47 (9 page)

"What's wrong with them?" I asked my newfound friend.

"There's a place in your brain," John said, touching my
forehead with a long thin finger, "that tells you when to
sleep. When there's a certain vibration in the air that place

kicks on and you have to stop what you're doing and get a deep rest. I caused that vibration to happen everywhere on the whole plantation with this." John held up the tin cigar.
"All I did," he said, "was push this button and everybody
within a quarter mile of here fell into a sleep like the

dead."

"Then why ain't we asleep?" I asked.
"Because we're special," John said, flashing a grin.
"I ain't special," I said. "I ain't got no tin cigar to put
peoples t'sleep or tricky words t'git peoples t'laugh. I'm
just a nigger wit' bloody hands."

John leaned close to me and said, "Not nigger but man.
And you are special, Forty-seven. In your mind and your
heart, in your blood. You carry within you the potential of
what farty old Plato called the philosopher-king."
"Who?"
John smiled.
"Come," he said.

He grabbed me by the wrist, pulled me out of the cot
and toward the door. I followed, afraid that Mud Albert
would jump up at any minute. But he didn't and we went
out into the yard in front of the cabin.

The night air was filled with the chirps and clicks of in
sects and the smell of night blooming jasmine. The nearly
full moon was wearing a cloud as a belt and stars winked all
around. I remembered when I slept in the barn that some
times I would wake up in the middle of the night and look up
on a sky like that.

"Can we go back to the cliffs where we saw the bear?" I asked.

"Not now," he said. "It's over ten miles from here and I
can't carry you when there's no sun."

Ten miles!!
thought that the new boy must be crazy. But
then again he did open our chains somehow and I had
never heard of the river we saw that day.

"Come on," he said. "We have to go off into the woods."
Tall John had regular Negro features except for his odd coloring. And when he spoke his voice was filled with au
thority so I felt that I had to go along with him. It wasn't
the way that I felt when white people ordered me around.
I was afraid of white people, but I wanted to do what John
asked of me. I wanted to follow him and find out what he
was showing me. Most of what he said I didn't understand,
but that didn't matter; I stored it all away thinking that one
day it would all make sense.

John led me back to the path where we met that after
noon. We went off about two hundred yards into the shrubs
and bushes until we came to a big elm. There was a recess
like a cave in the side of the tree and from there John pulled
out a shiny yellow sack that was about the size of a carpet
bag. He rummaged around in the bag until he came out
with three small tubes that were like glass except they were
soft. Then he returned the yellow bag to its hiding place.

A carpetbag was a small suitcase that traveling salesmen and government officials used
when traveling around the country. It was large enough for an extra suit of clothes and whatever other necessities one might need, such as writing paper, a razor, and maybe a little food.

"Come on," he said, and we headed back to the road
and then toward the slave quarters.

"What is that you stoled, Tall John?" I asked as we went
back up to our cabin.

"I haven't stolen a thing," he replied. "These are mine
and yours."

"A slave don't even own his clothes, boy," I said, repeat
ing words that I had heard my entire life. "He don't even
own his own body."

"No one owns their clothes, Forty-seven," Tall John
said, "nor their bodies. These things are just borrowed for a while. It is only the mind that you truly own."

"Says what?" I asked.

"And," the strange boy continued, "if no one owns even
their own clothes how can they possess another?"

"So you savin' that Master Tobias don't own his black
leather boots?" I asked.

"Every single particle in the whole wide universe is re
sponsible for its role in the unfolding of the Great Mind."
"What's that s'posed t'mean?" I asked.
"It means that if you stick your hand in a fire and burn
yourself that you are the one responsible for the pain,"
John said. "It means that if a man calls you slave and you
nod your head that you have made yourself a slave."
"Are you crazy, niggah?" I said.

He stopped and turned, pointed his elegant finger at me

under moonlight, and said, "Neither master nor nigger be."

A sudden scurrying came up behind him and I could

see Master Tobias's bloodhounds coming fast. They were
bounding at us under a sickly lunar glow.

My breath caught and John turned around. When he
saw the dogs bearing down on him he fell to his knees. I
figured that he lost all of his arrogance and was now kneel
ing before the Almighty in the moment of his death. I
would have knelt down too but my faith wasn't so strong. I
was trying to get my legs to run when the dogs leapt on
John. He put out his hands and I thought that they were
biting his fingers until I realized that they were licking him
all over like he was their long lost mama come home to suckle and love them.

He cooed to them in a language that I couldn't under
stand. One by one they fell on their backs and exposed
their bellies for him to scratch and thump.

