Buchanan is probing the other two. “Jill in tonight?”

Babe says, “Left her back at the place.”

The boy asks, “On a nod, right?”

“You stay away, hear, she got herself clean. She’s on no nod, just tired from mental confusion, from fighting her signs.”

“Clean,” the boy says, “what’s clean? White is clean, right? Cunt is clean, right? Shit is clean, right? There’s nothin’ not clean the law don’t go pointing its finger at it, right?”

“Wrong,” Babe says. “Hate is not clean. A boy like you with hate in his heart, he needs to wash.”

“Wash is what they said to Jesus, right?”

“Who’s Jill?” Rabbit asks.

“Wash is what Pilate said he thought he might go do, right? Don’t go saying clean to me, Babe, that’s one darkie bag they had us in too long.”

Buchanan is still delicately prying at Babe. “She coming in?”

The other cuts in, “She’ll be in, can’t keep that cunt away; put locks on the doors, she’ll ooze in the letter slot.”

Babe turns to him in mild surprise. “Now you loves little Jill.”

“You can love what you don’t like, right?”

Babe hangs her head. “That poor baby,” she tells the tabletop, “just going to hurt herself and anybody standing near.”

Buchanan speaks slowly, threading his way. “Just thought, man might like to meet Jill.”

The boy sits up. Electricity, reflected from the bar and the streets, spins around his spectacle rims. “Gonna match ’em up,” he says, “you’re gonna cut yourself in on an all-honky fuck. You can out-devil these devils any day, right? You could of out-niggered Moses on the hill.”

He seems to be a static the other two put up with. Buchanan is still prying at Babe across the table. “Just thought,” he shrugs, “two birds with one stone.”

A tear falls from her creased face to the tabletop. Her hair is done tight back like a schoolgirl’s, a red ribbon in back. It must hurt, with kinky hair. “Going to take herself down all the way, it’s in her signs, can’t slip your signs.”

“Who’s that voodoo supposed to boogaboo?” the boy asks. “Whitey here got so much science he don’t even need to play the numbers, right?”

Rabbit asks, “Is Jill white?”

The boy tells the two others angrily, “Cut the crooning, she’ll be here, Christ, where else would she go, right? We’re the blood to wash her sins away, right? Clean. Shit, that burns me. There’s no dirt made that cunt won’t swallow. With a smile on her face, right? Because she’s clean.” There seems to be not only a history but a religion behind his anger. Rabbit sees this much, that the other two are working to fix him up with this approaching cloud, this Jill, who will be pale like the Stinger, and poisonous.

He announces, “I think I’ll go soon.”

Buchanan swiftly squeezes his forearm. “What you want to do that for, Br’er Rabbit? You haven’t achieved your objective, friend.”