47

"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?"

"No," I answered petulantly. "Here I am in the jail when I should be free all'acause you had to go talkin' to that white man like he was a babychile."

"But we saved his daughter," John said in the darkness, where I was sure we'd die.

"But you a niggah, man," I cried. "An' ain't no niggah gonna ever speak to a white man wit'out givin' him his proper due."

"Neither master nor nigger be," he said in the darkness.

I wanted to strangle those words out of his throat but I knew that he was just ignorant of our ways. It had been less than a day since we had shared the dream of his land with his tiny, rainbow-colored people. But a lot had happened since then. Part of me thought that his land of Elle on the ocean named Universe was just a dream. But I knew in my heart that it wasn't, that Tall John was really from beyond Africa and had to be forgiven for not knowing that he was inferior to the slave master's power.

"Listen, Forty-seven," John said. "That's the reason I need you. I've lived among your people for many years but I've never understood their brutality. I was always on the outside passing through."

"But you been a slave," I argued.

"I always had the power to shrug off my chains and escape. I never really paid all that much attention to the people I met along the way because I was looking for you. I suppose that I always looked down on everyone I met and therefore never realized how they felt. Not until now when all of my power has been drained off to save the girl Eloise."

"That's why you need me?" I asked. "To understand how slaves feel?"

"No. Wall is coming."

"That's Mr. Pike?"

"Yes. He is a great power among his people. Much greater than I. You know how to survive against forces much greater than you. You are the teacher and I am the dunce. Without you there can be no future for anyone."

And even there, in my greatest danger, I felt the urgency in John's words.