In Binter’s dooryard they stopped. The house and yard still, silent. Some red hens dusting in the sun against the side of the barn. Jamie stepped out of the Packard and looked back at Carrick. “Wait,” he said. “And think it through so you got it straight. You try to go around me, go out on your own, I don’t care how small-time or peckerheaded a deal it is, I wipe you up like crap off my shoe. I been thinking, riding along, for you it’d be a red poker up the ass. Think on that. And stop drinking my fucking whiskey.”

The Binter woman had no English but left the kneading bread to come around the kitchen table in a floured fury when Jamie came through the screen door, her arms up and hands spraying white flour dust as she gesticulated, her face a harridan of hatred as if she recognized unwanted fate in the form of a single man when she saw it, her mouth old dry lips stretching out from yellow teeth, her tongue clacking against the roof of her mouth, the language Dutch or Ukrainian or Polack or something else, Jamie had never learned what. He went the opposite way around the table from her, ignoring her protest, the small hammer of her fists on his shoulder and back. She was small, big-breasted, her hair a tight bun, the color of dulled gunmetal, no gray. Now she had hold of the back of his jacket, pulling to stop him and he twisted free of her without turning toward her. Had no interest in silencing her, happy to let her quacking bring Binter out. He’d not till then been inside their house yet turned easily in the hall off the kitchen and down to the first door on the left where the drapes were pulled to block the light and the furniture was dark wood, carved with scrolled arms and clawfeet, dark-green-velvet upholstered. The walls a dense dim floral paper nearly covered with prints and photographs in silver- and gold-painted plaster frames. Binter rising from a single-ended settee of the same velvet, his trouser waist loosened against the bulk of his stomach for his nap. His hair flown. Buttoning his flies. The wife had stopped at the parlor door as if giving up. Or witness.

“Get her out of here,” Jamie said.

Binter ran a hand through his hair, his fingers crabbed as if not caring, the gesture without intention or thought. Studying Jamie a long moment. Then spoke in their tongue to the woman.

“I got a man’s going to live with you. You teach him the liquor making, front to back and back to front. When I’m happy with what he’s doing I’ll take it all off your hands. Not until then. Meanwhile, you can use him however you want. He makes any fuss at all about anything let me know. That’s how its going to be.”

Binter looked at Jamie and said, “It cannot be.”