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"His agents? Like sheriffs?"

"Something like you will be for me," John said.

And even though I was dying I got exasperated by his
riddles.

"What you tryin' t'say, nig
" I stopped myself from
using the insult and my friend smiled.

"I am going to perform a ritual that my people have
been doing since before any man walked on the earth," he
said. "I am going to put my cha into yours. You will still be
you but you will begin to know everything I know and everything my people have known. You will have power
that no human being has ever dreamed of. And with that
knowledge and that power you will save the world."

It was as if I were in a dream. I saw John in that morn
ing light even though darkness seemed to be descending.
I heard his words, but they might have just as well been a
memory.

John nodded and Eighty-four came into view. She sat
next to me on the big stone and took hold of my shoulders.
And then John sat on the other side of me. The light of
morning seemed to gather around his head and his visage
became saintly like the pictures in Tobias's illustrated Bible
that Big Mama Flore used to sneak and show me.

John brought his hands behind his neck and grabbed
hold of the light. He lifted it up above his head. It looked
something like one of the Calash though not hard and
angry but gentle. The appendages wrapped themselves
around John's fingers in a friendly caress. Then my friend
placed the living light upon my chest. The insubstantial
tentacles released him and wrapped themselves around
my body and my head. I felt a sense of joy so intensely that
I couldn't remain still.

"Hold him down, Tweenie," John commanded.

Eighty-four tightened her grip.

He grabbed hold of me too.

I didn't want to fight them but as the creature of light
pressed itself into my heart and mind I pushed hard to free
myself. I kicked and screamed and bit and shouted. I
twisted and knocked my head against the stone below me.
As the light filled me I had the desire to fly, to rise above
the world and see the oceans and the continents. Conti
nents? How did I know about continents? I wondered. How
did I know the names of oceans and constellations and
phrases in languages both human and inhuman?

I screamed and threw Eighty-four and John off of me. I
rose to my feet and raised my hands to the heavens. All around me were lights of every hue, many that have no
names in any human tongue. A billion billion little rainbow
people tittered in a place far away and long ago and even far into the future.

And then everything went black.

"Forty-seven," Tall John from beyond Africa said in a
booming voice.

I was lying on the ground next to the stone bed where I
had lain. I was naked and confused. I wanted to rise but
there were so many thoughts going through my head that I
couldn't manage to get my legs working.

"Ain't I dead?" were the first words out of my mouth.

In the back of my head I could hear the chatter of a
thousand beings. I didn't understand what they were saying but I was sure that they were talking to me.

"In a way you are," John said. "Your body will no longer
age, no longer will it experience the processes of a normal
human being. From now on you will be the age you were
when we met."

"What did you do to him?" Eighty-four asked. There was
wonderment in her eyes but no fear. I realized that her love for him somehow expected his power. It was no surprise to me that her passion was even more powerful than his light.

"I gave him my cha, or the child of my cha. The infant
that will grow to be a full soul within Forty-seven."

"I don't know what you mean," I said. I managed to
stand.

I felt different when I stood next to Eighty-four. After a
moment I realized that the difference was that I was looking
at her eye to eye. I had grown more than a foot. I had trou
ble standing because my legs were so much longer that I didn't know how to move them.

"The essence of everything I was given to fight Wall has
been planted inside your heart and mind," John was say
ing. "One day you will know everything that I know. You
can use that knowledge in your war against the Calash."

"When will that be?"

"So many years from now that everyone you know will

be long dead."

The idea that all of my friends would be dead sad
dened me.

"Even you?" I asked.

John looked away at the sky and Eighty-four put her
arm on my shoulder and said, "You growed."

"His body has caught up to his years," John told her.
"Flore kept him away from meat and milk so that he would
stay small and Tobias wouldn't send him into the cotton
fields. My cha has brought him to his full physical poten
tial
and beyond."

The chattering in the back of my mind was subsiding.
The pain of my lashes was gone. I reached around but
could find no sores or even scars on my back.

"So I'll never grow any older than I am right now?" I
asked.

"That's right."

I was happy that I would never have to grow old and sad
like the men and women I had known among the slaves. I
didn't know what I'd be missing. I'm still not all that sure.

"Not nigger but man," my mouth said the words but I
wondered where the elocution came from. Then I won
dered about the word
elocution.
I knew that it meant the
way words were said but I didn't know how I knew that.
All I knew for sure was that the word
nigger
felt like my en
emy; an enemy that would grind me into dust and let me
blow away on the breeze if I didn't oppose it.

