He was in the fever of work. He wanted them to know what it might mean to be branded: for another man’s initials to be burned into your skin; to be yoked about the neck; to wear an iron bit at the mouth; to cross the water in a fever ship; to wake in another man’s field; to hear the jangle of the marketplace; to feel the lash of the cowhide; to have your ears cropped; to accept, to bend, to disappear.
