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"I rolled out from a burlap sack on a mud flat in the
rain," Number Eight, also known as Coyote Pete, said.
"My mam was the hangin' tree. My daddy din't know his
own name."

The men all laughed at Pete's made-up rhymes.

"His name was Africa," Tall John pronounced, "whether he knew it or not."

The men all stopped laughing then. I sat up from my bunkbed to see if maybe they were angry with my friend.

"What you know 'bout the jungle, niggah?" Frankei, Number Eleven, asked angrily.

"Not a thing Brotha Frankie," John replied. "I know about the great civilizations of Kush and Nubia. I know about the blood of kings."

"You come from Africa?" Mud Albert asked then.

"I been there."

"So you are High John the so-called conqueror?"

"No," John said, not me. But he is among you."

High John?" Champ said. "Here? Which one of us is it?"

The men all lokked around at each other.

"Why, Forty-seven of course," Tall John said.

The men all started laughing, guffawing actually. Mud Albert laughed so hard he had to get down on one knee and hold his sides.

"Him?" Black Tom said.

"That runt?" Billy Coco added.

"How can you spect us to believesumpin' like that, Johnny?" Mud Albert asked. He had finally gotten back to his feet. "Forty-seven her haven't hardly evah been off the plantation. Why, he don't even have a proper name."

"Is you High John?" a slave we called Three-toed Bill asked me.

"Go on!" I said angrily

I was hoping that Tall John would stop his foolish talk, but that wish was not to be granted.

"Sure he is," John said. "Maybe you don't know it. Maybe he don't know it. But that's the way of the Conqueror. He ain't a man's flesh and bone alone. He's a spirit from the homeland. He burrow doen here or there for a while, do his business, end then he move on."

"An' how come you know that if' n you ain't him?" Mud Albert asked. He was no longer laughing.

The rest of the men sobered up too.

"At some othah time High John's spirit mighta passed through me, yeah," John said. "That's why when I see Forty-seven here I can see in him the spirit of the Conqueror. He might not know it yet but this boy is destined for greatness. An' if you stick close enough to him you might jes' find yourself wearing the chains of freedom."

"Chains'a freedom!" Three-toed said. "What the heck do that s'posed to mean?"

"It means many things, my friend," John replied. "And if you follow Forty-seven and you listen when he calls - you might just learns."

Boy is jest a fool," Sixty-three said, meaning John.

The other men seemed to agree and so they turned away towards their bunks.

Our chains were put on and the lights were put out.
When the cabin was filled with snores I turned to John.

"What was all that nonsense you tellin' them about me?
I ain't no High John the Conqueror."

"How would you know that?" my friend asked in the
dark.

"I know who I am," I said.

"Not if you call yourself nigger," he said. "Not if you
call Tobias Master. You have no idea of who you are des
tined to be, Forty-seven."

"But you do?"

"Yes."

"An' what will I be?" I was afraid of the answer but still
I had to ask. The other men might have thought that John
was the teller of tall tales but I had experienced his magic. I knew to take that boy seriously.

But that was not to be a night of answers.

"Go to sleep, Forty-seven," he said. "You need your
rest."

Those words were like a blindfold being pulled over my
eyes. No sooner than he said them I was in a deep sleep. I
dreamed that I wore a cape made of redbird feathers and
a crown made from broken slave chains. I marched from plantation to plantation and from each one a hundred and more slaves took their places behind me. Behind them the
white men who had been our masters scratched their heads
and watched us go.

The next three days passed in pretty much the same way.
During the daylight hours Eighty-four, Tall John, and I
picked cotton as a team. Eighty-four was completely infat
uated with my friend. She was always touching his arm and
grinning at him. He continued to flatter her, calling her
pretty and beautiful even though I couldn't see (at that
rime) what he saw in her.

They were both always laughing and grinning, except on the afternoon of the second day. That was when John
asked Eighty-four about her babies.

"Tell me about your children, Tweenie," he said out of
the blue. We were working on our eighth bag of cotton.

"I cain't talk about it," Eighty-four said with a tear in
her voice. "It's a hurt in my heart."

"But maybe if you talk about it," John pressed, "then
maybe you could stop it from hurtin'."

"You think so?" she asked. "'Cause you know I be
thinkin' 'bout them all the time."

John stopped walking and even set down the half-filled
sack of cotton. He put his hands on Eighty-four's shoulders
and she went down on her knees like I've seen some women
do when Brother Bob touched someone, saying that they
were now one with the Holy Spirit.

John went down on his knees too and I looked around to make sure that no white man or Mud Albert was any
where to see. I wanted to keep pulling cotton so that we
didn't get in trouble but the hurt in Eighty-four's face
made me mute.

