Free 47 by Walter Mosley

strong like you. An' mebbe another bush would see his neighbors as pretty. But when I look out chere all I see is you."
    For a moment Eighty-four was taken off guard.
    "You spoonin' me, boy?" she asked at last.
    "Tall John," he said, holding out a hand.
    Eighty-four had unkempt bushy hair that was fes tooned with tiny branches and burrs. She put her hand to a
    tangle of hair that had formed above her left eye. I was worried that she was getting ready to sock my friend but instead she put out her own hand.
    They shook and she even gave him a shy smile.
    "They told us," John said, still holding onto her hand, "that we was to come work wit' you.... What's yo name?"
    For a moment there was a friendly light in the surly girl- slave's eye, but then it turned hard.
    "Da womens calls me Fatfoot an' da mens calls me Porky 'cause dey say I'm like a poc'apine. Mastuh jes' call me Eighty-fo' an' I guess dats the bes' I got."
    "None'a them names fit a nice girl like you," John said. "So if you don't mind I think I'll calls you Tweenie 'cause when I first seen you between land and sky you seemed to belong there jes like you was the reason they came to gether."
    Eighty-four's eyes widened a bit and she took a closer look at my friend. I'm sure she was thinking the same thing I was; that is why would he be saying such nice and charming words to a surly and taciturn field slave who was black as tar and ugly as a stump?
    "Shet yo' mouf an' git ta pickin'," Eighty-four said, throwing off the web of flattery John had been weaving.
    When we came up she had dropped her big cotton sack, which was already a quarter filled. Before she could pick the bag up again. John grabbed it and threw it over his shoulder.
    "They send us to take the weight off'a you for a time,
    Tweenie," he said. "Me'n Forty-seven here is s'posed t'make it easier for you."
    "Boy," Eighty-four said. "Skinny nigger like you couldn't carry that bag more'n ten paces."
    "I'll do ten an' den ten more," John replied. "You'll see."
    Eighty-four sucked her tooth and grunted, but she let John carry her bag. She and I fell along either side of him, picking cotton balls and stuffing them in his sack.
    Eighty-four kept looking over at John, expecting him to falter under the weight of the cotton. We were harvesting cotton balls at a pretty fast clip and the bag was filling up. It wasn't long before it rose eight feet up off of John's back and trailed behind him. But the weight didn't seem to bother him. He was sweating but he had enough breath to keep talking to Eighty-four.
    "Tweenie, you evah wished you could jes th'ow off this cotton an' run out into the woods an' jump in a cold lake t'cool off?"
    That must have been just what Eighty-four was think ing because she shouted, "Sho' do! Oh Lawd yes. Cold watah on my skin an' down my th'oat. That an'a crust'a bread an' my life be heaven."
    I didn't interrupt their conversation. From experience I knew that my presence made Eighty-four angry. So I kept my mouth shut. But I had another reason to keep quiet. I was concentrating on how I pulled those cotton balls so that my hands didn't get cut up and infected again.
    9.
    Neither Eighty-four nor I carried the cotton bag that day. John lugged the big bag up and down the rows of cotton bushes while we stuffed the sack full.
    The whole time John sweet-talked Eighty-four.
    "Bein' a slave ain't half bad," he said in the long shad ows of the late afternoon, "if'n you could be lucky as me standin' between a good friend and a beautiful girl."
    "You should let me carry that sack now, Johnny," Eighty- four said with a smile. "Yo' back must be achin' sumpin' terrible."
    And there it was again, just one word. Not even a word but just adding the e sound at the end of his name and I knew that Eighty-four was smitten with Tall John the flatterer.
    At the end of the day we had pulled more cotton than any other three slaves on the whole plantation. We knew that because Mud Albert kept count.
    When we walked the stony