47

_10.

John, Eighty-four, and I picked cotton for the next days. On my last day in the slave cabin all the men gathered around John because they were used to him entertaining them with some wild and unpredictable talk.

"If you so smart," Silent Sam, slave Number Forty-six, asked John, "why'd you give yourself up to be one'a Mas-tuh Tobias's slaves?"

"I don't know about you," John replied, "but I ain't no slave."

"You ain't?"

"No, suh I ain't."

"Den what you doin' pickin' cotton like a slave?"

"I'm pickin' cotton 'cause I wanna pick cotton, of course."

Upon hearing this every man in the cabin, including me, broke out into laughter.

"So that mean if you didn't wanna pick cotton you wouldn't have to," Sam speculated.

"Dat's right."

"An' how you gonna get away wit' that?"

"No gettin' away to it, brothah. If I didn't wanna pick cotton I jes' wouldn't do it."

"But then they gonna beat you."

"That's what freedom's all about," John said in a serious voice. "Free is when you say yea or nay about what you will and will not do. Nobody can give you freedom. All freedom is, is you."

There was no more laughing that night. I could see in the men's faces that they were wondering about John's words. Many of them had thought the same words that he spoke out loud.

I turned in with the rest and went to sleep, not realizing that that was to be my last night as a slave.

"Lemme take this next bag, John," Eighty-four said when my friend reached down to get our next sack the next day. We had filled four bags of cotton already.

"Thas okay, Tweenie," John said as he threw the sack over his shoulder. "Me'n Forty-seven have to go in the afternoon so I might as well tote till then."

"Where you goin'?" she asked. There was the pain of loss in her voice.

"Tobias wanna see me."

It was the first I'd heard of it.

"Mastuh?" Eighty-four asked.

"Tobias," John said again.

"What you got to do wit' him?"

"Maybe if he ain't lookin'," John said instead of answering her question, "I'll grab some sugar an' put it in my pocket. An' the next time they send me out here I'll give that sugar to you for bein' so sweet."

For a second there I thought that there was something wrong with Eighty-four's face but then I realized that she was grinning. One of her lower teeth was missing but m was still a nice smile. The power to bring happiness into that sad slave's face was greater than healing my hands, taming the master's dogs, and putting the plantation to sleep all rolled together.

"You the one sweet," Eighty-four said to John.

I must have been smiling too because Eighty-four frowned again and said, "What you laughin' at, fool?"

Her sudden anger caught me off guard but luckily I didn't have time to speak and make things worse because just at that moment Mud Albert could be heard calling.

"Forty-seven!" he cried. "Numbah Twelve!"

I cocked my head as if listening for more and, in doing so, I was able to avoid Eighty-four's angry question.

"Got to go," I said to John.

"Bye, Tweenie," John said. He dropped the burlap sack and smiled.

She grabbed onto his arm and looked into his eyes beseechingly.

"You come on back, heah?" she said.

And there again was the power of my new friend. We had only been in the fields with Eighty-four for a few days

but she was already heartbroken at the prospect of his departure.

I understood her pain. I would feel the same way when John was gone from the Corinthian Plantation. And I was sure that he would be gone one day. I knew in my heart that a person as beautiful and smart as John was not destined to remain a slave on some backwater farm.

But John wasn't gone yet. He and I ran down a rough path through the cotton bushes. Along the way we saw dozens of slaves bent over in half toting giant sacks of cotton. Flies zipped around them and the sun beat down like Satan's hammer on their backs.

About half the way to where Mud Albert was John stopped and looked out at the slaves.

"We cain't waste time, John," I said. "Albert expect us ta hump it."

"I'm just looking," John said.

"Slave ain't s'posed t'be lookin'," I told him. "Slave s'posed to be doin' sumpin so that the mastuh don't have t'beat him."

"I have no master, Forty-seven. No master but the power that keeps my feet on the ground."

"Come on," I said, grabbing him by the arm.

I yanked but he wouldn't budge.

"Do you think that it's fair for those people to be forced to work day in and day out for their entire lives?" John asked.

"We gotta go," I replied.

"Answer my question and we can go."

I could tell that John wasn't going to move until I responded.

" 'Course I hate it that we slaves but what else we gonna do? Who would take care of us an' feed us if'n we didn't have no mastuh?"

"You could take care of yourselves," he said. "Buy your own farms, raise your own food."

Nobody had ever said anything like this to me before. The idea scared me. How could I do all the things that white people did? All I knew was how to be lazy and how to work like a dog.

"Let's go," I whispered.

On the way Tall John changed moods again. He made silly faces and did cartwheels as we ran. I got out of my serious mood and even laughed.

When we got to the open field that Mud Albert called his office we found the aged slave sitting on an empty molasses barrel as if it were a throne.

"What you grinnin' about, boy?" he asked me.

"Am I grinnin', Mud Albert, suh?"

"You sure is, niggah," he said. "You an' this red-eyed joker heah."

I thought that Tall John might try to correct Albert's use of the word nigger but all my friend did was smile.

"I's sorry," I said.

"Don't be sorry for laughin', boy. There sure is little enough of it in a nigger's lifetime."

I bowed my head because a tear came to my eye. For the first time I truly knew the sadness of Mud Albert's life. Slaving from the time he could walk until the day we wrap him in burlap and slap the dust from our hands.

I loved Mud Albert and I regretted his unfair lot.

"I got word from the house that Mastuh Tobias wanna see this new boy right away," Albert said. "You ready to go up there, Laughin' John?"

"Yessuh," John shouted.

"Go on then. Forty-seven'll show you the way. He'll wait for you too so that you don't get lost comin' back."

As we ran between the bright green leaves I asked John, "Why'd you give Eighty-four a name and you still call me Forty-seven?"

Up until then we'd been making our way quickstep through the bushes. But then John stopped and looked at me. His big eyes were filled with sorrow so deep that I felt my heart wrench.

"What?" I asked when he didn't speak.

"Your name is set," he said. "Wrought in metal and sent °n a great ship on the long journey across the sky. One day you may decide on another name. But for the rest of time my people and even the Upper Level will know you by the number given you at the Corinthian Plantation."

"What you talkin' 'bout?" I asked. His words were so wild that they felt like mosquitoes buzzing around my ears. "You, Forty-seven. You," John said. "Didn't I tell you that I've been searching for you all this time?"

"But how you gonna know to look for me?" I asked. "How you even know I was here?"

"I have always known that you would be here one day, Forty-seven. Long before men made iron tools, when terror birds and mastodons roamed the land we knew that you were coming. I waited and wandered and searched until I came upon the Corinthian. I searched for centuries but never once did I give up hope. I never doubted the promise."

"What promise?"

"You, Forty-seven. You are the promise. Your blood is capable of great power, your heart is free from hatred, and your mind dares to consider new ways."

We stared into each other's eyes and a profound feeling passed between us. There was a promise and an obligation that we both recognized. Then we grinned and ran off toward Tobias's home.