47

For a moment Eighty-four was taken off guard.

"You spoonin' me, boy?" she asked at last.

"Tall John," he said, holding out a hand.

Eighty-four had unkempt bushy hair that was festooned with tiny branches and burrs. She put her hand to a

tangle of hair that had formed above her left eye. I was worried that she was getting ready to sock my friend but instead she put out her own hand.

They shook and she even gave him a shy smile.

"They told us," John said, still holding onto her hand, "that we was to come work wit' you… What's yo name?"

For a moment there was a friendly light in the surly girl-slave's eye, but then it turned hard.

"Da womens calls me Fatfoot an' da mens calls me Porky 'cause dey say I'm like a poc'apine. Mastuh jes' call me Eighty-fo' an' I guess dats the bes' I got."

"None'a them names fit a nice girl like you," John said. "So if you don't mind I think I'll calls you Tweenie 'cause when I first seen you between land and sky you seemed to belong there jes like you was the reason they came together."

Eighty-four's eyes widened a bit and she took a closer look at my friend. I'm sure she was thinking the same thing I was; that is why would he be saying such nice and charming words to a surly and taciturn field slave who was black as tar and ugly as a stump?

"Shet yo' mouf an' git ta pickin'," Eighty-four said, throwing off the web of flattery John had been weaving.

When we came up she had dropped her big cotton sack, which was already a quarter filled. Before she could pick the bag up again. John grabbed it and threw it over his shoulder.

"They send us to take the weight off'a you for a time,

Tweenie," he said. "Me'n Forty-seven here is s'posed t'make it easier for you."

"Boy," Eighty-four said. "Ski

"I'll do ten an' den ten more," John replied. "You'll see."

Eighty-four sucked her tooth and grunted, but she let John carry her bag. She and I fell along either side of him, picking cotton balls and stuffing them in his sack.

Eighty-four kept looking over at John, expecting him to falter under the weight of the cotton. We were harvesting cotton balls at a pretty fast clip and the bag was filling up. It wasn't long before it rose eight feet up off of John's back and trailed behind him. But the weight didn't seem to bother him. He was sweating but he had enough breath to keep talking to Eighty-four.

"Tweenie, you evah wished you could jes th'ow off this cotton an' run out into the woods an' jump in a cold lake t'cool off?"

That must have been just what Eighty-four was thinking because she shouted, "Sho' do! Oh Lawd yes. Cold watah on my skin an' down my th'oat. That an'a crust'a bread an' my life be heaven."

I didn't interrupt their conversation. From experience I knew that my presence made Eighty-four angry. So I kept my mouth shut. But I had another reason to keep quiet. I was concentrating on how I pulled those cotton balls so that my hands didn't get cut up and infected again.

9.

Neither Eighty-four nor I carried the cotton bag that day. John lugged the big bag up and down the rows of cotton bushes while we stuffed the sack full.

The whole time John sweet-talked Eighty-four.

"Bein' a slave ain't half bad," he said in the long shadows of the late afternoon, "if'n you could be lucky as me standin' between a good friend and a beautiful girl."

"You should let me carry that sack now, Joh

And there it was again, just one word. Not even a word but just adding the e sound at the end of his name and I knew that Eighty-four was smitten with Tall John the flatterer.

At the end of the day we had pulled more cotton than any other three slaves on the whole plantation. We knew that because Mud Albert kept count.

When we walked the stony path back to the slave quarters Eighty-four made sure that she was walking next to my friend. She even held his hand for a while, making sure that Mr. Stewart wasn't anywhere to see them.

John seemed to genuinely like Eighty-four. This perplexed me because no one else I knew had ever said a kind word about her. So when we came to the fork in the road where the men and women split off from each other, I went up to John and asked him about our work-mate.

"Why you so sweet to that sour girl?" I asked.

"Tweenie?" John said with a smile. "She's something else. That girl could work a whole farm by herself. I don't think that I've ever met a woman so strong or so full of love."

"But she jes' a field slave," I argued.

"That's what you say about yourself," John pointed out.

"But you on'y met her today."

"I only met you yesterday," he countered.

"But you said that you come here lookin' for me. You lookin' for Eighty-four too?"

"No," John said. He stopped walking and so did I. "I wasn't looking for Tweenie but when I saw her I felt all of the pain she feels over her lost children. My heart went out to her. Her loss and mine are very much alike."

"How did you know about the babies that Mastuh took from her?" I asked.

He pointed at me and said, "Neither master nor nigger be."

"Numbah Twelve!" Mud Albert shouted. "Forty-seven! Get yo black butts movin'."

We hurried off before John could tell me how he knew about Eighty-four's babies. I had been with him every moment so I knew that none of the other slaves had told him. But I forgot about that mystery for a while because we were ru

The men hustled into the slave cabins and Ernestine brought us our porridge.

I wasn't particular about what I ate by that time. Whatever they put in front of me I sucked down while looking around for more. Slaving is hungry work. I was hungry morning, noon, and night. I dreamed about corn cakes and strawberries. Sometimes I would suck on a bite-sized rock just to pretend that I was eating.

That night after a full day of picking cotton I was so tired that all I wanted to do was eat, then sleep. But in the middle of our supper the men started asking John questions.

"Where you from?" Charlie Baylor asked.

"Where we're all from," John said as if that was the only answer and why didn't Charlie know it.

"And where's that?" Billy Branches asked.

"Don't you know where you from?" John asked back.

"I rolled out from a burlap sack on a mud flat in the rain," Number Eight, also known as Coyote Pete, said. "My mam was the hangin' tree. My daddy din't know his own name."

The men all laughed at Pete's made-up rhymes.

"His name was Africa," Tall John pronounced, "whether he knew it or not."

The men all stopped laughing then. I sat up from my bunkbed to see if maybe they were angry with my friend.

"What you know 'bout the jungle, niggah?" Frankei, Number Eleven, asked angrily.

"Not a thing Brotha Frankie," John replied. "I know about the great civilizations of Kush and Nubia. I know about the blood of kings."

"You come from Africa?" Mud Albert asked then.

"I been there."

"So you are High John the so-called conqueror?"

"No," John said, not me. But he is among you."

High John?" Champ said. "Here? Which one of us is it?"

The men all lokked around at each other.

"Why, Forty-seven of course," Tall John said.

The men all started laughing, guffawing actually. Mud Albert laughed so hard he had to get down on one knee and hold his sides.

"Him?" Black Tom said.

"That runt?" Billy Coco added.

"How can you spect us to believesumpin' like that, Joh