47

Some of the slaves that had come from Africa, or had been around those that did, knew how to steal blood from cows and weren't afraid to eat fat worms and other bugs. But no matter what we did our lot was a hard one. Our hearts and souls were forged in the furnace of slavery and we were made so strong that we dragged the entire nation on our ski

I felt the manacle around my ankle give. Then John jumped out of bed and lit one of the oil lanterns, illuminating the room of sleeping men.

"What you doin', niggah?" I said to the boy called Tall John.

"Neither nigger nor master be," he said. "Get up, Forty-seven, and fight for your life."

Slowly I raised up and looked around. All of the men were sleeping in the cabin. But it was more than just a bunch of men sleeping. It was like in the late fall when Mud Albert would take his secret fermenting jug from its hiding place in the barn and him and Mama Flore would drink from it and fall unconscious just like as if somebody had hit them in the head with a rifle butt.

"What's wrong with them?" I asked my newfound friend.

"There's a place in your brain," John said, touching my forehead with a long thin finger, "that tells you when to sleep. When there's a certain vibration in the air that place

kicks on and you have to stop what you're doing and get a deep rest. I caused that vibration to happen everywhere on the whole plantation with this." John held up the tin cigar. "All I did," he said, "was push this button and everybody within a quarter mile of here fell into a sleep like the

dead."

"Then why ain't we asleep?" I asked. "Because we're special," John said, flashing a grin. "I ain't special," I said. "I ain't got no tin cigar to put peoples t'sleep or tricky words t'git peoples t'laugh. I'm just a nigger wit' bloody hands."

John leaned close to me and said, "Not nigger but man. And you are special, Forty-seven. In your mind and your heart, in your blood. You carry within you the potential of what farty old Plato called the philosopher-king." "Who?" John smiled. "Come," he said.

He grabbed me by the wrist, pulled me out of the cot and toward the door. I followed, afraid that Mud Albert would jump up at any minute. But he didn't and we went out into the yard in front of the cabin.

The night air was filled with the chirps and clicks of insects and the smell of night blooming jasmine. The nearly full moon was wearing a cloud as a belt and stars winked all around. I remembered when I slept in the barn that sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and look up on a sky like that.

"Can we go back to the cliffs where we saw the bear?" I asked.

"Not now," he said. "It's over ten miles from here and I can't carry you when there's no sun."

Ten miles!! thought that the new boy must be crazy. But then again he did open our chains somehow and I had never heard of the river we saw that day.

"Come on," he said. "We have to go off into the woods." Tall John had regular Negro features except for his odd coloring. And when he spoke his voice was filled with authority so I felt that I had to go along with him. It wasn't the way that I felt when white people ordered me around. I was afraid of white people, but I wanted to do what John asked of me. I wanted to follow him and find out what he was showing me. Most of what he said I didn't understand, but that didn't matter; I stored it all away thinking that one day it would all make sense.

John led me back to the path where we met that afternoon. We went off about two hundred yards into the shrubs and bushes until we came to a big elm. There was a recess like a cave in the side of the tree and from there John pulled out a shiny yellow sack that was about the size of a carpetbag. He rummaged around in the bag until he came out with three small tubes that were like glass except they were soft. Then he returned the yellow bag to its hiding place.

A carpetbag was a small suitcase that traveling salesmen and government officials used when traveling around the country. It was large enough for an extra suit of clothes and whatever other necessities one might need, such as writing paper, a razor, and maybe a little food.

"Come on," he said, and we headed back to the road and then toward the slave quarters.

"What is that you stoled, Tall John?" I asked as we went back up to our cabin.

"I haven't stolen a thing," he replied. "These are mine and yours."

"A slave don't even own his clothes, boy," I said, repeating words that I had heard my entire life. "He don't even own his own body."

"No one owns their clothes, Forty-seven," Tall John said, "nor their bodies. These things are just borrowed for a while. It is only the mind that you truly own."

"Says what?" I asked.

"And," the strange boy continued, "if no one owns even their own clothes how can they possess another?"

"So you savin' that Master Tobias don't own his black leather boots?" I asked.

"Every single particle in the whole wide universe is responsible for its role in the unfolding of the Great Mind." "What's that s'posed t'mean?" I asked. "It means that if you stick your hand in a fire and burn yourself that you are the one responsible for the pain," John said. "It means that if a man calls you slave and you nod your head that you have made yourself a slave." "Are you crazy, niggah?" I said.

He stopped and turned, pointed his elegant finger at me

under moonlight, and said, "Neither master nor nigger be."

A sudden scurrying came up behind him and I could see Master Tobias's bloodhounds coming fast. They were bounding at us under a sickly lunar glow.

My breath caught and John turned around. When he saw the dogs bearing down on him he fell to his knees. I figured that he lost all of his arrogance and was now kneeling before the Almighty in the moment of his death. I would have knelt down too but my faith wasn't so strong. I was trying to get my legs to run when the dogs leapt on John. He put out his hands and I thought that they were biting his fingers until I realized that they were licking him all over like he was their long lost mama come home to suckle and love them.

He cooed to them in a language that I couldn't understand. One by one they fell on their backs and exposed their bellies for him to scratch and thump.

"Come over here and meet my new friends, Forty-seven," he said.

"Nuh-uh," I said. "No, suh."

"Come on," he insisted. "These dogs won't bite you."

One of the vicious hounds got up and came over to me. When she licked my fingers I started to laugh. After a while the dogs, John, and I were scampering around the yard, playing as freely as little white kids under the moon-cast shadow of the Master's mansion.

After a long while John bade good-bye to the dogs and led me back to the slave cabin.

Once inside John slapped his hands together on one of

the three glass tubes he stole. This covered his hands with a thick clear paste that he rubbed into the brand that Pritchard had burned into my shoulder. It felt cool against my skin and the pain that still lingered from the burn went away.

John returned the lantern to its place and snuffed out the flame. We got back on the cot and put the shackles around our ankles. Then he gave me the two soft-glass tubes to hold, one in each hand.

"Squeeze these as hard as you can in both hands," he told me.

I did what he said and both little pipes burst in my hands. A cold sensation went through my wounds and I shivered there in the hot and smelly cabin.

"Keep your fists clenched like that," John said to me. "Keep them tight and in the morning the infection will be gone."

I held on tight and John put his hand on my shoulder.

"This wax will heal you," he said.