"What you thinkin' 'bout?" I asked him in the dark.
"My home," he said.
"Where that?" I asked, "Africa?"
I was beginning to think that maybe Mud Albert was right and that boy was actually an African deity come to free the slaves.
"Is that a boat wit' a sun on it?" I asked.
"Not exactly," he whispered.
"What's it like where you're from?" I asked my new
friend.
"My home," he said, "is very different from anything in Georgia or anywhere else on Earth. It has red skies and floating lakes and many of the animals can speak and use tools." "Horses that can swing a hammah?" I asked. "Like that," he said in the dark. "Yes." "That's crazy talk."
"Here it is," John said, "but on my world everything is different. People are much smaller and they have skin coloring from green to blue to red." "Any white people there?" "Some," he said.
"When did you come here?" I asked him. "A long, long, long time ago," he said, a little sadly. "And you haven't been home in that long time?" Even in the dark I could see that John turned to look
at me.
"My home is so very far away that there was only enough power to bring my ship here with not nearly enough to bring me back again."
"And so you cain't never go home?" I asked, feeling sorry
for him.
"Only inside my mind."
I didn't know what he meant but for some reason I didn't have the heart to make him explain.
"In a way you could say that," he replied. "I mean / am not from there but I'm from a place that is as far away for me as Africa is for you."
"It's even a longer way than Africa is?" "Yes."
"How far is that?"
"There are many, many miles between you and the land of your blood," he said kindly. "So many that if there was a road from the door of this cabin to the place of your ancestors' birth you would have to walk from sunup to sundown every day for a year before you got there."
"That long?" I said in wonder. "And is your home that far too?"
"For each step that you'd take toward Africa I would have to travel a hundred years, and even then once you reached your home I'd still have tens of thousands years yet to go."
My math wasn't too good at that time. The highest number I knew was ninety-seven. But I knew a big number when I heard it. So when Tall John from beyond Africa said tens of thousands I knew that he would wear out the soles of his feet before he would ever see his home again. This made me wonder some.
"So if Africa is a year away," I said, "and your home is so much more than that, then how did you get here in the first place?"
Again John smiled. "I used something created by my people called the Sun Ship."
After a while of us being quiet Tall John turned over and went to sleep. For a long time I lay awake looking up into the darkness. As hard as my life as a slave had been I still felt sorry for Tall John from beyond Africa because I knew in my heart that he had come all that way just to find me.
"But what could he want with a nobody like me?" I asked the darkness.
When no answer came I closed my eyes and dreamed of red skies and floating lakes.
8.
I woke up when Champ Noland unlocked my chains. The slave cabin was a terrible shock to me. In my dreams I had been in a faraway land, beyond Africa, where people of every color, even white, lived in harmony and peace. I was there with Mama Flore and Mud Albert and even the taciturn Eighty-four. Even she was smiling and happy in the world Tall John came from. I realized that it must have all been a dream. John never put the plantation to sleep and we didn't play with Tobias's vicious bloodhounds. The strange boy never told me about some crazy faraway home. I was just dreaming.
Tall John was still asleep but when I looked at him he opened his eyes.
He smiled broadly and asked, "How are your hands?"
I looked down at my clenched fists. They were closed around something that was like melted candle wax, only softer and much cooler. I had to pull hard to get my hands open but then I could see that my wounds were healed.
The swelling was gone and there weren't even any scabs or scars. A scar in the shape of the Number forty-seven was still stitched in my skin, but it too had healed completely.
I felt a shock all the way down into my chest. Maybe it had all been true: the sleeping plantation, the bloodhounds licking my hands, the faraway home of Tall John and his rainbow people.
"Get up from there, Forty-seven," Mud Albert growled. "You too, Twelve. Them cotton balls ain't gonna fall off into yo sacks."
John and I got up with the rest of the men and went out into the fields. On the way Mud Albert called to us. We slowed down. Mud Albert was old and walked with a limp. "How's yo hands, Forty-seven?" Albert asked me. Instead of answering I held both palms out to show him. "What?" he said, stopping there in the middle of the stony path.
