47 (28 page)

When the sun peaked over the mountains John began
to fade.

"Don't go!" I cried.

"Queziastril is turning to some other concern, my
friend, Forty-seven. But don't fear, I'll come back and look
for you again."

With those words my little friend faded into the air. And
even though I was sad at his death I knew that we would
be comrades for many years to come.

Something I have learned over the years since those
times is that nothing is ever truly gone from the world. No
atom or electron ceases to exist, they only change from one
thing into another. And no life ever ends but itself trans
mutes into other forms and places.

John was alive in my heart and so I was able to glean a
lesson that he meant to teach me.

And what I needed to do was to consider his words and
make sure that I and my friends could survive long enough
to do battle with Wall and his ghoul, Mr. Stewart.

Every day we saw white men in the distance searching with
hounds and muskets.

One evening Champ came running into our cave, drag
ging Bitter Lee, slave Number Seventeen from the Corinthian Plantation. Lee had been shot in the back but still he
managed to throw off the hounds and escape. Champ had
found him near the stream, barely conscious and burning
with fever.

"Why'd they shoot you, Bitter Lee?" Mama Flore
asked him.

"They blames the slaves fo' burnin' down Corinthian,"
he said. "They say it was niggers killed all them white men
and women."

"But didn't nobody tell'em 'bout Mr. Stewart and his band'a thieves?" Champ asked.

"None'a the white peoples from Corinthian lived," Bit
ter Lee said. "They's all dead 'cept for Miss Eloise, who
showed up outta nowhere. She said that you niggers gone
west but she didn't remember the fire or the attack."

Somehow I knew that Tall John had helped Eloise to forget the events of that terrible night. Maybe if he knew
that the slaves would have been blamed for the murders
he would have done differently.

"How you know all this?" Nola asked, "if you been
runnin'?"

"They caught me," Number Seventeen said. "Caught
me and told me that they was gonna hang me for all them
murders. They th'owed me in chains but in the night
Miss Eloise come to me an' unlocked my chains. She said
that she had a dream that Forty-seven here had saved her, and in the dream he told her that there was no nigger or
master and she thought that that meant she should let
me free."

We all looked at each other, wondering what spell John
had put on Eloise to make her act like that. And while we
were looking at each other Bitter Lee began coughing. It
was a deep, wet, rolling cough that went on for well over a
minute. And when he stopped coughing he was dead.

We buried Bitter Lee at midnight. When Mama Flore
was saying a few holy words over his shallow grave we
heard dogs braying and even saw lantern light not twenty-five feet from where we were praying.

Later on I picked up the little disk that we used to hide
us from the search parties. Physical contact with the device gave me information about its use. Somehow, the light that
John gave me allowed me to understand his technology in this way. I saw that the machine's power was running low,

and soon the white men would find us. So I reached into John's yellow sack and came out with a small glass plate
that had blue and red threads running through it.

I studied that plate for three days without eating or
sleeping.

Mama Flore and Champ and Nola and even sad Tweenie
tried to get me to rest and sup but I told them that this was
the only way for me to save their lives. I told them that but
for all my fasting and staring in three days I hadn't learned
a thing about the little glass dish.

But then, at the end of the third day, when I was feeling
dizzy and weak, something strange happened.

It was as if the world stopped but I kept on going. I rose
up out of my body and looked at the plate held by my body's hands. The blue and red threads wound together
and waved toward one side of the rim. When I looked
toward that rim I saw mountains and deep forests with
trees older than countries and bears that stood twice as tall as tall men stand.

Canada.
The word sounded in my mind.
Freedom.
This
word rung true.

I snapped out of the trance and said out loud, "Follow
the blue and red threads and they will lead us to freedom
in Canada."

When the morning broke I told my friends that we were
going to take a journey through the wild woods of America
and go all the way to Canada, where they might let a colored man or woman be free.

"How do you know what way's the right way?" Champ
Noland asked.

"Because," Tweenie said, "he an' John shared the light and now Forty-seven is the one to lead us."

There were tears in her eyes and a deep sadness in her
voice. Everyone listening believed her, even me. And so that
night we set out through the woods. We had over fifteen hundred miles to travel on bare feet. There were wild ani
mals and evil white men we passed along the way. We had
many adventures and each of us nearly died more than once.
But we made it to Canada and freedom. Mama Flore was able to settle down on a farm that Champ started. He mar
ried Tweenie and they adopted Nola and me. And for some
time we all lived together safe from chains and whips.

Maybe some other time I will tell the story of our es
cape or of the times years later when I came up against Mr.
Stewart and other ghouls of the evil Calash
Wall.

But for the time being this story is over. Some of us
lived, others did not. But at least for some of us there was
happiness and freedom at the end of the trail.