“Perfect!” Lawson said. “I heard the water squish!”

“I timed it to a split second,” Murphy said with a quiet, modest smile.

“You’re getting damn good, Murphy,” Johnson said.

Trembling, he rose and they pushed the chair forward. Grey and blue eyes continued to regard him with quizzical contempt. He lowered his head in surrender and sighed through open lips. The fit of coughing had made him thirsty and he licked his lips and was grateful for the few drops of moisture he tasted there. He lifted his hand and rubbed his mouth and when he brought his fingers away he found that it had not been water he had tasted, but the tangy salt of his own blood. What they doing to me? he asked himself in despair.

“How long were you working for Mrs. Wooten, boy?” Lawson asked.

“’Bout a y-y-year, sir,” he panted.

“How’d you get the job?”

“The ch-ch-church sent m-m-me,” he spoke in gasps. “Mrs. Wooten c-c-called Reverend Davis . . . He always s-s-sends us out on j-jobs . . . Reverend Davis g-g-got an employm-m-ment office at the ch-church . . . If you c-c-call up Reverend Davis . . .”

“Quit telling us what to do!” Lawson barked.

He sat crying, his lips slobbering. Sweat trickled from his face onto his hands.

“All right,” Lawson said. “If you want to sit here all night, then it’s up to you. If you talk, you can get some rest . . .”

“I ain’t got nothing to s-s-say, mister,” he gulped. “I just want to go home to my wife . . . You-all got the wrong man . . .”

“Johnson,” Lawson called, “string ’im up and see how he acts.”

“Okay,” Johnson said.

Johnson advanced with handcuffs and clapped them about his wrists.

“Come on, boy,” Johnson said. “Maybe your brains are in your feet; if they are, we’ll get ’em back into your skull.”

Johnson yanked him up and clapped steel bands upon his ankles; then Johnson and Murphy lifted him bodily and swung him upside-down and hoisted his feet to a steel hook on the wall. The steel bands on his ankles were looped over the hook and he hung toward the floor, head first. Blood pounded in his temples and his heart and lungs sagged heavily in his chest. He could barely breathe.

“Well, how do you feel, boy?” Lawson asked.

He could not answer. His sight dimmed. The room went round and round. He swallowed several times. Circles of fire blazed about his ankles and his eyeballs strained against their sockets. Nausea welled up in him and he tightened his throat to keep from retching.

“Mister,” he whispered.

“Talk, you black bastard!”

The room and the voices gradually receded. Though his eyes were wide open, he could see nothing. His breath came in heavy heaves and he could feel his body, like a huge pendulum, swaying in space with each throb of his heart. Fire traveled down from his ankles to the calves of his legs, then to his knees; fire finally enveloped his entire body and a great cloud of darkness entered his brain. The next thing he knew he was sitting on the floor and someone was slapping his face.