The auction began at ten. He bought three young men for the fields, quick-shouldered and quiet-eyed. He bought an experienced cook with scars on his wrists where someone had once made a point. By noon, Thomas had spent nearly five thousand dollars and felt the strange satisfaction of a gambler who’d won not by luck but by calculation.
During the lunch break, he wandered to the edge of a group of planters he recognized from a dinner party the week before. Their voices dropped when they spoke, as if they were sharing the location of buried silver.
“You staying for the afternoon?” one asked.
“No reason to,” the other replied. “I know what’s coming.”
A pause. The first man cleared his throat like he was scraping something bitter from his tongue.
“They’re finally selling her,” he said.
“About time.”
“Been sitting in the holding pens three weeks. Nobody’ll touch it after what happened at the Petton place.”
“Three men dead inside of two months,” the other muttered. “Four, if you count old Petton himself.”
Thomas waited for laughter, for the comfortable shrug of rich men telling ghost stories. But there was no laughter. Just a shared look that had the shape of superstition.
