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.
Champ picked up the brand and put it back on the stove and then he went for Pritchard.
Pritchard was in for it because everyone on the plantation knew that you didn't mess with Champ. He was strong and fast and didn't even know what the word pain meant.
Champ moved in and Pritchard swung his crutch. It hit Champ on the shoulder but he didn't even grunt. He hit Pritchard so hard that the crippled slave fell to the floor and rolled away. Champ moved fast then and picked Pritchard up by his shirt.
"You know it's Mud Albert that s'posed to brand the new slaves," Champ said. "You know it ain't your job."
"But I was just tryin' to help out, Champ," Pritchard whined. "I didn't know I was doin' somethin' wrong."
I almost felt sorry for Pritchard in spite of the pain in my shoulder. He sounded like a lonely child wanting a playmate or a toy. In my mind I could see Champ letting the poor cripple go and walking back to see if I was hurt.
But instead Champ hit Pritchard and hit him again. He kept hitting him even though the poor man was screaming and begging for his life.
"Don't kill me, Champ!" Pritchard cried.
"Why you wanna make that little boy hurt?" Champ asked, and then he hit him.
"Don't kill me, Champ!"
"Do you like it when I beat on you like this?" Champ hit Pritchard again.
"No. No. I'm sorry. I's jes' doin' it to help out. I's jes' tryin' to help Mud Albert out."
"If you evah touch that boy again I will kill you," Champ said, and then he hauled off and delivered a terrible blow. "Kill you." And he hit him again.
Champ beat Pritchard until the lame slave wrapped
himself around the big man's ankles, dripping blood and tears on Champ's bare feet.
I wanted Champ to stop hitting Pritchard but I knew that you couldn't interfere with men when they were fighting mad.
Finally Champ stamped away, leaving Pritchard like a heap of bloody rags.
"You okay, boy?" Champ asked me.
Looking up at him I thought I knew what angels must be. Because even though I was in terrible pain I realized that Champ had saved my life. And having those feelings I began to cry. I thought that a strong man like Champ would be disgusted with a crybaby, but instead he sat down and put his big hand on my back.
"It's okay, boy," he said. "We all cry when they burn us like that. I'm just sorry you didn't have us around you to help you feel bettah about the pain."
3.
Mud Albert came back that evening with the rest of the slaves. Everyone was tired from a full day of picking cotton.
Ernestine, the cook's helper-slave, dragged a cast-iron pot out to the cabin and served us sour porridge in dirty wooden bowls. We were each given a big serving of the foul slop. I couldn't eat a bite of it.
"You gonna eat yo' suppa?" a small man I came to know as Julie asked.
"Naw."
"Then hand it ovah to me."
Julie took my bowl and started feeding himself with both hands. This is because they didn't give us forks or spoons to eat our mush. After all, we were slaves, not civilized human beings.
Mud Albert was the oldest man on the Corinthian or any nearby plantation. He walked with a limp and had many folds in his black face. His forehead was high and elegant. The only hair he had left was at his temples and gray. But for all his age Mud Albert was the most respected
man among us slaves. He was fair and deliberate and he never, in anyone's memory, did a wrong thing to another man or woman.
Albert had sent Champ back to the cabin to see if I was there. Champ was to bring me out to the cotton fields but instead he stayed with me after Pritchard crawled away.
Albert and the other slaves came back at sunset, after fourteen backbreaking hours of picking cotton. That's the way ninety-nine percent of the slaves worked back in 1832 from sunup to sundown, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year.
When Albert saw my branded skin he took a jar out from under his brass bed. That was his bed because Albert was the head slave in charge of all the other field slaves. It was his job to make sure that we were all chained in every night and that we worked hard and that we didn't run away. For all that responsibility Master Tobias gave him a brass bed that was too old for white people to sleep in anymore.
Albert scooped a handful of foul-smelling paste out of the jar. Then he smeared this glop on my burns. It hurt even more and I yelled out but Albert told me that the lard and herbs would help to heal my shoulder.
After that Albert assigned me to Champ's cot.
The slaves all slept two to a bunk. We didn't have the space for the luxury of our own beds.
Before Albert turned down the lantern he went around chaining each one of us by our ankles to an eyebolt in the floor. They chained us down at night because it was accepted as general knowledge that a slave was most likely to decide to run in the dark.
I was happy to be there next to Champ but it was hard going to sleep with such a big man. He tossed and rolled in his sleep and sometimes pushed me almost out of the bed. But I never complained. I knew that Albert put me there so that Champ could watch over me and protect me from any other slaves like Pritchard who were jealous of the easy life I had before coming out to live with them.
One day, after I had been working in the cotton fields for a while, Mud Albert told me that it went hard for most young boys out among the man-slaves.
"Boys is soft and tendah," he told me. "And men are rough. Boys need a mother's touch, but they won't put them among the women because it's forbade for male and female slaves to live together that is unless the master says it's all right."
"Why?" I asked in the hot morning out among the cotton plants that seemed to go on forever.
"You'll know one day, boy," Albert said. "But right now you don't have to worry acause Champ done said that he's lookin' out for you and after they seen what he done to Pritchard they gonna know bettah than to mess wit' you."
"How come Champ ain't mean an' angry like Pritchard, Mud Albert?" I asked.
"Because Champ is the biggest, toughest, hardest-workin', friendliest slave anybody done ever see'd. He
gets to visit with slave women all around the county and because'a that he don't get so rough."
I counted my blessings that I knew Mud Albert and Champ Noland. But for a long time I forgot that it was Big Mama Flore that made my acquaintance with them.
The morning after Pritchard branded me they had us up before sunrise. You could see the stars shining through the cracks in the ceiling of the cabin as Mud Albert walked up and down the rows with a kerosene lantern shining in our eyes. Then he used his big brass key on each man's leg manacles so that they could get up and go to work.