"We'll be safe for a while," he whispered. "Have to sleep."
He fell unconscious and soon after I followed.
In my dreams I was being chased by a one-eyed monster who was at once one of the Calash and the wounded Mr. Stewart.
17 .
"Wake up, boy," someone said. "Wake up."
In my dream I was floating on a square raft down a wide river. The sun was glittering in my eyes and warming my skin with its bright rays. A great she-bear stood on her back legs at the shore and roared me welcome.
"Wake up, boy," a female voice said. She shook me gently but still the wounds on my back felt as if hot coals had been dropped on them.
"Ow!" I cried.
I opened my eyes to see Eighty-four sitting there in the glow of something like lamplight. It was a steady orange radiance emanating from the tripod that John had set up before he passed out. After a moment I realized that it must have been nighttime because out beyond the orange glow was darkness.
"You crazy, Eighty-four? We cain't have no light in the night. They'll see us out here."
"He said no," she whispered. "He said that they cain't see us 'cause'a his little lantern."
She didn't have to say who he was. I knew that John had set up some magic to protect us.
"He bettah?" I asked.
"Not hardly," Eighty-four said. "He crawled off an' said that he had to do sumpin' to make his legs an' arms not be so stretched out. I said that I'd help him but he bade me to stay here wit' you."
I figured that he was probably going to do something so strange that he thought he might scare Eighty-four. Maybe he was going to turn back into a tiny little orange and purple man, I thought. And then I wondered about that. How could I have gotten so far away from a slave's everyday life that I was thinking about magic and defying the white men that owned me? That wasn't me. I bowed my head when white men addressed me. I said yassuh and nawsuh whenever they asked me a question. How did I find myself in the night, half dead, thinking about magic and so deep in trouble that nothing I knew of could save my life.
"I love him," Eighty-four said.
"You do?"
"Uh-huh. He was so sweet to me them days that we picked cotton. He talked to me like he could see right in my heart. An' I know he felt sumpin' fo' me too."
"He said, 'that Eighty-four's a beautiful girl,'" I added.
"He said that?" She seemed amazed.
"Yes, ma'am. He said that you were just as pretty as Miss Eloise. And I do believe he's right."
Eighty-four grinned and leaned over to kiss my brow.
"You a nice boy," she said. "I sorry I was so mean to you that day we pick cotton."
"Shoot," I said. "Pickin' that cotton make a mad daws out of a bunny rabbit."
Eighty-four grinned some more and touched my cheek with her calloused palm.
"Maybe Numbah Twelve and you and me can get away somewhere where they ain't got no slaves," she said. "Maybe him an' me get married and we could raise you as our boy."
Even though I was weak and hurting I felt something grand about her including me in her dream. All John had to do was give her a few nice words and she changed from a sullen bully into a woman filled with hope.
"How are you, Forty-seven?" John asked then.
We both turned and saw him emerge into the orange light. He was walking upright and full of strength. It was as if all of Mr. Stewart's tortures had amounted to naught. John winked at me and I knew that he had done some powerful magic.
"Was you listenin' to us?" Eighty-four asked warily.
"Only a little bit, Tweenie. I was happy to see you and I didn't want to interrupt."
The slave-girl bowed her head. I knew that she was embarrassed at what she had said. I think she was more worried about him knowing what she felt than she was about the white men that had to be after us.
Just as I had this thought I heard the braying of Tobias's
hounds. There was a yip and then a loud howl. And we all three knew that the white men were hunting us down.
"Put out that light, Numbah Twelve," I said.
"No one can see us as long as this light shines," he replied calmly. "They can't see us while we remain within the light of this disk."
I had no idea of what his words meant. And even though I trusted him I knew that he was capable of making mistakes. After all, him thinking that saving Tobias's daughter would keep the plantation master from hurting us is what got my friends beaten and killed.
The hounds were getting closer. I could hear each one barking and calling for black blood.
"We got to get outta here, baby," Eighty-four said to her man.
"Forty-seven is too weak," he answered. "And if we move away from my little machine the dogs will run us down."
"They'll smell his blood if we stay here," she argued.
"No," he said. "You have to trust me, Tweenie. I know what I'm doing."
"You didn't know so good when you got yo butt tied up in Mr. Stewart's shack," she said.
"If you run Tobias and his dogs will tear you to shreds," he said. "But if you stay, and I survive, we will be married in a church and Forty-seven here will grow into a man who will save the whole world."
"If we run we can do that."
"If we run Forty-seven will die and the world will pass away with him," John said.
Eighty-four gazed at me with an emotion in her face that I could not decipher. Maybe she hated me for standing in the way of her happiness. Maybe she wondered at the deep connection between me and her man. I had no answers for her. John and his war with the being called Wall was just as much a mystery to me as was the sun in the sky or the secret to how birds learned to fly. All I knew for sure was that he was right about my wounds. I couldn't have risen to my feet if an angel flew down and bade me to follow him to the Pearly Gates.
