At 2 a.m. at the end of Pigs Alley, Fatty sits outside his jook joint, “Fatty’s Jook,” worried because Nate Timblin is inside drinking Fatty’s new moonshine. Rusty reports Nate has been steadily “sipping that shine,” and Fatty fears what a drunk Nate might do in his place.

Fatty’s fear is tied to how the liquor arrived in Chicken Hill. After Fatty and his friend Big Soap were fired from Flagg and Big Soap busted Fatty’s lip and knocked out a tooth, Fatty went to Philadelphia to his cousin Gene for help. Gene was hospitalized after a disastrous attempt to rent a prized palomino from the Chestnut Hill Riding Company and hitch it to an old fire-company water pumper; the horse bolted, wrecking the pumper and badly injuring Gene, and the Quaker owner, Thomas Sturgis, pressed charges. Gene’s wife persuaded Fatty to run Gene’s dry-cleaning business for two weeks, arranged for a dentist who replaced Fatty’s gold tooth with a wooden one, and sent Fatty home with fourteen gallons of strong North Carolina moonshine to sell.

Now, with Nate drinking that same “Blood of Christ,” Fatty considers calling the police on his own joint to force Nate out, but worries the cruel cop Billy O’Connell might respond and provoke trouble, especially given O’Connell’s connection to Dodo being taken to Pennhurst. Fatty instead closes early, turning down the jukebox and pushing the other customers out, leaving only Nate, Rusty, and himself.

Facing Nate at a corner table, Fatty is shaken by Nate’s silent, controlled rage and remembers an old prison warning from a lifer named Dirt: Nate’s true name is “Nate Love,” and he is dangerous when something inside him is “turned loose.” Rusty, trying to reach Nate, speaks openly about Dodo’s confinement and Doc Roberts’s wrongdoing, and Nate’s intensity eases slightly as the men suggest there may be a way to address Pennhurst.

Nate finally murmurs a phrase so quietly they must lean in to hear; Fatty and Rusty then escort him home and put him to bed while Addie is away at the hospital with Chona. Walking back, Rusty presses Fatty for what Nate said, and Fatty explains it as a warning: “Differing weights mean differing measures. The Lord knows ’em both.” Fatty concludes that unless they break Dodo out of Pennhurst, trouble is coming.