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I must have been smiling too because Eighty-four
frowned again and said, "What you laughin' at, fool?"

Her sudden anger caught me off guard but luckily I
didn't have time to speak and make things worse because
just at that moment Mud Albert could be heard calling.

"Forty-seven!" he cried. "Numbah Twelve!"

I cocked my head as if listening for more and, in doing so, I was able to avoid Eighty-four's angry question.

"Got to go," I said to John.

"Bye, Tweenie," John said. He dropped the burlap sack and smiled.

She grabbed onto his arm and looked into his eyes be
seechingly.

"You come on back, heah?" she said.

And there again was the power of my new friend. We
had only been in the fields with Eighty-four for a few days

but she was already heartbroken at the prospect of his departure.

I understood her pain. I would feel the same way when John was gone from the Corinthian Plantation. And I was
sure that he would be gone one day. I knew in my heart
that a person as beautiful and smart as John was not des
tined to remain a slave on some backwater farm.

But John wasn't gone yet. He and I ran down a rough path through the cotton bushes. Along the way we saw
dozens of slaves bent over in half toting giant sacks of cot
ton. Flies zipped around them and the sun beat down like
Satan's hammer on their backs.

About half the way to where Mud Albert was John
stopped and looked out at the slaves.

"We cain't waste time, John," I said. "Albert expect us
ta hump it."

"I'm just looking," John said.

"Slave ain't s'posed t'be lookin'," I told him. "Slave s'posed to be doin' sumpin so that the mastuh don't have
t'beat him."

"I have no master, Forty-seven. No master but the
power that keeps my feet on the ground."

"Come on," I said, grabbing him by the arm.

I yanked but he wouldn't budge.

"Do you think that it's fair for those people to be forced
to work day in and day out for their entire lives?" John
asked.

"We gotta go," I replied.

"Answer my question and we can go."

I could tell that John wasn't going to move until I re
sponded.

" 'Course I hate it that we slaves but what else we gonna
do? Who would take care of us an' feed us if'n we didn't
have no mastuh?"

"You could take care of yourselves," he said. "Buy your
own farms, raise your own food."

Nobody had ever said anything like this to me before.
The idea scared me. How could I do all the things that
white people did? All I knew was how to be lazy and how
to work like a dog.

"Let's go," I whispered.

On the way Tall John changed moods again. He made silly faces and did cartwheels as we ran. I got out of my serious
mood and even laughed.

When we got to the open field that Mud Albert called
his office we found the aged slave sitting on an empty molasses barrel as if it were a throne.

"What you grinnin' about, boy?" he asked me.

"Am I grinnin', Mud Albert, suh?"

"You sure is, niggah," he said. "You an' this red-eyed
joker heah."

I thought that Tall John might try to correct Albert's use
of the word nigger but all my friend did was smile.

"I's sorry," I said.

"Don't be sorry for laughin', boy. There sure is little
enough of it in a nigger's lifetime."

I bowed my head because a tear came to my eye. For
the first time I truly knew the sadness of Mud Albert's life. Slaving from the time he could walk until the day we wrap
him in burlap and slap the dust from our hands.

I loved Mud Albert and I regretted his unfair lot.

"I got word from the house that Mastuh Tobias wanna
see this new boy right away," Albert said. "You ready to go
up there, Laughin' John?"

"Yessuh," John shouted.

"Go on then. Forty-seven'll show you the way. He'll
wait for you too
so that you don't get lost comin' back."

As we ran between the bright green leaves I asked John,
"Why'd you give Eighty-four a name and you still call me Forty-seven?"

Up until then we'd been making our way quickstep
through the bushes. But then John stopped and looked at
me. His big eyes were filled with sorrow so deep that I felt
my heart wrench.

"What?" I asked when he didn't speak.

"Your name is set," he said. "Wrought in metal and sent
°n a great ship on the long journey across the sky. One day
you may decide on another name. But for the rest of time
my people and even the Upper Level will know you by the
number given you at the Corinthian Plantation."

"What you talkin' 'bout?" I asked. His words were so
wild that they felt like mosquitoes buzzing around my ears.
"You, Forty-seven. You," John said. "Didn't I tell you
that I've been searching for you all this time?"

"But how you gonna know to look for me?" I asked.
"How you even know I was here?"

"I have always known that you would be here one day,
Forty-seven. Long before men made iron tools, when ter
ror birds and mastodons roamed the land we knew that
you were coming. I waited and wandered and searched
until I came upon the Corinthian. I searched for centuries
but never once did I give up hope. I never doubted the
promise."

"What promise?"

