47

_5.

Nobody tried to stop me when I ran away from the funeral. That's because I was so small that I was still seen as a plantation child and not of an age to try and escape. And neither did I consider flight because where would I run? There was nothing but plantations for hundreds of miles and if ever a white man saw me he was bound by law to catch me and beat me and return me to my owner.

My hands were hurting and so was my heart as I walked through the piney path that led from the colored graveyard to the slave quarters. The sun was setting and birds were singing all around. Big fat lazy bugs were floating in the air on waxen wings, and a slight breeze cooled my brow. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered that times like that were magic and if you looked hard enough you might just see some fairy or saint in amongst the trees. And laying eyes on such a magical creature would change everything in your life.

But that was the first day of my transition from childhood to maturity. Between the death of Ned and the callous manner of Master Tobias I was beginning to see that there might not be magic in the world after all. The man we called Nigger Ned was in his grave with no one to give him the proper words to see him on to heaven. Big Mama Flore had abandoned me and my hands were red and swollen. I was a slave and I was always going to be a slave until the day that I died. Better that I died soon, I thought, before I had to endure too much more sorrow.

It was then that I noticed a sound that no bird or insect could have made. It was a thrashing in the woods. It could have been a badger or an armadillo, but it might also have been a boar or bear or wildcat. I was small enough that a fearsome creature like that could see me as prey and so, even though I had just been contemplating my death, I became afraid for my life.

The fast-moving sound of crashing was over to my right. I decided not to go off the path because I wouldn't be able to move as fast as a wild animal through the underbrush. I lit out at a run down the path and as soon as I did I heard the creature moving quicker still, and in my direction. I ran even harder and shouted once. Off to the side I could see the bushes being disturbed by the animal chasing me. I ran harder but the beast was catching up to me. Then he was still in the woods but ahead of me. I decided to run back the way I had come but when I tried to stop I was moving too fast and tripped over my own feet.

The creature stopped running and I had the feeling that it had emerged from the bushes, into the path. I looked up

expecting to see the jagged teeth of a wolf or some other fearsome beast, but instead there was a tall colored boy standing there. He was the most beautiful being I had ever seen. I say that he was colored but not like any Negro I'd known. His skin was the color of highly polished brass but a little darker, a little like copper too but not quite. His eyes were almond-shaped and large with red-brown pupils. He was bare-chested and slender, but there was elegance in his lean stance. All he wore was a pair of loose blue trousers cinched at the waist with a piece of rope.

When our eyes met the boy seemed to be looking for something inside me. He peered closer, frowning and straining as if he saw something familiar. Then he broke out into a broad grin. He walked up to me, put out a helping hand, and pulled me to my feet.

"There you are at last," he said as if we were playmates just come to the end of a game of hide-and-seek. "I've been looking high and low for you."

"Who you?" I replied, feeling like a fool after my fearful flight.

"Yes, sir," he said, "I've searched everywhere from Mis-sissip to Alabam, from Timbuktu to Outer Mongolia."

"You crazy, boy?" I asked.

I was a little put off by his obvious lies.

He just stood there nodding and smiling until a sudden seriousness came into his face.

"Did a big white man with a mustache come around here looking for me?" the boy asked.

"Sho did."

"What did they say?"

"I don't think Mastuh liked that man too much," I said. "He told him that he'd tell him ifn he come across a lost slave, but I don't think he would really."

"Never say master," the copper-and-brass-colored boy said. "Not unless you are looking inward or up beyond the void."

Just hearing those words and seeing that bronze boy made my heart race faster than when I was trying to escape him. There was something about the way he talked to me, as if we had always known each other and now we were just taking up a conversation after a few days of being apart. For a moment there I almost believed that he really had been searching for me. For a moment I felt as if I had been found.

"Are you the nigger that Mr. Pike was looking for?" I asked.

"No master," he said. "No nigger either. No cur or demon or weed. Only life and firmament. Only fire and dark."

All his words became a little too much for my ears. I wanted him to make sense so I asked, "What's your name?"

The bright-eyed, slender boy looked puzzled a moment and then he looked sad. "They called me Son on the Barnes Plantation and Petey in the Lawrence cotton fields. Mr. London McGraw called me Two-step on a Virginia tobacco farm and on the Red Clay Plantation they named me

Lemuel. I've been called a thousand names over the years," he said. "But now, I think, my name is John, Tall John because your head only comes up to my chest."

"Well, Lemuel or John or Petey or whatever it is you wanna be called, we better get off'n this here path 'cause I hear Tobias's dogs comin'. He probably sniffin' 'round for you."

A most beautiful grin spread across the runaway slave's face. He grabbed me by the wrist and, with strength I wouldn't have believed his skinny arms could muster, dragged me through the underbrush and into the woods.

We moved quickly through the trees. My legs were pumping as fast as they could go but it didn't feel as if I were touching the ground with my feet. The slave who called himself Tall John was laughing happily but also as if he was relieved and restored.

We ran a zigzag path through the woods.

"Over this way!" he'd shout, and we'd change direction. "Faster!"

I can't say why I went so easily with the strange boy. Even though he was much taller than I we were probably near the same age. And, like I said before, it seemed as if I already knew him, that we had known each other in another place and time. I knew it was crazy but I had complete trust in the runaway who called himself Tall John.

We moved through the trees so fast that I couldn't mark which way we were going. It felt as if we were flying low like playing sparrows, but I knew that was just my imagination. I was running hard but it didn't make my breath come fast. My legs didn't get tired.

After quite some time of going like that we came to a cliff that looked out over a wide river. Giant herons and eagles flew up above. Down below I could see a she-bear and her two cubs sloshing through the shallow water, pawing the mud for some ort to sustain them in the summer heat. The sun was almost fully set and the sky was red with long black clouds hanging down. A lonely bird cried in the distance and tears sprang to my young eyes. I had never seen anything so beautiful, I had never felt so happy or at peace. I didn't know it at the time but that was my first experience of the feeling of freedom.

"Where is this?" I asked.

"White men named this place Winslet Canyon but the Indians have another name," Tall John said. "That she-bear down there thinks of it as the smell of fish and water with a hint of pine and cougar."

"How far is we from the plantation?" I wanted to know.

"Not far enough," the toffee-colored boy said, and then he added, "yet."

I squatted down at the edge of the ravine and devoured the vision with my eyes. It was so beautiful and serene. I wished that Ned could have been there or at least that he could have been buried there in the peaceful paradise that I never knew existed.

"They're looking for you, Number Forty-seven," the ' boy that called himself Tall John said.

"I don't hear nuthin'," I replied, not wanting to leave and not caring how he knew my name.

He grabbed me by the wrist again and said, "But they are calling. They sure are."

And then we were running again. Again I was floating above the ground, it seemed. Again I was moving ahead of the breeze. Before I knew it I was on the path and there before me stood Master Tobias, holding the leashes of his six slave-hating bloodhounds.