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and a wide brim.

"Mr. Pike!" Tobias yelled. "What brings you to our neck

of the woods?"

Even though my hands were hurting me and my mind
was hoping that Ned had been good enough to be allowed
to slave in heaven, I was still indignant that somebody
would interrupt a funeral and that the orator would stop his
eulogy in order to enter into small talk with some acquain
tance, regardless of his race.

"I was hoping that you could help me, Mr. Tobias," the

well-dressed stranger said.

"Why you dressed in Sunday best?" Tobias asked.

"I like my fine clothes," Pike answered in an arrogant tone. He moved his head around, exhibiting an unmistak
able show of pride. His eyes opened wide while he did this
and I could swear that for a moment his eyes were like

bright rainbows.

As almost two hundred pair of Negro eyes watched, the
fancy white man dismounted his mare and sauntered toward
Tobias. As he did so he let his eyes wander across the mass
of black humanity.

"I lost a slave," Pike said.

"And you think he run the thirty-five miles from your plantation to mine?"

"I don't know," the man said. "Could be. The boy is
called Lemuel. He's young, maybe fourteen, and a strange
brown color. My wife wants him back. She thinks that he's a healer. But I think that he's just a shiftless ungrateful cur.
Et my food and then run like a thief in the night."

"Well, if I see someone like that I'll tell you," Tobias
said. "Now if you don't mind these slaves here is hungry and I have a sermon to finish."

Mr. Pike didn't seem too happy with being cut off for
the benefit of a mob of black folk. He stood there for a mo
ment too long, staring at Tobias. But he finally got the
point and turned away. He climbed up on his magnificent
mare and shouted for her to gallop off. With all of that
noise Tobias had to wait until the rude visitor was out of
earshot before he could continue with the sermon.

"Where was I?" Tobias asked. But we knew it wasn't for
us to answer him. "Oh yeah. Slim was a good boy ..." He
called him boy but Ned was nearly as old as Mud Albert.
"... better than some white men. Take that no good
lowlife Andrew Pike. From the looks of him you'd think
that he was better than any nigger. But it ain't so. That
man right there sold me a horse that he said could work
pullin' a plow or a carriage. He took two good slaves for it
but it wasn't four days before Dr. Boggs told me that the
horse had heartworm. When I complained, Pike didn't

even apologize. Took my niggers and left it for me to put
his horse down.

"Ned, you can go up to heaven knowin' that you were a
better man than that."

Tobias slapped his hands together as if he had dug the
grave himself, or maybe it was that he felt dirty having to
speak at a slave's burial. Anyway he walked away from the
grave and up to his mansion. He left Mr. Stewart and nine
or ten men armed with rifles to guard us while we sang
over the death of our fellow man and friend.

Seeing those armed men was the first time I ever enter
tained the notion that white people were afraid of us. As I
said, there were plenty of black folk at that burial. We
could have overrun those few white riflemen and killed
the Master and his plantation boss. We could have taken
the Corinthian Plantation for our own.

For a moment I imagined screaming black men and women overrunning the riflemen, beating them with their
own weapons and burning down the mansion. I saw the
overboss and his men on their knees, begging for their
lives like Pritchard had done when Tobias considered kill
ing him. I saw us all sitting in the Master's dining room, eating ham, and putting our bare feet right up on his table.

I knew it was a sin to have these thoughts and it scared
me to the bone. I started shivering, fearful that someone
could see the blasphemy in my eyes. And if they did, and
they told Master, I'd be in Mr. Stewart's killin' shack quicker
than they could call my number.

"Are you all right, babychile?" Mama Flore asked.

She had come up beside me while I was having my evil
thoughts and while all the other slaves were singing.

"Fine," I said, letting my head hang down and holding
my wounded hands behind my back.

"Mud Albert told me that that dog Pritchard knocked you down and branded you," she said.

"It's okay. Albert put some lard on it and it hardly even
hurt except if I move." I shifted around, making sure to
keep my hands behind me.

"What's wrong with yo hands, sugah?"

"I got to go back to the cabin," I said. "Mud Albert said
that he wanted me to clean out from under his bed."

Most of the slaves were singing "Blessed Soul." Flore reached out for me but I moved away and she only grazed
my cheek with her finger. She called after me but I just
ran, crying bitterly at my sad fate and for the soul of the
slave they called Nigger Ned.

5.

Nobody tried to stop me when I ran away from the funeral.
That's because I was so small that I was still seen as a plan
tation child and not of an age to try and escape. And nei
ther did I consider flight because where would I run? There
was nothing but plantations for hundreds of miles and if
ever a white man saw me he was bound by law to catch me
and beat me and return me to my owner.

