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Negro I’ve ever seen. Your back, I mean.”
    After a pause, Johnson said, “That’s the life of a slave.”
    “I seen plenty of slaves without a mark on them,” the boy said. “What’d you do to get beat up like that?”
    “Run off,” Johnson said. “Plenty of times.”
    “Well, you’re loose now,” the boy said.
    “Yessir,” Johnson said, then added, “ain’t no one going to hit me no more.”
    The boy smiled, very thin, very sour.
    “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he said.
    “No one’s gonna whip me now that I’m a free man,” Johnson said. His tone was a warning.
    The boy did not reply. Instead, he turned around and unstrapped his overalls. Johnson felt as if the breath had been sucked from his body. The boy’s back was twisted and crisscrossed with a thousand scars, looping in and around one another like a pile of rope or a ball of rattlesnakes.
    “Who did that to you?” Johnson asked.
    “My daddy,” the boy said. “He was trying to beat the devil out of me. He never stopped till I ran away. So I suppose he never did get the devil all the way out. I reckon it’s the same way with you.”
    Johnson could not think of anything to say.
    The boy shrugged his way back into his clothing.
    “My name is Winter,” he said. “Come on. Follow me.”

13
    A few miles off, Quentin Ross was woken by the sound of the birds singing. For few minutes he lay in bed, smiling without opening his eyes. The birdsong was remarkable. It was impossible to predictwhat the next note would be, but as soon as that note was sounded it seemed inevitable. As if the birds were singing according to a pattern that Quentin knew without knowing he knew it.
    Finally he sat up and looked around the simple bedchamber, yawning. Then he walked to the kitchen, feeling as if nothing he was seeing could be quite real.
    In the kitchen he picked up a copper teakettle, turning it around and around in his hands, smiling and looking at his reflection. For some reason he was convinced that if he turned it at just the right speed, at just the right angle, he would see something miraculous. And then it occurred to him that everything was miraculous, everything, and he started to chuckle; he couldn’t help himself.
    A voice spoke.
    “Lieutenant?”
    Quentin tried to focus on the person standing at the back door.
    “Are you all right, sir?” the voice said.
    Quentin strained his eyes. It felt as if the person were very far away, even though he was standing right in front of him. His mind would not descend to the present moment, like a bird that kept circling in the sky.
    “Are you all right, Lieutenant?”
    Quentin rubbed his face and looked again. Aha! It was Duncan Empire.
    “Never better,” Quentin said. “Never better.”
    “You’re not hurt, sir?” Duncan asked.
    “Of course not,” Quentin said. “Why do you ask?”
    Duncan did not respond immediately. He seemed to be performing some sort of quiet calculation. Finally he spoke. “Well sir, you’re covered with blood.”
    It took a moment for Quentin’s mind to understand what these words meant. Then he looked down and saw that he was completely naked and that, indeed, there was blood all over him. As if he had bathed in it.
    “Oh my,” he said.
    He looked up at Duncan as if for an explanation. Duncan didn’t move. Quentin put his hand to his mouth and thought. Then he started toward the door, heading for the pump out back. Then heremembered he was naked and stopped and turned back for his clothes. Then he realized that he couldn’t put his clothes on, because they would get stained with blood. And so he turned back to Duncan, smiling warmly but emptily.
    “Wait just a minute, sir,” Duncan said.
    Duncan stepped outside and motioned to his brothers waiting at the road. Charlie and Johnny looked a bit puzzled but wandered away, dragging their sacks of loot behind them. When they passed out of sight, Quentin went out and Duncan went in.
    The kitchen table was set