"Champ and Flore stood up for us," I said to John. "Mud
Albert gave his life tryin' to help Mama Flore. If I didn't
he'p'em then how could I do anything else worthwhile?"

The words came from me and the feelings did too. But
I could feel the little creature of light in amongst them. It
was as if the hero that I always wanted to be in my heart
was set free by my friend and now I would never be a nig
ger again.

I went down a small path to a pond and looked at my re
flection in the water. I was taller but not so tall as a full-
grown man. My body had filled out some too but I was still
of a slight build. And on my shoulder was stitched the
Number 47. The scar of slavery would never be gone from me. And as long as I lived that memory would be alive.

19
.

We waited until nightfall before John and I made our way
back to the Corinthian Plantation. We left Eighty-four be
hind because John was going to use a second sound ma
chine he'd found in his yellow bag and that would put her to sleep along with the rest of the plantation. He didn't tell her that, though. He said that two could move around bet
ter than three. She didn't argue. I think that Eighty-four had made up her mind never to step foot on the master's

estate again.

It was nigh on midnight when we entered upon the main
yard in front of Tobias's mansion. John walked onto the porch with impunity but I was more timid. Even though I
had seen his machine put everyone to sleep before I was
still nervous that if a sound could put someone to sleep
then maybe another sound could wake them up. And if I made that sound then they would awake to see me sneaking around the white man's rooms.

Flore had been the center of my life and she stood up to
protect me when my twelve lashes were announced. She
was mother to me and I would have done anything to save

her life.

I went to the closet where she slept but there was an
other woman there. It was Clemmie, Mr. Turner's old nurse
maid, sleeping in Big Mama's place.

"Is she dead?" I asked my friend. "Did she die while you

were savin' my life?"

John put his hands on top of his head and shut his eyes
tight. It was like he was trying to
remember
where Flore had
gone. He stayed like that for a minute or more. And while
he was thinking I felt something like a pinch at the back of my neck. It was so sharp that I rubbed my hand back there
but there was nothing I could feel. I understood somehow
that I was feeling John's mature light searching around for
Flore. I knew that some day I would be able to do the same

thing.

John opened his eyes and said, "She's in the barn."
I was running as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
I found Flore on a pitiful mattress of hay. Her face was
drawn and ashen. The bruise of where she was bludgeoned loomed large above her brow.

She was asleep, as was everyone, but her breathing was

shallow and weak.

I went into the corner and beheld the most heartbreaking
thing I had ever seen.

It was the body of Mud Albert. He'd been stripped
naked and the blood had been washed from his wounds.
He lay upon the burlap sack they would bury him in. His
eyes were still open and his beard hairs seemed brittle and sparse. One hand was across his chest but the other was up to his shoulder curled into a claw-like hook.

I remembered all of the kind words and wise words Al
bert had spoken to me over the many seasons of my slavery. Looking down on him I realized that he died because
of his love for Flore. It came to me then that no one should have to die for love.

"She must have a vascular cleansing to hasten her recu
perative powers," John said as he threw a blanket over
Mud Albert's small frame.

He often spoke in big words like that but this was the
first time I understood what he was saying. It struck me as
odd but I didn't have much time to think about it because
I was mourning Mud Albert. "What can I do?" I asked.

"If we put her in a wagon and took her to where my sack
is I might be able to relieve her symptoms some. She has
had a serious trauma to the head so she might be a little
slower."

"Steal a wagon from Master Tobias?" I was worried about my adopted mother but stealing from a white man
was certain death in Georgia at that time.

"We can leave her," John suggested.

I was enraged by his offhanded manner. It was as if he
didn't care if Flore lived or died.

"Don't be angry with me, Forty-seven," John said.
"What you're worried about is true. It will be hard to keep
out of sight if we have to carry Flore. And if we're all cap
tured she will die anyway Sometimes we have to make
hard choices."

It was a tough call. Here the woman who had raised me
was near death and I had to brave death in order to ease
her pain.

"Let's do it," I said, full of fears and trepidation.

"You go on and find Tobias's carriage," John said. "I'll
stay here and get her ready."

I went through the barn door into the yard. The carriage
was kept next to the vegetable garden so I went off look
ing for the mule Lacto that had crippled Pritchard.