Walter Mosley - 47

And what I needed to do was to consider his words and make sure that I and my friends could survive long enough to do battle with Wall and his ghoul, Mr. Stewart.

Every day we saw white men in the distance searching with hounds and muskets.

One evening Champ came running into our cave, dragging Bitter Lee, slave Number Seventeen from the Corinthian Plantation. Lee had been shot in the back but still he managed to throw off the hounds and escape. Champ had found him near the stream, barely conscious and burning with fever.

"Why'd they shoot you, Bitter Lee?" Mama Flore asked him.

"They blames the slaves fo' burnin' down Corinthian," he said. "They say it was niggers killed all them white men and women."

"But didn't nobody tell'em 'bout Mr. Stewart and his band'a thieves?" Champ asked.

"None'a the white peoples from Corinthian lived," Bitter Lee said. "They's all dead 'cept for Miss Eloise, who showed up outta nowhere. She said that you niggers gone west but she didn't remember the fire or the attack."

Somehow I knew that Tall John had helped Eloise to forget the events of that terrible night. Maybe if he knew that the slaves would have been blamed for the murders he would have done differently.

"How you know all this?" Nola asked, "if you been runnin'?"

"They caught me," Number Seventeen said. "Caught me and told me that they was gonna hang me for all them murders. They th'owed me in chains but in the night Miss Eloise come to me an' unlocked my chains. She said that she had a dream that Forty-seven here had saved her, and in the dream he told her that there was no nigger or master and she thought that that meant she should let me free."

We all looked at each other, wondering what spell John had put on Eloise to make her act like that. And while we were looking at each other Bitter Lee began coughing. It was a deep, wet, rolling cough that went on for well over a minute. And when he stopped coughing he was dead.

We buried Bitter Lee at midnight. When Mama Flore was saying a few holy words over his shallow grave we heard dogs braying and even saw lantern light not twenty-five feet from where we were praying.

Later on I picked up the little disk that we used to hide us from the search parties. Physical contact with the device gave me information about its use. Somehow, the light that John gave me allowed me to understand his technology in this way. I saw that the machine's power was running low,

and soon the white men would find us. So I reached into John's yellow sack and came out with a small glass plate that had blue and red threads running through it.

I studied that plate for three days without eating or sleeping.

Mama Flore and Champ and Nola and even sad Tweenie tried to get me to rest and sup but I told them that this was the only way for me to save their lives. I told them that but for all my fasting and staring in three days I hadn't learned a thing about the little glass dish.

But then, at the end of the third day, when I was feeling dizzy and weak, something strange happened.

It was as if the world stopped but I kept on going. I rose up out of my body and looked at the plate held by my body's hands. The blue and red threads wound together and waved toward one side of the rim. When I looked toward that rim I saw mountains and deep forests with trees older than countries and bears that stood twice as tall as tall men stand.

Canada. The word sounded in my mind. Freedom. This word rung true.

I snapped out of the trance and said out loud, "Follow the blue and red threads and they will lead us to freedom in Canada."

When the morning broke I told my friends that we were going to take a journey through the wild woods of America and go all the way to Canada, where they might let a colored man or woman be free.

"How do you know what way's the right way?" Champ Noland asked.

"Because," Tweenie said, "he an' John shared the light and now Forty-seven is the one to lead us."

There were tears in her eyes and a deep sadness in her voice. Everyone listening believed her, even me. And so that night we set out through the woods. We had over fifteen hundred miles to travel on bare feet. There were wild animals and evil white men we passed along the way. We had many adventures and each of us nearly died more than once. But we made it to Canada and freedom. Mama Flore was able to settle down on a farm that Champ started. He married Tweenie and they adopted Nola and me. And for some time we all lived together safe from chains and whips.

Maybe some other time I will tell the story of our escape or of the times years later when I came up against Mr. Stewart and other ghouls of the evil Calash Wall.

But for the time being this story is over. Some of us lived, others did not. But at least for some of us there was happiness and freedom at the end of the trail.