The courtroom was cold and I kept my hands in my pockets because outside it was hot and inside it wasn't, and inside it was cold like one of those cells where they keep meat, and I knew the cold that keeps meat because I had worked in the slaughterhouse and the cold of the slaughterhouse is a cold that gets into your bones and never leaves, and in my pocket I had the slip of paper and the slip was folded in four and damp with sweat and I gripped it and let it go and gripped it. The lawyer had told me to keep quiet. He had told me I was a witness and that a witness speaks when he is asked to speak and not before, and I had said yes, and I had thought that saying yes was easy, and I had sworn to myself, the day I got out of that trailer, never to look back, never, and silence had been my defense and the defense had held for three years.

The courtroom had chairs of pale wood joined together, and carpet that swallowed footsteps, and a flag in a corner hanging without wind, and the air that came from above, from the vents, and smelled of nothing, smelled of plastic and cold, and the lamps were white and cast no shadow, and in that shadowless light everyone looked like wax. The man was there in front, seated, in a jacket that didn't fit him, and he didn't raise his eyes, and I looked at the back of his neck and thought of the trailer.

Because the trailer I remember in pieces. I remember it by the handle, the handle inside that wouldn't open, and one man pulled it and one pushed it and one beat on it with his shoe and the handle was smooth and wouldn't give from the inside because from the inside those doors don't open, and I remember it by the metal, the metal wall that in the day burned and you touch it and let go and touch it and you can't keep your hand on it, and under our feet the metal that shook when the truck moved and then the metal still when the truck stopped and didn't start again. And I remember it by the heat, the heat that was not the heat of the sun but the heat of bodies, the heat that rises and doesn't fall and fills your mouth, and the air that grew thick, the air you had to chew to get it down, and one man had beaten against the wall to make a hole and there was no hole, and one had shouted at the truck to stop and the truck couldn't hear. And I remember it by the names, because at the start people called each other by name, and one called his wife and one called his brother and a woman called a child's name, and then the names grew few, and then a single name, and then no one.

Fifty-three. They read them, these days, fifty-three names, one after another, and one of those names was the name I had written on the slip, because I was afraid of forgetting it, because the fear of forgetting it was greater than the fear of remembering it, and my hand in my pocket looked for the slip without my telling it to, and my tongue went dry, and I gripped.

Wilder was next to me. Wilder had given me his water when mine was gone, and he didn't know me, and he gave it to me anyway, and he said here, and I took it, and he died and I didn't, and this is the thing you don't say, that one man takes another man's water and lives, and the other doesn't.

Then the judge said something and the lawyer looked at me and shook his head, slightly, the way you do to a dog, and I felt my hand opening the slip in my pocket, on its own, and I pulled out the slip and opened it and the paper was soft and the letters were faded with sweat but I knew them, and I raised my hand, and I stood up, and my tongue was dry but the word came out anyway, and I said the name. I said Wilder. I said it loud, louder than I meant to, and my voice in the cold courtroom was a voice I didn't recognize, and I thought that now I couldn't take it back, and I didn't want to take it back.

The courtroom stopped. A woman with a small machine was writing, and she wrote that too, she wrote the name, and the name went in where things stay, and it stays there now, among the papers, a name among the numbers. The man in front did not raise his eyes. He didn't raise them when I spoke or after, and maybe he didn't know who Wilder was, and maybe to him they had been a cargo and nothing else, and I did not speak to him, I spoke to the air of the courtroom so that the air would keep that name.

Then they let me out. And outside there were the steps and there was the real sun, the kind that warms, and the heat outside was not the heat inside the trailer, it was a heat you could leave, and I sat down on the warm steps and folded the slip again even though I no longer needed it, and put it back in my pocket, and I said the name once more, quietly, for myself. Wilder. I said it the way you say a thing you don't want to lose. Wilder. I said it quietly, and then again, not to count it, but to keep it, and my lips moved and almost no sound came out, and it was fine anyway, and the name stayed, and it was mine to keep, and I kept it.