Just at that moment a dog bayed not ten yards from where we sat. Eighty-four and I turned our heads to see, at the furthest extreme of orange light, the snout and tail of one of Tobias's hounds! The dog was tinted orange by John's glowing apparatus. It seemed to glance at us, or at least in our direction, but then he turned away, howled, and ran off into the night.
For a moment I saw one of Tobias's men come into the glow but he just looked through us and then went on after the dogs.
We all sat silently for long moments after the hunters had gone. The dogs' braying faded into the distance.
I was so tired that when I closed my eyes I couldn't open them again. But I wasn't quite asleep. I could still hear John and Eighty-four talking.
"What we gonna do if'n we cain't run?" she asked.
"When the sun comes up," he said, "I can take you and Forty-seven one at a time to a special place."
"An' we just gonna wait till then?" she asked.
"I guess."
"Then why don't you come ovah here an' sit next to me t'keep me warm?"
I heard a rustling and then I passed over into the darkness of sleep.
1 8.
When I awoke I was laying face up upon a large flat stone. The sun was hovering above the level of the pine trees. I could see its red glow beyond my feet. The pain from the whipping wasn't as bad as it had been before but I was still very weak. Even the morning sun couldn't warm my bones or brighten my eyes.
"Forty-seven," John said.
"Yeah, John?"
"I'm sorry but you are dying."
"I am?" I could hear Eighty-four crying but I couldn't see her.
"I'm sorry," John said. He was standing to my right, looking down on my demise.
"It wasn't yo fault," I said. "I was the one wanted to go back and save Eloise. I'm glad we did it but I feel terrible about Mud Albert. If I die will you bury me next to that river we saw? The one where the bears was."
"You won't die," John said. "At least not today."
"But you said "
"I said I was sorry. I wanted to wait a while before we became brothers. I wanted you to grow into a man and learn the herita
ge of your race. A young man like you will find it hard to wage the kind of war that is bound to arise between you and Wall and his agents."
"His agents? Like sheriffs?"
"Something like you will be for me," John said.
And even though I was dying I got exasperated by his riddles.
"What you tryin' t'say, nig " I stopped myself from using the insult and my friend smiled.
"I am going to perform a ritual that my people have been doing since before any man walked on the earth," he said. "I am going to put my cha into yours. You will still be you but you will begin to know everything I know and everything my people have known. You will have power that no human being has ever dreamed of. And with that knowledge and that power you will save the world."
It was as if I were in a dream. I saw John in that morning light even though darkness seemed to be descending. I heard his words, but they might have just as well been a memory.
John nodded and Eighty-four came into view. She sat next to me on the big stone and took hold of my shoulders. And then John sat on the other side of me. The light of morning seemed to gather around his head and his visage became saintly like the pictures in Tobias's illustrated Bible that Big Mama Flore used to sneak and show me.
John brought his hands behind his neck and grabbed hold of the light. He lifted it up above his head. It looked something like one of the Calash though not hard and angry but gentle. The appendages wrapped themselves around John's fingers in a friendly caress. Then my friend placed the living light upon my chest. The insubstantial tentacles released him and wrapped themselves around my body and my head. I felt a sense of joy so intensely that I couldn't remain still.
"Hold him down, Tweenie," John commanded.
Eighty-four tightened her grip.
He grabbed hold of me too.
I didn't want to fight them but as the creature of light pressed itself into my heart and mind I pushed hard to free myself. I kicked and screamed and bit and shouted. I twisted and knocked my head against the stone below me. As the light filled me I had the desire to fly, to rise above the world and see the oceans and the continents. Continents? How did I know about continents? I wondered. How did I know the names of oceans and constellations and phrases in languages both human and inhuman?
I screamed and threw Eighty-four and John off of me. I rose to my feet and raised my hands to the heavens. All around me were lights of every hue, many that have no names in any human tongue. A billion billion little rainbow people tittered in a place far away and long ago and even far into the future.
And then everything went black.
"Forty-seven," Tall John from beyond Africa said in a booming voice.
I was lying on the ground next to the stone bed where I had lain. I was naked and confused. I wanted to rise but there were so many thoughts going through my head that I couldn't manage to get my legs working.
"Ain't I dead?" were the first words out of my mouth.
In the back of my head I could hear the chatter of a thousand beings. I didn't understand what they were saying but I was sure that they were talking to me.
"In a way you are," John said. "Your body will no longer age, no longer will it experience the processes of a normal human being. From now on you will be the age you were when we met."
"What did you do to him?" Eighty-four asked. There was wonderment in her eyes but no fear. I realized that her love for him somehow expected his power. It was no surprise to me that her passion was even more powerful than his light.
"I gave him my cha, or the child of my cha. The infant that will grow to be a full soul within Forty-seven."
"I don't know what you mean," I said. I managed to stand.
