Just ahead, at the edge of the stream, Denver couldsee her silhouette, standing barefoot in the water, liking her black skirts up above her calves, thebeautiful head lowered in rapt attention. Blinking fresh tears Denver approached her — eager for a word, a sign of forgiveness.

　　Denver took off her shoes and stepped into the water with her. It took a moment for her to drag hereyes from the spectacle of Beloved's head to see what she was staring at.

　　A turtle inched along the edge, turned and climbed to dry ground. Not far behind it was anotherone, headed in the same direction. Four placed plates under a hovering motionless bowl. Behindher in the grass the other one moving quickly, quickly to mount her. The impregnable strength ofhim — earthing his feet near her shoulders. The embracing necks — hers stretching up toward hisbending down, the pat pat pat of their touching heads. No height was beyond her yearning neck,stretched like a finger toward his, risking everything outside the bowl just to touch his face. Thegravity of their shields, clashing, countered and mocked the floating heads touching. Beloveddropped the folds of her skirt. It spread around her. The hem darkened in the water.

　　OUT OF SIGHT of Mister's sight, away, praise His name, from the smiling boss of roosters, PaulD began to tremble. Not all at once and not so anyone could tell. When he turned his head, aimingfor a last look at Brother, turned it as much as the rope that connected his neck to the axle of abuckboard allowed, and, later on, when they fastened the iron around his ankles and clamped thewrists as well, there was no outward sign of trembling at all. Nor eighteen days after that when hesaw the ditches; the one thousand feet of earth — five feet deep, five feet wide, into which woodenboxes had been fitted. A door of bars that you could lift on hinges like a cage opened into threewalls and a roof of scrap lumber and red dirt. Two feet of it over his head; three feet of open trenchin front of him with anything that crawled or scurried welcome to share that grave calling itselfquarters. And there were forty-five more. He was sent there after trying to kill Brandywine, theman schoolteacher sold him to. Brandywine was leading him, in a coffle with ten others, throughKentucky into Virginia. He didn't know exactly what prompted him to try — other than Halle,Sixo, Paul A, Paul F and Mister. But the trembling was fixed by the time he knew it was there.

　　Still no one else knew it, because it began inside. A flutter of a kind, in the chest, then the shoulderblades. It felt like rippling — gentle at first and then wild. As though the further south they led himthe more his blood, frozen like an ice pond for twenty years, began thawing, breaking into piecesthat, once melted, had no choice but to swirl and eddy. Sometimes it was in his leg. Then again itmoved to the base of his spine. By the time they unhitched him from the wagon and he sawnothing but dogs and two shacks in a world of sizzling grass, the roiling blood was shaking him toand fro. But no one could tell. The wrists he held out for the bracelets that evening were steady aswere the legs he stood on when chains were attached to the leg irons. But when they shoved himinto the box and dropped the cage door down, his hands quit taking instruction. On their own, theytraveled. Nothing could stop them or get their attention. They would not hold his penis to urinateor a spoon to scoop lumps of lima beans into his mouth. The miracle of their obedience came withthe hammer at dawn.

　　All forty-six men woke to rifle shot. All forty-six. Three whitemen walked along the trenchunlocking the doors one by one. No one stepped through. When the last lock was opened, the threereturned and lifted the bars, one by one. And one by one the blackmen emerged — promptly and without the poke of a rifle butt if they had been there more than a day; promptly with the butt if,like Paul D, they had just arrived. When all forty-six were standing in a line in the trench, anotherrifle shot signaled the climb out and up to the ground above, where one thousand feet of the besthand-forged chain in Georgia stretched. Each man bent and waited. The first man picked up theend and threaded it through the loop on his leg iron. He stood up then, and, shuffling a little,brought the chain tip to the next prisoner, who did likewise. As the chain was passed on and eachman stood in the other's place, the line of men turned around, facing the boxes they had come outof. Not one spoke to the other. At least not with words. The eyes had to tell what there was to tell:

　　"Help me this mornin; 's bad"; "I'm a make it"; "New man"; "Steady now steady."Chain-up completed, they knelt down. The............