He approached the spring wagon, holding out his hand. He wore pants and a shirt; in the warm summer weather a ring of white flesh slopped out above his belt, just as it had that hot night in the soddy when he’d defeated Jonathan. ‘Hello, Jonathan,’ he said. His voice was deeper, more confident. ‘Nice of you to pick me up. How are you keeping?’

Jonathan scanned the soft flesh and the belly. And then – oh, how long had he planned this tantara of the victory to come – how many nights had he seen it, tasted it—

He winked.

‘A surprise’, Clausewitz says, ‘can only be effected by that party which gives the law to the other.’ Like Jonathan after George’s wink of two years before, George now found himself off-balance. What could this wink mean? What law could this slave dictate to this freeman? Where was the risk? He was George, soon to be betrothed to Shockton Beef: George, the future senator. And yet – He grew restless in the days that followed. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he said several times, seeing danger, personal danger to him, to George, Georgina’s George: seeing it flicker across Jonathan’s face like phosphorescence on water. Jonathan turned away without speaking.

Then one afternoon, Jonathan sought him out. He cocked his head toward the railroad tracks at the edge of the Stokes’ land.

‘How come you’ve decided to talk to me?’ George said. ‘You got something to show me? That it?’

Jonathan nodded.

George studied him a moment. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

When they reached the stream by the cottonwoods, Jonathan again cocked his head toward the tracks, then splashed into the stream. George followed.

‘What is this that’s so special—?’ George began, coming closer.

Jonathan snapped his body around and threw both fists into George’s genitals.

Before the French Revolution, European generals worked for whatever prince offered the best salary, much like corporate executives today. Soldiers were mercenaries, expensive to train, hard to replace; they had no stake in the outcome of their fight, often no idea even of what the campaign was about. So war was very different: death to be avoided, battles to be fought as games of maneuver, like chess. True patriotism, true hatred of the enemy – Clausewitz calls it military virtue – is a phenomenon that doesn’t appear until the French Revolution. But when it does, it is as formidable an innovation as nuclear fission. Battlefields ever after have been slaughterhouses, and Jonathan had the Rights of Man spilling over in his heart as recklessly as any French Revolutionary. He beat on long after George had collapsed to the ground.

Standing victorious over the body – bloody, bruised, torn, panting, but victorious – he knew he should consolidate this victory: establish the defeat, establish death. He knelt down and reached out his hand, having it in mind to feel George’s pulse at the neck; but when it came to it, he could not force himself to touch that flesh. Pounding at the sodden whale of George’s being was one thing: touching him after the fact was different altogether. The girlish breasts showed themselves through the torn and bloody cloth of the shirt. Jonathan swallowed back disgust, wavered, reached out his hand once more, but still could not do it. George looked dead: Jonathan had seen dead animals and had some idea what death looks like. So it was that he excused himself from his duty; just this once, and to his eternal regret, he excused himself. He gave the head one final, not very enthusiastic kick: there was no sign of life whatever, no sound, not even a trickle of blood.