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Tall John was still asleep but when I looked at him he
opened his eyes.

He smiled broadly and asked, "How are your hands?"

I looked down at my clenched fists. They were closed around something that was like melted candle wax, only
softer and much cooler. I had to pull hard to get my hands
open but then I could see that my wounds were healed.

The swelling was gone and there weren't even any scabs
or scars. A scar in the shape of the Number forty-seven
was still stitched in my skin, but it too had healed com
pletely.

I felt a shock all the way down into my chest. Maybe it had all been true: the sleeping plantation, the bloodhounds licking my hands, the faraway home of Tall John and his rainbow people.

"Get up from there, Forty-seven," Mud Albert growled.
"You too, Twelve. Them cotton balls ain't gonna fall off
into yo sacks."

John and I got up with the rest of the men and went out
into the fields. On the way Mud Albert called to us. We
slowed down. Mud Albert was old and walked with a limp.
"How's yo hands, Forty-seven?" Albert asked me.
Instead of answering I held both palms out to show him.
"What?" he said, stopping there in the middle of the
stony path.

He took my hands in his and rubbed his thumbs over
the palms that were red and bleeding the night before. "What happened to them cuts?"
"I dunno," I said.

I didn't want to lie to Albert. He was a good man and I
trusted him. But I feared that if anybody found out about
Tall John's yellow sack and healing waxes that he'd be
punished. Because no matter how much he claimed that
no one could own another person, the Master didn't agree. And it was law on the Corinthian Plantation that anything

coming into the hands of a slave was then the property of
the Master and had to be turned over to him.

Albert looked into my eyes suspiciously.

"Did Johnny here have somethin' to do with this?" he asked me.

"Wit' what?"

"All right," Albert said on a sigh. "I can see you ain't talkin'. But since you all healed I want you to go down to
the east field an' take Twelve wit' ya. I want you t'pick cot
ton wit' Johnny here the first few days or so. Make sure he know what's what."

"But that's where Eighty-four workin'," I protested.

I still remembered the painful pinch she gave me.

"Since when did a slave get to pick who he work wit'?" Albert asked.

"Since nevah," I said with my head hanging down.

"Den you bettah git ovah theah an' take this joker
wit' ya."

"Yes, suh," I said. "Come on, John."

My new friend and I ran quickly from the scowling Albert. I knew that he wasn't really all that mad at me, it was just that he had to show who was boss in front of the new
slave.

When I got out to the cotton fields I realized that it wasn't
only my hands that felt healed. My whole body felt renewed
that morning.

"Don't tell me I gots ta put up wit' you two lazy niggahs
this mornin','' were the first words from Eighty-four's an
gry mouth when we got to her row.

"Yes'm," I said politely, having no desire to receive an
other pinch.

I ducked my head and grabbed a burlap sack from the
ground. I wanted to start picking cotton quickly so that
Eighty-four didn't have a reason to be angry.

"Get you a sack too," I said to Tall John.

But instead of getting right to work my friend stood
there staring at Eighty-four.

"What you lookin' at, fool?" Eighty-four said.

She wore a faded and torn blue dress that had seen lots
of sweat and dirt, little water, and no soap at all. She had
probably worn that same garment since she was small and
so the hemline was way up past her knees.

"You, ma'am," the skinny jokester, Tall John, said.

"Me? You needs t'be eyeballin' dat cotton."

"I s'pose," John said easily. "It's true that cotton is tall
and strong like you. An' mebbe another bush would see his
neighbors as pretty. But when I look out chere all I see
is you."

For a moment Eighty-four was taken off guard.

"You spoonin' me, boy?" she asked at last.

"Tall John," he said, holding out a hand.

Eighty-four had unkempt bushy hair that was fes
tooned with tiny branches and burrs. She put her hand to a

tangle of hair that had formed above her left eye. I was worried that she was getting ready to sock my friend but instead she put out her own hand.

They shook and she even gave him a shy smile.

"They told us," John said, still holding onto her hand,
"that we was to come work wit' you.... What's yo name?"

For a moment there was a friendly light in the surly girl-
slave's eye, but then it turned hard.

"Da womens calls me Fatfoot an' da mens calls me
Porky 'cause dey say I'm like a poc'apine. Mastuh jes' call
me Eighty-fo' an' I guess dats the bes' I got."

"None'a them names fit a nice girl like you," John said.
"So if you don't mind I think I'll calls you Tweenie 'cause
when I first seen you between land and sky you seemed
to belong there jes like you was the reason they came to
gether."

Eighty-four's eyes widened a bit and she took a closer
look at my friend. I'm sure she was thinking the same
thing I was; that is
why would he be saying such nice
and charming words to a surly and taciturn field slave who was black as tar and ugly as a stump?

