John led me back to the path where we met that afternoon. 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 carpetbag. 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, repeating 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 responsible 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 kneeling 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 understand. 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 floating 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 coloring 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 sundown 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 number 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 taciturn 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.