47

by Walter Mosley

  I was happy to be there next to Champ but it was hard going to sleep with such a big man. He tossed and rolled in his sleep and sometimes pushed me almost out of the bed. But I never complained. I knew that Albert put me there so that Champ could watch over me and protect me from any other slaves like Pritchard who were jealous of the easy life I had before coming out to live with them.

  One day, after I had been working in the cotton fields for a while, Mud Albert told me that it went hard for most young boys out among the man-slaves.

  "Boys is soft and tendah," he told me. "And men are rough. Boys need a mother's touch, but they won't put them among the women because it's forbade for male and female slaves to live together that is unless the master says it's all right."

  "Why?" I asked in the hot morning out among the cotton plants that seemed to go on forever.

  "You'll know one day, boy," Albert said. "But right now you don't have to worry acause Champ done said that he's lookin' out for you and after they seen what he done to Pritchard they gonna know bettah than to mess wit' you."

  "How come Champ ain't mean an' angry like Pritchard, Mud Albert?" I asked.

  "Because Champ is the biggest, toughest, hardest-workin', friendliest slave anybody done ever see'd. He

  gets to visit with slave women all around the county and because'a that he don't get so rough."

  I counted my blessings that I knew Mud Albert and Champ Noland. But for a long time I forgot that it was Big Mama Flore that made my acquaintance with them.

  The morning after Pritchard branded me they had us up before sunrise. You could see the stars shining through the cracks in the ceiling of the cabin as Mud Albert walked up and down the rows with a kerosene lantern shining in our eyes. Then he used his big brass key on each man's leg manacles so that they could get up and go to work.

  Champ grunted and turned over, almost crushing me.

  "Sorry, boy," he said, and he lifted up so that I could crawl out to the floor.

  We went to relieve ourselves in the ditch out behind the cabins. Across the way we could see the women and the girls crouching down and doing the same.

  Then we were marched out into the cotton fields for the day's work. Even though the sun wasn't up yet you could feel the heat of the day rising. The air was full of biting flies and gnats and there was the strong smell of animal manure in the mud. It's strange the things you remember. The worst part of that first day was the sharp rocks sticking into the soles of my feet. The only piece of clothing I owned was a big burlap shirt that felt like sandpaper on my skin. I had no pants or shoes or hat to wear. My sleeves came way down over my hands.

  Before the sun came up I was paired off with a woman named and numbered eighty-four. She was quite a bit taller than I but not much older: fifteen or sixteen the way white people counted. She'd already given birth to two children by slave men that Master thought would sire strong backs.

  Her children had been sold off right after they were born and so Eighty-four had turned sour.

  Her hands were rougher than my burlap shirt and I hardly understood a word she said.

  Eighty-four had lived almost her whole life out among the slaves in the women's cabin and had nothing to do with white folks except for Mr. Stewart and his cruel work-hands. Me and Champ and especially Mama Flore spent time learning how the white people talked and acted.

  To tell you what Eighty-four looked like poses a peculiar problem for me. This is because I remember her in two very different ways. The first was the way I saw Eighty-four as a scared slave boy looking upon a big, angry, black girl. She never smiled or uttered a kind word. She never once asked how I felt or if I needed help. She was, as I said, black like I am black very dark. And back then, in the days of Negro degradation, white people either laughed at our color or, even worse, felt sorry for us because of our obvious ugliness and inferiority. In my childhood being black meant poverty, slavery, and all things bad. I was, before Tall John came, ashamed of my color and of everyone who looked like me. And so when I first looked upon Eighty-four I was afraid and disgusted.

  But when I remember her now there's a wholly different image in my mind's eye. Eighty-four was tall and slender with high cheekbones and large, almond-shaped eyes. Her skin was a dark black that had depth to it like the night sky. In later years I had the pleasure of seeing her laugh many times and so I know her teeth were ivory of color and powerful. Eighty-four was beyond good-looking, beyond beautiful she was regal.

  I know her beauty now, but when I first laid eyes on her she was a fright to me.

