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We moved quickly through the trees. My legs were
pumping as fast as they could go but it didn't feel as if I
were touching the ground with my feet. The slave who
called himself Tall John was laughing happily but also as if
he was relieved and restored.

We ran a zigzag path through the woods.

"Over this way!" he'd shout, and we'd change direc
tion. "Faster!"

I can't say why I went so easily with the strange boy. Even though he was much taller than I we were probably
near the same age. And, like I said before, it seemed as if I
already knew him, that we had known each other in an
other place and time. I knew it was crazy but I had complete trust in the runaway who called himself Tall John.

We moved through the trees so fast that I couldn't mark
which way we were going. It felt as if we were flying low
like playing sparrows, but I knew that was just my imagi
nation. I was running hard but it didn't make my breath come fast. My legs didn't get tired.

After quite some time of going like that we came to a
cliff that looked out over a wide river. Giant herons and ea
gles flew up above. Down below I could see a she-bear and
her two cubs sloshing through the shallow water, pawing the mud for some ort to sustain them in the summer heat.
The sun was almost fully set and the sky was red with long black clouds hanging down. A lonely bird cried in the dis
tance and tears sprang to my young eyes. I had never seen
anything so beautiful, I had never felt so happy or at peace.
I didn't know it at the time but that was my first experi
ence of the feeling of freedom.

"Where is this?" I asked.

"White men named this place Winslet Canyon but the
Indians have another name," Tall John said. "That she-
bear down there thinks of it as the smell of fish and water with a hint of pine and cougar."

"How far is we from the plantation?" I wanted to know.

"Not far enough," the toffee-colored boy said, and then
he added, "yet."

I squatted down at the edge of the ravine and devoured
the vision with my eyes. It was so beautiful and serene. I wished that Ned could have been there or at least that he could have been buried there in the peaceful paradise that I never knew existed.

"They're looking for you, Number Forty-seven," the '
boy that called himself Tall John said.

"I don't hear nuthin'," I replied, not wanting to leave
and not caring how he knew my name.

He grabbed me by the wrist again and said, "But they
are calling. They sure are."

And then we were running again. Again I was floating above the ground, it seemed. Again I was moving ahead of
the breeze. Before I knew it I was on the path and there
before me stood Master Tobias, holding the leashes of his six slave-hating bloodhounds.

6.

The lead dog leaped at me and snapped her vicious jaws
not a hand's span away from my face. I could smell her ca
nine breath and hear the loud clacking of her teeth biting
down.

Master Tobias yanked on his dogs' chains but they kept
straining to get at me and Tall John.

"What's this?" the irate slave master said in a voice so
frightening that I almost fell down from the weight of his
words.

"He done arrested me, mastuh," the runaway slave Tall
John said. He no longer sounded like the mischievous
child I had met. "Arrested'ed me even though I wanted to run. He dragged me out the bushes and said that you was
the mastuh and I bettah heed."

John let his head hang down and his jaw go slack. He
stooped over and brought his hands together as if he were
pleading. I had to blink at him because he no longer seemed
to be the boy I had met less than an hour past.

Tobias, who was never at a loss for words in all the sea
sons I had known him, went silent and furrowed his brows.
He looked from the runaway to me, and back again.

"Is that so, Forty-seven?"

"Yessuh," I said. I would have said so no matter what he
had asked. I was so frightened of the slavering, snapping
jaws of those hounds that all I could do was nod and say yes
and hope that those big teeth didn't tear out my windpipe.

"Who are you?" Master asked the bronze cast boy

"They call me Tall John, your honor, suh. I was found in
a cave near the Paradise Rice Plantation in South Carolina.
They speculate that my mama must'a had me but then threw me down there so that the mastuh didn't kill both
me an' her."

"You not Andrew Pike's runaway nigger from the Red
Clay Plantation?"

"No, suh. Uh-uh. Naw. The Paradise Plantation burnt
down and I was on a raft with Mastuh hisself tryin' to get
downstream. But he got a terrible grippe and died and I been wanderin' in the wilderness evah since."

If I hadn't heard the boy describe Pike I would have be
lieved his whopper. But as it was I kept quiet because I
knew that what was going on was far beyond my control or
understanding.

"So your master is dead and his plantation is burned
down?" Tobias asked.

"Yes, suh."

"And how did the plantation burn down?"

"I think it was abolitionists," John said, bugging out his
eyes. "Abolitionists and maybe injuns too. They burned
down the master's house with all'a his family and then took
the slaves and run. But I stayed with my mastuh because
you know I loved him because he treated us slaves so good."

