Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [73]
A large number of local gentlemen had gathered before the raised platform where a wooden shaft with chains attached stood in the center, the men talking among themselves as though waiting for the opening of a service of some kind or in anticipation of meal. The boy and his father stood a pace or two apart from this crowd, though now and then the older man acknowledged the greetings of the other gentlemen. To one or two he gestured at the boy and made known that this was his son.
That son heard little of this now. He concentrated on the sounds from within the long barred room, standing almost on tip-toe in an attempt to try to listen. When a man in a coat and hat stepped up (as if out of nowhere) onto the platform the boy leaned his entire body in that direction. The man began to jabber and the boy paid little attention to what he said, straining, virtually up on his toes to see beyond the shoulders of the men bunched up in front of the block as a bulldog faced man, clearly a guard, in dark clothes and club in hand, went to open the door to the barracks.
The shouting, weeping, crying that poured out through the door—he held his breath—this even before the guard, now aided by another man just as ugly, herded the interned Africans into a line just behind the block and plucked from the bunch a thick-necked fellow as dark as a moonless night and pushed him up a set of steps so that he stood above the crowd. The boy’s eyes burned in amazement as the auctioneer began to take bids on the African.
“…stronger’n when he went into the Pest House, blessed with muscles galore, gentleman as you can see…”
The man stared above the heads of the crowd, his eyes fixed on some point the boy could not, when he turned behind him to spy, discern.
Voices shouting money figures boiled around him. The man was led away. Another took his place. And then another.
His father grasped his shirt-sleeve.
“We are looking for a helper and such for your mother. You keep an eye open now, son.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said.
The crowd pressed tighter in as the first woman of the auction walked carefully up the steps, as if she were wearing a long gown on which she might trip rather than the rags that scarcely left any part of her generous tar-black body unexposed.
“What do you think, son?”
The boy wanted to speak but felt as though he had lost his tongue.
His father leaned down and said, “A bit too old, probably untrainable…”
The boy nodded, and felt the crowd pack closer as the sale of this woman speeded along.
A younger woman, less sure of herself and much more exposed, if that was possible and still be wearing clothes, stood tentatively on the block.
A man nearby expelled from his lips a lascivious noise, something the boy had heard before only when men called to dogs or horses. Others took up the sound. The boy felt suddenly weak in the legs, as though he might fall down and become trampled under the feet of these large, bidding men.
“Five hundred!” a man called out.
“Look at her,” the auctioneer said, touching a short rod to the girl’s naked ribs. “Look!”
Perhaps it was a dream, the boy thought later. His thoughts swirled about in his skull and his stomach twisted and untwisted. He looked and looked, and under cover of the press of the crowd—who also apparently pushed forward to look and look—he found his hands on his lower parts, and while the auctioneer called for bids and more bids rubbed himself until