'Bein' a slave ain't half bad,' he said in the long shadows 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
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 quarters 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 perplexed 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 nigger 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 moment 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.
'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.
