When it’s time for the auction, he chains us up again and shuts us in a room behind the Planter’s Hotel, pulling us out one by one. The woman with the missing tooth. The tall man with the wide chest. The man with the notch in his ear. The man that tried to run. The woman with the long neck. Isaac.

The chain round my ankles digs at where my copper skin’s been rubbed clean away, but that ain’t nothing to the fear snaking in the pit of my belly. When the slaver tells me to get up, I don’t want to move, but I do. I seen him do things on the march from Charlottesville to Fredericksburg, chained to the man in front of me and the woman behind, so I jump up soon as he calls my name. A jet-black boy won’t look me in the face as he unhooks me from an iron ring in the floor. I take small shuffling steps ’cause of the ankle shackles, but I take them quick ’cause I see the look the slaver’s giving me.

Mister Maddox is a lizard of a man, all waxy skin and beady eyes. The few greasy hairs he’s got growing out the top of his head look like pig whiskers. I flinch when he reaches for me. He unfastens my chains and the shackles slip from my wrists and my bleeding ankles.

He sets me beside the hotel wall, and I grab on to the wood siding. The white paint flakes off as I worry the slats with my fingers. It’s almost my turn on the block. The sticky heat of summer’s eased off and it’ll be a spell before the biting cold of winter comes. There’s not one speck of white in the whole blue sky. From behind yellow-green leaves I can hear a dove coo.

I shut my eyes and breathe out long and slow.

Above the noise of the crowd, the voice of the auctioneer calls out. “I have seven hundred. Do I hear seven-fifty for this fine specimen? Strong as an ox and docile as a lamb.”

It’s Isaac he’s talking about, up there on the block. My brother. The auctioneer tells him to take off his shirt and show the people his muscles. I hate the auction man. I hate Mister Maddox. I hate them all. The bidding gets up to nine hundred dollars.

I don’t notice how I’m humming till Mister Maddox says, “Sing something cheerful or shut the hell up.”

It’s a Jesus-help-me church song I’m humming that Momma sometimes sings. I sink down to the ground, pull my legs up to my chest and lay my head on my knees. Momma. She’s got to be crawling out of her skin with worrying about us. Before this happened, she’d have sworn up and down that Master’d never sell us. Guess you never know.

The auctioneer shouts out, “Sold!” and I look up.

Mister Maddox’s got hold of Isaac by the arm. He pulls him down from the auction block and hands him over to a red-faced fat man with three chins. Isaac hangs his head as the fat man slips a rope round his neck.