Luther never saw Dandy and Smoke move, but when he turned at the sound of Jessie’s grunt, they’d already clamped his wrists to the table and Smoke had Jessie’s head held fast in his hands.

Luther said, “Hey, ya’ll wait a—”

The Deacon’s slap connected with Luther’s cheekbone and busted up through his teeth and his nose and eyes like shards of broken pipe. The Deacon’s hand didn’t leave his head, either. He clenched Luther’s hair and held his head in place as Dandy produced a knife and sliced it along Jessie’s jawbone from his chin up to the base of his ear.

Jessie screamed long after the knife had left his flesh. The blood climbed out of the wound like it had been waiting its whole life to do so, and Jessie howled through his mask and Dandy and Smoke held his head in place as the blood poured onto the table and Deacon Broscious yanked on Luther’s hair and said, “You close your eyes, Country, I’ll take them home with me.”

Luther blinked from the sweat, but he didn’t shut his eyes, and he saw the blood flow over the lip of the wound and off Jessie’s flesh and spill all over the table, and he could tell by a fleeting glimpse of Jessie’s eyes that his friend had exited the place where he was worried about the wound to his jaw and had realized these could be the first moments of a long, last day on earth.

“Give that pussy a towel,” the Deacon said and pushed Luther’s head away.

Dandy dropped a towel on the table in front of Jessie, and then he and Smoke stepped back. Jessie grabbed the towel and pressed it to his chin and sucked through his teeth and wept softly and rocked in his chair, his mask gone red up the left side, and that went on for some time, no one saying anything and the Deacon looking bored, and when the towel was redder than the Deacon’s hat, Smoke handed Jessie another one to replace it and tossed the bloody one behind him to the floor.

“Your thieving old man getting killed?” the Deacon said. “Nigger, that’s now the second most memorable moment of your life.”

Jessie clenched his eyes shut and pressed the towel so hard against his jaw Luther could see his fingers turn white.

“Can I get an ‘amen’ on that, brother?”

Jessie opened his eyes and stared.

The Deacon repeated his question.

“Amen,” Jessie whispered.

“Amen,” the Deacon said and clapped his hands. “Way I figure it, you been skimming ten dollars a week from me for two years now. What that add up to, Smoke?”

“One thousand forty dollar, Deacon, sir.”

“A thousand forty.” The Deacon turned his gaze on Luther. “And you, Country, you either in on it or known about it and didn’t tell me, which make it your debt, too.”

Luther didn’t know what else to do so he nodded.

“You don’t need to nod like you confirming something. You ain’t confirming shit to me. I say something is, and it very much is.” He took a sip of whiskey. “Now, Jessie Tell, can you pay me my money or it all done got shot up your arm?”