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Champ moved in and Pritchard swung his crutch. It hit
Champ on the shoulder but he didn't even grunt. He hit
Pritchard so hard that the crippled slave fell to the floor and
rolled away. Champ moved fast then and picked Pritchard
up by his shirt.

"You know it's Mud Albert that s'posed to brand the
new slaves," Champ said. "You know it ain't your job."

"But I was just tryin' to help out, Champ," Pritchard
whined. "I didn't know I was doin' somethin' wrong."

I almost felt sorry for Pritchard in spite of the pain in my
shoulder. He sounded like a lonely child wanting a playmate or a toy. In my mind I could see Champ letting the
poor cripple go and walking back to see if I was hurt.

But instead Champ hit Pritchard and hit him again. He
kept hitting him even though the poor man was screaming
and begging for his life.

"Don't kill me, Champ!" Pritchard cried.

"Why you wanna make that little boy hurt?" Champ
asked, and then he hit him.

"Don't kill me, Champ!"

"Do you like it when I beat on you like this?" Champ
hit Pritchard again.

"No. No. I'm sorry. I's jes' doin' it to help out. I's jes'
tryin' to help Mud Albert out."

"If you evah touch that boy again I will kill you,"
Champ said, and then he hauled off and delivered a terri
ble blow. "Kill you." And he hit him again.

Champ beat Pritchard until the lame slave wrapped

himself around the big man's ankles, dripping blood and tears on Champ's bare feet.

I wanted Champ to stop hitting Pritchard but I knew
that you couldn't interfere with men when they were fight
ing mad.

Finally Champ stamped away, leaving Pritchard like a
heap of bloody rags.

"You okay, boy?" Champ asked me.

Looking up at him I thought I knew what angels must
be. Because even though I was in terrible pain I realized
that Champ had saved my life. And having those feelings I
began to cry. I thought that a strong man like Champ would be disgusted with a crybaby, but instead he sat
down and put his big hand on my back.

"It's okay, boy," he said. "We all cry when they burn us
like that. I'm just sorry you didn't have us around you to
help you feel bettah about the pain."

3.

Mud Albert came back that evening with the rest of the
slaves. Everyone was tired from a full day of picking cotton.

Ernestine, the cook's helper-slave, dragged a cast-iron
pot out to the cabin and served us sour porridge in dirty wooden bowls. We were each given a big serving of the
foul slop. I couldn't eat a bite of it.

"You gonna eat yo' suppa?" a small man I came to know
as Julie asked.

"Naw."

"Then hand it ovah to me."

Julie took my bowl and started feeding himself with both hands. This is because they didn't give us forks or
spoons to eat our mush. After all, we were slaves, not civi
lized human beings.

Mud Albert was the oldest man on the Corinthian or any nearby plantation. He walked with a limp and had
many folds in his black face. His forehead was high and el
egant. The only hair he had left was at his temples and
gray. But for all his age Mud Albert was the most respected

man among us slaves. He was fair and deliberate and he never, in anyone's memory, did a wrong thing to another
man or woman.

Albert had sent Champ back to the cabin to see if I was
there. Champ was to bring me out to the cotton fields but
instead he stayed with me after Pritchard crawled away.

Albert and the other slaves came back at sunset, after
fourteen backbreaking hours of picking cotton. That's the
way ninety-nine percent of the slaves worked back in
1832
from sunup to sundown, seven days a week, three
hundred sixty-five days a year.

When Albert saw my branded skin he took a jar out
from under his brass bed. That was his bed because Albert
was the head slave in charge of all the other field slaves. It
was his job to make sure that we were all chained in every
night and that we worked hard and that we didn't run
away. For all that responsibility Master Tobias gave him
a brass bed that was too old for white people to sleep in
anymore.

Albert scooped a handful of foul-smelling paste out of
the jar. Then he smeared this glop on my burns. It hurt
even more and I yelled out but Albert told me that the lard
and herbs would help to heal my shoulder.

After that Albert assigned me to Champ's cot.

The slaves all slept two to a bunk. We didn't have the
space for the luxury of our own beds.

Before Albert turned down the lantern he went around
chaining each one of us by our ankles to an eyebolt in
the floor. They chained us down at night because it was
accepted as general knowledge that a slave was most likely
to decide to run in the dark.

I was happy to be there next to Champ but it was hard
going to sleep with such a big man. He tossed and rolled in
his sleep and sometimes pushed me almost out of the bed.
But I never complained. I knew that Albert put me there
so that Champ could watch over me and protect me from
any other slaves like Pritchard who were jealous of the
easy life I had before coming out to live with them.

One day, after I had been working in the cotton fields
for a while, Mud Albert told me that it went hard for most young boys out among the man-slaves.