He took my hands in his and rubbed his thumbs over the palms that were red and bleeding the night before. "What happened to them cuts?" "I dunno," I said.
I didn't want to lie to Albert. He was a good man and I trusted him. But I feared that if anybody found out about Tall John's yellow sack and healing waxes that he'd be punished. Because no matter how much he claimed that no one could own another person, the Master didn't agree. And it was law on the Corinthian Plantation that anything
coming into the hands of a slave was then the property of the Master and had to be turned over to him.
Albert looked into my eyes suspiciously.
"Did Johnny here have somethin' to do with this?" he asked me.
"Wit' what?"
"All right," Albert said on a sigh. "I can see you ain't talkin'. But since you all healed I want you to go down to the east field an' take Twelve wit' ya. I want you t'pick cotton wit' Johnny here the first few days or so. Make sure he know what's what."
"But that's where Eighty-four workin'," I protested.
I still remembered the painful pinch she gave me.
"Since when did a slave get to pick who he work wit'?" Albert asked.
"Since nevah," I said with my head hanging down.
"Den you bettah git ovah theah an' take this joker wit' ya."
"Yes, suh," I said. "Come on, John."
My new friend and I ran quickly from the scowling Albert. I knew that he wasn't really all that mad at me, it was just that he had to show who was boss in front of the new slave.
When I got out to the cotton fields I realized that it wasn't only my hands that felt healed. My whole body felt renewed that morning.
"Don't tell me I gots ta put up wit' you two lazy niggahs this mornin','' were the first words from Eighty-four's angry mouth when we got to her row.
"Yes'm," I said politely, having no desire to receive another pinch.
I ducked my head and grabbed a burlap sack from the ground. I wanted to start picking cotton quickly so that Eighty-four didn't have a reason to be angry.
"Get you a sack too," I said to Tall John.
But instead of getting right to work my friend stood there staring at Eighty-four.
"What you lookin' at, fool?" Eighty-four said.
She wore a faded and torn blue dress that had seen lots of sweat and dirt, little water, and no soap at all. She had probably worn that same garment since she was small and so the hemline was way up past her knees.
"You, ma'am," the skinny jokester, Tall John, said.
"Me? You needs t'be eyeballin' dat cotton."
"I s'pose," John said easily. "It's true that cotton is tall and strong like you. An' mebbe another bush would see his neighbors as pretty. But when I look out chere all I see is you."
For a moment Eighty-four was taken off guard.
"You spoonin' me, boy?" she asked at last.
"Tall John," he said, holding out a hand.
Eighty-four had unkempt bushy hair that was festooned with tiny branches and burrs. She put her hand to a
tangle of hair that had formed a
bove her left eye. I was worried that she was getting ready to sock my friend but instead she put out her own hand.
They shook and she even gave him a shy smile.
"They told us," John said, still holding onto her hand, "that we was to come work wit' you.... What's yo name?"
For a moment there was a friendly light in the surly girl-slave's eye, but then it turned hard.
"Da womens calls me Fatfoot an' da mens calls me Porky 'cause dey say I'm like a poc'apine. Mastuh jes' call me Eighty-fo' an' I guess dats the bes' I got."
"None'a them names fit a nice girl like you," John said. "So if you don't mind I think I'll calls you Tweenie 'cause when I first seen you between land and sky you seemed to belong there jes like you was the reason they came together."
Eighty-four's eyes widened a bit and she took a closer look at my friend. I'm sure she was thinking the same thing I was; that is why would he be saying such nice and charming words to a surly and taciturn field slave who was black as tar and ugly as a stump?
"Shet yo' mouf an' git ta pickin'," Eighty-four said, throwing off the web of flattery John had been weaving.
When we came up she had dropped her big cotton sack, which was already a quarter filled. Before she could pick the bag up again. John grabbed it and threw it over his shoulder.