I felt different when I stood next to Eighty-four. After a moment I realized that the difference was that I was looking at her eye to eye. I had grown more than a foot. I had trouble standing because my legs were so much longer that I didn't know how to move them.
"The essence of everything I was given to fight Wall has been planted inside your heart and mind," John was saying. "One day you will know everything that I know. You can use that knowledge in your war against the Calash."
"When will that be?"
"So many years from now that everyone you know will
be long dead."
The idea that all of my friends would be dead saddened me.
"Even you?" I asked.
John looked away at the sky and Eighty-four put her arm on my shoulder and said, "You growed."
"His body has caught up to his years," John told her. "Flore kept him away from meat and milk so that he would stay small and Tobias wouldn't send him into the cotton fields. My cha has brought him to his full physical potential and beyond."
The chattering in the back of my mind was subsiding. The pain of my lashes was gone. I reached around but could find no sores or even scars on my back.
"So I'll never grow any older than I am right now?" I asked.
"That's right."
I was happy that I would never have to grow old and sad like the men and women I had known among the slaves. I didn't know what I'd be missing. I'm still not all that sure.
"Not nigger but man," my mouth said the words but I wondered where the elocution came from. Then I wondered about the word elocution. I knew that it meant the way words were said but I didn't know how I knew that. All I knew for sure was that the word nigger felt like my enemy; an enemy that would grind me into dust and let me blow away on the breeze if I didn't oppose it.
"Champ and Flore stood up for us," I said to John. "Mud Albert gave his life tryin' to help Mama Flore. If I didn't he'p'em then how could I do anything else worthwhile?"
The words came from me and the feelings did too. But I could feel the little creature of light in amongst them. It was as if the hero that I always wanted to be in my heart was set free by my friend and now I would never be a nigger again.
I went down a small path to a pond and looked at my reflection in the water. I was taller but not so tall as a full-grown man. My body had filled out some too but I was still of a slight build. And on my shoulder was stitched the Number 47. The scar of slavery would never be gone from me. And as long as I lived that memory would be alive.
19 .
We waited until nightfall before John and I made our way back to the Corinthian Plantation. We left Eighty-four behind because John was going to use a second sound machine he'd found in his yellow bag and that would put her to sleep along with the rest of the plantation. He didn't tell her that, though. He said that two could move around better than three. She didn't argue. I think that Eighty-four had made up her mind never to step foot on the master's
estate again.
It was nigh on midnight when we entered upon the main yard in front of Tobias's mansion. John walked onto the porch with impunity but I was more timid. Even though I had seen his machine put everyone to sleep before I was still nervous that if a sound could put someone to sleep then maybe another sound could wake them up. And if I made that sound then they would awake to see me sneaking around the white man's rooms.
Flore had been the center of my life and she stood up to protect me when my twelve lashes were announced. She was mother to me and I would have done anything to save
her life.
I went to the closet where she slept but there was another woman there. It was Clemmie, Mr. Turner's old nursemaid, sleeping in Big Mama's place.
"Is she dead?" I asked my friend. "Did she die while you
were savin' my life?"
John put his hands on top of his head and shut his eyes tight. It was like he was trying to rememberwhere Flore had gone. He stayed like that for a minute or more. And while he was thinking I felt something like a pinch at the back of my neck. It was so sharp that I rubbed my hand back there but there was nothing I could feel. I understood somehow that I was feeling John's mature light searching around for Flore. I knew that some day I would be able to do the same
thing.
She was asleep, as was everyone, but her breathing was
shallow and weak.
I went into the corner and beheld the most heartbreaking thing I had ever seen.
It was the body of Mud Albert. He'd been stripped naked and the blood had been washed from his wounds. He lay upon the burlap sack they would bury him in. His eyes were still open and his beard hairs seemed brittle and sparse. One hand was across his chest but the other was up to his shoulder curled into a claw-like hook.
I remembered all of the kind words and wise words Albert had spoken to me over the many seasons of my slavery. Looking down on him I realized that he died because of his love for Flore. It came to me then that no one should have to die for love.
"She must have a vascular cleansing to hasten her recuperative powers," John said as he threw a blanket over Mud Albert's small frame.
He often spoke in big words like that but this was the first time I understood what he was saying. It struck me as odd but I didn't have much time to think about it because I was mourning Mud Albert. "What can I do?" I asked.
"If we put her in a wagon and took her to where my sack is I might be able to relieve her symptoms some. She has had a serious trauma to the head so she might be a little slower."
"Steal a wagon from Master Tobias?" I was worried about my adopted mother but stealing from a white man was certain death in Georgia at that time.
"We can leave her," John suggested.
I was enraged by his offhanded manner. It was as if he didn't care if Flore lived or died.
"Don't be angry with me, Forty-seven," John said. "What you're worried about is true. It will be hard to keep out of sight if we have to carry Flore. And if we're all captured she will die anyway Sometimes we have to make hard choices."
It was a tough call. Here the woman who had raised me was near death and I had to brave death in order to ease her pain.
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