My mind was racing. The business about the performance was surreal and foreign, of course, but I couldn’t leave alone the thought that Daniel Emmett might be paying me for my singing. I might be able to have the money to buy my wife and daughter. “Jim, are you ready?” Emmett called to me. I paused, unsure of my diction, whether to speak as myself or as a slave. I made the safe choice. “I is, suh.”