"They send us to take the weight off'a you for a time,
Tweenie," he said. "Me'n Forty-seven here is s'posed t'make it easier for you."
"Boy," Eighty-four said. "Skinny nigger like you couldn't carry that bag more'n ten paces."
"I'll do ten an' den ten more," John replied. "You'll see."
Eighty-four sucked her tooth and grunted, but she let John carry her bag. She and I fell along either side of him, picking cotton balls and stuffing them in his sack.
Eighty-four kept looking over at John, expecting him to falter under the weight of the cotton. We were harvesting cotton balls at a pretty fast clip and the bag was filling up. It wasn't long before it rose eight feet up off of John's back and trailed behind him. But the weight didn't seem to bother him. He was sweating but he had enough breath to keep talking to Eighty-four.
"Tweenie, you evah wished you could jes th'ow off this cotton an' run out into the woods an' jump in a cold lake t'cool off?"
That must have been just what Eighty-four was thinking because she shouted, "Sho' do! Oh Lawd yes. Cold watah on my skin an' down my th'oat. That an'a crust'a bread an' my life be heaven."
I didn't interrupt their conversation. From experience I knew that my presence made Eighty-four angry. So I kept my mouth shut. But I had another reason to keep quiet. I was concentrating on how I pulled those cotton balls so that my hands didn't get cut up and infected again.
9.
Neither Eighty-four nor I carried the cotton bag that day. John lugged the big bag up and down the rows of cotton bushes while we stuffed the sack full.
The whole time John sweet-talked Eighty-four.
"Bein' a slave ain't half bad," he said in the long shadows of the late afternoon, "if'n you could be lucky as me standin' between a good friend and a beautiful girl."
"You should let me carry that sack now, Johnny," Eighty-four said with a smile. "Yo' back must be achin' sumpin' terrible."
And there it was again, just one word. Not even a word but just adding the e sound at the end of his name and I knew that Eighty-four was smitten with Tall John the flatterer.
At the end of the day we had pulled more cotton than any other three slaves on the whole plantation. We knew that because Mud Albert kept count.
When we walked the stony path back to the slave quarters Eighty-four made sure that she was walking next to my friend. She even held his hand for a while, making sure that Mr. Stewart wasn't anywhere to see them.
John seemed to genuinely like Eighty-four. This perplexed me because no one else I knew had ever said a kind word about her. So when we came to the fork in the road where the men and women split off from each other, I went up to John and asked him about our work-mate.
"Why you so sweet to that sour girl?" I asked.
"Tweenie?" John said with a smile. "She's something else. That girl could work a whole farm by herself. I don't think that I've ever met a woman so strong or so full of love."
"But she jes' a field slave," I argued.
"That's what you say about yourself," John pointed out.
"But you on'y met her today."
"I only met you yesterday," he countered.
"But you said that you come here lookin' for me. You lookin' for Eighty-four too?"
"No," John said. He stopped walking and so did I. "I wasn't looking for Tweenie but when I saw her I felt all of the pain she feels over her lost children. My heart went out to her. Her loss and mine are very much alike."
"How did you know about the babies that Mastuh took from her?" I asked.
He pointed at me and said, "Neither master nor nigger be."
"Numbah Twelve!" Mud Albert shouted. "Forty-seven! Get yo black butts movin'."
We hurried off before John could tell me how he knew about Eighty-four's babies. I had been with him every moment so I knew that none of the other slaves had told him. But I forgot about that mystery for a while because we were running and Albert was angry and my stomach was growling with hunger.
The men hustled into the slave cabins and Ernestine brought us our porridge.
I wasn't particular about what I ate by that time. Whatever they put in front of me I sucked down while looking around for more. Slaving is hungry work. I was hungry morning, noon, and night. I dreamed about corn cakes and strawberries. Sometimes I would suck on a bite-sized rock just to pretend that I was eating.
That night after a full day of picking cotton I was so tired that all I wanted to do was eat, then sleep. But in the middle of our supper the men started asking John questions.
