After she drives off in Splodie’s car, Roman and Dante erase any evidence that Splodie and Getty were ever at the crematory.

Roman tells Dante to come home with him so that he won’t get into more trouble, but Dante insists that he needs to get high and runs off, cursing the crematory. Roman feels as if he is on the verge of panic. He tells himself that he will be able to return to his life back in Atlanta: “This isn’t your home anymore. This is just a place where your family lives. This is not who you are” (84).

Roman returns home at sunrise and has a dream in which his mother tries to speak to him. Later that morning, Neveah tells Roman that she’s asked Chauncey to look into their case informally. Her brother’s attempts to dissuade her only make her more suspicious. Roman claims that he and Dante were attacked because Dante was “messing with somebody’s girlfriend or wife” (88).

After fleeing the crematory, Dante goes to a party in an impoverished neighborhood called the Skids and tries to block out the memories of what happened that night with drugs and sex. The following day, Dante’s friend Tug tells him that several police officers came to Getty’s home, prompting speculation that he’s a confidential informant. Dante lies and says that Getty had mentioned leaving the state. On his way home, he calls Roman and arranges to meet his brother at the crematory later that afternoon. Roman is upset that Dante still hasn’t visited their father in the hospital.

Roman visits his father in the hospital and thinks about how Keith rarely voiced his love. He believes that coldness drove his mother into Oscar Conley’s arms, but he still loves his mother and feels grateful to his father despite his parents’ mistakes.

Next, Roman takes over at the crematory so that Neveah can go to the state office and pay a business fee. Detective Chauncey Mansfield asks to speak to him, and Roman soon suspects that the man is sleeping with his sister. The detective says that Getty was a confidential informant. Based on Getty’s ransacked apartment, the police suspect that he was abducted and murdered. The detective asks Roman to tell him what really happened to him and Dante.

Roman answers by telling a childhood story about how he obtained vengeance on a bully who stole his sister’s lunch money. He tricked a violent boy named Roland Rundgren into thinking that the bully had stolen his bike, and Roland brutally attacked the other boy. Roman concludes the story by saying, “People who hurt us, who hurt my brother, who hurt my sister [….] tend to meet a Roland Rundgren” (99). After the detective leaves, Roman collapses with relief that Getty didn’t tell the police about his deal with Dante and the Black Baron Boys.

The narrative moves back in time to the day of Bonita Carruthers’ disappearance. That morning, Neveah reminds her brothers that their mother will be home late and leaves for a track meet. Dante goes to meet some friends at the basketball court. Roman is distracted by his crush on a neighbor named Delia. The cheeriness of the flashback is overshadowed by the narrator’s ominous observation that the siblings will soon be enveloped in “the cold embrace of an endless night” (102).