CASS displays the holes in his shirt and the burn along his ribs.

SALAZAR: He didn’t mean to. That was Brother—

CASS: I kind of figured that. I didn’t say he meant to. I think his nerves grabbed and boom—one of those events. So he set the gun down on the table and everybody stood around paralyzed for a little bit. Until suddenly I thought, Hey, I’m picking up this gun, and I’m grabbing your satchel here, and see you down the line I hope but not really. I mean, man, I was on a bender. I didn’t remember this business till right now while I’m telling it. Now. Mr. Child of Jehovah. Listen. I got a question…I do wanna dialogue religion.

SALAZAR: What.

CASS: Could you maybe look upon me as an instrument of God?

SALAZAR: What?

CASS: If things happened, things that were done by me, things that you wish would have happened but you couldn’t do it yourself—like when you’ve gotta put your dog down, man. But luckily he gets hit by a car. Otherwise you would’ve had to drag him out back of the house in the woods and shoot him, and wouldn’t that bring you down, wouldn’t that break your heart? Your dog was sick. I was innocently driving along. I ran over your dog for you. Now you’re glad because finally he’s dead.

SALAZAR: Is that how you feel about the woman who fell? The lovely Eldorado—

CASS: Fuck you!…I flushed your material down my toilet. I dissolved your drugs. They’re oozing through the ecology right this second. The cotton’s jumpin’, and the fish are high.

SALAZAR: That’s bad.

CASS: What’s bad? It’s bad for a so-called spiritual leader and he’s the founder of his own group and they have even their own vehicle to be holding a satchel full of dope and trying to blow my ass up with a thirty-eight. In his friend’s house! And he shouldn’t have friends like her. What kind of substance was it, anyhow?

SALAZAR: I really don’t have that information…I believe it was cocaine. (Pause.) I don’t know how this happened. Her boyfriend set the whole thing up. He knows a dirty narc. Some lost soul in the DEA.

CASS: Jack set this up?

SALAZAR: Jack. And he’s not Brother Jenks’s brother. I believe he’s brother to the Devil.

CASS: So—see? I am an instrument—an instrument of Jehovah.

SALAZAR: We, the Children of Jehovah…We are beginners…(Pause.) I don’t know what possessed him! That Kate Wendell person! I just—can I tell you something?

CASS: Sure. Consider me—

SALAZAR: He came to me crying last night. Brother Jenks wept in my lap. Wept like a child in my lap. I just think he’s always been in love with that woman.

CASS: She ain’t that lovable.

SALAZAR: You asked for an explanation—

CASS: I didn’t hear myself asking.

SALAZAR: I asked for an explanation. All right? I prayed for an explanation. She—and Jack Toast—are evil. And Brother Jenks is stuck loving her. Stuck! His heart is torn, he—