I learned early that on a Mississippi plantation, truth was a candle in a hurricane. You could cup your hands around it, pray it wouldn’t die, and still watch it go out because a powerful man decided darkness suited him better.
My name was Elijah Carter, though the ledger called me boy as if the word could shrink my bones, as if ink had the authority to erase a person. I belonged to the Cross estate outside Natchez, a wide, proud stretch of cotton that smelled like heat, sweat, and money that didn’t belong to the hands that earned it.
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