  "Bes' scurry n' hump," were Eighty-four's first words to me.

  "What?" I asked.

  She replied by pinching my arm till it hurt terribly and repeated the words, pulling a cotton boll and pushing it into her big burlap bag.

  I learned right away to watch her gestures as she spoke. That way I could keep from getting pinched. As it was the place where she tweaked me hurt for over a week.

  It was dark when we started but it was hot too. I pulled cotton for a long time, cutting my hands more than once on the tough husks of the pods. I wasn't bothered by the cuts at first because my shoulder still hurt pretty bad.

  The moment they started working the slaves began to sing. They sang songs that were not in English and they sang songs that were hymns learned from the monthly service that the traveling Negro minister, Brother Bob,

  delivered. Bob was one of the few free Negroes in the county who was at liberty to move about. There were a few other freed slaves around that had little cabins. These were favored slaves who got too old to work or were granted their freedom because of some brave act they committed. Usually they saved their Master or one of the Master's children from death.

  Most slaves prayed that the Master would have some accident so that they could run in and save him.

  "Or at least he could die," many a man-slave would say, "so then I wouldn't have no master to do me so."

  Eighty-four thumped me on the ear while I was having these thoughts.

  "Dey callin'," she said angrily. And then I heard it. "Forty-seven!" It was Mud Albert. I cut out at a run.

  It was full morning by then. The sun was up and five kinds of birds were chattering in the trees. I took the high road because it had fewer sharp rocks. I was in pain from the brand on my shoulder, cut feet, and lacerated hands. It hurt where Eighty-four had pinched me and I was bone tired from the hard work of picking cotton. But even with all that I was still happy to be running in the late morning sun. When I came upon Mud Albert he was sitting on a barrel in a clearing surrounded by dozens of empty burlap bags. All around the clearing were cotton plants and slaves with cotton-filled bags on their backs that were three and four

  times the size of a man. The sun was blazing but there was a breeze and I wasn't pulling cotton so it all seemed beautiful to me. I ran up to Albert all breathless and hopeful.

  "How's that shoulder?" Mud Albert asked me.

  "Hurts some," I said, "but that lard you put on it makes

  it bettah."

  "Good. Now tell me, how'd you like cotton pickin'?" The question stymied me for a moment. The first thing any Negro slave in the south ever learned was not to complain about his lot to the boss. How you doin'f the boss asks you. Good, mastuh, you're supposed to shout.

  But I hated picking cotton. My hands were bleeding, my back hurt, and there was something in the cotton plant that made my eyes all red and itching. If I told the cabin boss that I liked pulling cotton he might believe me and give me that job until the end of time.

  What I didn't know, or what I didn't want to know, was that almost all slaves picked cotton or some other onerous job for their entire lives. There was no escape from that, no chance at some better life. Hoping that Albert would give me something better to do was a child's dream.

  As I've said, I was fourteen at that time but I was still a child in many ways. Living in the barn under Mama Flore's protection I hadn't lived much among the men and therefore had n
ever faced many of the hard lessons of life. Because I was so spoiled I still had the dreams of a child.

  Children resist slavery better than grown men and women because children believe in dreams. I dreamed of lazy days in the barn and stolen spoonfuls of honey from the table where Mama Flore prepared meals in the big house. I dreamed of riding in Master's horse-drawn carriage and of going to the town where they had stores filled with candies and soft shirts with bone buttons. I dreamed of roasted chickens stuffed with sweet parsnips and onions. And, being a child, I thought that my dreams just might one day come true.

  The mature slave knows that dreams never come true. They know that they'll eat sour grain and sawdust every day except Christmas and that they'll always work from before sunrise until after dusk every day for all the days of their lives.

  If I were a full-grown slave I would have known that picking cotton was the only job for me on the Corinthian plantation. But being a child I was hoping for a loophole, like a job picking peaches that I could take a bite out of now and then.

  Mud Albert smiled because I couldn't answer his question.

  "So you don't love Miss Eighty-four and all those long rows'a cotton balls?"