My hands were hurting and so was my heart as I walked
through the piney path that led from the colored graveyard
to the slave quarters. The sun was setting and birds were
singing all around. Big fat lazy bugs were floating in the
air on waxen wings, and a slight breeze cooled my brow.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered that
times like that were magic and if you looked hard enough
you might just see some fairy or saint in amongst the trees.
And laying eyes on such a magical creature would change
everything in your life.

But that was the first day of my transition from childhood
to maturity. Between the death of Ned and the callous
manner of Master Tobias I was beginning to see that there
might not be magic in the world after all. The man we
called Nigger Ned was in his grave with no one to give him
the proper words to see him on to heaven. Big Mama Flore
had abandoned me and my hands were red and swollen. I
was a slave and I was always going to be a slave until the
day that I died. Better that I died soon, I thought, before I
had to endure too much more sorrow.

It was then that I noticed a sound that no bird or insect
could have made. It was a thrashing in the woods. It could have been a badger or an armadillo, but it might also have
been a boar or bear or wildcat. I was small enough that a
fearsome creature like that could see me as prey and so,
even though I had just been contemplating my death, I be
came afraid for my life.

The fast-moving sound of crashing was over to my
right. I decided not to go off the path because I wouldn't
be able to move as fast as a wild animal through the under
brush. I lit out at a run down the path and as soon as I did I heard the creature moving quicker still, and in my direc
tion. I ran even harder and shouted once. Off to the side I
could see the bushes being disturbed by the animal chasing me. I ran harder but the beast was catching up to me.
Then he was still in the woods but ahead of me. I decided
to run back the way I had come but when I tried to stop I
was moving too fast and tripped over my own feet.

The creature stopped running and I had the feeling that it had emerged from the bushes, into the path. I looked up

expecting to see the jagged teeth of a wolf or some other
fearsome beast, but instead there was a tall colored boy
standing there. He was the most beautiful being I had ever
seen. I say that he was colored but not like any Negro I'd
known. His skin was the color of highly polished brass but
a little darker, a little like copper too but not quite. His
eyes were almond-shaped and large with red-brown pupils. He was bare-chested and slender, but there was elegance in
his lean stance. All he wore was a pair of loose blue trousers
cinched at the waist with a piece of rope.

When our eyes met the boy seemed to be looking for
something inside me. He peered closer, frowning and strain
ing as if he saw something familiar. Then he broke out into
a broad grin. He walked up to me, put out a helping hand,
and pulled me to my feet.

"There you are at last," he said as if we were playmates
just come to the end of a game of hide-and-seek. "I've
been looking high and low for you."

"Who you?" I replied, feeling like a fool after my fear
ful flight.

"Yes, sir," he said, "I've searched everywhere from Mis-
sissip to Alabam, from Timbuktu to Outer Mongolia."

"You crazy, boy?" I asked.

I was a little put off by his obvious lies.

He just stood there nodding and smiling until a sudden
seriousness came into his face.

"Did a big white man with a mustache come around
here looking for me?" the boy asked.

"Sho did."

"What did they say?"

"I don't think Mastuh liked that man too much," I said.
"He told him that he'd tell him ifn he come across a lost
slave, but I don't think he would really."

"Never say master," the copper-and-brass-colored boy
said. "Not unless you are looking inward or up beyond
the void."

Just hearing those words and seeing that bronze boy
made my heart race faster than when I was trying to escape
him. There was something about the way he talked to me,
as if we had always known each other and now we were
just taking up a conversation after a few days of being
apart. For a moment there I almost believed that he really had been searching for me. For a moment I felt as if I had
been found.

"Are you the nigger that Mr. Pike was looking for?" I
asked.

"No master," he said. "No nigger either. No cur or de
mon or weed. Only life and firmament. Only fire and dark."

All his words became a little too much for my ears. I
wanted him to make sense so I asked, "What's your name?"

The bright-eyed, slender boy looked puzzled a moment
and then he looked sad. "They called me Son on the
Barnes Plantation and Petey in the Lawrence cotton fields.
Mr. London McGraw called me Two-step on a Virginia to
bacco farm and on the Red Clay Plantation they named me

Lemuel. I've been called a thousand names over the years,"
he said. "But now, I think, my name is John, Tall John be
cause your head only comes up to my chest."

"Well, Lemuel or John or Petey or whatever it is you
wanna be called, we better get off'n this here path 'cause
I hear Tobias's dogs comin'. He probably sniffin' 'round
for you."

A most beautiful grin spread across the runaway slave's
face. He grabbed me by the wrist and, with strength I
wouldn't have believed his skinny arms could muster,
dragged me through the underbrush and into the woods.