I didn't know what to do. John was my friend. I wanted to protect him, but I couldn't stand up to that white man. He could have killed me with just one blow.
Tobias advanced on the prostrate boy. There was death in every gesture of the white man's body.
"Master!" Flore shouted. "Her eyes."
Tobias turned to see his girl looking at him. She held his gaze for a moment and then looked away as if something else had captured her attention. I looked in the direction of her gaze but all I saw was a bare wall.
Tears sprang to my eyes. Eloise was alive and so John and I would be spared. We saved the Master's daughter. He might even grant our freedom. Defeat and death turned around in a flash, like lightning.
"Thank you, Lord," Flore cried.
"She's cured," Tobias said.
"Not yet," John announced. "You threw me off before I could finish the treatment."
"What else do you have to do?" Tobias asked warily.
"I can only show you," said the slave in the voice of a free man.
I could see the two feelings in the slave master's face. He had never had a Negro speak to him thus. For such a slight he was duty-bound to punish the offender. But on the other hand he loved his daughter more than anything-I could see all that in Tobias's visage as plainly as I could see the fingers on my own hand.
Finally Tobias said, "Go on then."
"Come, Forty-seven," he said to me. "This is the hardest part."
Together we went back to the girl's side.
John leaned close to me and whispered, "You have to show her the way back."
Before I could ask him what he meant he took a step back and held out one hand to me while placing the other on the girl's brow.
The moment I took John's hand I was no longer in Eloise's room. Instead I found myself in a field of yellow flowers. I was naked standing next to the girl. She was naked too.
It was broad daylight above us but at the horizon (which seemed to be very far away) night had already fallen. Just at the place where the land touches the sky there hung a beautiful crescent moon. Eloise was staring at that moon. I realized that she had been gazing in that direction even in her bed. Her face was turned fully toward the eerie lunar glow.
She took a step toward the horizon.
I took a closer look at the moon, and in the dark harbor of its arc I saw the grinning skull of Death. I knew then that Eloise had been so close to dying that she had almost completed her journey when Tall John gave her the medicine.
I realized that it was my job to keep her from going toward the darkness under that moon.
But there was a serious problem. I was a black slave while she was the white-skinned daughter of the Master. I wasn't supposed to touch her even with clothes on. I wasn't even supposed to speak in her presence. I was afraid that if she became aware of me she'd scream and her father would slaughter me for molesting his child.
She took another step.
"What should I do, John?" I called out, half hoping that Eloise would hear.
But John didn't answer and Eloise moved another step toward the darkness.
The horizon seemed much closer now. Eloise was no more than a dozen paces from her death.
"Miss Eloise," I said softly.
She made no sign that she heard.
She took another step.
"Miss Eloise," I said boldly.
But still she didn't hear.
"Miss Eloise!"
She took two steps, moving faster now.
She was beginning to run toward the night.
I knew then that there was nothing else I could do. I ran after her and grabbed her by her pale shoulders. She struggled against me but I used all of the strength in my young limbs to drag her back toward the sunlit field of yellow flowers.
"Let me aloose," she cried.
But I didn't stop until we were in the light again, until there was no darkness or crescent moon anywhere to be seen.
Still she gazed toward the place where the skull-face of
Death had loomed, but I stood in front of her, blocking her line of vision.
She noticed me and then looked down at the flowers around her feet.
When her gaze came back to me she asked, "You're one of pap's niggers ain't you, boy?" she asked me. "The one that was spyin' on me from the barn."
She didn't seem concerned about our lack of clothes. Actually she didn't even seem to notice.
"Neither master nor nigger be," I said fearfully. I had to say it but I felt that even though the sky was clear I'd be struck down by a bolt from the white man's God.
"Where are we?" Eloise asked.
"You sick, miss," I said. "Me'n my friend Number Twelve is tryin' to make you bettah. You was walkin' in a deathly direction but I grabbed you an' dragged you back."
"Are you usin' slave magic?" she asked.
"I reckon we is," I said. "It sho seem like it."
"I hear Nola cryin'," Eloise said, cocking her ear.
I could hear it too. The soft sobs were coming from nowhere it seemed.
"Back in yo bedroom ma'am," I said. "She's back there worried that you about to expire."
"But I won't die?"
"I don't think so. Not today anyway."
"So you saved my life," she said, staring into my eyes.
"I s'pose so. You were strayin' toward Death an' we brung you back home."
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Forty-seven."
"Thank you, Forty-seven. Thank you for savin' my life."
I appreciated her gratitude but there was something else that was even more important to me. I really had saved her life. I had used my mind and my courage to brave Death and Master Tobias to do what I thought was right. These actions made me a man, and a real man, I knew, could never be a slave.
From that moment on I never thought of myself as a slave again.
Suddenly I was back in Eloise's bedroom. She was awake and staring into my eyes. She smiled and I knew that she was going to live.
"Is she gonna live, Number Twelve?" Tobias asked in a loud voice.
"Yes, sir, I believe she is."
"All right then. Mr. Stewart?"
"Yes, boss?"
"Take these two filthy niggers and throw them in the Tomb."
I felt rough hands grab me by the shoulders. Two white men ran in and knocked John to the floor.
John had a look of terror and shock on his face.
"What are you doing, Tobias Turner?" he asked with a crack in his voice.
"What I should'a done the minute you stood up an
called me by my name," Tobias said. "This is no house of abolitionists. You will pay for your crimes."
"But I saved your daughter," John said. I could hear the pain and confusion in his words.
"God saved my child," Tobias said. "And now I shall do his will by punishing you."
One of the white men hit John in the face and he fell unconscious.
"Check his pockets to see what else he stole from me," Tobias told them.
The only thing they found was the cigar-shaped sleep inducing device. Tobias took that and put it in his pocket. Then the white men dragged John from the room.
I was deeply shocked by this brutality. After all, I had just come from a bright field of beauty and saving the Master's child. But those men didn't care how I felt. The men who held me battered me around the shoulders and head and dragged me from the room.
Flore yelled out, "babychile!" and I called out for her, but to no avail.
The Tomb was a tiny shack that had once been an outhouse. It sat in the middle of the yard and Mr. Stewart used it to punish slaves without permanently damaging them. It was no bigger than a deep coffin on the inside with just enough room for a male slave or two smaller boy slaves, as we found out.
Mr. Stewart chained us hand and foot and tied us together. Then he locked the door behind us. It was dark in there and filled with biting maggots and ticks. As the sun bore down on the yard the heat rose in there until it was hotter than I had ever known.
"Are you all right, Forty-seven?"