Richmond, Virginia 1853
“Get up, boy.”
Grady opened his eyes. Gilbert stood over him, shaking the sleep from him. Was it morning? It seemed too dark, too quiet in the loft above the kitchen for it to be morning. He heard the faint drumbeat of rain on the roof.
“Get up,” Gilbert repeated. “Massa Fletcher wants you.”
The urgency in Gilbert’s voice made Grady’s heart pound faster, like the drumming rain. And there was something else that Grady couldn’t quite place—something very wrong. The day had started out all wrong. Massa Fletcher’s manservant never came up to the loft to wake him. Massa Fletcher never sent for Grady.
“But why? What’s he want?” Grady asked. His movements felt sluggish, his limbs still heavy with sleep as he pulled on his trousers.
Gilbert opened his mouth as if to speak, then stopped. He quickly looked away but not before Grady saw Gilbert’s chin tremble the way a woman’s does when she’s about to cry. “If you got shoes,” Gilbert said hoarsely, “better put them on.”
A sick feeling gripped Grady’s stomach as he climbed down the ladder to the kitchen. He smelled ham frying and biscuits baking, but something was wrong here, too. Esther wasn’t bustling around in her usual way, clanging pots and yelling at Luella. Instead, Esther stood beside the fireplace, her hands over her mouth as if she was trying to hold something terrible inside. Tears trailed down her broad face the same way the rain washed down the kitchen window. Esther’s eyes never left Grady’s face as he finished descending the ladder and slowly headed toward the door. He wanted to ask Esther what was the matter, but before he could speak she suddenly reached for him, pulling him into her arms, hugging the breath from him. Her body shook the way it did when Eli told one of his funny stories, but Esther wasn’t laughing.
“Here, now!” Gilbert said. “Don’t you do that, Esther. Don’t, now.” He pried her arms open, freeing Grady, then pushed him toward the door. The sick feeling in his belly tightened as he emerged into the cold rain. Then he froze at the sound of his mother’s horrible, anguished cries.
“No … no!
” She was running toward him from the Big House wearing only her nightclothes, her eyes wild with fright. “Please don’t take him. Please don’t take my boy from me. Please!
” Eli ran right behind her, grabbing her and stopping her before she could reach Grady. “Mama!” he cried. He started toward her, but a white man Grady had never seen before lunged at him, gripping his arm and wrenching it painfully as he pulled him backward.
“Hey! Come back here, boy!”
Grady began to scream. It was what people did when they wanted to wake up from a nightmare—and that’s surely what this was. He screamed and screamed, longing to wake up and see his mama bending over him, to hear Esther’s familiar clamor downstairs in the kitchen. He would begin this day all over again, the way he always did, toting water and fetching wood for the kitchen fire, helping Eli with Massa Fletcher’s horses. In the afternoon, when Missy Caroline finished her lessons in the Big House, they would play together in the backyard beneath the warm Virginia sun.
But Grady didn’t wake up. This wasn’t a dream. He cried out for help as he twisted and kicked, desperate to free himself from the stranger’s grip. He could hear his mama’s cries above his own.
“Please don’t send my boy away. I beg you, Massa! Please!
” A second white man gripped Grady’s other arm and they dragged him down the brick walkway toward the street. Massa Fletcher stood near the wrought-iron gate, his arms folded across his chest. Rain darkened the shoulders of his overcoat and the brim of his hat as he calmly watched, deaf to Grady’s screams and his mama’s anguished cries.
“No! Don’t take my boy! He’s all I got! Please, Massa! No!
” Grady glimpsed Massa’s cold, dark eyes for a moment and saw neither pity nor regret in them. Then the strangers dragged Grady out of the safety of the yard, propelling him toward a wagon filled with Negroes that was parked by the curb. One of the white men prodded the slaves with the butt of his whip, shouting at them to make room on the wagon. Then the two men lifted Grady like a sack of feed and tossed him onboard.
Grady struggled and fought for freedom as the damp bodies of strangers pressed all around him, holding him down. Rain soaked his clothes and ran down his face along with his tears. The wagon jolted and began to move.
“Mama!” he screamed.
“Don’t you let them white folks hear you cry!” The hushed voice in Grady’s ear was urgent, demanding. “Don’t you ever give them that power over you.”
But Grady couldn’t have stopped crying even if he’d wanted 27 to. “Mama! I want my mama!”
