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they were born and so Eighty-four had turned sour.
    Her hands were rougher than my burlap shirt and I hardly understood a word she said.
    Eighty-four had lived almost her whole life out among the slaves in the women's cabin and had nothing to do with white folks except for Mr. Stewart and his cruel work- hands. Me and Champ and especially Mama Flore spent time learning how the white people talked and acted.
    To tell you what Eighty-four looked like poses a pecu liar problem for me. This is because I remember her in two very different ways. The first was the way I saw Eighty- four as a scared slave boy looking upon a big, angry, black girl. She never smiled or uttered a kind word. She never once asked how I felt or if I needed help. She was, as I said, black like I am black very dark. And back then, in the days of Negro degradation, white people either laughed at our color or, even worse, felt sorry for us because of our obvious ugliness and inferiority. In my childhood being black meant poverty, slavery, and all things bad. I was, before Tall John came, ashamed of my color and of everyone who looked like me. And so when I first looked upon Eighty-four I was afraid and disgusted.
    But when I remember her now there's a wholly differ ent image in my mind's eye. Eighty-four was tall and slen der with high cheekbones and large, almond-shaped eyes. Her skin was a dark black that had depth to it like the night sky. In later years I had the pleasure of seeing her laugh many times and so I know her teeth were ivory of color and powerful. Eighty-four was beyond good-looking, beyond beautiful she was regal.
    I know her beauty now, but when I first laid eyes on her she was a fright to me.
    "Bes' scurry n' hump," were Eighty-four's first words to me.
    "What?" I asked.
    She replied by pinching my arm till it hurt terribly and repeated the words, pulling a cotton boll and pushing it into her big burlap bag.
    I learned right away to watch her gestures as she spoke. That way I could keep from getting pinched. As it was the place where she tweaked me hurt for over a week.
    It was dark when we started but it was hot too. I pulled cot ton for a long time, cutting my hands more than once on the tough husks of the pods. I wasn't bothered by the cuts at first because my shoulder still hurt pretty bad.
    The moment they started working the slaves began to sing. They sang songs that were not in English and they sang songs that were hymns learned from the monthly service that the traveling Negro minister, Brother Bob,
    delivered. Bob was one of the few free Negroes in the county who was at liberty to move about. There were a few other freed slaves around that had little cabins. These were fa vored slaves who got too old to work or were granted their freedom because of some brave act they committed. Usu ally they saved their Master or one of the Master's children from death.
    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