“This is fine, thank you.” Joel was already halfway down the hall to the master suite, the minister hurrying after him. He gave Wesley an exhausted smile and closed the bedroom door in his face.

The little lock in the doorknob turned without a sound. Joel waited a moment, just to be certain Wesley wouldn’t try to break in, and went into the adjoining bathroom. He turned on the tap, left the water running.

Back in the bedroom, Joel saw that Wesley had tidied up the massive oak dresser. It now held only a little dish of loose change, a Bentley Bison class ring—the year 2006 engraved along the top—and a wallet. Joel eased open a drawer: loose boxers. Gym shorts. Undershirts.

Wesley knocked on the door. “Are you alright in there?” He sounded tipsy, anxious.

Joel didn’t bother answering. The door’s knob jiggled.

“Joel?”

He saw a closet, a big TV stand.

“Joel, what are you doing in there?”

His eyes settled on a little nightstand with a big iron keyhole in the drawer. Antique, or trying to look like it. When Joel tugged on the drawer, he felt a latch hold it shut. Barely.

Wesley went quiet in the hall. Joel suspected he’d begun to look for the same thing as him: a tool to pry open a lock.

Joel found his first. He pulled his brother’s knife free from its sheath and wedged the blade into the drawer. He heard Wesley hurrying up the hallway.

“I’m calling the police, Joel.” Pohleessh. Jull.

The drawer began to give. Joel leaned on the blade. “That’s a bad idea, Wesley.”

“You have no right to come into my house like this, Joel, to—”

The drawer came open with a loud snap and a little puff of sawdust. Its contents clattered to the floor: a pocket Bible, a tacky old necklace with a dubious stone in the center, a credit card.

And, tucked in amid the clutter, was a small golden disk hooked to a wide blue ribbon. Joel pulled the medal free. He saw on it just what he thought he would, what he had been too drunk to recognize when he saw it on Sunday night. The letters MVP were embossed on the front.

And written across the back: STATE SEMIFINALS 2016.

Joel smiled. He thought of Clark asking him, “How many queers do we have in Pettis County?”

Standing on the side of the road a few minutes before, the adrenaline finally fading from his head, he’d finally stopped to think about what Luke had told him at the park. “I wasn’t hurting anyone.”

It was a stretch, but it was worth a shot.

Joel opened the bedroom door. Wesley stood on the other side with his phone in his hand, a finger poised over the screen, but at the sight of the medal he slid the phone slowly into his pocket and took a step away as if Joel had made to strike him with it.

“Just what were you and Luke Evers up to on Friday night, Mr. Mores?”