The cross above Saint Verity Baptist has buzzed on the same bad transformer since 1997, and most nights it's the brightest thing on Route 12 besides the Gas & Go sign that's been missing its S since spring. Down at the Gas & Go, Denny Prejean is three minutes into deciding whether tonight's the night, turning a busted .38 over in the glovebox of a Buick that isn't his, watching Marcus Toussaint run the register like a man who's never once in his life been robbed and fully intends to keep it that way. Denny owes Eustis Bellard four hundred dollars and Eustis doesn't do payment plans. Eustis does swamp, and rope, and a boat that comes back with one fewer passenger than it left with. Two miles east, in a doublewide with the AC unit held in by a bungee cord, Odette Fontenot is counting a fence's take by candlelight because the power got cut Tuesday — forty-one silver spoons, a christening cross, two shotguns that definitely have stories, and a wedding ring she's already decided not to ask about. Her brother's in Angola for a version of this exact night gone wrong. She tells herself she's smarter. She isn't. Nobody in this parish is smarter than the parish. And up at the church, Pastor Aubin Guilbeau is counting a different kind of take — cash in the collection plate that doesn't match cash in the account, a congregation that trusts him because trust is the only currency that's never once let them down before, and a knock coming Sunday morning from a woman asking hard questions about a fire in 2019 that the insurance company still hasn't closed the file on. Nobody's a saint here. The parish just keeps the books. Where does your sinner come in?