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"We bettah get back," I said.

"But you said that they would kill us," John argued.
"Wouldn't it be better to run?"

"But that girl is dyin'."

"But she's related to people that make Negroes into

slaves. Wouldn't it be better to let her die? Wouldn't it be
better for Tobias to feel like you do about the suffering of
your people? Anyway, Flore and Mud Albert will be slaves
if you go back or not."

I looked up at the strange boy who had befriended me. At first I thought that he was making fun of me. But when
I looked into his face I saw that he really expected me to
have no feelings for Eloise and even the other slaves.

"No," I said. "I wanna run. An' I sho nuff don' wanna die. But I'd be lonely without my friends in Canaland and
I don't blame Miss Eloise for my sufferin'."

"One day you will have to leave the plantation, Forty-
seven. Your destiny is far from here."

"Come on," I said. "Let's get back before I change my
mind about runnin'."

The sun was out and John was able to move fast again. So
it wasn't too very long before we got to the plantation. I
wanted to go right out in the fields and start working, pre
tending that nothing had happened. But John ran us right
up to the front porch of the Master's home and knocked on
his door.

Fred Chocolate answered. I knew we were in trouble
when a worried look came into his sour face. I knew we
were dead.

"Run," Fred said. "Run away from here you stupid niggers. Run."

117

teen

"I've come to see Tobias," John said.

"Tell this soft-headed fool to run from here," Fred said
to me.

I grabbed John's arm but his feet were planted like tree roots. There was no moving him.

"Bring Tobias Turner to me," John said in a stern tone.

Fred fell back a step and then a voice came from some
where in the house.

"Who is that you're talkin' to, Fred Chocolate?" It was
Master Tobias.

My guts turned to water and my knees were no sturdier
than blades of grass. Tobias came to the door, pushing the butler aside.

"What's this?" he cried. "The runaways. Call Mr. Stewart, Fred. I will have these boys whipped in front of all the
slaves out here. Whipped until their backs is bloody and
their heads hang down dead."

"No!" Big Mama Flore cried.

I saw her run into the big sitting room behind our en
raged Master.

"They just boys, Master Tobias," Fred said.

And even though I was afraid for my life I was amazed
that the snooty house Negro would have stood up for two
pieces of field trash like us.

"Mr. Stewart!" Tobias cried.

"You can kill us, Tobias Turner," John said in a voice
that could not be ignored. "But will you allow us save your
daughter's life before you do?"

The russet-hued lad held up his napkin-sack of medicine.

"What are you sayin', Number Twelve?" the Master
asked.

"You sent us to find medicine," my friend said proudly. "We've done that. We had to go far away and we got stuck
in the rain. I couldn't let the herbs we carried get wet and so we had to hide until the rain stopped."

"The rain quit late last night, nigger!" Mr. Stewart said from behind us.

He had just gained the porch in answer to Tobias's call.
I could feel the stamping of his hard boots on the wood be
neath our feet. Every time his shod feet hit the planks I
imagined him trampling on my bones.

"We fell asleep," John said to Tobias. "We were tired from searching for the medicines your girl needed."

"You can break her fever?" Tobias asked. His voice was
lower now. I could hear the sorrow and exhaustion in his
words.

"Yes, sir," John said, as serious as a hangman.

"Then come on upstairs before it's too late," Tobias said.

"Number Forty-seven has to come with me," John told
Tobias, and I really wished he hadn't. All I wanted to do
was to get back out in the cotton fields; back to where I was
just a slave and nobody white talked to me or worried
about my whereabouts.

"I can't let two filthy niggers in my little girl's room."

"You'd rather let her die?" John asked.

He was no longer acting like a downtrodden slave. Tall

John was talking to Tobias in just the same way he spoke
to me. As a matter of fact I believed that everything John was doing and saying was for my benefit. He wasn't worried about the Master or the plantation boss or stuffy Fred
Chocolate. He was showing me something. And maybe I
would have understood his lesson if I wasn't scared down
to the wood beneath my bare feet.

Tobias was shivering with rage at the impudent slave
and also in fear for his daughter's life. If John would have
listened to me I could have told him that the slave master
held a grudge longer than he'd remember any good deed. I
could have told John that talking like a white man to a white
man was the quickest way for a slave to meet the Lord.

"Come on!" Tobias shouted.

He ran back into the mansion and John followed. I fell
back, hoping that I could get away, back to the cotton
fields, but Mr. Stewart pushed against my shoulder and I
was thrown into the doorway of the big house.

