“He’ll send them away. They’ll disappear. Or worse.”

What was worse than disappearing? I tried not to look at the men after that, but I couldn’t help it. Men were everywhere, drinking, lighting bits of trash on fire. One man pulled a woman down onto his lap. She laughed, pushed his hands away, eventually stopped laughing.

Jake sat in the center of the circle, the place of honor, in a faded, old recliner, larger than the other chairs. Stuffing vomited out the sides. He looked like the king of shit. His feet were up in those flip-flops. A ratty fleece blanket, printed with a wolf’s face, was thrown over his lap, and he was laughing. He turned his head to me, his eyes pale as a dog’s. Was this the moment he saw what I could do? Was this the moment he made me work for him?

“Stop looking,” Jamey hissed.

I turned my head down to the potatoes. “What do you want me to do with these?”

“You got a knife?”

Did I want to lose it to her? Did I trust Jamey? “No,” I lied.

A burst of laughter, like machine gun fire, from the men. Something one of the women did, or was made to do.

Jamey licked her lips, hesitating, then pulled a pocketknife from her coat. “This is sharp. Cut out the eyes and cut the taters into chunks, then fry ’em in the deer grease.”

“I know how to cook potatoes.”

“Then act like it,” she snapped.

A couple of the women set their serving platters down and began to dance. It was such a slow, languid motion that I did not understand what was happening at first. One of the women unzipped her coat. It fell in a puddle at her feet. Then, despite the cold, she stripped her off her silver T-shirt. She faced my direction, rocking her hips awkwardly. Her skin was a sky stippled with bruises. There was no music. One of the men began to beat on the underside of a pot with a knife or stick. He couldn’t keep time. The women moved like hypnotized snakes, drugs or exhaustion slowing their blood.

“I got something for you,” Jake said, scrounging in his pockets.

For a moment, I remembered the Pumpkin King. But it wasn’t seeds Jake pulled from his pockets. It was quarters. He flung a handful at the women. Coins dinged off their bodies like hail.

He snapped his fingers for more beer.

I turned away. I found a dirty, cast-iron skillet beneath a tree, and snapped off a stick to scrape it out with. I was crouched on the ground, my back to Jake and the women, scrubbing at the skillet, when I saw movement in the woods.