I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett

over here and close my eyes for a bit.” I held the rifle cradled against my chest and drifted.

    My dream spiraled like all things spiral: life, reflection, desire toward some truth, but never aimed directly at it. The year was 1861. Somehow I knew that and somehow I knew that I was in New Orleans, though I had never been there and certainly hadn’t been there in the nineteenth century. Though it was only March, the air was wet and hot, wetter than air should be, hotter than air should be. My clothes, my clothes were magnificent. I was dressed in a canary yellow frock suit, fitted at my trim waist and just a little snug across my chest. My shirt was white and crisp in spite of the humidity, and I realized that for some reason I was not perspiring like those around me. People watched me, I believed, with some admiration and some respect and perhaps fear. The yellow of my suit made my dark brown skin seem smooth in the bright sun. Other slaves wore tattered work clothes as they labored loading and unloading cargo. The ship’s captain, with whom I was dealing, was wrapped in drab attire, as was the white dock foreman, a short, fat man in a vest. They all called me Raz-ru, and I heard a black man refer to me behind my back as
the claw.
    “That does it, Raz-ru,” the captain said, handing me a copy of the shipping bill. “Tell me, will we ever see Mr. Bond down here again? Or are you taking over everything?”
    “Maybe,” I said, intentionally leaving it unclear about which question I was answering. “Maybe.”
    As I walked away from the docks a black man named Jason joined me. I greeted him by name. He was taller than I, very slender, and his voice was unusually high pitched.
    “They says the war is comin’, Raz-ru. They says we gonna be free men,” Jason said.
    “Who is they?” I asked.
    “Everybody.”
    I stopped and looked him in the eyes. “I hope it’s true. I believe it is true. Are you ready for it?”
    “I’m ready.”
    “Good man. Stay ready.”
    Then I was wandering with less ease, but more than I would have expected, through a crowd of white men, ugly faces, some with tobacco-stained chins, some dressed in finery. I was in an auction hall, and the merchandise was slaves. The item on the block was a man about my size, built very much like me, square jawed like me. The auctioneer barked out his attributes, said he was as strong as an ox, could lift and run all day and didn’t mind the heat or the humidity. He then gestured, and the man ran back and forth through the aisle, the muscles of his back rippling, his head down. The first bids were called out, and I heard fifty, then seventy-five, but I didn’t hear what price he finally fetched.
    A sudden hush fell upon the room as what looked very much like a white woman was pushed onto the block. But she couldn’t have been white because she was on the block. In New Orleans there were hundreds like her, but this woman wore the clothes of a so-called lady, and by that I mean that she was dressed from the waist up as well as below, given a respect that any other slave could never have expected. She stood with her back straight, her chin out, defiant. All the slaves behind the block came together as if a choir and then, as a choir, sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” their voices soft, mellow, round, their gaze a collective one, dumb and lost.
    “I have here a high-, high-yellow bitch of good lines,” the auctioneer called. “Her good white blood is evident, but I can guarantee her hot and steamy nigger disposition. From her hips you can see she’s probably not much for breedin’, but she’s great for rehearsin’. Her skin might be white, but she bleeds black. A fine luxury purchase for the discriminating gentleman.”
    Before the bidding began, a familiar voice rang out, offering five thousand dollars. It was the voice of the man who owned me. Hamish Bond stepped forward, dashing and comfortable in his camel dress coat, his tightly cinched green