“Yes, sir,” Luther said.

“Yes, sir,” Jessie said.

The Deacon nodded. “Now how you gone pay back six thousand thirty-two dollars of my money?”

Jessie said, “Somehow we’ll—”

“You’ll what?” The Deacon laughed. “You stick up a bank?”

Jessie said nothing.

“You go over to White Town maybe, rob every third man you see all day and all night?”

Jessie said nothing. Luther said nothing.

“You can’t,” the Deacon said softly, his hands spread out on the table. “You just can’t. Dream all you want, but some things ain’t in the realm of possibility. No, boys, there’s no way you can come up with my—oh, shit, it’s a new week, I almost forgot—my six thousand eighty-four dollars.”

Jessie’s eyes slid to the side and then forced their way back to the center. “Sir, I need a doctor, I think.”

“Need you a fucking mortician if’n we don’t figure your way out this mess, so shut the fuck up.”

Luther said, “Sir, just tell us what you want us to do and we’ll sure do it.”

It was Smoke who slapped him in the back of the head this time, but the Deacon held up a hand.

“All right, Country. All right. You cut to the chase, boy, and I respect that. So I will respect you in kind.”

He straightened the lapels of his white jacket and leaned into the table. “I got a few folks owe me large change. Some of them in the country, some of them right here downtown. Smoke, give me the list.”

Smoke came around the table and handed the Deacon a sheet of paper and the Deacon looked at it and then placed it on the table so Luther and Jessie could see it.

“There’s five names on that list. Each one is into me for at least five hundred a week. You boys gone go get it today. And I know what you’re thinking in your whiny-assed head-voices. You thinking, ‘But, Deacon, sir, we ain’t muscle. Smoke and Dandy supposed to handle the hard cases.’ You thinking that, Country?”

Luther nodded.

“Well, normally Smoke and Dandy or some other hardheaded, can’t-fucking-scare-’em sons a bitches would be handling this. But this ain’t normal times. Every name on that list has someone in their house with the grippe. And I ain’t losing no important niggers like Smoke or Dandy here to that plague.”

Luther said, “But two unimportant niggers like us…”

Deacon reared his head back. “This boy is finding his voice. I was right about you, Country—you got talent.” He chuckled and drank some more whiskey. “So, yeah, that’s the size of it. You gone go out and collect from these five. You don’t collect it all, you better be able to make up the difference. You bring it on back to me and keep going out and bringing it on back until this flu is over, I’ll wipe your debt back to the principal. Now,” he said, with that big broad smile of his, “what you think of that?”