"Dey's LeRoy an' Abraham," Eighty-four said softly.
Tears were cascading down her berry black cheeks. "Dat's
what I named 'em even though I knew that evil-hearted
Mr. Stewart meant to take'em from me. Dey was so
pretty
...
an' each time I give birth when I seed LeRoy,
an' latah Abraham, I loved 'em so much that it hurt. An'
den, when dey took 'em away, it hurt so bad I was sho I'd die. Dey was so young, but Mama Flore said dat dey new
master's be good to 'em 'cause dey'd grow up into mens that'd be good workers."

Eighty-four began to howl then and John took her into
his arms. I was sad for Eighty-four's loss and I was scared
that somebody would hear her and punish us for malinger
ing. And I was also amazed because John was crying along with Eighty-four. It was then that I realized that he felt lost
in the same way that Abraham and LeRoy were lost.

The next morning Mud Albert had me take John out to the
west field to see if there were any ripe peaches on a tree that the slaves had found out around there. Mud Albert
called that tree his private orchard. John and I took a short
cut past the hanging tree.

On the way John was in a good mood. He was talking to
me about my future.

"One day," he said, "many years from now you will
think back on these days and say that it all must have been a bad dream. . . ."

He didn't finish because when we got close to that tree

he grabbed his head and fell to the ground just as if Champ
Noland had cuffed him. He screamed in pain.

"What is this place?" he pleaded. He writhed on the
ground and white foam appeared at the corners of his
mouth. "Why has there been so much suffering here?"

I got down on my knees and grabbed him by the shoul
ders.

"This is where they hangs killers an' robbers an' slaves
gone wrong," I said. "What's the mattuh?"

He pointed up at the branch where I had once seen
Tommy Brown hanging with his neck broken and his fat
tongue sticking through dead lips. They hung Tommy for
stealing a chicken from the Master's henhouse.

I had also seen Billy Lukas, slave Number Six, swinging
in a breeze from that branch. They hanged Billy because
Loretta McLaughry, a white woman, had said that he was
leering at her as she was riding down the road in her buggy.

John yelled again and then begged me to take him out
from there. I did what he asked.

"More than a hundred men have been murdered under
that tree," he said when we were far from there. "Mur
dered."

10.

John, Eighty-four, and I picked cotton for the next days. On my last day in the slave cabin all the men gathered
around John because they were used to him entertaining
them with some wild and unpredictable talk.

"If you so smart," Silent Sam, slave Number Forty-six, asked John, "why'd you give yourself up to be one'a Mas-
tuh Tobias's slaves?"

"I don't know about you," John replied, "but I ain't no
slave."

"You ain't?"

"No, suh
I ain't."

"Den what you doin' pickin' cotton like a slave?"

"I'm pickin' cotton 'cause I wanna pick cotton, of
course."

Upon hearing this every man in the cabin, including
me, broke out into laughter.

"So that mean if you didn't wanna pick cotton you
wouldn't have to," Sam speculated.

"Dat's right."

"An' how you gonna get away wit' that?"

"No gettin' away to it, brothah. If I didn't wanna pick cotton I jes' wouldn't do it."

"But then they gonna beat you."

"That's what freedom's all about," John said in a serious
voice. "Free is when you say yea or nay about what you
will and will not do. Nobody can give you freedom. All
freedom is, is you."

There was no more laughing that night. I could see in
the men's faces that they were wondering about John's
words. Many of them had thought the same words that he
spoke out loud.

I turned in with the rest and went to sleep, not realizing that that was to be my last night as a slave.

"Lemme take this next bag, John," Eighty-four said when
my friend reached down to get our next sack the next day.
We had filled four bags of cotton already.

"Thas okay, Tweenie," John said as he threw the sack
over his shoulder. "Me'n Forty-seven have to go in the af
ternoon so I might as well tote till then."

"Where you goin'?" she asked. There was the pain of
loss in her voice.

"Tobias wanna see me."

It was the first I'd heard of it.

"Mastuh?" Eighty-four asked.

"Tobias," John said again.

"What you got to do wit' him?"

"Maybe if he ain't lookin'," John said instead of an
swering her question, "I'll grab some sugar an' put it in my
pocket. An' the next time they send me out here I'll give
that sugar to you for bein' so sweet."

For a second there I thought that there was something
wrong with Eighty-four's face but then I realized that she
was grinning. One of her lower teeth was missing but
m
was still a nice smile. The power to bring happiness into
that sad slave's face was greater than healing my hands,
taming the master's dogs, and putting the plantation to
sleep all rolled together.

"You the one sweet," Eighty-four said to John.