“Don’t you let them know that,” the man insisted. “That’s how they keep us down, how they torment us. Show some pride, boy.” The man gripped one of Grady’s arms, but he continued to kick and squirm, desperate to break free.
“Hush, now … stop …” a woman’s voice soothed. “Ain’t doing no good to fight. You only hurt yourself if you’re falling off this wagon, and then they’re catching you anyways.” Someone gripped his feet to keep him from kicking. The hands holding him all had shackles and chains attached to their wrists. The cold metal bumped against Grady as the wagon rumbled down the hill into downtown Richmond.
Grady was still fighting and struggling, sobbing in frustration and fear when the wagon finally drew to a halt. Every inch of his body ached, and his throat burned from screaming. The two white men climbed down from the wagon and began shouting at Grady and the others, prodding them like animals as they herded them into a fortress-like building. Dark faces peered out from behind barred windows. Grady heard the jangling, clanking sound of iron chains with every movement the captives made, scraping across the paving stones as they shuffled into the building, rattling from their wrists as they wiped the rain from their faces. Only young children like Grady had been left unshackled.
He needed to pray. Jesus would help him. Eli said Massa Jesus was always listening, always standing by ready to answer his prayers. “Please help me, Massa Jesus,” he murmured. “Please, please help me!” He glanced around frantically, searching for help, waiting for Jesus to come. But one of the white men dragged him through the gate and slammed it shut.
Inside the fortress, his captors separated the men from the women and children, pushing them into two different jail cells. The big slave who had spoken to Grady in the wagon pulled him into the men’s cage with him. The air seemed alive with defiance and anger while the white men were present, but as soon as the door slammed shut and they left, Grady felt his fellow captives’ despair. The atmosphere was so thick with it that his insides writhed. He trembled uncontrollably. Why was this happening to him?
The cell was barren and unlit, the floor strewn with straw. The stench of filth filled every breath Grady took. Eli kept Massa’s stables back home cleaner than this. Grady didn’t want the filth to touch him, but there was no place to sit except the floor. As hours passed and he grew too weak with fear to stand any longer, he finally sank down, huddling with his knees drawn up to his chin, trembling. Each man seemed alone in the crowded room, unaware of the others, as if they not only were locked in this room but locked away inside themselves, as well.
Grady closed his eyes and tried to picture his mother’s face. She was usually so happy, always humming or singing as she went about her work. But all he could remember was the terror he’d seen in her eyes that morning, the anguish he’d heard in her voice. He tried to recall the touch of her graceful hands as they soothed him, caressed him—but he couldn’t. He felt an ache in the center of his chest.
Grady sat hunched on the floor for a very long time, wondering why he was here. Someone had made a terrible mistake. They’d realize it soon, and Eli or Gilbert or maybe even Massa Fletcher himself would drive the carriage downtown and make the jailers unlock the door. They would bring him back home to his mother. He bowed his head and prayed the way Eli had told him to. “Help me, Massa Jesus! Please, please get me out of this terrible place.” He repeated the words over and over in his head, but the entire day passed, the rain continued to fall outside, and no help came.
As evening fell and the gloomy cell turned cold and shadowy, Grady smelled food and heard the white jailers’ voices outside the door. As soon as his fellow prisoners heard the voices, a spark of hatred seemed to crackle through the air like lightning. Slumped shoulders stiffened with anger, and eyes that had been moist with sorrow a moment ago now froze with hatred. The hatred seemed to soak inside Grady until his blood turned to ice.
The big slave pulled Grady to his feet. He gripped Grady’s face in one huge hand and raised it toward the ceiling. “You listen to Amos, boy. Hold your chin up, now. Don’t you let them see you crying.” The hard knot of grief in the center of Grady’s chest swelled and grew, nurtured by the hatred all around him.
The jailers brought food to the other cell first. Grady heard the women clamoring and fighting for it, the children crying. Amos’ hushed voice penetrated the men’s cell, rallying them. “Don’t be acting like animals,” he ordered. “That’s what they think we are. Show them we’re men.”
When their food came, the men divided it among themselves with no shoving or pushing. But they were forced to eat with their hands and to lap water from a trough like dogs. Amos offered Grady some food but he couldn’t eat any of it, his stomach a cold, heavy lump of fear.
