The warden raises his hand, stopping the guards. He’d like to avoid being branded a fascist by the media if he can avoid it.

“Evening, Mrs. Givens,” Hanratty says in a syrupy voice. “I’ll be thinking ’bout your sister and your niece when they send me off to Jesus. I’ve thought about them many a night when I’m falling asleep. Yes, ma’am.”

Mrs. Givens’s shivering hand clenches my wrist like a claw.

“The black man is a mongrel creature,” Hanratty says with a tone of regret. “But the good Lord knows a nigger wench is heaven between the sheets.”

“Gag the prisoner,” orders the warden.

“All you motherfuckers gonna die worse than me!” Hanratty shouts. “This ain’t nothing! Nothing!”

Two guards seize Hanratty’s head and fasten a black leather restraining device over his mouth and chin. The warden checks his watch and motions for the guards to follow him out of the room. Mrs. Givens isn’t reading her Bible anymore. She’s gripping my left wrist like it is the handrail on a cliff, her eyes riveted to the gurney.

“Are the chemicals going in?” she asks.

“Yes, ma’am. He’s got about five minutes to live.”

Mrs. Givens says something under her breath.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, he ought to be awake while it happens. My people was.”

Mrs. Givens doesn’t notice when I lift the Bible from her lap with my free hand and take up reading where her bookmark lies.

Now, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. And the Lord said to Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast Thou not made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face. . . .

As God takes Satan’s suggestion and puts forth his hand, I recall with soul-searing clarity the feeling of being singled out for suffering, of sitting in a plastic chair in the oncologist’s office and hearing the white-coated doctor say to my wife that most terrible of words: malignant. Later I would learn more arcane terms, like daughter cells and highly refractory—