Excerpt from Yonder by Jabari Asim, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She raised an eyebrow and turned her gaze lower, below my waist.

"Sure you don't want to tie it there?"

"You're a naughty girl," I said. "I just might have to swat your tail."

She grinned. "It's yours to swat."

Greene, had he been lurking outside the cabin with his book of notes, would not have believed what he heard. He was certain that Stolen knew nothing of romance.

"Billy Boy," he told me once, calling me by the nickname he used for me, "I say I love my horse, and if I've got liquor in me I might even swear it before a parson. But it's really just a kind of affection because we've shared some adventures. Your people, Billy Boy, you're full of sinew and rhythm, I'll grant you that. Bucks can tend crops all day in the hot sun, and so can the wenches. Your creator blessed you with strong backs. And the way all of you move to the fiddle—well, that could be more than rhythm. That might even be soul. With liquor in me, I might swear to that also. Bucks and wenches share adventures. But matters of the heart, well, I wouldn't squander much thought on it. Love, affection, those are concerns best left to those better equipped to handle them." He had hardly finished when his wife yelled from somewhere in the mansion, a high-pitched keening that nearly rattled the windows. The mistress was heard far more often than she was seen, and we all took it as a blessing. We called her Screech Owl on account of her shrill screaming day and night.

If I hadn't been stiff and exhausted, I might have chuckled at the memory of Greene's lecture as I labored in the pit. Instead I grabbed Margaret's kerchief from around my neck and held it to my nose. Then I resumed my pace before the others complained, and continued grinding stone.

For all our pains, the worst was at day's end, or whenever Greene tired of toying with us in that fashion. It was then that he lined us up and forced us to submit to a rude search.

"As if we had a mind to steal rocks," Milton would say later in the quarters, his bushy eyebrows rising and falling as we washed off the day's dust. We would scrub ourselves heartily then, and even Cupid would agree with his complaints.

In the meantime, we assembled and lowered our trousers, bending and squatting to Greene's commands. He inspected each of us carefully. I looked away when he lingered before me and tugged between my legs.

"Billy Boy, your sack seems heavy. What you saving it up for?"

"Nothin'. Suh."

"Make sure you sow your seed where it's needed."

I nodded.

"Margaret should be bigged soon, or I'll have to pair you with someone else."

"Yassuh."

I didn't want to be with anyone else. Nor did I want her bigged.

I liked to shuck her. Slide her shift up over her firm thighs, watch her goodness unfold like a sweet brown surprise.

But Margaret didn't care much for slow shucking, slow anything. In my recollection of those days, she never waits for me. When I enter her cabin, she's already naked and staring me down. She's more short than tall, the top of her head reaching almost to the middle of my chest, and halfway between lean and stout. Like most Stolen, she's been working since she could stand, tending babies, chopping weeds, hauling wood, boiling clothes. She's small but mighty. She jumps on me, back or front she doesn't care, just wants her legs wrapping around me and rubbing heat into my soul. We wrestle rough, down to the ground. I look into her bright eyes, surrounded by lashes so long they seem unreal. I savor her plump lips.

"How can a woman your size be so strong?"

"Stop talking. Do what you came here for."

The second time, same night, and she's on top.

"Shh," she says. "Just let me ride."

The third time, she wants it from behind.

I grip her hips in the dark while she rocks me. I feel certain I am going to die. I have never felt a happiness so real, so present.

From YONDER: A Novel by Jabari Asim. Copyright © 2022 by Jabari Asim. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.