"Where you from?" Charlie Baylor asked.
"Where we're all from," John said as if that was the only answer and why didn't Charlie know it.
"And where's that?" Billy Branches asked.
"Don't you know where you from?" John asked back.
"I rolled out from a burlap sack on a mud flat in the rain," Number Eight, also known as Coyote Pete, said. "My mam was the hangin' tree. My daddy din't know his own name."
The men all laughed at Pete's made-up rhymes.
"His name was Africa," Tall John pronounced, "whether he knew it or not."
The men all stopped laughing then. I sat up from my bunkbed to see if maybe they were angry with my friend.
"What you know 'bout the jungle, niggah?" Frankei, Number Eleven, asked angrily.
"Not a thing Brotha Frankie," John replied. "I know about the great civilizations of Kush and Nubia. I know about the blood of kings."
"You come from Africa?" Mud Albert asked then.
"I been there."
"So you are High John the so-called conqueror?"
"No," John said, not me. But he is among you."
High John?" Champ said. "Here? Which one of us is it?"
The men all lokked around at each other.
"Why, Forty-seven of course," Tall John said.
The men all started laughing, guffawing actually. Mud Albert laughed so hard he had to get down on one knee and hold his sides.
"Him?" Black Tom said.
"That runt?" Billy Coco added.
"How can you spect us to believesumpin' like that, Johnny?" Mud Albert asked. He had finally gotten back to his feet. "Forty-seven her haven't hardly evah been off the plantation. Why, he don't even have a proper name."
"Is you High John?" a slave we called Three-toed Bill asked me.
"Go on!" I said angrily
I was hoping that Tall John would stop his foolish talk, but that wish was not to be granted.
"Sure he is," John said. "Maybe you don't know it. Maybe he don't know it. But that's the way of the Conqueror. He ain't a man's flesh and bone alone. He's a spirit from the homeland. He burrow doen here or th
ere for a while, do his business, end then he move on."
"An' how come you know that if' n you ain't him?" Mud Albert asked. He was no longer laughing.
The rest of the men sobered up too.
"At some othah time High John's spirit mighta passed through me, yeah," John said. "That's why when I see Forty-seven here I can see in him the spirit of the Conqueror. He might not know it yet but this boy is destined for greatness. An' if you stick close enough to him you might jes' find yourself wearing the chains of freedom."
"Chains'a freedom!" Three-toed said. "What the heck do that s'posed to mean?"
"It means many things, my friend," John replied. "And if you follow Forty-seven and you listen when he calls - you might just learns."
Boy is jest a fool," Sixty-three said, meaning John.
The other men seemed to agree and so they turned away towards their bunks.
Our chains were put on and the lights were put out. When the cabin was filled with snores I turned to John.
"What was all that nonsense you tellin' them about me? I ain't no High John the Conqueror."
"How would you know that?" my friend asked in the dark.
"I know who I am," I said.
"Not if you call yourself nigger," he said. "Not if you call Tobias Master. You have no idea of who you are destined to be, Forty-seven."
"But you do?"
"Yes."
"An' what will I be?" I was afraid of the answer but still I had to ask. The other men might have thought that John was the teller of tall tales but I had experienced his magic. I knew to take that boy seriously.
But that was not to be a night of answers.
"Go to sleep, Forty-seven," he said. "You need your rest."
Those words were like a blindfold being pulled over my eyes. No sooner than he said them I was in a deep sleep. I dreamed that I wore a cape made of redbird feathers and a crown made from broken slave chains. I marched from plantation to plantation and from each one a hundred and more slaves took their places behind me. Behind them the white men who had been our masters scratched their heads and watched us go.
The next three days passed in pretty much the same way. During the daylight hours Eighty-four, Tall John, and I picked cotton as a team. Eighty-four was completely infatuated with my friend. She was always touching his arm and grinning at him. He continued to flatter her, calling her pretty and beautiful even though I couldn't see (at that rime) what he saw in her.
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