“No, sir.”

“No sir what?”

“No, sir, I don’t like boys,” Jessie said. “No, sir.”

The Deacon showed them his palms in apology. “A girl, then, yeah? Young, though, am I right? You never forget ’em when you were young and they were, too. Nice piece of chocolate with a ass you could pound all night and it still don’t lose its shape?”

“No, sir.”

“No sir you don’t like a fine young woman’s ass?”

“No, sir, that’s not my memorable moment.” Jessie coughed and took another slug of whiskey.

“Then what is, boy? Shit.”

Jessie looked away from the table, and Luther could feel him composing himself. “My most memorable moment, sir?”

The Deacon clapped the table. “Most memorable,” he thundered and then winked at Luther, as if, whatever this con was, Luther was somehow in on it with him.

Jessie lifted his mask and took another swig. “Night my pops died, sir.”

The Deacon’s face strained with the weight of compassion. He dabbed his face with a napkin. He sucked air through pursed lips and his eyes grew large. “I am so sorry, Jessie. How did the good man pass?”

Jessie looked at the table, then back into the Deacon’s face. “Some white boys in Missouri, sir, where I was reared?”

“Yes, son.”

“They come and said he’d snuck onto their farm and killed their mule. Said he’d meant to cut it up for food but they’d caught him at it and run him off. These boys, sir? They showed up at our house next day and dragged my pops out the house and beat him something fierce, all in front of my mama and me and my two sisters.” Jessie drained the rest of his glass and then sucked back a great wet hunk of air. “Aw, shit.”

“They lynch your pops?”

“No, sir. They done left him there and he died in the house two days later from a busted-up skull. I was ten year old.”

Jessie lowered his head.

The Deacon Broscious reached across the table and patted his hand. “Sweet Jesus,” the Deacon whispered. “Sweet sweet sweet sweet Jesus.” He took the bottle and refilled Jessie’s glass and gave Luther a sad smile.

“In my experience,” the Deacon Broscious said, “the most memorable thing in a man’s life is rarely pleasant. Pleasure doesn’t teach us anything but that pleasure is pleasurable. And what sort of lesson is that? Monkey jacking his own penis know that. Nah, nah,” he said. “The nature of learning, my brothers? Is pain. Ya’ll think on this—we hardly ever know how happy we are as children, for example, until our childhood is taken from us. We usually can’t recognize true love until it’s passed us by. And then, then we say, My that was the thing. That was the truth, ya’ll. But in the moment?” He shrugged his enormous shoulders and patted his forehead with his handkerchief. “What molds us,” he said, “is what maims us. A high price, I agree. But”—he spread his arms and gave them his most glorious smile—“what we learn from that is priceless.”