I am God. Open your mouth wide and I’ll fill it.

– Psalms 81:10

Mama and Abner stayed together long enough to have two children: a girl and a boy.

Abner, going, took the boy. Their daughter stayed with Mama, who stayed in the house she’d kept for them all, a house she’d inherited from her own grandmother.

A few years later, Abner, frustrated with his son, sent the boy to live with Mama.

Always room for one more, Mama said.

Jesse, the boy, and Julie, the daughter, had a baby together when Julie was fourteen. They named the boy Jesse Junior.

Abner, upset, did not come to get Jesse. He washed his hands of his boy. He blamed Mama.

They been at it, he said, and under your roof the whole time. The hell you didn’t know.

They weren’t raised together, Mama said. And I didn’t know.

Mama’s heart was big, Mama’s heart was pure. She was always looking for the best side.

When Jesse Junior was going on ten years and some, Julie moved to down Miami. She found another man. She sent Jesse Junior back. She needed help with little Jesse Junior, she said. She didn’t know where Jesse Senior, her brother, was, she said. Jesse, he comes, Jesse he goes, she said. I don’t know where or when.

She ain’t ever coming back, Mama said, when Julie was five minutes gone.

Jesse did not go far. He worked for a roofer, then on a car lot detailing cars, then, after a short time in prison, he found work in a rendering plant. A renderer is like a slaughterhouse, except the animals come in dead. They are animals dead in farmers’ fields, dead of a variety of diseases and misfortunes including foundering, colic, and sometimes starvation. Struck by lightning too—it happens. Every day is apocalyptic for the animals kept by man.

Jesse said that when he applied, the boss asked him a few questions. He didn’t mind about Jesse being in prison. Everyone gets a second chance, he said. Some of ‘em get it here. He took Jesse out of the office and walked him to the door of the plant.

We got two kinds of employees, he said, lifers and them what leave after their first check without giving notice. You walk in there, he said, and take a good goddamn breath and hold it. I’ll be watching. If you puke, you can’t do this job. If you gag, you can’t do this job.

He went the door.

A good goddamn breath now, the man said. I can tell if you baby-sip it. You can’t fake fuck-all with me.

He threw the door open and Jesse inhaled that sour bong-rip of rotten ruminant entrails and the blood of foundered ponies bisected by veterinarians who knew there was nothing to do but the kids cried so he was called and even an escaped llama knocked one-hundred-and-sixteen feet off of a the highway by a semi-trailer hauling frozen vegetables to Canada and piglets that died of untreated Coccidiosis in the dozens with maggots already writhing in their eyes and assholes and the miasma of baked-on animal shit, shit everywhere, and all of it—every last bit of flesh and hoof and hair and mane—to be plumbed for something useful by the renderer’s necromancies.

I been working there ever since, Jesse would say, when he told the story.

Jesse rented an apartment above a gently used clothing store in a building that used to be a bank. He bought an old GMC in pretty good shape. Every Saturday morning he’d go over to Mama’s for breakfast and to see Jesse Junior. Jesse never said much. You know Jesse, Mama said, he was always good-looking, dark of hair and fair of eye—just like Julie—but he had a reserve about him that came across as humility. He never spoke first. That reserve is why people loved him.

One Saturday Jesse got there and there at Mama’s table was his cousin (twice) Gaylene and her girlfriend Kendra. The two girls had bought a power-washer and some brooms and squeegees and started a power-washing business. Squirters, they called it. Power-Washing & Concrete Cleaning.

They did driveways, fences and that sort of things. No graffiti though. Hollow concrete block is porous and absorbs paint. It’s difficult to remove. It’s easier—and cheaper—to paint over it, she’d tell people when they called about it.

Gaylene told Mama that she and Kendra had taken a call from some guy—a professor at the University—who wanted his driveway washed. She quoted him $250 and he signed the quote. Take care of it, he said, and went back in his house. Get it done.

She and Kendra set about the work and in time, were done. She knocked on the door and the guy and his wife came to the door.

All done, she said. That’s $250, please and thanks.

They guy looked over her shoulder and out at the driveway.

It looks worse than it did before, he said. I am not paying you anything.

Kendra took out her cell phone. I have pictures she said. Before and after.

It was not Kendra’s first rodeo there with Squirters. Kendra—who had a tattoo of red-eyed Medusa on her shoulder—was tougher than Gaylene. Underneath the medusa was the name Gaylene in cursive script. Gaylene liked; Kendra loved.

The professor was harder yet.

Get off my property or I’m calling the police, the man said, all professor-ish.

He turned around and went back into the house. His wife went to close the door.

You had best listen to my husband, she said. We can’t pay for poor work.

Gaylene and Kendra, back at Mama’s place and waiting on Mama’s biscuits with little Jesse, talked of a builder’s lien or small claims court or of just what to do.

Jesse had taken his boots off at the door. Jessie wore steel-toed boots, same as he wore at the rendering plant. He’d taken the laces out, so he could just slide them on and off, like slippers.  He sat at the table, barefoot, and looked at the pictures.

How long for those biscuits, Mama, he asked?

Soon enough, Mama said, and then, to Gaylene and Kendra, you should get the lien. To run a business, you have to be business-like. That’s all you can do.