"Boys is soft and tendah," he told me. "And men are
rough. Boys need a mother's touch, but they won't put
them among the women because it's forbade for male and
female slaves to live together
that is unless the master
says it's all right."

"Why?" I asked in the hot morning out among the cotton plants that seemed to go on forever.

"You'll know one day, boy," Albert said. "But right now
you don't have to worry acause Champ done said that he's
lookin' out for you and after they seen what he done to
Pritchard they gonna know bettah than to mess wit' you."

"How come Champ ain't mean an' angry like Pritchard,
Mud Albert?" I asked.

"Because Champ is the biggest, toughest, hardest-
workin', friendliest slave anybody done ever see'd. He

gets to visit with slave women all around the county and
because'a that he don't get so rough."

I counted my blessings that I knew Mud Albert and
Champ Noland. But for a long time I forgot that it was Big
Mama Flore that made my acquaintance with them.

The morning after Pritchard branded me they had us up
before sunrise. You could see the stars shining through the cracks in the ceiling of the cabin as Mud Albert walked up
and down the rows with a kerosene lantern shining in our
eyes. Then he used his big brass key on each man's leg
manacles so that they could get up and go to work.

Champ grunted and turned over, almost crushing me.

"Sorry, boy," he said, and he lifted up so that I could
crawl out to the floor.

We went to relieve ourselves in the ditch out behind the
cabins. Across the way we could see the women and the
girls crouching down and doing the same.

Then we were marched out into the cotton fields for the
day's work. Even though the sun wasn't up yet you could
feel the heat of the day rising. The air was full of biting
flies and gnats and there was the strong smell of animal
manure in the mud. It's strange the things you remember.
The worst part of that first day was the sharp rocks sticking
into the soles of my feet. The only piece of clothing I
owned was a big burlap shirt that felt like sandpaper on my
skin. I had no pants or shoes or hat to wear. My sleeves
came way down over my hands.

Before the sun came up I was paired off with a woman
named and numbered eighty-four. She was quite a bit taller
than I but not much older: fifteen or sixteen the way white
people counted. She'd already given birth to two children
by slave men that Master thought would sire strong backs.

Her children had been sold off right after they were
born and so Eighty-four had turned sour.

Her hands were rougher than my burlap shirt and I
hardly understood a word she said.

Eighty-four had lived almost her whole life out among
the slaves in the women's cabin and had nothing to do with
white folks except for Mr. Stewart and his cruel work-
hands. Me and Champ and especially Mama Flore spent
time learning how the white people talked and acted.

To tell you what Eighty-four looked like poses a pecu
liar problem for me. This is because I remember her in two
very different ways. The first was the way I saw Eighty-
four as a scared slave boy looking upon a big, angry, black
girl. She never smiled or uttered a kind word. She never
once asked how I felt or if I needed help. She was, as I
said, black like I am black
very dark. And back then, in
the days of Negro degradation, white people either laughed at our color or, even worse, felt sorry for us because of our
obvious ugliness and inferiority. In my childhood being
black meant poverty, slavery, and all things bad. I was, before Tall John came, ashamed of my color and of everyone
who looked like me. And so when I first looked upon Eighty-four I was afraid and disgusted.

But when I remember her now there's a wholly differ
ent image in my mind's eye. Eighty-four was tall and slen
der with high cheekbones and large, almond-shaped eyes.
Her skin was a dark black that had depth to it like the
night sky. In later years I had the pleasure of seeing her laugh many times and so I know her teeth were ivory of
color and powerful. Eighty-four was beyond good-looking,
beyond beautiful
she was regal.

I know her beauty now, but when I first laid eyes on her she was a fright to me.

"Bes' scurry n' hump," were Eighty-four's first words
to me.

"What?" I asked.

She replied by pinching my arm till it hurt terribly and
repeated the words, pulling a cotton boll and pushing it
into her big burlap bag.

I learned right away to watch her gestures as she spoke. That way I could keep from getting pinched. As it was the
place where she tweaked me hurt for over a week.

It was dark when we started but it was hot too. I pulled cot
ton for a long time, cutting my hands more than once on the tough husks of the pods. I wasn't bothered by the cuts
at first because my shoulder still hurt pretty bad.

The moment they started working the slaves began to
sing. They sang songs that were not in English and they sang songs that were hymns learned from the monthly
service that the traveling Negro minister, Brother Bob,

delivered. Bob was one of the few free Negroes in the county
who was at liberty to move about. There were a few other
freed slaves around that had little cabins. These were fa
vored slaves who got too old to work or were granted their
freedom because of some brave act they committed. Usu
ally they saved their Master or one of the Master's children
from death.