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.

Tall John was still asleep but when I looked at him he opened his eyes.

He smiled broadly and asked, "How are your hands?"

I looked down at my clenched fists. They were closed around something that was like melted candle wax, only softer and much cooler. I had to pull hard to get my hands open but then I could see that my wounds were healed.

The swelling was gone and there weren't even any scabs or scars. A scar in the shape of the Number forty-seven was still stitched in my skin, but it too had healed completely.

I felt a shock all the way down into my chest. Maybe it had all been true: the sleeping plantation, the bloodhounds licking my hands, the faraway home of Tall John and his rainbow people.

"Get up from there, Forty-seven," Mud Albert growled. "You too, Twelve. Them cotton balls ain't gonna fall off into yo sacks."

John and I got up with the rest of the men and went out into the fields. On the way Mud Albert called to us. We slowed down. Mud Albert was old and walked with a limp. "How's yo hands, Forty-seven?" Albert asked me. Instead of answering I held both palms out to show him. "What?" he said, stopping there in the middle of the stony path.

He took my hands in his and rubbed his thumbs over the palms that were red and bleeding the night before. "What happened to them cuts?" "I dunno," I said.

I didn't want to lie to Albert. He was a good man and I trusted him. But I feared that if anybody found out about Tall John's yellow sack and healing waxes that he'd be punished. Because no matter how much he claimed that no one could own another person, the Master didn't agree. And it was law on the Corinthian Plantation that anything

coming into the hands of a slave was then the property of the Master and had to be turned over to him.

Albert looked into my eyes suspiciously.

"Did Johnny here have somethin' to do with this?" he asked me.

"Wit' what?"

"All right," Albert said on a sigh. "I can see you ain't talkin'. But since you all healed I want you to go down to the east field an' take Twelve wit' ya. I want you t'pick cotton wit' Johnny here the first few days or so. Make sure he know what's what."

"But that's where Eighty-four workin'," I protested.

I still remembered the painful pinch she gave me.

"Since when did a slave get to pick who he work wit'?" Albert asked.

"Since nevah," I said with my head hanging down.

"Den you bettah git ovah theah an' take this joker wit' ya."

"Yes, suh," I said. "Come on, John."

My new friend and I ran quickly from the scowling Albert. I knew that he wasn't really all that mad at me, it was just that he had to show who was boss in front of the new slave.

When I got out to the cotton fields I realized that it wasn't only my hands that felt healed. My whole body felt renewed that morning.

"Don't tell me I gots ta put up wit' you two lazy niggahs this mornin','' were the first words from Eighty-four's angry mouth when we got to her row.

"Yes'm," I said politely, having no desire to receive another pinch.

I ducked my head and grabbed a burlap sack from the ground. I wanted to start picking cotton quickly so that Eighty-four didn't have a reason to be angry.

"Get you a sack too," I said to Tall John.

But instead of getting right to work my friend stood there staring at Eighty-four.

"What you lookin' at, fool?" Eighty-four said.

She wore a faded and torn blue dress that had seen lots of sweat and dirt, little water, and no soap at all. She had probably worn that same garment since she was small and so the hemline was way up past her knees.

"You, ma'am," the skinny jokester, Tall John, said.

"Me? You needs t'be eyeballin' dat cotton."

"I s'pose," John said easily. "It's true that cotton is tall and strong like you. An' mebbe another bush would see his neighbors as pretty. But when I look out chere all I see is you."