Names, he thinks. These country men have names. The Colonel never even asked their names. He concentrates, watches the third man reel into the gauntlet, racing toward the two sprawled bodies on the riverbank.

Tucker, he makes himself remember, that’s his name. The first bullets knock the man down.

Big Gee. Willis. Terel. Coates.

Then they seize Grant by his elbows.

“You have no right!” He has found his voice. “We have papers!” His five companions lie in a single heap so close to the water they could reach out and wash their dead hands in it.

“Untie his hands,” the Colonel orders, his tone full of regret.

Grant rubs circulation back into his wrists. But before he can grab or punch, strong hands are clamping his arms.

“As you seem to have a higher opinion of yourself than those blue-gum nigger cohorts of yours,” the Colonel says, “we must take you down a peg.”

Grant stares at the Colonel, stares at those soft gray eyes. But it is another man who has the knife. A fist closes on Grant’s right index finger, yanking it taut at the knuckle. The knife flashes so fast, the finger is already gone before the pain blinds him in one quick burn. He wills himself to remain conscious.

The Colonel recites, as if he has said it before, “ ‘He shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness. Yea, the Lord our God shall cut them off.’ ”

They take all the fingers, and the thumb. As each digit is severed, the Colonel’s man tosses it to the crowd. Grant stares in horror at the mutilated stump of his hand, nausea washing over him. Then, running through his mind, over and over, is the old rhyme his daddy taught him in the fields, counting it out on his fingers: ought is an ought and a figure is a figure, all for the white man and nothin’ for the nigger.

The back of his throat constricts. The crowd goes silent. His arm feels heavy and dead. He tucks it tightly into his left armpit, and, before they can shove him toward the gauntlet, he charges through it on his own, roaring. The Psalm of David is coming out of his mouth in tongues: “ ‘I will early destroy all the wicked of the land! I will cut off all wicked doers from the City of the Lord!’ ”

They are not quite ready for him. He is halfway down the lines before they lay a hand on him. He hears the snick of revolvers being cocked, like a chain of beads being counted, hears the bellowing of men on either side as a dull, surfy roar.

The sun is up over the town. The brown river glistens suddenly silver. Grant runs for it. He can make it—for one instant, he believes this. He is invisible, a wraith, a bloodless haint.