Walter Mosley - 47

"Ain't I dead?" were the first words out of my mouth.

In the back of my head I could hear the chatter of a thousand beings. I didn't understand what they were saying but I was sure that they were talking to me.

"In a way you are," John said. "Your body will no longer age, no longer will it experience the processes of a normal human being. From now on you will be the age you were when we met."

"What did you do to him?" Eighty-four asked. There was wonderment in her eyes but no fear. I realized that her love for him somehow expected his power. It was no surprise to me that her passion was even more powerful than his light.

"I gave him my cha, or the child of my cha. The infant that will grow to be a full soul within Forty-seven."

"I don't know what you mean," I said. I managed to

stand.

I felt different when I stood next to Eighty-four. After a moment I realized that the difference was that I was looking at her eye to eye. I had grown more than a foot. I had trouble standing because my legs were so much longer that I didn't know how to move them.

"The essence of everything I was given to fight Wall has been planted inside your heart and mind," John was saying. "One day you will know everything that I know. You can use that knowledge in your war against the Calash."

"When will that be?"

"So many years from now that everyone you know will

be long dead."

The idea that all of my friends would be dead saddened me.

"Even you?" I asked.

John looked away at the sky and Eighty-four put her arm on my shoulder and said, "You growed."

"His body has caught up to his years," John told her. "Flore kept him away from meat and milk so that he would stay small and Tobias wouldn't send him into the cotton fields. My cha has brought him to his full physical potential and beyond."

The chattering in the back of my mind was subsiding. The pain of my lashes was gone. I reached around but could find no sores or even scars on my back.

"So I'll never grow any older than I am right now?" I asked.

"That's right."

I was happy that I would never have to grow old and sad like the men and women I had known among the slaves. I didn't know what I'd be missing. I'm still not all that sure.

"Not nigger but man," my mouth said the words but I wondered where the elocution came from. Then I wondered about the word elocution. I knew that it meant the way words were said but I didn't know how I knew that. All I knew for sure was that the word nigger felt like my enemy; an enemy that would grind me into dust and let me blow away on the breeze if I didn't oppose it.

"Champ and Flore stood up for us," I said to John. "Mud Albert gave his life tryin' to help Mama Flore. If I didn't he'p'em then how could I do anything else worthwhile?"

The words came from me and the feelings did too. But I could feel the little creature of light in amongst them. It was as if the hero that I always wanted to be in my heart was set free by my friend and now I would never be a nigger again.

I went down a small path to a pond and looked at my reflection in the water. I was taller but not so tall as a full-grown man. My body had filled out some too but I was still of a slight build. And on my shoulder was stitched the Number 47. The scar of slavery would never be gone from me. And as long as I lived that memory would be alive.

We waited until nightfall before John and I made our way back to the Corinthian Plantation. We left Eighty-four behind because John was going to use a second sound machine he'd found in his yellow bag and that would put her to sleep along with the rest of the plantation. He didn't tell her that, though. He said that two could move around better than three. She didn't argue. I think that Eighty-four had made up her mind never to step foot on the master's

estate again.

It was nigh on midnight when we entered upon the main yard in front of Tobias's mansion. John walked onto the porch with impunity but I was more timid. Even though I had seen his machine put everyone to sleep before I was still nervous that if a sound could put someone to sleep then maybe another sound could wake them up. And if I made that sound then they would awake to see me sneaking around the white man's rooms.

Flore had been the center of my life and she stood up to protect me when my twelve lashes were announced. She was mother to me and I would have done anything to save

her life.

I went to the closet where she slept but there was another woman there. It was Clemmie, Mr. Turner's old nursemaid, sleeping in Big Mama's place.

"Is she dead?" I asked my friend. "Did she die while you

were savin' my life?"

John put his hands on top of his head and shut his eyes tight. It was like he was trying to remember where Flore had gone. He stayed like that for a minute or more. And while he was thinking I felt something like a pinch at the back of my neck. It was so sharp that I rubbed my hand back there but there was nothing I could feel. I understood somehow that I was feeling John's mature light searching around for Flore. I knew that some day I would be able to do the same

thing.

John opened his eyes and said, "She's in the barn." I was running as soon as the words were out of his mouth. I found Flore on a pitiful mattress of hay. Her face was drawn and ashen. The bruise of where she was bludgeoned loomed large above her brow.

She was asleep, as was everyone, but her breathing was

shallow and weak.

I went into the corner and beheld the most heartbreaking thing I had ever seen.

It was the body of Mud Albert. He'd been stripped naked and the blood had been washed from his wounds. He lay upon the burlap sack they would bury him in. His eyes were still open and his beard hairs seemed brittle and sparse. One hand was across his chest but the other was up to his shoulder curled into a claw-like hook.

I remembered all of the kind words and wise words Albert had spoken to me over the many seasons of my slavery. Looking down on him I realized that he died because of his love for Flore. It came to me then that no one should have to die for love.

"She must have a vascular cleansing to hasten her recuperative powers," John said as he threw a blanket over Mud Albert's small frame.

He often spoke in big words like that but this was the first time I understood what he was saying. It struck me as odd but I didn't have much time to think about it because I was mourning Mud Albert. "What can I do?" I asked.

"If we put her in a wagon and took her to where my sack is I might be able to relieve her symptoms some. She has had a serious trauma to the head so she might be a little slower."

"Steal a wagon from Master Tobias?" I was worried about my adopted mother but stealing from a white man was certain death in Georgia at that time.

"We can leave her," John suggested.

I was enraged by his offhanded manner. It was as if he didn't care if Flore lived or died.

"Don't be angry with me, Forty-seven," John said. "What you're worried about is true. It will be hard to keep out of sight if we have to carry Flore. And if we're all captured she will die anyway Sometimes we have to make hard choices."

It was a tough call. Here the woman who had raised me was near death and I had to brave death in order to ease her pain.

"Let's do it," I said, full of fears and trepidation.

"You go on and find Tobias's carriage," John said. "I'll stay here and get her ready."

I went through the barn door into the yard. The carriage was kept next to the vegetable garden so I went off looking for the mule Lacto that had crippled Pritchard.

The mule was nowhere to be seen but when I came to the rear of the mansion I saw Tobias's buggy still hitched to his great gray mare. The mare was just standing there with her back leg crooked so I knew she was asleep. Gently I roused her by rubbing between her eyes and then I led the sleepy horse and buggy back toward the barn.