47

by Walter Mosley

  In the distance we could see the tall flames rise from the Corinthian Plantation. The sounds of the battle faded but then I heard something like both a gasp and a scream.

  "Did you hear that, Champ?" I asked.

  "What?"

  I heard another scream. It was a girl.

  "That," I said.

  "I don't heah nuthin', Forty-seven," Champ replied, cocking his ear.

  "Stop the wagon, Champ. Stop it."

  He did as I said just as soon as he was sure that we were hidden behind a stand of dark trees.

  "What's wrong, boy?"

  "You know where the hangin' oak is?" I asked him.

  "I guess I do," he said. "They hanged the man I called uncle from there onceit."

  "Numbah Twelve will be theah waitin' for me. You go to him and I'll be by in just a while."

  "Where you goin'?"

  "Hand me that rope from under yo' "seat," I said.

  Big Champ Noland did as I asked and I ran off in the woods faster than a deer fleeing a cougar.

  Running through the deep forest toward the sound of the girl's scream, I realized that it wasn't one girl yelling, but two.

  I was agitated and afraid for my life and the lives of the only family I had ever known. But even though I was so distressed it was still amazing to me how I managed to run through those woods. My feet moved surely between the low-slung branches, and if there was no place to stand I easily climbed high and moved quickly through the upper branches like a wily chipmunk avoiding some land-bound predator. At times I was nearly at the top of the trees, finding the fastest footholds there.

  I was at such a lofty place when I saw Mr. Stewart fall upon Eloise Turner and her faithful servant, and half-sister, Nola. Eloise, dressed in a mere slip and barefoot, was trying to evade the leather-skinned madman while Nola, wearing only a nightshirt herself, was standing to the side yelling for help.

  Stewart grabbed Eloise and lifted her in the air.

  "Help me!" she cried, and I remembered when Pritchard had slapped me silly and branded me.

  I knew I had to save those two girls. I knew I had to face my fear of the man who daunted me since as far back as I could remember. But before I could steel myself Nola ran forward and threw a rock, hitting Stewart in the head. That blow would have knocked any ordinary man out cold. But Elias Ainsworthy Stewart was no longer an ordinary man. He had risen after Eighty-four delivered a fatal blow to his head, and so Nola's pebble wasn't going to bother him.

  The stone made a metallic sound upon striking his skull, and for a moment Stewart froze, tilting his head as if he had forgotten something. Eloise was screaming and I chose that moment to jump down from the tree.

  I came down on the ground behind Stewart. I made to run up to him but I tripped on something soft. I was up on my feet soon enough but then I saw that the obstacle that made me fall was the body of Tobias Turner. He was lying half on his side with his head turned at an impossible angle. He wore black pants and a white shirt with the tails out and no shoes. It was his bare feet that made me feel sorry for him. The big difference between the master and all of his slaves was that he was always shod and we never were. Now that he was fallen down to our level even the musket lying next to his outstretched hand was impotent.

  I stared at the man who I'd always thought of as master, until the coming of Tall John. I felt sorry for his death, angry at his life, and glad that he could never hurt another slave. These feelings struggled against each other in my heart. A slave has a thousand feelings about his slaver. This is because that man has the power of life and death over his slaves and even though you might be hating him you also pray that he will show you mercy.

  I might have sat there all night between those emotions if Nola hadn't screamed again.

  "You leave my mistress be, Elias Stewart!" she shouted, and then she screamed like a banshee.

  Quickly I tied a loop in the rope I got from the carriage. I tied the other end to a poplar sapling. Then I came up behind the living ghoul Mr. Stewart. When he raised a foot I put the loop about his ankle and pulled hard. The one-eyed goliath fell and I lashed his feet together.

  "Damn you, boy," Stewart bellowed.

  He released Eloise in order to grab at me but I was too swift. I ran all the way around him, seized Eloise by the wrist with one hand and Nola with my other. We all three took off through the woods.