We ran along through the sitting room, with its posh
couches and chairs. My dirty bare feet scuttled over the
soft carpeting. And even though I was soothed by the feel
of the fabric beneath my feet I thought that it was not
nearly so elegant as the bed of leaves beneath that great tree where I slept the night before.

We ran up the stairs: Mr. Stewart, Master Tobias, Tall
John, Flore, Fred Chocolate, and I. There we came to a big
double door that was open. The walls of that room were

lined with large windows and everything was covered with
yellow lace. The curtains were lace and also the canopy
over the bed, even the walls were painted like the creamy
material.

Under the canopy, in the center of the room, in the
oversized bed, lay the girl-child Eloise. She looked frail
and pale with her eyes closed and sounds of distress com
ing from her lips.

"The fever is taking her brain," John said in an offhanded
manner. "She will not live out the morning unless she is treated."

Next to the bed was Eloise's light-skinned maid, Nola.
Nola was hardly older than I. She had freckles and greenish
eyes and crinkly reddish-brown hair. It was general knowl
edge among the slaves that Nola was Tobias's daughter by a slave named Patrice who had died some years before.

Nola was crying over her white half-sister's agony. It
was plain to see that she loved Eloise as much as I did.

Many slaves loved their masters. Looking back on it
now it seems odd
loving someone that keeps you in chains and runs roughshod over your life. But back then
the only rule we knew was the white Masters' rule, and so
if the Master were ever kind many of us felt grateful because we didn't know any better. And if somebody like
Eloise, who never said a harsh word, was somewhere for us
to catch a glimpse of now and again, we felt a swelling in
our hearts, hoping that such a kind soul would somehow
ease our sufferings. That's because the human heart is always filled with hope and the need to love.

So Nola loved Eloise. She would have happily died in her stead.

"Shall I save your daughter, Tobias?" John asked arro
gantly.

"Out of the way, Nola," the defeated slave master said.

"No!" Nola shouted.

Mama Flore took the unwilling girl by the shoulders
and pulled her away from the dying white girl's bed.

"Come, Forty-seven," John said as he moved toward
the girl's side.

Grabbing me by the arm, Tobias said, "Wait a minute. You ain't said what you need this nigger for. He's been on my plantation since he was baby. He don't have no healin'
in 'im."

"Where I am from," John replied, rather impatiently,
"we cannot heal without teaching. Forty-seven is my student. If I didn't have him I could not save your daughter."

Tobias released me and John unfolded his napkin on
the bed.

Even now, over a hundred and seventy years later, in
the twenty-first century, I remember the feelings I had in
that white girl's bedroom. I was afraid for Eloise because
she looked so drawn and deathlike. I was afraid for myself
because John had made me part of his haughty procedure.
And even while all that fear was in me I was aware that the

Master had lost all of his high-minded ways. He was giving
in to a mere slave because that slave might be able to do
what they could not. This was possibly the most important
lesson John ever taught me; that our so-called masters
were not all-powerful, that they were also weak and vul
nerable at times. But at the moment I was too frightened
to understand the significance of that knowledge.

Upon his open napkin there were various leaves, mush
rooms, and twigs. There were also two smaller versions of
the soft-glass tubes that he had used to heal my hands and
brand. These tubes were so small that they might have
been seeds.

John put his hand on Eloise's brow. Nola screamed at
him to stop touching her mistress. Flore then dragged the
child from the room. John was busy crumbling up the veg
etation and mixing it with oil from the capsules he'd got
ten from the yellow bag. Then he rubbed the paste up
under her upper lip.

"What are you doin' there, Twelve?" Tobias said in a
threatening tone.

"Saving your girl if you let me be," he replied.

John crushed another tube and then ran his fingers under the unconscious girl's tongue.

This intimacy was too much for the white man. He
grabbed Tall John by the shoulder and threw him nearly
across the room. The youth hit the floor with a loud grunt
and reached back to rub his head.

I didn't know what to do. John was my friend. I wanted
to protect him, but I couldn't stand up to that white man.
He could have killed me with just one blow.

Tobias advanced on the prostrate boy. There was death in every gesture of the white man's body.

"Master!" Flore shouted. "Her eyes."

Tobias turned to see his girl looking at him. She held his
gaze for a moment and then looked away as if something
else had captured her attention. I looked in the direction of
her gaze but all I saw was a bare wall.

Tears sprang to my eyes. Eloise was alive and so John
and I would be spared. We saved the Master's daughter.
He might even grant our freedom. Defeat and death turned around in a flash, like lightning.

"Thank you, Lord," Flore cried.

"She's cured," Tobias said.

"Not yet," John announced. "You threw me off before I
could finish the treatment."