The cell grew dark, and the men lay down to sleep on the floor wherever they could find space. Grady sat with his arms wrapped around his knees and thought of his bed in the loft above the kitchen. He could cry all he wanted to now that it was dark and no one would see him. But he didn’t think he had any tears left to shed. He had prayed all day, begging Massa Jesus for help. Why hadn’t He answered?
Amos lay beside him, his hands cushioning his head. “Stop thinking about home, boy,” he said. “You ain’t going back.”
Grady swallowed hard and spoke for the first time since morning. “W-why are we in jail?”
“You never heard of the slave auction?”
Grady shook his head, then realized that Amos couldn’t see him in the dark. “No, sir.”
“You’re gonna be sold to a new owner. That’s what they do with slaves—buy and sell us like cattle.”
“My mama—” Grady began, but Amos cut off his words with an angry cry.
“Enough! You never gonna see your mama again, long as you live.”
Grady pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes to hold back his tears.
“May as well know the truth, boy, so you won’t keep hoping. You ain’t never going home again, never seeing your mama. New massa gonna buy you and move you someplace else.”
Grady managed to choke out a single word, “Why?”
Amos exhaled. “Maybe your old massa’s needing the money, maybe you done something wrong, maybe he’s just tired of looking at you. He ain’t needing a reason. You getting a new massa now. Find out soon enough if he be good or bad.”
Grady lay down in the straw and covered his face to muffle his sobs. It couldn’t be true. His mama would come looking for him and rescue him. She wouldn’t leave him in this terrible place or let him be sold to a new master. Massa Jesus would show her where to come.
“Go to sleep,” Amos said. His voice no longer sounded angry. “Only peace you ever gonna have in this life is when you’re sleeping.”
The words of a psalm Eli had taught him floated through Grady’s mind: I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord, makes me dwell in safety. Eli had told him to recite those words whenever a thunderstorm or the wind scared him at night and he couldn’t sleep. Eli had promised him that Massa Jesus would always be near, taking good care of him. “Are you hiding them words in your heart?” Eli would ask, and Grady would tap his own chest and say, “They in there, Eli. They all hiding right down in there.” But Grady’s heart felt very different in this godforsaken place, as if it were much too heavy to carry around in his chest. He lay awake for a long time listening to men snoring and women weeping. And for the first time in his life, Grady was afraid of tomorrow.
When he first awoke the next morning Grady didn’t know where he was. Judging by the smell, he might have fallen asleep in the stable. He sat up and looked around. Pale bands of sunlight slanted through a high, barred window—and he remembered. Grady lay down again, buried his face in his folded arms, and wept.
After a breakfast of corn bread and pork rinds, the guards shoved Grady and the other men outside into an enclosed yard with high stone walls and a barred gate. A knot of men crowded around the gate, blocking the view of the street, but Grady could hear carriages and horses driving past. The incessant noise of scraping, rattling chains resounded in his ears, jingling like muted sleigh bells.
The rain had stopped. In the open patch of sky above Grady’s head, gulls circled and screamed. The sun shone, but it seemed colder and dimmer than the sun he used to play beneath back home with his friend Caroline. He thought of her when a frail brown sparrow landed on top of the wall above him, pecking at the stones. “That gal don’t eat enough to keep a sparrow alive,” Esther always used to say. Caroline was older than Grady but smaller, as fine-boned and delicate as a bird. For as far back as Grady could recall, they had played together in the backyard and pestered Eli with their endless questions.
Caroline had white skin like her father, Massa Fletcher. White skin like Grady’s jailers. The color of a person’s skin had never seemed important to Grady before, but he’d awakened yesterday to the realization that he was a Negro, a slave, like all the other dark-skinned people imprisoned with him. The men on the outside of the bars, the ones holding the keys, were white.
“God’s eye is on the sparrow,” Eli had told him. “He knows if one of them be falling down.” Eli had always seemed so certain. But why hadn’t God been watching over Grady yesterday when those men had grabbed him and locked him up in this place? Why hadn’t He answered all Grady’s pleas for help? Massa Jesus might still live back home with Eli and Caroline and Mama, but it didn’t seem like He would ever come near a place like this. There were no words of Jesus hidden in Grady’s heart here. The sparrow hopped along the top of the wall, then flew away. Grady’s eyes filled with tears.
