He folds his arms.

– If you are Coalition, I would like to know this. And if you are not? And if you are? Does it matter?

Axler puts a hand over the knife sheathed inside his vest.

– We should kill them, Papa.

– Did I ask you, Axler? Did I ask you anything but to be quiet?

– Wherever they’re from, they’re here to make trouble. We have to make a lesson of them. The people, Papa, the rest of the tribe, we told them we would keep them safe. This is how we do it.

He takes the knife out and points it at Vendetta and Harm.

– We keep the women of the tribe for increase.

He points it at Stretch.

– We kill the enemies of the tribe for safety.

He points it at me and Lydia.

– And we kill invaders to protect the borders of the tribe’s land.

He points the knife at himself.

– You may not like the way I did this tonight, Papa, but it had to be done. The rest of the tribe will not want to know it was done this way, but it had to be done. They can sleep safely in Gravesend only if we make these choices. I sinned. I broke the Sabbath. But someone has to.

Rebbe Moishe pulls down the corners of his mouth, raises his eyebrows, unfolds his arms and hoists his shoulders.

– Sometimes, not always, but sometimes my son can talk sense.

I clear my throat.

He drops his shoulders.

– Yes?

– Would it be possible for me to ask a question?

– These manners, where have they come from? Yes, of course, a question, ask it.

I look at Axler.

– I was wondering if that’s the knife you used to kill Selig?

No one says anything. So I carry the conversation for the moment.

– In the cemetery? It was just a little while ago? You stuck it through his throat and cut his brain stem with it. Was that the one you’re waving around there?

He comes in my direction.

– Axler!

He stops and looks at his father.

– A filthy lie! Do you need any more proof, Papa?

I lean into the aisle.

– Hey, I’m not asking anyone to take my word for this, Rebbe. Try grilling one of his lameass posse here. Based on the spine they showed when he was waxing their friend, I’m guessing they’ll spill the beans in about a second.

I look at the kid who scratched my head.

– What about it, buddy, you and Selig close? Got any regrets about not stepping up when junior lost his cool and killed the promising young rabbinical student?

The head scratcher opens his mouth, stands, sits, closes his mouth, looks at the Rebbe, looks away.

– He’s lying, Rebbe.

I shrug.

– Well, that’s it, looks like I’m screwed. Testimony like that, how can I not be lying?

Axler’s fingers are white on the handle of the knife when he waves it at me.

– He’s lying. He killed Chaim.

He waves it at Lydia.

– And she killed Selig. She killed Selig.

Lydia straightens.

– Hold on, hold on. I admit I fired indiscriminately and can’t account for every round, but I didn’t stab anyone. I’m certainly not prepared to accept the blame for a death I can’t say for certain I had any involvement in.

Stretch goes red faced.

– Will someone please shut that cunt’s mouth before I go crazy?

Lydia comes off the bench.

She careens across the aisle and throws her shoulder into Stretch and knocks him to the floor and grabs him by his bound ankles and lifts him and swings him high in an arc over her head and brings him down and his skull shatters three of the large white tiles that cover the floor, sending a spiderweb of cracks across them and gouts of blood and shards of bone through the air.

She falls to her knees and drops his ankles and watches him jerk twice and stiffen and we all smell his bowels go and the blood stops pumping and the one eye that still has a socket to hold it in rolls around and stops and glasses over.

Lydia looks at the dead midget, looks up at us all.

– I told him I’d kill him if he talked like that again.

Harm goes berserk.

Vendetta goes berserk too, but all she does is grab her dad and howl and shake. Harm wants to make Lydia dead. And she makes a living doing the nail act with her sister. And the rest of the crowd is trying to get her down without killing her.

Fucking fiasco.

I do the smart thing and roll off my pew and squirm under it and watch. Lydia just sits on the floor and stares at Vendetta with her dead father in her arms.

Harm gets close, but Axler’s boys keep wrestling her down. They have to break a few bones to do it, Rebbe Moishe all the time telling them to be gentle.

When they try to get Stretch from Vendetta’s embrace, she bites someone’s thumb off. They get smart and let her hold the dead guy and just lift them both from the floor and carry them out to wherever they took Harm and Rachel. Axler’s place, I guess.

And in the middle of all this, Axler comes for me.

Knife out, chaos behind him, he reaches under the pew and pulls me out and I twist my wrists and the straps hold and I kick my legs and the straps hold and he pulls my hair and stretches my throat and when his father hauls him off me and throws him to the other side of the temple he takes hair and scalp with him.

And soon after that, it’s pretty quiet. The girls are gone with the escort of boys, which leaves me bound on the floor, and the Rebbe sighing deep, and his son dragging himself to his feet and looking for his knife, and Lydia, still staring at the door where they took the dead father and his crazed daughters.

Lydia looks at Moishe.

– I did warn him.

He crouches next to her.

– Yes, you did. No one said otherwise.

– I’ve never done anything like that before.

– Of course not, why would you have? He tasked you. You are wounded and exhausted and in danger and he tasked you.

– I mean, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve killed before. But in self defense. I. I’ve never. In anger. I’ve never done that before.

– You were raised well, then. You said your father kept Seder? You were raised in a proper house? He was Jewish? Yes?

She looks at the cracked tiles.

– What? Yes. Jewish. All that nonsense. All of us. Yeah, yeah, but California Jewish is different from New York Jewish.

– Shht. Nonsense. There is only Jewish. Look at us, yes? I came from Poland. Do you believe this? It is true. Deep in the dark holds of ships. Smuggled out. From Poland. Over the sea. Are we different from New York Jews? Perverse as we are, are we not Jewish? Yes, we are. Your father raised you Jewish, you are Jewish. And your mother?

– Yeah, like I said, all Jewish. Bat mitzvah, the whole thing. Till I was old enough to think for myself.

– Well, they must have raised you well and loving. You’ve been blessed. In this our life, only to have killed in self defense. Never until now in anger. Never from greed or hunger. That I could say the same.

He stands, he stands and takes a step and puts himself in the path of his son, who has recovered his knife and has crossed the temple and is coming for me.

– Axler.

– Move, Papa.

– Boy.

– Move.

Axler sweeps his arm at his father to knock him aside.

And the Rebbe grabs his son’s wrist and twists it and cranks it down and behind his back and pushes it up and kicks him once behind each knee and Axler goes down and throws his free hand out to catch himself and the knife flies from his fingers and his father forces the arm high and his son bends until his forehead touches the ground, his face rubbed in the pooled blood of his uncle.

– Boy, you have done enough. Enough. And is there no length you will not go to cover your sins? Laying hands on your father? Your Rebbe? Piling bodies on bodies to hide the ones beneath? Invoke the safety of the tribe to excuse your shame? Shht.

He releases the arm and straightens. But Axler stays as he is.