47

_22.

It didn't take us long to come to the hanging oak. Because we could make a straight line through the woods while Champ had to take a longer road we all arrived at the same time.

There were alarm bells ringing throughout the valley by then. People on other plantations had seen the fire and smoke rising from Corinthian and so they were coming to help out. The hanging oak wasn't on any direct path and so we knew that we were pretty safe.

Tall John hadn't shown up yet but I wasn't worried about him. I had the feeling that if he were harmed I would have felt it in the light in my chest.

"What you doin' wit' her here, Forty-seven?" Champ asked me when he caught sight of Eloise.

"Mr. Stewart was tryin' t'kill her and Nola," I said. "I took 'em away from him."

"Take me home," Eloise cried.

"No, Miss Eloise," Nola said. "That Mr. Stewart's still out there. An' he must be untied by now."

"That's yo home, girl," I added, pointing at the smoke rising with the sun. "It ain't safe for you there yet."

Eloise looked at the thick black plume and took a deep breath. "My father will stop that traitor," she announced. "And he will give all you slaves a chicken dinner and set you free for bein' faithful and savin' my life."

At one time that would have been my only dream, to be given freedom by my master. But neither nigger nor master be had become a reality for me. And even though by Georgia law I was now the property of Miss Eloise Turner I expected to take my own freedom come what may.

"Yo' daddy's dead, girl," I said.

"No," Eloise replied sounding almost reasonable. "Mr. Stewart hit him but my daddy only fell down senseless."

"No ma'am," I said. "He fell down all right but his neck broke when he went down. I saw him."

"No!" Eloise protested.

She looked around at Nola and the slave girl wrapped her beloved mistress and half-sister in her arms.

Champ pulled the buggy behind the hanging tree and I climbed in the back to see how Flore was doing.

Her skin had gone dull and her eyes were open but it didn't seem like she saw anything. I called her name but she didn't answer. When I stroked her cheek I felt that she was burning hot.

"Forty-seven," Tall John from beyond Africa said.

When I turned around I saw that my friend had retrieved

his yellow sack. As John approached us from the deep wood Champ faltered and then fell to the ground. He clutched at his foot, the foot he used to kick open the burning door.

Quick as anything John brought out a tube of healing wax and slathered it on Champ's bloody burns. He then climbed into the wagon and began to examine Flore.

The sun was coming up and there were the sounds of dogs braying all around.

"Let's get these people into the woods," John said.

He took a tarp from the back of the buggy and laid it on the ground. Then he and I together pulled Flore from the carriage and lay her on the thick blanket. Then we pulled with all our might, dragging Flore into the forest.

"Come on, girl, and help us," John said to Nola.

For a moment she gave her mistress a worried look but then she ran to our side and helped haul the unconscious slave behind the trees that stood witness for so many years to the hangings of so many slaves and criminals.

"Is she gonna live?" I asked John when we were hidden.

"I think she might if you didn't bring every white man in the county down on our heads."

"Don't you worry about that, Numbah Twelve," I said proudly. "You just leave that to me."

With that I ran out to the buggy, grabbed the reins, and yelled, "He-ah!" The mare threw back her head and ran out into the road.

Champ yelled but he couldn't stop me because of his burned foot. John called for me to stop but I ignored his command.

I didn't use the buggy whip on the horse. Somehow she and I both knew that she was supposed to run. The buggy raced down the road, bumping over ruts and stones. We were headed for the main road that crossed the path to the Corinthian Plantation.

We, the gray mare and I, had made it about a mile when we heard a yell.

"Hey, you, nigger!"

I turned my head to see a group of about five white men on foot surrounded by half a dozen hounds. Behind them came two white men on horseback.

"Run, horse!" I yelled, and the beast understood. She whinnied and then kicked her feet as if it were the devil himself on our trail.

The horsemen came after us. And no matter how fast my horse could run she was still hindered by the weight of the buggy. We were racing down a path between two hay fields. The horsemen were bearing down on us and there was no avoiding them. I could hear their grunts and curses urging their horses to go even faster.

Up ahead there was a wood of knotty pine.

One horseman had made it to the back of my carriage. He leaped from his horse onto the buckboard.

"I'm'onna cut your throat, nigger," he yelled.

I turned my head to see him. He was about to jump on me but we hit a stone and he was knocked off balance.

When he fell I could see that the other horseman was almost upon us.

The man who was in the buggy was trying to get his balance, all the time cursing at me. But before he could make good his threats we reached the edge of the piney wood.

"Stop, girl!" I yelled to the horse.

When she slowed down things around us happened very quickly. First the horse that was pursuing us veered to the right, throwing his rider from the saddle and onto the hard road. The man who was in the buggy was also thrown down. I stood up from the rider's seat and jumped onto a large branch above my head. Then I made it through the trees as if I were a bird playing among the branches.

From the cover of the foliage I could see the five men on foot come up to their fallen friends.

The man who had jumped in the back of the carriage said, "Niggah jumped up in that tree."

Another man, breathing hard from his run, said, "Must be headed north toward the Lippman place and the river."

Two other men agreed with his guess.

I smiled to myself, knowing that I had sent our pursuers on a wild goose chase. I moved into the deeper wood and then headed back toward the hanging oak.

The sun was just now peeking above the horizon.

When I got there Flore was sitting upright and talking with Champ. The pain that had been in Champ's face was gone. Tall John and Eloise were sitting under a tree. He was telling her something and she was listening closely.

Nola approached me.

"I wanna thank you, Numbah Forty-seven," she said.

Hearing these words I longed for a real name. I wanted Nola to know me as person and friend not a number.

"That's okay," I said, made shy by her steady gaze.

"You seem different," she said. "Like you biggah or sumpin'."

"With all this stuff goin' on," I said, "I think I did grow some."

"When you fought Mr. Stewart that was the most brave thing I ever seed," she said. "Just a boy standin' up to that one-eyed monster of a man. I'll never forget seein' that for all the rest of my life."

She reached out and touched my face and I felt that everything I had gone through was worth it. I had saved her life. I was a hero, at least on that one smoky morning.

"Where did you go, Forty-seven?" Tall John asked as he approached us.

"I got them white mens to chase me," I said. "And then I run off into the woods where they couldn't catch me or see me to shoot at. They think that we on t'other side'a the valley so they ain't gonna come around heah no time soon."

"What about the dogs, boy?" Champ Noland asked. "What about them bloodhounds?"

I looked around and saw that Tall John had put up his little plate-thing that made the orange light and so I knew we were hidden from even the hounds.

"They won't smell us, Champ. You can count on that."

"I seen them dogs hunt down a man in the rain," Champ said. "We gots to run, Forty-seven."

"You can't run with that foot, Champ," John said. "Here, drink this water and relax."

John handed Champ a small stone cup filled with clear liquid and the hero drank it down. Not more than five minutes had passed when the big man sat down and then laid down to sleep. Eloise was already asleep under the tree where she and John had been speaking.

Only Flore and Nola were still awake. Flore was sitting up on her tarp with her legs stretched out in front of her and with her hands behind her, propping her up.

"Come here, boy," she said to me. "Come talk to yo Big Mama."

I was so happy to hear Flore call to me that I ran to her side.

"How you feelin', Big Mama?" I cried.

"I feel good, baby. But what happened? Where are we? I remembah that Tobias said that he was gonna beat you and then somebody hit me."

I put my arms around Flore's head and squeezed her. I kissed her face.

"Why you cryin', babychile?" she asked. "Is we dead?"

"Naw, Big Mama. We free."

Flore's eyes opened big as moons. She looked at me and then at the tree branches above her head.

"Free?"

The truth was dawning on both of us. We were free.