I had never seen a slave grease a white man like that.
The lie was so bold that I was sure that Tobias was about to release the hounds to tear us both to shreds.

"What was your master's name, boy?"

"Joe," John said. "Mastuh Joe."

This brought a smile to the Tobias's lips.

"Joe?" he said. "Joseph. Did he have a last name?"

"I jes called him Mastuh Joe, Mastuh. I stayed with him
until he died and then I wandered off in the woods lookin' for a farm to work on and a mastuh to keep me. But I been lost all this time until I come upon Mr. Forty-seven here. I
was so scared that I wanted to run but he tole me that you was a good mastuh and that I needn't be ascared."

"You know it's my duty to try and find your master and
return you to him, don't you, son?" Tobias said.

The only word I had to hear was the last one
son.
When Master Tobias uttered that word to a colored person
it was a sign of affection. That meant that the slave he addressed was now his property.

"Mastuh," John said with deep-felt awe in his voice, "if you could bring me back to my mastuh an' his big house I
would kiss your feet an' pledge my life to you."

Tobias swelled up when he heard these words. Every
plantation master wanted to be loved by his slaves. He
wanted them to look on him like their daddy. John had
greased Tobias so well that he assured himself a place on
the Corinthian Plantation for the rest of his natural born
days.

Whatever effect John had on Tobias it was the opposite
for those bloodhounds. They doubled their efforts to get
off from the master's leash and then they started braying as
if they had caught the scent of a wounded deer. Tobias
yanked hard on their collars and yelled at them and made them heel. But still you could see their evil eyes looking
hard at the both of us poor souls.

"Forty-seven," the master said when his dogs went
mostly quiet.

"Yessuh."

"For the time bein' we gonna give this boy here Nigger
Ned's numbah and he's gonna sleep in the men's cabin."

"Yessuh."

"You tell Mud Albert that I will call to see this slave up
at the big house latah on and that I don't want him molested by any of the rough element out there undah his
charge. And I don't want him branded
at least not yet."

"Yessuh," I said for a third time.

But for that solitary response I was speechless. I had
never heard orders from the Master like that; for him to be
concerned about the welfare of a mere slave or for that
slave to be presented to him like a guest at his house. It was
beyond my experience. Black men and women were slaves
and niggers on the level of dogs to somebody like Tobias.
He might come out to the kennel to scratch behind their
ears or maybe throw them a bone. But to have a slave pre
sent himself at the big house to meet with the Master
that was like a Negro being able to walk down the main
road at midday without some white man grabbing him and
beating him and dragging him back home in chains.

Tobias pulled on his dogs' collars and dragged them
back down the path toward his house. At every step one of
the four hounds would turn and growl at us. You could tell
that they could feel our flesh rend under their sharp teeth.

"I thought you said nevah t'say mastuh?" I said when
Tobias was gone far enough away.

John smiled easily and I could tell that he was again the
same confident young man I had met earlier that day.

"When I talk to somebody like I talked with Tobias,"
he said, "it's like a joke. To me Tobias Turner is nothing
more than one of those dogs are to him
just a mad beast
at the wrong end of the chain. But when you say
master
and
when you say
nigger
you are making yourself his dog and
his slave."

"I am his slave," I said.

"Not anymore," Tall John said.

It's funny what one word can tell you. When Tobias
called John
son
I knew that he intended to steal him from
Pike and keep him as one of his. And when John said the
word
any
I knew that he wasn't one of us, the slaves, but

something different, something that neither I nor anyone
I had ever known had met. I knew right then that the run
away Lemuel, now calling himself Tall John, was some
thing like an angel, or a devil. But whichever one he was I
knew that I wanted to be his friend.

7.

"He says which?" Mud Albert asked me.

For the third time I explained what Master Tobias had
told me concerning Tall John.

"For this niggah here?" Albert said.

"That's what he said," I answered for the third time also.

"What they call you?" Albert asked the strange colored
slave.

"Tall John."

"Tall John? Why ain't they called you Skinny John or
Copper John or just John?"

"Tall," John said as if he were considering the word for
the first time in his life. "Tall
...
is a funny word, you right
about dat. I mean you could have a tall flea as long as he
taller den alia the other fleas. To you an' me dat flea ain't no mo' den a tiny midget but to alia da othah fleas he be like some kinda king."

Once again Tall John was talking like a whole different person. I came to understand that
he spoke one way to white people, another way to slaves, and still another way to me when
we were alone. In this way John hid his true nature from everyone but me.