47

6.

The lead dog leaped at me and snapped her vicious jaws not a hand's span away from my face. I could smell her canine breath and hear the loud clacking of her teeth biting down.

Master Tobias yanked on his dogs' chains but they kept straining to get at me and Tall John.

"What's this?" the irate slave master said in a voice so frightening that I almost fell down from the weight of his words.

"He done arrested me, mastuh," the runaway slave Tall John said. He no longer sounded like the mischievous child I had met. "Arrested'ed me even though I wanted to run. He dragged me out the bushes and said that you was the mastuh and I bettah heed."

John let his head hang down and his jaw go slack. He stooped over and brought his hands together as if he were pleading. I had to blink at him because he no longer seemed to be the boy I had met less than an hour past.

Tobias, who was never at a loss for words in all the seasons I had known him, went silent and furrowed his brows. He looked from the runaway to me, and back again.

"Is that so, Forty-seven?"

"Yessuh," I said. I would have said so no matter what he had asked. I was so frightened of the slavering, snapping jaws of those hounds that all I could do was nod and say yes and hope that those big teeth didn't tear out my windpipe.

"Who are you?" Master asked the bronze cast boy

"They call me Tall John, your honor, suh. I was found in a cave near the Paradise Rice Plantation in South Carolina. They speculate that my mama must'a had me but then threw me down there so that the mastuh didn't kill both me an' her."

"You not Andrew Pike's runaway nigger from the Red Clay Plantation?"

"No, suh. Uh-uh. Naw. The Paradise Plantation burnt down and I was on a raft with Mastuh hisself tryin' to get downstream. But he got a terrible grippe and died and I been wanderin' in the wilderness evah since."

If I hadn't heard the boy describe Pike I would have believed his whopper. But as it was I kept quiet because I knew that what was going on was far beyond my control or understanding.

"So your master is dead and his plantation is burned down?" Tobias asked.

"Yes, suh."

"And how did the plantation burn down?"

"I think it was abolitionists," John said, bugging out his eyes. "Abolitionists and maybe injuns too. They burned down the master's house with all'a his family and then took the slaves and run. But I stayed with my mastuh because you know I loved him because he treated us slaves so good."

I had never seen a slave grease a white man like that. The lie was so bold that I was sure that Tobias was about to release the hounds to tear us both to shreds.

"What was your master's name, boy?"

"Joe," John said. "Mastuh Joe."

This brought a smile to the Tobias's lips.

"Joe?" he said. "Joseph. Did he have a last name?"

"I jes called him Mastuh Joe, Mastuh. I stayed with him until he died and then I wandered off in the woods lookin' for a farm to work on and a mastuh to keep me. But I been lost all this time until I come upon Mr. Forty-seven here. I was so scared that I wanted to run but he tole me that you was a good mastuh and that I needn't be ascared."

"You know it's my duty to try and find your master and return you to him, don't you, son?" Tobias said.

The only word I had to hear was the last one son. When Master Tobias uttered that word to a colored person it was a sign of affection. That meant that the slave he addressed was now his property.

"Mastuh," John said with deep-felt awe in his voice, "if you could bring me back to my mastuh an' his big house I would kiss your feet an' pledge my life to you."

Tobias swelled up when he heard these words. Every plantation master wanted to be loved by his slaves. He wanted them to look on him like their daddy. John had greased Tobias so well that he assured himself a place on the Corinthian Plantation for the rest of his natural born days.

Whatever effect John had on Tobias it was the opposite for those bloodhounds. They doubled their efforts to get off from the master's leash and then they started braying as if they had caught the scent of a wounded deer. Tobias yanked hard on their collars and yelled at them and made them heel. But still you could see their evil eyes looking hard at the both of us poor souls.

"Forty-seven," the master said when his dogs went mostly quiet.

"Yessuh."

"For the time bein' we gonna give this boy here Nigger Ned's numbah and he's gonna sleep in the men's cabin."

"Yessuh."

"You tell Mud Albert that I will call to see this slave up at the big house latah on and that I don't want him molested by any of the rough element out there undah his charge. And I don't want him branded at least not yet."

"Yessuh," I said for a third time.

But for that solitary response I was speechless. I had never heard orders from the Master like that; for him to be concerned about the welfare of a mere slave or for that slave to be presented to him like a guest at his house. It was beyond my experience. Black men and women were slaves and niggers on the level of dogs to somebody like Tobias. He might come out to the kennel to scratch behind their ears or maybe throw them a bone. But to have a slave present himself at the big house to meet with the Master that was like a Negro being able to walk down the main road at midday without some white man grabbing him and beating him and dragging him back home in chains.

Tobias pulled on his dogs' collars and dragged them back down the path toward his house. At every step one of the four hounds would turn and growl at us. You could tell that they could feel our flesh rend under their sharp teeth.

"I thought you said nevah t'say mastuh?" I said when Tobias was gone far enough away.

John smiled easily and I could tell that he was again the same confident young man I had met earlier that day.

"When I talk to somebody like I talked with Tobias," he said, "it's like a joke. To me Tobias Turner is nothing more than one of those dogs are to him just a mad beast at the wrong end of the chain. But when you say master and when you say nigger you are making yourself his dog and his slave."

"I am his slave," I said.

"Not anymore," Tall John said.

It's funny what one word can tell you. When Tobias called John son I knew that he intended to steal him from Pike and keep him as one of his. And when John said the word any I knew that he wasn't one of us, the slaves, but

something different, something that neither I nor anyone I had ever known had met. I knew right then that the runaway Lemuel, now calling himself Tall John, was something like an angel, or a devil. But whichever one he was I knew that I wanted to be his friend.