"You, Forty-seven. You are the promise. Your blood is
capable of great power, your heart is free from hatred, and
your mind dares to consider new ways."

We stared into each other's eyes and a profound feeling passed between us. There was a promise and an obligation
that we both recognized. Then we grinned and ran off
toward Tobias's home.

10.

"You wait out on the back porch until the Master is through
with Number Twelve," Fred Chocolate, Master Tobias's
haughty manservant, said to me.

Fred was a tall man, thin and blacker than nighttime.
He had great white eyes and a perpetual disdainful sneer
on his lips. He wore a black suit with big lapels and a white
shirt with a string tie. His shoes looked like black glass they were so shiny and his white gloves made his hands
look like cabbage butterflies in a black forest.

Before meeting Tall John I believed that Fred Chocolate was the most elegant colored man in the entire world
the
luckiest too.

Fred Chocolate was named by Tobias's wife when she
was just a child. She called him Fred Chocolate after a
character in a child's book and the name stuck to him. He
was such a favorite of the Master that Tobias allowed the
butler to have a shack to live in and a wife, Mabel Choco
late, to live in it with him. Mabel Chocolate was also one of
Miss Eloise's maids.

Fred spoke for the Master when he was away and even
gave orders to the white workers, all except Mr. Stewart. So
when Fred told me to go to the back porch I ran around the
house to the little platform built behind the slave's entrance.

I sat down on the stoop there and watched the little black
ants make their way, in long lines, from the house to their
nest under the honeysuckle bushes. Those ants had been
making that journey as long as I could remember. Many a
day I had sat on those steps watching them, vassals to a fat
queen that lived under the ground. I thought that the
slaves were like those ants: Flore and Albert and Pritchard
and all the slaves on our plantation and all the slaves on all
the plantations in all of Georgia. I looked around to see if there was an ant sitting on a pebble looking at everybody
else like I was doing. But I never saw a lazy ant. Even they
were better than I
that's what I thought back then.

"Hi, babychile," a voice said.

Big Mama Flore had come up behind me and was look
ing down on my head.

I frowned and grabbed a stick to hit those ants with. But
when I was about to strike them I looked down and thought
about how I would feel if some hard-hearted person was to
strike me and my friends for no reason. So instead I threw
the stick into the bushes and turned toward Flore.
"Why'd you shet that do' on me, Big Mama?" I cried.
She knelt down next to me and wrapped me in her arms.
I had been waiting for that loving embrace for many a day.
When she hugged me I started to cry and she did too. She

kissed my cheek and our tears rolled together. She pulled
the burrs out of my hair.

She didn't answer my question but it wasn't necessary.
In my heart I knew why she turned me away. I had to be a
field slave if that was what Tobias wanted. I had to do what
the Master decreed.

Neither master nor nigger be,
the words came to me as they
would time and again over the many years of my long life.
John had given me a gift that was also a danger if I ever
said it out loud.

"How's it goin' out there with Mud Albert and Champ?"
Flore asked me.

It was just a simple question. One word would have suf
ficed for the answer. But it opened the floodgates of my pain and labor. I told Flore about Pritchard branding me and about Champ's beating of him. I told her about the
cotton and Eighty-four's pinches and the chiggers and bit
ing gnats, I talked about Tall John but I didn't tell her
about the wonderful things he could do. I didn't tell be
cause I was worried that if Master knew about John's pow
ers he might take him away and I'd never see him again. "Lemme see yo hands," Flore said at one point.
I held up my palms.

"They all healed," she said. "Mud Albert said that you
had real bad cuts. How'd they get bettah?"

I hunched my shoulders. I really didn't know what John had done.

"I guess I jes heal quick," I said.

We talked for a long time and at the end Flore wrapped,
four molasses cookies in a napkin that she pinned to the in
side of my work shirt. Not long after that Fred Chocolate
showed up with Tall John in tow.

"Go back to work," the haughty manservant said.
Flore kissed my cheek. Then she looked at my new
friend and said, "So you the new boy?"
"Yes ma'am," John said brightly.
"My baby here likes you," she added. "He is a fine person, Number Forty-seven is," John answered. "The finest the human race has to offer."

"Watch your mouth," Fred Chocolate said as he slapped
the top of John's head.

But my friend didn't cower or wince. He kept Flore's
eye and she looked at him in wonder and maybe even with
a little fear.

"It was nice to meet you, young man," she said then.
"I'm afraid you'll be seein' more of him than you want
to," Fred said. "Mastuh seems to think that this copper-
colored piece'a trash can help Miss Eloise."
"He has the touch?" Flore asked.
"Mastuh think so."
"Do you?" Flore asked John.