  "It's pretty hard, Mud Albert. My hands," I said holding out my bloody ringers and palms.

  The sight of my cuts took the grin from Albert's lips.

  "I sorry, boy," he said. "I know that it hurts pickin' that cotton. It hurts the back and the hands, the eyes and the

  heart too. Work can break your heart just as bad as a woman can. Every nigger out here works harder than any two white peoples. That's why I let you have the mornin' pickin' cotton with Miss Eighty-four.

  "You really too little to be workin' in the fields yet. I don't know what Master Tobias was thinkin' to put you out here like that. But as long as you here I need you to know what it is to chop cotton. And now that you know I'ma put you out chere as a runnah for the slaves. That means you gonna run heah and theah doin' things for me and the other peoples needs it. So if I have a message you gonna run deliver it. If somebody need watah you gonna fill up the pail and run it ovah to 'em. You understand me, boy?" "Yes suh, Mud Albert, suh," I said being as polite as I knew how to be.

  "An' don't you forget them bleedin' hands an' watery eyes, don't forget the hurt in your back and your chest. Because I cain't save you from pullin' cotton if'n you don't do the job I give ya."

  "I run so fast that my feet won't even touch the ground, Mud Albert," I swore.

  He laughed and nodded and handed me his water bottle. That was the first drink of water I had since we got to the cotton fields many hours before.

  I know how bad a thing it is to be a slave and I know how terrible it was but I don't believe that there's a free person in the whole world that knows how good a cup full of water can taste. Because you have to be a deprived slave, to be kept waiting for your water like we were to really appreciate how good just one swallow can be. When we finally got a drop on our tongues it was like something straight from the hands of the Almighty.

  4.

  From Sunday to Sunday to Sunday I ran water and messages for Mud Albert.

  Mr. Stewart was the plantation boss and it was his job to organize the work that the slaves did. But Mr. Stewart relied on Mud Albert to direct the workers. No slave ever did anything bad under Albert because he was much kinder than any white boss would be. The white bosses thought that slaves were always lying but Albert was one of us; he could tell the difference between a malingerer and somebody who was really sick.

  So Mr. Stewart would sit around talking to the white plantation workers while Albert oversaw the cotton picking, and even the processing of the cotton gin.

  All us slaves hated the cotton gin, the machine used to separate the cotton from the seeds and chaff. It was like the hungry maw of Satan himself swallowing every pound of cotton we could deliver. If the cotton gin were idle Master would think that was because us slaves were too lazy to feed it. But Albert knew how to keep the machine going with the least possible amount of raw cotton and he knew to the bale how much the master needed to be satisfied.

  And so all the slaves worked while Albert sent me to bring them water and to keep him informed about how everything was going. If somebody was slacking off or else if somebody was sick and couldn't work I'd tell Albert and he'd tell Champ and sooner than you could count to ninety-three the problem would be solved.

  There were only two big problems in those first few weeks. The first was my hands. They were all red and dripping ever since my first day of picking cotton. Albert said that he didn't like the look of it but he didn't want to call the horse doctor either.

  "Sometimes that crazy doctor jus' say to cut off whatever limb is hurtin'," Albert told me. "An' if'n he cut off yo hands that will be the end of you."

  That was all I needed to hear. I carried the water by holding the buckets by their handles on either my wrist or in the crook of my arm and I kept my hands out of sight whenever Mr. Stewart came around to make sure that his slaves were working.

  The other thing that happened was that the slave we called Nigger Ned, Number Twelve, died of pneumonia in his cot. Mud Albert tried to take the load off of Ned but by then he was too sick. Three days after my second Sunday in the slave quarters Ned couldn't climb out of his bed. By the next morning he was dead.

  Master Tobias allowed us slaves to have a burial service because Ned had been in the slave cabin for many years. Ned was a good man and we all liked him. Nobody except for rascals ever had a bad word to say about him. The slaves all called him that terrible name because we didn't know any better and the white people said it just because they like the way it sounded.