Jesse messed up little Jesse’s hair and got up.

Back soon enough, he said.

He left the rest talking at the table. He always smelled a little of the rendering plant’s particular post-mortem, and of cigarettes, and the smell lingered in his wake. He only smoked at the plant, on breaks. Everyone in the rendering business smokes. They all have the same reason.

From the pictures Jessie had seen the house, and the address thereof. When he got there, he parked in the newly washed driveway, and walked up and rang the doorbell. No one came. He rang and rang. Still, no one. Goddamn, he said out loud, and then walked around the front of the house looking through the windows, his hand cupped over his brow and his face almost against the glass to see through the glare from the street. Come out, come out, wherever you are, he half-said, half-sang. Come out, come out wherever you are.

What do you want?

The voice came from behind him.

It was the professor and his wife. They’d been somewhere on foot and had walked into the driveway behind him.

With the unlaced steel-toed boot of his right foot Jessie kicked the professor in the shin and broke the man’s tibia with a crack that echoed and down the man went. While he lay there Jessie kicked him on the groin as hard as he could. The man writhed and vomited, Jessie kicked him in the head twice, and the man quit moving, unconscious.

He turned to the wife, who stood there with her hand over her mouth.

You owe my cousin $250 for the driveway, he said. Let’s go in and get it.

The wife walked into the house and Jessie followed. She went to her purse and counted out three hundred dollars and handed it to Jessie.

No, he said, it’s two-fifty. He gave her $50 back.

He walked out by himself. The man was starting to sir. Jessie kicked him at the base of his spine, cracking his coccyx. Not so loud as the kick to the shin, but Jessie could feel it better. The man writhed and began to bawl, shouting, shouting, shouting without forming an articulate complaint, making noise just to make noise, no longer in control of his lungs or his mouth or his brain.

Some things are learned the hard way, Jessie said to him, but they are learned nonetheless.

The wife stayed in the house. She wasn’t coming out for anything, for a while. Her kitchen, tidy and expensively finished with granite countertops, smelled faintly of cigarette and the animal charnel born of a July heat wave.

Jesse got into his truck and drove back to Mama’s. He sat down in her entryway and took his boots off, then walked back into the kitchen. The biscuits were piled high and hot right out of Mama’s oven and he could smell the bacon cooking. He gave the $250 to Gaylene and winked at Kendra. Your builder’s lien, he said.

Everyone was quiet. Mama was cooking, thinking what what what, and Gaylene and Kendra were doing the math and trying to guess the sum of what Jessie might have done but still glad of their money.

Jesse Junior asked to Jesse, how come you have boots, but no shoes?

It’s because I have two sets of boots, Jesse said. I got new ones at home. Laces and all. Haven’t broke ‘em in yet.

How do you break them in, Jesse Junior asked?

You fish in them, big Jesse said. Serious. Put ‘em on and stand in the water for a few hours. It’s a bonus if you catch any fish but you don’t have to. You’re just breaking in new boots. When you can’t stand there any more you take ‘em off and set ‘em in the sun to dry for a couple of days. When they are wet, they mold to your feet and yours alone and when they’re done drying, they’ll fit your feet better than any slippers you could buy for any money you might have.

Jesse Junior nodded, very seriously.

Who is older, he asked big Jesse, you or Mama Julie?

Mama Julie is, said Mama, before big Jesse could answer. Thirteen months and thirteen days.

Jesse smiled but said nothing. People had been talking. He ate his biscuits fast. Butter and jam on one, honey on the other, but it’s all he had time for.

The police come of course, and knocked at the door. Jesse met them at the door and there was some talk and he was put in handcuffs and taken away. Jesse said something about right is right and one of the cops said something about two wrongs and then Jesse, barefoot, was gone.

Mama set to work then and made some calls. She took out an envelope and asked Gaylene and Kendra for the $250, which they handed over without complaint. She said it was for bail for Jesse. No telling how much it was gonna be. They needed to start now. Mama had an old teapot on top for fridge—it had been her grandmother’s and had never left that house. She reached in and brought out more money in tens and fives and ones and change.

Mam once said about Jesse how people loved him for his reserve and how he let others speak first, and that lay on them like a gesture of respect—but that they liked him more for his violence, violence like dark hair, like bright eyes.

Come an hour and Jesse walked in, barefoot, just like he had left.
They let you out already, Mama asked?

Sure did, Jesse said. They let me out on my own recognizance, that and my boss’s word.

What do you mean? Mama asked.

I called my boss. He always said if ever I got in trouble call him first. He’d help. So, he told the cops that whatever it was he’d be good for it. There ain’t many of us that can work at that place you know. It ain’t for everyone. He’s gotta keep us good hands. Keep in mind, I never killed anyone. Plus, that sumbitch did owe Gaylene and Kendra the money.

Mama took the money out of the envelope and gave Gaylene and Kendra their $250 and put her money back in her grandma’s teapot.

Jesse sat down at the table again, bare feet crossed underneath it.

Look Jesse, he said to his son, you’re probably gonna hear some things about me. All of ‘em is true, mostly, but first you gotta understand, me and your Mama Julie, we weren’t raised together, and that’s the all of it.

Mama nodded her assent and said only that not everything was true, what was said, but that not all of what was said was bad, neither.