"Shet yo' mouf an' git ta pickin'," Eighty-four said,
throwing off the web of flattery John had been weaving.

When we came up she had dropped her big cotton sack,
which was already a quarter filled. Before she could pick
the bag up again. John grabbed it and threw it over his
shoulder.

"They send us to take the weight off'a you for a time,

Tweenie," he said. "Me'n Forty-seven here is s'posed
t'make it easier for you."

"Boy," Eighty-four said. "Skinny nigger like you couldn't
carry that bag more'n ten paces."

"I'll do ten an' den ten more," John replied. "You'll see."

Eighty-four sucked her tooth and grunted, but she let
John carry her bag. She and I fell along either side of him,
picking cotton balls and stuffing them in his sack.

Eighty-four kept looking over at John, expecting him to
falter under the weight of the cotton. We were harvesting
cotton balls at a pretty fast clip and the bag was filling up.
It wasn't long before it rose eight feet up off of John's back
and trailed behind him. But the weight didn't seem to
bother him. He was sweating but he had enough breath to
keep talking to Eighty-four.

"Tweenie, you evah wished you could jes th'ow off this
cotton an' run out into the woods an' jump in a cold lake
t'cool off?"

That must have been just what Eighty-four was think
ing because she shouted, "Sho' do! Oh Lawd yes. Cold watah on my skin an' down my th'oat. That an'a crust'a
bread an' my life be heaven."

I didn't interrupt their conversation. From experience I
knew that my presence made Eighty-four angry. So I kept
my mouth shut. But I had another reason to keep quiet. I
was concentrating on how I pulled those cotton balls so that my hands didn't get cut up and infected again.

9.

Neither Eighty-four nor I carried the cotton bag that day. John lugged the big bag up and down the rows of cotton bushes while we stuffed the sack full.

The whole time John sweet-talked Eighty-four.

"Bein' a slave ain't half bad," he said in the long shad
ows of the late afternoon, "if'n you could be lucky as me
standin' between a good friend and a beautiful girl."

"You should let me carry that sack now, Johnny," Eighty-
four said with a smile. "Yo' back must be achin' sumpin'
terrible."

And there it was again, just one word. Not even a word
but just adding the
e
sound at the end of his name and
I knew that Eighty-four was smitten with Tall John the
flatterer.

At the end of the day we had pulled more cotton than
any other three slaves on the whole plantation. We knew
that because Mud Albert kept count.

When we walked the stony path back to the slave quar
ters Eighty-four made sure that she was walking next to
my friend. She even held his hand for a while, making sure
that Mr. Stewart wasn't anywhere to see them.

John seemed to genuinely like Eighty-four. This per
plexed me because no one else I knew had ever said a kind
word about her. So when we came to the fork in the road
where the men and women split off from each other, I
went up to John and asked him about our work-mate.

"Why you so sweet to that sour girl?" I asked.

"Tweenie?" John said with a smile. "She's something else.
That girl could work a whole farm by herself. I don't think
that I've ever met a woman so strong or so full of love."

"But she jes' a field slave," I argued.

"That's what you say about yourself," John pointed out.

"But you on'y met her today."

"I only met you yesterday," he countered.

"But you said that you come here lookin' for me. You
lookin' for Eighty-four too?"

"No," John said. He stopped walking and so did I. "I
wasn't looking for Tweenie but when I saw her I felt all of
the pain she feels over her lost children. My heart went out
to her. Her loss and mine are very much alike."

"How did you know about the babies that Mastuh took from her?" I asked.

He pointed at me and said, "Neither master nor nig
ger be."

"Numbah Twelve!" Mud Albert shouted. "Forty-seven!
Get yo black butts movin'."

We hurried off before John could tell me how he knew about Eighty-four's babies. I had been with him every mo
ment so I knew that none of the other slaves had told him.
But I forgot about that mystery for a while because we
were running and Albert was angry and my stomach was
growling with hunger.

The men hustled into the slave cabins and Ernestine
brought us our porridge.

I wasn't particular about what I ate by that time. Whatever they put in front of me I sucked down while looking
around for more. Slaving is hungry work. I was hungry morning, noon, and night. I dreamed about corn cakes and strawberries. Sometimes I would suck on a bite-sized rock
just to pretend that I was eating.

That night after a full day of picking cotton I was so tired
that all I wanted to do was eat, then sleep. But in the middle
of our supper the men started asking John questions.

"Where you from?" Charlie Baylor asked.

"Where we're all from," John said as if that was the only
answer and why didn't Charlie know it.

"And where's that?" Billy Branches asked.

"Don't you know where you from?" John asked back.