  As we ran away Stewart roared an evil curse.

  Eloise was so frightened that she stopped running.

  "Come on," I hissed. "We gots to go."

  "Yeah, Miss Eloise," Nola echoed. "We gots to get away from that man."

  "I'm scared," she cried.

  "We all scared, babychile," I said. "Scared is the lamp that lights the way."

  "Yes, suh," Nola said.

  They were words that Flore had often said to me. They had the right effect. Eloise pulled her tattered slip around her and hurried with me and her light-skinned servant through the dark wood. The three of us moved quickly amid the howls of Mr. Stewart's rage.

  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 h
er 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.

  23 .

  Free to do what we wanted to do. Freedom what every slave dreamed about from morning to night and from night to morning, every day of their lives.

  Flore's mouth opened and tears flooded her eyes.

  "Free?" she said again.

  She rocked forward and put her arms around me. When she hugged me I was her little boy again. I grabbed on tight.

  In the distance dogs were howling and the smell of smoke was in the air but we didn't care about all of that. We were free under the pale blue morning skies. Even if they caught us and hung us from the tree we hid behind we still had the greatest treasure in the world.

  After a while Flore fell asleep too. Nola had taken a sip of Tall John's water earlier on and so she was dozing peacefully.

  "Will they find us?" I asked my friend.

  "I don't think so," he said. But his brow was furrowed and his words were heavy.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  "There's a place about ten miles north of here where my machine lies hidden under the ground. There's an alarm set on it designed to tell me if one of the Calash is somewhere nearby."

  "Did that alarm ring?" I asked.

  John nodded.

  "Maybe it's just some animal rubbed up against it," I suggested, wanting to calm my friend down.

  "No. It's Wall. He has found my ship while I was distracted here with you and your friends. He will soon be able to utilize the mechanism and dig the green powder from the earth."

  "Then we bettah go an' stop 'im 'fore he can do that," I said, speaking right up. "You helped me save my friends an' now I'll help you."

  John smiled then.

  "You would help me even though you are just now free?" he
asked.

  i "If'n we can put Flore an' Champ ovah wit' Eighty-four then I'd be happy that they was free an' you'n me could go an' take that green powder gin away from Andy Pike."

  "It will take him a while to open the door," John said. "And together we might be a match for him."

  I smiled and shook my friend's hand.

  "We gonna do it," I said.

  Then John said something that I didn't understand at the time but it struck me as being rather odd.

  "Your courage gives me the strength to surrender myself," he said. "All life flows toward the Upper Level."

  After that John gave me a drink of his sleeping water and I drifted off into a dream that was not a dream at all.

  I was floating in the air among thousands of the tiny, multicolored people of John's race. Then I felt something pulling and pushing at me, and the sky disappeared and there was nothing above but blackness and stars. I was thrown out of the company of the little people and I was flying faster than anything toward one of the glittering stars.

  All of a sudden I knew that I wasn't dreaming about me

  but about Tall John when he got into his Sun Ship and headed off toward Earth.

  The star I was heading for became as big as the sun. It was a wide field of fire that sang with power and majesty, but I wasn't afraid. I slipped through the white flames of the star and came to a place that was pure and red. It was hot but there was a place right in the middle of the star that was black and cold. I/John dove into the center of the blackness and suddenly I/John was somewhere else. I/John was far, far away from my home, and lonely. I/John would never be home again. All of my people were far behind me while I/John would find star after star traveling so far away from my home that it would be as if there was no home for me, anywhere.

  I woke up crying for that loneliness. And I knew somehow that the dream was not really a dream but a lesson about my friend Tall John from beyond the stars. His light was a part of me now and it was telling me about my friend, his history, and my mission.

  "You awake, boy?" Champ Noland asked.

  It was nighttime. Champ and Flore and Tall John and Nola stood around me as I lay on the ground. The moon illuminated my friends.

  "Where's Eloise?" I asked.

  "We sent her home," John said.