even apologize. Took my niggers and left it for me to put his horse down.
"Ned, you can go up to heaven knowin' that you were a better man than that."
Tobias slapped his hands together as if he had dug the grave himself, or maybe it was that he felt dirty having to speak at a slave's burial. Anyway he walked away from the grave and up to his mansion. He left Mr. Stewart and nine or ten men armed with rifles to guard us while we sang over the death of our fellow man and friend.
Seeing those armed men was the first time I ever entertained the notion that white people were afraid of us. As I said, there were plenty of black folk at that burial. We could have overrun those few white riflemen and killed the Master and his plantation boss. We could have taken the Corinthian Plantation for our own.
For a moment I imagined screaming black men and women overrunning the riflemen, beating them with their own weapons and burning down the mansion. I saw the overboss and his men on their knees, begging for their lives like Pritchard had done when Tobias considered killing him. I saw us all sitting in the Master's dining room, eating ham, and putting our bare feet right up on his table.
I knew it was a sin to have these thoughts and it scared me to the bone. I started shivering, fearful that someone could see the blasphemy in my eyes. And if they did, and they told Master, I'd be in Mr. Stewart's killin' shack quicker than they could call my number.
"Are you all right, babychile?" Mama Flore asked.
She had come up beside me while I was having my evil thoughts and while all the other slaves were singing.
"Fine," I said, letting my head hang down and holding my wounded hands behind my back.
"Mud Albert told me that that dog Pritchard knocked you down and branded you," she said.
"It's okay. Albert put some lard on it and it hardly even hurt except if I move." I shifted around, making sure to keep my hands behind me.
"What's wrong with yo hands, sugah?"
"I got to go back to the cabin," I said. "Mud Albert said that he wanted me to clean out from under his bed."
Most of the slaves were singing "Blessed Soul." Flore reached out for me but I moved away and she only grazed my cheek with her finger. She called after me but I just ran, crying bitterly at my sad fate and for the soul of the slave they called Nigger Ned.
5.
Nobody tried to stop me when I ran away from the funeral. That's because I was so small that I was still seen as a plantation child and not of an age to try and escape. And neither did I consider flight because where would I run? There was nothing but plantations for hundreds of miles and if ever a white man saw me he was bound by law to catch me and beat me and return me to my owner.
My hands were hurting and so was my heart as I walked through the piney path that led from the colored graveyard to the slave quarters. The sun was setting and birds were singing all around. Big fat lazy bugs were floating in the air on waxen wings, and a slight breeze cooled my brow. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered that times like that were magic and if you looked hard enough you might just see some fairy or saint in amongst the trees. And laying eyes on such a magical creature would change everything in your life.
But that was the first day of my transition from childhood to maturity. Between the death of Ned and the callous manner of Master Tobias I was beginning to see that there might not be magic in the world after all. The man we called Nigger Ned was in his grave with no one to give him the proper words to see him on to heaven. Big Mama Flore had abandoned me and my hands were red and swollen. I was a slave and I was always going to be a slave until the day that I died. Better that I died soon, I thought, before I had to endure too much more sorrow.
It was then that I noticed a sound that no bird or insect could have made. It was a thrashing in the woods. It could have been a badger or an armadillo, but it might also have been a boar or bear or wildcat. I was small enough that a fearsome creature like that could see me as prey and so, even though I had just been contemplating my death, I became afraid for my life.
The fast-moving sound of crashing was over to my right. I decided not to go off the path because I wouldn't be able to move as fast as a wild animal through the underbrush. I lit out at a run down the path and as soon as I did I heard the creature moving quicker still, and in my direction. I ran even harder and shouted once. Off to the side I could see the bushes being disturbed by the animal chasing me. I ran harder but the beast was catching up to me. Then he was still in the woods but ahead of me. I decided to run back the way I had come but when I tried to stop I was moving too fast and tripped over my own feet.
The creature stopped running and I had the feeling that it had emerged from the bushes, into the path. I looked up
expecting to see the jagged teeth of a wolf or some other fearsome beast, but instead there was a tall colored boy standing there. He was the most beautiful being I had ever seen. I say that he was colored but not like any Negro I'd known. His skin was the color of highly polished brass but a little darker, a little like copper too but not quite. His eyes were almond-shaped and large with red-brown pupils. He was bare-chested and slender, but there was elegance in his lean stance. All he wore was a pair of loose blue trousers cinched at the waist with a piece of rope.
When our eyes met the boy seemed to be looking for something inside me. He peered closer, frowning and straining as if he saw something familiar. Then he broke out into a broad grin. He walked up to me, put out a helping hand, and pulled me to my feet.
"There you are at last," he said as if we were playmates just come to the end of a game of hide-and-seek. "I've been looking high and low for you."
"Who you?" I replied, feeling like a fool after my fearful flight.
"Yes, sir," he said, "I've searched everywhere from Mis-sissip to Alabam, from Timbuktu to Outer Mongolia."
"You crazy, boy?" I asked.
I was a little put off by his obvious lies.
He just stood there nodding and smiling until a sudden seriousness came into his face.
"Did a big white man with a mustache come around here looking for me?" the boy asked.
"Sho did."
"What did they say?"
"I don't think Mastuh liked that man too much," I said. "He told him that he'd tell him ifn he come across a lost slave, but I don't think he would really."
"Never say master," the copper-and-brass-colored boy said. "Not unless you are looking inward or up beyond the void."
Just hearing those words and seeing that bronze boy made my heart race faster than when I was trying to escape him. There was something about the way he talked to me, as if we had always known each other and now we were just taking up a conversation after a few days of being apart. For a moment there I almost believed that he really had been searching for me. For a moment I felt as if I had been found.
"Are you the nigger that Mr. Pike was looking for?" I asked.
"No master," he said. "No nigger either. No cur or demon or weed. Only life and firmament. Only fire and dark."
All his words became a little too much for my ears. I wanted him to make sense so I asked, "What's your name?"
The bright-eyed, slender boy looked puzzled a moment and then he looked sad. "They called me Son on the Barnes Plantation and Petey in the Lawrence cotton fields. Mr. London McGraw called me Two-step on a Virginia tobacco farm and on the Red Clay Plantation they named me
Lemuel. I've been called a thousand names over the years," he said. "But now, I think, my name is John, Tall John because your head only comes up to my chest."