“We’re freedmen, cap’n—I told you.”

The Colonel yanks Grant’s collar, tearing his shirt. “Where is your badge, boy?”

“Cap’n?” Something’s wrong now, Grant thinks, getting more wrong every second.

“Every free nigger is required to wear a badge of cloth sewn onto his left shoulder—here.” He cuffs Grant, hard. “The badge says ‘Free.’ Cost you a dollar at the town hall.”

Someone murmurs, “Colonel, nobody goes by that old law.”

“Cap’n, we don’t mind buying a badge, once we working.”

“Too late. Can’t buy it now. You-all are unregistered niggers violating our curfew.”

The country man fingers his stick and mutters, “Now they making up all kind of laws.”

One of the white men snatches his stick and snaps it in half. “Don’t be running that African voodoo on us.”

“Colonel!” one of the men calls from the sea wall. “It’s Parmele’s skiff—got all his gear in it.”

The Colonel folds his arms. “What have you done with the fisherman who owns this boat? What have you done with his body?”

“Wasn’t no fisherman,” the country man mutters.

“Please, cap’n, we’re just poor field niggers looking for a job of work.”

“Carter! Henry!” the Colonel says. “See if you can find Dal Parmele.” The two men disappear into the darkness, and soon hooves are clopping fast on cobblestones. “What about you?” He grips Grant again by his linen shirt. “You a field nigger? You don’t look like any field nigger I ever saw.” He turns to his followers. “Gentlemen, what is your opinion of this fellow?”

“Damned rabble-rouser,” one of them says. Others murmur assent.

“No sir, cap’n—”

“Yes, that’s what I think. A rabble-rouser.”

Grant remembers the name inked on his cuff. “Mr. MacIver can vouch for us, cap’n.”

“MacIver? The Scots are all upriver. Make up another name.” The men behind him laugh. “Are you the leader of these fugitives?”

“Cap’n, these are freedmen. They go where they please. We have papers—”

He tears the papers out of Grant’s hand. “I don’t see any papers.”

“You didn’t even look—”

“Don’t back-sass me, boy,” he warns softly. He riffles through the papers impatiently. “Well, what do we have here?” he announces, unfolding a yellowed newsprint pamphlet—David Walker’s Appeal to the Enslaved Negroes of the American South. Walker, the son of a North Carolina slave, went to Boston to preach against the evils of slavery. Grant was given the tract by a liveried slave on a rice plantation across the river. He meant to throw it away in the swamp.

“Read us a lesson from your tract.” He offers it to Grant.

“Cap’n, I swear, somebody just gave that—”

“Read us a lesson, boy.”