47

dark. John and I leaned against the bark, shoulder to shoulder. The dark and the sound of the rain, and maybe the fear of Tobias, made me very tired. I nodded and almost fell asleep.

"Do you want to see where I'm from?" I thought I heard him say.

"Might as well," I said, "seein' as it'll prob'ly be the last story I hear 'fore Mastuh tie me to that wagon wheel an' have 'em whip me till I'm dead."

I turned on my side and I'm pretty sure that I fell asleep.

I opened my eyes on a beautiful day in some far-off and wonderful place. Not only was I awake but I was running down an open road.

Somewhere in my mind I worried that I might be seen by some white man who would beat me like the slave laws demanded. I worried, but the road was broad and straight so I figured that if I saw somebody coming that I could run away before they could catch me and bring me back to the plantation.

But when I looked around I realized that I didn't need to worry. The plants on the side of the road were red and purple, without leaves, not at all like proper trees. And the sky was pink and red and the road was paved with something like glass, and there was no sun in the sky but it was still bright and clear.

"This is where I am from," a voice said.

I stopped running and turned to see my friend was standing there next to me.

It was John and then again it wasn't. He had the same

voice and his eyes were deep and kind as they had been on the Corinthian Plantation. But in this new place he was a head taller, quite a bit thinner, and his skin was more orange than brown. And above his head I could see a shimmering light that moved when he did.

You can imagine that I was amazed by the events unfolding around me. The last thing I remembered was being under a tree in a rainstorm. Now all of a sudden I was in a strange new land and my friend had grown a foot and changed colors on me.

"What the hell you doin' to me, niggah?" I said.

He pointed at me and said, "Neither master nor nigger be."

In this new place his words took on a new meaning. They brought about a vision: I saw Tobias and the cowering Pritchard in my mind. The slave master was holding a whip and the abject slave was writhing on the ground, begging our master for mercy.

I didn't want to be either one of them. I reached out in my imagination and pushed their images away. Then I turned my attention back to Taller John and his lecturing finger.

"That's right, Forty-seven," John said as if he knew what had been going on in my head, as if he saw the tableau of master and slave in my mind.

"Go beyond it," John continued. "Just because they treat you like that doesn't mean that you have to believe in them."

As the images faded from my mind I was once again aware of the strange land around me.

"You live here?" I asked.

"No," Tall John, the orange being from beyond Africa, said.

"But you were born here?"

"Yes," he said. "My ancestors were born here many millions of years ago. It is a planet called Elle and it is so far from Earth that it is as if it doesn't really exist."

"Far beyond the dirt?" I asked. The only time I had heard anyone use the word earth they were talking about the soil beneath our feet.

"Earth," he said again. "It is the planet you come from. Like the moon only larger and crowded with life."

"An' this place "

"My planet Elle," he interjected.

"Yeah. This place Elle is a earth too but so far away that you cain't get there?"

Tall John nodded and smiled. He was even taller now and his orange skin was tinged with purple. The light above his head brightened and I was beginning to think that he wasn't a boy at all.

"An' why couldn't we bring our real bodies here?" I asked.

"Because if I spent the rest of my life trying to get here I would hardly be any closer than I am now under that tree in my sleep."

"You as far from yo home as I am from my freedom," I said, surprising myself with the thought.

John smiled and nodded. He put his hand on my shoulder and we walked on in the strange landscape.

As we walked he spoke to me in his commanding tone.

"But I could bring us here because all I have to do is remember and the great mind delivers me."

"Like if I remembered the river you brought me to?" I asked. "I could go there just by rememberin' it?"

"Yes," John said. "Behind all of existence there is one great mind. And every single living, thinking being is a part of that mind. Once you learn to connect with it you can always return to a place or a thought that you once had."

"Like make-believe?" I asked.

"No. We are really here at this moment but as wraiths."

"Ghosts?"

"Someone ignorant of the Great Mind might see us as ghosts but no one on Elle would make that mistake."

As we walked the red and purple forest gave way to a wide plain made up of what looked like piles of stones. The stacks of rock were gray and red-brown and none were piled higher than a man. The piles were all shivering. They looked like rock-studded cocoons ready to release their butterflies.