A dark-haired woman in a fancy blue dress comes out of a dry goods store across the street and walks right on over to the crowd of men. She links arms with a man in a brown suit who’s bidding off to the right of the auction block I’m perched on.

“A man like that shouldn’t be allowed to keep slaves,” she mutters when the raggedy man outbids him again. “It’s shameful.” She wrinkles up her high forehead and stares at me with small, close eyes.

The auction’s up to seven hundred and ninety.

“I have seven-ninety. Do I hear eight hundred?” The auctioneer looks round the crowd of men, but not a one speaks up. “Going once to the man in the red vest.”

I look over, and it’s the raggedy man he means. My whole body goes to ice. I’ve seen his kind. No-account men who can barely afford to feed their slaves, working them half to death in the day and never letting them alone in the night.

“Going twice,” the auctioneer shouts. “Last chance, gentlemen.”

Some of the men shake their heads. The auctioneer takes off his hat and fans himself with it.

I clasp my hands and get to praying something fierce, just begging God not to let that man take me.

“Sold.”

I can’t hardly breathe.

Mister Maddox pulls me down and I trip over my own feet, smashing my knees and elbows on the ground. Behind me, the men laugh. I bite the inside of my mouth to keep from howling and pick myself up. As Mister Maddox leads me off to the side, I tremble so hard I have to fist my hands in my skirts.

The raggedy man comes up to take me, but Mister Maddox keeps hold of my arm.

“She’s yours when you’ve paid for her.”

My new master looks me over and licks his lips. He will own my days and my nights, and every drop of blood and every bead of sweat. The eagerness I see in him to explore what all that could mean for the two of us terrifies me.

An official man with a money pouch steps up to take the payment.

“I got six hundred and fifty with me now,” my new master says to the money pouch man. “I’ll get you the rest next week.”

“Hell and tarnation, Jeb, you know that’s not how this works,” the man says. “This is the third time you’ve bid for a slave you can’t afford to buy.”

Jeb looks at my breasts and sets his jaw. “I can afford her,” he says. “You let me take her back home tonight and I’ll have the money to you tomorrow.”

The official man spits on the ground between them. “I’m not fool enough to let you take a slave you haven’t paid for.” Tucking the money pouch into his vest, he steps back through the auction crowd to the brown-suit man, whose arm’s still linked with the blue-dress woman. They talk a spell and then he leads them to where Mister Maddox has me by the arm.