  The free colored preacher, Brother Bob, was too far away to make it for to give the sermon and so Master Tobias said that he would say some words.

  We all walked to the slave graveyard in the evening after work in the fields. The slave graveyard was situated on the far side of the Master's big house. It was a small plot of land surrounded by a dilapidated picket fence. The slender slats of wood used as grave markers were crowded closely together. I remember that even in death the slaves would never have a place to spread out and rest.

  Mr. Stewart let us leave the fields an hour before the sun set so that we could form in lines in front of the grave that Tobias had Champ Noland dig. They didn't give Ned a pine box after all he was just a field slave. Instead they wrapped him in one of those big burlap sacks and laid him in the ground.

  I was standing in front of everyone because I was the smallest of the field slaves. I could see Big Mama Flore standing with the house Negroes across from the grave, behind Master Tobias. She looked at me once but I turned away. I was still mad at her for slamming that door and not saving me from Mr. Stewart. I hoped that she would feel bad in her heart because of the way I ignored her.

  A row of jet black ravens stood along the slanted roof on the south side of the mansion. They numbered a dozen or more. The birds watched the funeral proceedings. Every once in a while they made comments in their dry, crackling voices. Back then we saw ravens as an evil omen. Now that I look back on that day I see that it was Master Tobias who should have worried about the portent of those birds.

  My hands were hurting terribly. Most of the time I held them up to keep the worst pain away, but I couldn't do that at the funeral. At funerals you were supposed to keep your hands down.

  "We come heah today," Master Tobias said after we were all in place, "to say good-bye to Nigger Ned, or as I always called him Slim."

  Tobias, who was wearing work pants and a blue shirt, gestured toward the hole in the ground and then continued, "Slim was a good boy. He never asked for more or complained. We only had to beat him twice in my memory and he always worked hard in the field. You know all the niggers who work hard in this life will have a land of milk and honey after they die. The Lord don't want no shiftless slaves in heaven, only thems that has worked hard and showed that they are worthy of heaven's bounty " "Mr.
Tobias!" a man's voice called out.

  The ravens cried out and took wing at the sound of that

  man's call.

  All of us slaves, and Master Tobias too, turned to see a grand white man on a towering chestnut mare. He had great black mustachios and he wore a black suit with a white shirt. His hat was black with a small round crown

  and a wide brim.

  "Mr. Pike!" Tobias yelled. "What brings you to our neck

  of the woods?"

  Even though my hands were hurting me and my mind was hoping that Ned had been good enough to be allowed to slave in heaven, I was still indignant that somebody would interrupt a funeral and that the orator would stop his eulogy in order to enter into small talk with some acquaintance, regardless of his race.

  "I was hoping that you could help me, Mr. Tobias," the

  well-dressed stranger said.

  "Why you dressed in Sunday best?" Tobias asked.

  "I like my fine clothes," Pike answered in an arrogant tone. He moved his head around, exhibiting an unmistakable show of pride. His eyes opened wide while he did this and I could swear that for a moment his eyes were like

  bright rainbows.

  As almost two hundred pair of Negro eyes watched, the fancy white man dismounted his mare and sauntered toward Tobias. As he did so he let his eyes wander across the mass of black humanity.

  "I lost a slave," Pike said.

  "And you think he run the thirty-five miles from your plantation to mine?"

  "I don't know," the man said. "Could be. The boy is called Lemuel. He's young, maybe fourteen, and a strange brown color. My wife wants him back. She thinks that he's a healer. But I think that he's just a shiftless ungrateful cur. Et my food and then run like a thief in the night."

  "Well, if I see someone like that I'll tell you," Tobias said. "Now if you don't mind these slaves here is hungry and I have a sermon to finish."

  Mr. Pike didn't seem too happy with being cut off for the benefit of a mob of black folk. He stood there for a moment too long, staring at Tobias. But he finally got the point and turned away. He climbed up on his magnificent mare and shouted for her to gallop off. With all of that noise Tobias had to wait until the rude visitor was out of earshot before he could continue with the sermon.