The big slave’s voice came from behind Grady: “That’s freedom, boy.” Grady didn’t turn around, unwilling to let Amos see his tears. “Freedom means flying away anytime you want, going wherever you want—just like that bird. Being free is all I think about, all the time. I’m just biding my time, and when the chance comes, I’ll be flying away, too. In the meantime, you gotta plan for it, boy. Know where you gonna go and how you’re getting there. Otherwise they catch you right away and whip you till you wish you was dead.”
Grady had no idea what Amos was talking about. He’d barely known fear or uncertainty during all the years he’d lived above the kitchen with Mama and Eli and the others. He’d known that he wasn’t allowed inside the Big House where Caroline lived, but until those white men had dragged him away against his will, until they’d locked him behind barred doors, Grady had never felt a lack of freedom.
The slaves’ time in the exercise yard ended much too soon. The guards herded them back into the cell and left them there for another long night. Early the following morning, the jailers arrived and ordered them to strip to their underdrawers in preparation for the auction block. “Show them you aren’t hiding any defects,” a guard explained. Without a word, the other men began to undress. Grady hesitated.
“Do it, boy,” Amos ordered.
Heat rushed to Grady’s face as he fumbled with his buttons. He had never undressed in front of strangers before. He began to shiver, not from the cold but from shame at his nakedness. The big man poked his bare shoulder.
“You stand up tall and proud, you hear? This is the way God made you. You ain’t needing to be ashamed. The white folks is the ones who ought to be ashamed.”
Guards herded them out of the cell and marched them across the yard to the other building. Once inside, they ordered Grady and the others to stand on a raised platform above a huge crowd of spectators. Grady forced himself not to hunch his shoulders, not to cry, even though he saw white women and children staring up at him. One by one the white men shoved the other slaves to the front of the platform and auctioned them off to the highest bidder.
“Now, here’s a healthy young buck,” the auctioneer said when it was Grady’s turn to go forward. He felt rage building inside him as he gazed into the distance above the heads of the spectators and bidders, refusing to look at their faces as they stared up at him.
“He looks well-fed, sturdy bones, good breeding,” the auctioneer said. “About nine or ten years old, I’d say. Turn around, boy, and show us your back.” Grady obeyed. “See there? Not a mark on him,” the auctioneer said. “He knows how to mind. Turn around again and raise your arms, boy.”
Grady had seen the other slaves lift their arms with their palms spread. He refused to make the gesture of surrender. He curled his hands into tight fists before raising them. Laughter rippled through the crowd.
“Well, now,” the auctioneer chuckled, “you can see by the size of those fists that he’s going to be a big, strong buck someday. Good breeding stock. Who’ll start the bidding at forty dollars?”
Grady couldn’t understand the auctioneer’s babble as the spectators bid on him. He gazed straight ahead, unblinking, until the auctioneer shouted “Sold!” and Grady was pulled off the platform. Someone thrust his shirt and trousers into his hands, then marched him forward to meet his new master.
Mr. Edward Coop was a stern, shrewd-eyed man in his fifties, impeccably dressed in a dark, vested suit and starched white shirt. His graying brown hair was receding, making his long, narrow face appear even longer. A drooping mustache hid Coop’s unsmiling mouth, and his gray eyes seemed cold and piercing as he examined Grady up close. Coop’s Negro servant reached for a pair of manacles and tried to shackle Grady to the chain along with all the other slaves Coop had purchased, but Grady’s wrists and ankles were slender enough to pull free.
“You won’t run off, will you boy?” Coop demanded. “Know what happens if you do?”
Grady didn’t reply. He had no idea what to say. Coop held a short riding crop in his hand, and before Grady could react, his new master raised his arm and whipped the leather across his bare shoulders with two quick slashes. The blows burned as if a hot poker had seared Grady’s skin. The sudden violence and pain shocked him, but he forced himself not to cry, shuddering with the effort.
“Now you know,” Coop said. “If you try to run off you’ll get forty more when I catch you. And you better know I’ll catch you.”
The tears Grady swallowed seemed to travel to his chest where the knot of hatred swelled and burned. Added to what he felt for Massa Fletcher was a newly formed hatred for Edward Coop, a hatred that was quickly growing to include all white men. Because there was no doubt at all in Grady’s mind that they were responsible for his pain and fear and grief. White men had done this to him. And he hated them all.