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Most slaves prayed that the Master would have some
accident so that they could run in and save him.

"Or at least he could die," many a man-slave would say,
"so then I wouldn't have no master to do me so."

Eighty-four thumped me on the ear while I was having
these thoughts.

"Dey callin'," she said angrily.
And then I heard it.
"Forty-seven!" It was Mud Albert. I cut out at a run.

It was full morning by then. The sun was up and five
kinds of birds were chattering in the trees. I took the high
road because it had fewer sharp rocks. I was in pain from the
brand on my shoulder, cut feet, and lacerated hands. It hurt
where Eighty-four had pinched me and I was bone tired
from the hard work of picking cotton. But even with all
that I was still happy to be running in the late morning sun. When I came upon Mud Albert he was sitting on a barrel
in a clearing surrounded by dozens of empty burlap bags.
All around the clearing were cotton plants and slaves with
cotton-filled bags on their backs that were three and four

times the size of a man. The sun was blazing but there was
a breeze and I wasn't pulling cotton so it all seemed beautiful to me. I ran up to Albert all breathless and hopeful.

"How's that shoulder?" Mud Albert asked me.

"Hurts some," I said, "but that lard you put on it makes

it bettah."

"Good. Now tell me, how'd you like cotton pickin'?" The question stymied me for a moment. The first thing
any Negro slave in the south ever learned was not to com
plain about his lot to the boss.
How you doin'f
the boss asks
you.
Good, mastuh,
you're supposed to shout.

But I hated picking cotton. My hands were bleeding,
my back hurt, and there was something in the cotton plant
that made my eyes all red and itching. If I told the cabin boss that I liked pulling cotton he might believe me and give me that job until the end of time.

What I didn't know, or what I didn't want to know, was
that almost all slaves picked cotton or some other onerous
job for their entire lives. There was no escape from that, no
chance at some better life. Hoping that Albert would give me something better to do was a child's dream.

As I've said, I was fourteen at that time but I was still a
child in many ways. Living in the barn under Mama Flore's
protection I hadn't lived much among the men and there
fore had never faced many of the hard lessons of life. Because I was so spoiled I still had the dreams of a child.

Children resist slavery better than grown men and
women because children believe in dreams. I dreamed of
lazy days in the barn and stolen spoonfuls of honey from
the table where Mama Flore prepared meals in the big
house. I dreamed of riding in Master's horse-drawn car
riage and of going to the town where they had stores filled
with candies and soft shirts with bone buttons. I dreamed
of roasted chickens stuffed with sweet parsnips and onions.
And, being a child, I thought that my dreams just might
one day come true.

The mature slave knows that dreams never come true.
They know that they'll eat sour grain and sawdust every
day except Christmas and that they'll always work from
before sunrise until after dusk every day for all the days of
their lives.

If I were a full-grown slave I would have known that
picking cotton was the only job for me on the Corinthian
plantation. But being a child I was hoping for a loophole,
like a job picking peaches that I could take a bite out of
now and then.

Mud Albert smiled because I couldn't answer his ques
tion.

"So you don't love Miss Eighty-four and all those long
rows'a cotton balls?"

"It's pretty hard, Mud Albert. My hands," I said holding out my bloody ringers and palms.

The sight of my cuts took the grin from Albert's lips.

"I sorry, boy," he said. "I know that it hurts pickin' that
cotton. It hurts the back and the hands, the eyes and the

heart too. Work can break your heart just as bad as a
woman can. Every nigger out here works harder than any
two white peoples. That's why I let you have the mornin'
pickin' cotton with Miss Eighty-four.

"You really too little to be workin' in the fields yet. I
don't know what Master Tobias was thinkin' to put you out
here like that. But as long as you here I need you to know
what it is to chop cotton. And now that you know I'ma put
you out chere as a runnah for the slaves. That means you
gonna run heah and theah doin' things for me and the
other peoples needs it. So if I have a message you gonna run deliver it. If somebody need watah you gonna fill up
the pail and run it ovah to 'em. You understand me, boy?"
"Yes suh, Mud Albert, suh," I said being as polite as I
knew how to be.

"An' don't you forget them bleedin' hands an' watery
eyes, don't forget the hurt in your back and your chest. Be
cause I cain't save you from pullin' cotton if'n you don't do the job I give ya."

"I run so fast that my feet won't even touch the ground, Mud Albert," I swore.

He laughed and nodded and handed me his water bottle.
That was the first drink of water I had since we got to
the cotton fields many hours before.

I know how bad a thing it is to be a slave and I know how terrible it was but I don't believe that there's a free
person in the whole world that knows how good a cup full of
water can taste. Because you have to be a deprived slave, to be kept waiting for your water like we were to really appre
ciate how good just one swallow can be. When we finally
got a drop on our tongues it was like something straight
from the hands of the Almighty.

