I never did understand how a man could be happy about being crippled but Mama Flore said, "A slave sometimes would rather kiss the Master's whip if that kept him from feeling its sting."
And so on my first day as a field slave this broken man, Pritchard, was there to greet me, leaning on a crutch cut from a poplar sapling and standing next to a small cast-iron stove. And even though it was a hot day, and hotter still in that close room, he had that stove going. He was holding an iron stick with a rag on one end and with the other end deep in the glowing embers.
"Well, well, well," Pritchard said again. "If it ain't Fat Flore's little puppy dog."
I didn't like him calling Big Mama fat, even though she was, and I didn't like being called her dog either. But I didn't say anything because even though Pritchard was lame he was still a man and I was only half his size and a little less.
"You know the first thing a nigger got to do when he come out chere to the slave quarters," Pritchard said in a loud voice that made me both frightened and angry. "He gots to get his name."
"I ain't s'posed to have no name!" I shouted, and this was true. Master Tobias had said, after his wife Una had died, that I wasn't to be called by any name because I was going to be a field slave and all a field slave needed was his number.
"That was before you came out to here." Pritchard smiled, showing me his brown, broken teeth. I was so scared that I was moving backwards and didn't even know it until my back touched up against the wall behind me.
"Mastuh told Mama Flore that she couldn't name me," I said, not understanding what it was that Pritchard meant.
He pulled the iron stick out of the stove and showed me the bright orange tip.
"Fat Flore ain't out here, boy," he said. "It's just me and you and I got your name right chere on this stick."
When I saw that glowing brand it dawned on me what Pritchard meant.
He was stripped to the waist because of the heat. And on his right shoulder I could see the scars from his branding. Every field slave on the plantation had their number branded on their right shoulder. This was the custom ever since Miss Una's great-grandfather had started the farm. The slaves all talked about how much that branding hurt, but because Flore had never been branded, I assumed that it wouldn't happen to me either. That's because I saw myself as different. I lived in the barn and didn't have a place like everybody else. I saw myself as a kind of young prince in that big shed – like Master Turner's daughter, Eloise, was the princess of the big house.
But at that moment I realized that being put in the slave quarters meant that I was going to be branded just like all the other slaves there.
I shouted "No!" and tried to run away, but the wall was at my back and Pritchard was right there in front of me.
He had been a tall and hale man before his accident. But now he was bent and misshapen as if the damage done to his leg had gone all throughout his entire body. He was light-colored compared to Mud Albert or Fred Chocolate, Master Tobias's manservant. I was darker than Pritchard too.
"Don't do it!" I cried.
He dropped his crutch and reached for my arm but I ducked away and ran off into the long cabin. When I saw that I left him by the only door I realized that I was trapped.
"It's better to come and take it like a man, Forty-seven," Pritchard said in a scary voice. "Because if I have to fight with you, you gonna get all beat and bruised on top'a bein' branded. Take it like a man and it will only hurt like hell."
He picked up his crutch and grinned. I couldn't understand why he was so happy at the thought of causing me pain.
I was miserable then. The numbers on the end of that brand were smoking in the hot air. And I knew that if he marked me I would have lost any chance I ever had to be the prince of my dreams.
"Please don't do it! Please don't do it!" I shouted.
"I got to do it, boy," Pritchard said with that sickening grin on his lips. "It's my job to brand all the new niggers."
Pritchard moved with the shamble of a dead man, taking a step with his whole leg and then dragging the other. He was hunched over too. And he had a smile on his face all the time but you knew he wasn't thinking about anything funny. He moved in my direction and I inched away.
"I got to burn these numbers in your shoulder boy. Got to. That's my job. Here all this time you been layin' up in the barn, huggin' on Fat Flore an' eatin' corn cakes while us niggers be out here eatin' sour grain and strainin' in the cotton fields. Now you gonna know what it's like to sweat and strain and hurt."
"It ain't my fault that they made you work so hard out here, Pritchard," I said. "I din't want them to do that to you."
"I seen you laughin' at me, boy. While I was carryin' them bags'a cotton, while I be hobblin' around on this broke down leg."
He took a step toward me and I took a step back.
"I never laughed at you," I pleaded. "If I laughed it's just because I was playin'."
"You ain't gonna play no more, niggah," he said as he crept forward. "After I burn these here numbers inta yo' flesh you gonna know what it's like to be a nigger-slave workin' sunup to sundown until you vomit up your guts and die."
As he said these words he took a quick step and threw the crutch at me. I tried to get out of the way but that twirling stick got between my legs and I went down. Before I could get to my feet again Pritchard was on me. He got both of my wrists together in one big hand and he lifted me up off of the ground. When he pulled me up next to his face I could smell his rotten breath.
"Fma burn that numbah so far into you," he said, "that after you die they gonna find it burnt into bone."
He dragged me back across the room and no matter how hard I struggled I couldn't break his grip.
When we got back to the iron stove he dropped his crutch and pressed the iron, which had cooled, back into the red embers.
"Please don't do this to me," I begged. "Please don't. Please."
"Fma burn you good, boy," was his reply. "Fma burn you good."
I screamed and pulled and kicked and bit trying to get away from that iron. But try as I would Pritchard got me down on the floor, pulled off my burlap shirt, and held my arms down with his knees. Then he pulled that poker out of the fire and said, "Here it come," and then I felt a pain that I had never imagined a person could feel. It went all the way through me and I yelled and then I passed out for a short while.
I would have rather stayed unconscious but the pain in my shoulder was so great that I woke up crying. I wanted
to touch the wound but it was too sore. Pritchard was saying something but I couldn't make it out because the pain wouldn't let me know anything else.
But then Pritchard yanked me up off the floor and yelled, "You bit me, niggah! Bit me on my arm!"
I heard him but somehow it didn't make sense. I was the one who hurt. How could anything he felt be so bad?
"Little bastard," Pritchard said. "Just for that I'ma brand you again. See if'n you bite me this time."
He pulled the brand out of the fire again and when I saw it I screamed louder than I ever had before, or since. Pritchard threw me on the hard floor and then held me down with his knees again.
"Here it come," he said, but the brand never touched my skin.
"Get up from there, Twenty-five!" a man shouted.
It was Champ Noland.
Suddenly Pritchard was gone from on top of me. I heard the iron fall on the floor. I sat up and saw him backing away, brandishing his crutch. Then I saw Champ. He was very tall and powerful with a handsome black face except for a scar that ran over his right eye and back toward his ear.