47

_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 above 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.