4.

From Sunday to Sunday to Sunday I ran water and mes
sages for Mud Albert.

Mr. Stewart was the plantation boss and it was his job to
organize the work that the slaves did. But Mr. Stewart re
lied on Mud Albert to direct the workers. No slave ever did
anything bad under Albert because he was much kinder than any white boss would be. The white bosses thought
that slaves were always lying but Albert was one of us; he
could tell the difference between a malingerer and some
body who was really sick.

So Mr. Stewart would sit around talking to the white
plantation workers while Albert oversaw the cotton picking, and even the processing of the cotton gin.

All us slaves hated the cotton gin, the machine used to
separate the cotton from the seeds and chaff. It was like
the hungry maw of Satan himself swallowing every pound of cotton we could deliver. If the cotton gin were idle Master would think that was because us slaves were too lazy to
feed it. But Albert knew how to keep the machine going
with the least possible amount of raw cotton and he knew to the bale how much the master needed to be satisfied.

And so all the slaves worked while Albert sent me to
bring them water and to keep him informed about how
everything was going. If somebody was slacking off or else
if somebody was sick and couldn't work I'd tell Albert and
he'd tell Champ and sooner than you could count to ninety-
three the problem would be solved.

There were only two big problems in those first few
weeks. The first was my hands. They were all red and drip
ping ever since my first day of picking cotton. Albert said
that he didn't like the look of it but he didn't want to call
the horse doctor either.

"Sometimes that crazy doctor jus' say to cut off what
ever limb is hurtin'," Albert told me. "An' if'n he cut off yo
hands that will be the end of you."

That was all I needed to hear. I carried the water by
holding the buckets by their handles on either my wrist or in the crook of my arm and I kept my hands out of sight
whenever Mr. Stewart came around to make sure that his
slaves were working.

The other thing that happened was that the slave we
called Nigger Ned, Number Twelve, died of pneumonia in his cot. Mud Albert tried to take the load off of Ned but by
then he was too sick. Three days after my second Sunday
in the slave quarters Ned couldn't climb out of his bed. By
the next morning he was dead.

Master Tobias allowed us slaves to have a burial service
because Ned had been in the slave cabin for many years.
Ned was a good man and we all liked him. Nobody except
for rascals ever had a bad word to say about him. The
slaves all called him that terrible name because we didn't know any better and the white people said it just because
they like the way it sounded.

The free colored preacher, Brother Bob, was too far
away to make it for to give the sermon and so Master Tobias said that he would say some words.

We all walked to the slave graveyard in the evening after work in the fields. The slave graveyard was situated on
the far side of the Master's big house. It was a small plot of
land surrounded by a dilapidated picket fence. The slen
der slats of wood used as grave markers were crowded
closely together. I remember that even in death the slaves would never have a place to spread out and rest.

Mr. Stewart let us leave the fields an hour before the
sun set so that we could form in lines in front of the grave
that Tobias had Champ Noland dig. They didn't give Ned
a pine box
after all he was just a field slave. Instead they
wrapped him in one of those big burlap sacks and laid him
in the ground.

I was standing in front of everyone because I was the
smallest of the field slaves. I could see Big Mama Flore
standing with the house Negroes across from the grave, be
hind Master Tobias. She looked at me once but I turned
away. I was still mad at her for slamming that door and not
saving me from Mr. Stewart. I hoped that she would feel
bad in her heart because of the way I ignored her.

A row of jet black ravens stood along the slanted roof on
the south side of the mansion. They numbered a dozen or
more. The birds watched the funeral proceedings. Every
once in a while they made comments in their dry, crackling voices. Back then we saw ravens as an evil omen. Now that I look back on that day I see that it was Master Tobias who
should have worried about the portent of those birds.

My hands were hurting terribly. Most of the time I held them up to keep the worst pain away, but I couldn't do that at the funeral. At funerals you were supposed to keep your
hands down.

"We come heah today," Master Tobias said after we were
all in place, "to say good-bye to Nigger Ned, or as I always
called him
Slim."

Tobias, who was wearing work pants and a blue shirt,
gestured toward the hole in the ground and then contin
ued, "Slim was a good boy. He never asked for more or
complained. We only had to beat him twice in my memory
and he always worked hard in the field. You know all the niggers who work hard in this life will have a land of milk
and honey after they die. The Lord don't want no shiftless
slaves in heaven, only thems that has worked hard and
showed that they are worthy of heaven's bounty
"
"Mr. Tobias!" a man's voice called out.

The ravens cried out and took wing at the sound of that

man's call.

All of us slaves, and Master Tobias too, turned to see a
grand white man on a towering chestnut mare. He had
great black mustachios and he wore a black suit with a
white shirt. His hat was black with a small round crown