"Come over here and meet my new friends, Forty-
seven," he said.

"Nuh-uh," I said. "No, suh."

"Come on," he insisted. "These dogs won't bite you."

One of the vicious hounds got up and came over to me.
When she licked my fingers I started to laugh. After a while
the dogs, John, and I were scampering around the yard,
playing as freely as little white kids under the moon-cast
shadow of the Master's mansion.

After a long while John bade good-bye to the dogs and
led me back to the slave cabin.

Once inside John slapped his hands together on one of

the three glass tubes he stole. This covered his hands with a thick clear paste that he rubbed into the brand that Pritchard
had burned into my shoulder. It felt cool against my skin
and the pain that still lingered from the burn went away.

John returned the lantern to its place and snuffed out the
flame. We got back on the cot and put the shackles around
our ankles. Then he gave me the two soft-glass tubes to
hold, one in each hand.

"Squeeze these as hard as you can in both hands," he
told me.

I did what he said and both little pipes burst in my
hands. A cold sensation went through my wounds and I
shivered there in the hot and smelly cabin.

"Keep your fists clenched like that," John said to me.
"Keep them tight and in the morning the infection will be
gone."

I held on tight and John put his hand on my shoulder.

"This wax will heal you," he said.

I was feeling good because for the first time since I had
come to the slave quarters I wasn't hurting. My hands and my shoulder felt good and I wanted to talk some more.

"What you thinkin' 'bout?" I asked him in the dark.

"My home," he said.

"Where that?" I asked, "Africa?"

I was beginning to think that maybe Mud Albert was right and that boy was actually an African deity come to
free the slaves.

"Is that a boat wit' a sun on it?" I asked.

"Not exactly," he whispered.

"What's it like where you're from?" I asked my new

friend.

"My home," he said, "is very different from anything in
Georgia or anywhere else on Earth. It has red skies and float
ing lakes and many of the animals can speak and use tools."
"Horses that can swing a hammah?" I asked.
"Like that," he said in the dark. "Yes."
"That's crazy talk."

"Here it is," John said, "but on my world everything is
different. People are much smaller and they have skin col
oring from green to blue to red." "Any white people there?" "Some," he said.

"When did you come here?" I asked him.
"A long, long, long time ago," he said, a little sadly.
"And you haven't been home in that long time?"
Even in the dark I could see that John turned to look

at me.

"My home is so very far away that there was only
enough power to bring my ship here with not nearly
enough to bring me back again."

"And so you cain't never go home?" I asked, feeling sorry

for him.

"Only inside my mind."

I didn't know what he meant but for some reason I
didn't have the heart to make him explain.

"In a way you could say that," he replied. "I mean / am
not from there but I'm from a place that is as far away for
me as Africa is for you."

"It's even a longer way than Africa is?"
"Yes."

"How far is that?"

"There are many, many miles between you and the
land of your blood," he said kindly. "So many that if there was a road from the door of this cabin to the place of your ancestors' birth you would have to walk from sunup to sun
down every day for a year before you got there."

"That long?" I said in wonder. "And is your home that
far too?"

"For each step that you'd take toward Africa I would have to travel a hundred years, and even then once you
reached your home I'd still have tens of thousands years
yet to go."

My math wasn't too good at that time. The highest num
ber I knew was ninety-seven. But I knew a big number
when I heard it. So when Tall John from beyond Africa said
tens of thousands
I knew that he would wear out the soles of
his feet before he would ever see his home again.
This made me wonder some.

"So if Africa is a year away," I said, "and your home is so
much more than that, then how did you get here in the first
place?"

Again John smiled. "I used something created by my
people called the Sun Ship."

After a while of us being quiet Tall John turned over and
went to sleep. For a long time I lay awake looking up into
the darkness. As hard as my life as a slave had been I still
felt sorry for Tall John from beyond Africa because I knew
in my heart that he had come all that way just to find me.

"But what could he want with a nobody like me?" I
asked the darkness.

When no answer came I closed my eyes and dreamed of
red skies and floating lakes.

8.

I woke up when Champ Noland unlocked my chains. The
slave cabin was a terrible shock to me. In my dreams I had
been in a faraway land, beyond Africa, where people of
every color, even white, lived in harmony and peace. I was
there with Mama Flore and Mud Albert and even the taci
turn Eighty-four. Even she was smiling and happy in the
world Tall John came from. I realized that it must have all
been a dream. John never put the plantation to sleep and we didn't play with Tobias's vicious bloodhounds. The
strange boy never told me about some crazy faraway home.
I was just dreaming.