Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen Page B

“You’ll know when you get older but now you just be quiet and never, never say you heard me praying about being free.”
    Which I never did, even after I learned what freedom is and started praying for it my ownself. Even then.
    The people in the white house aren’t richer than God, I know that.
    But they be rich, and they be spending a lot of money and they brought in the new hand for a thousand dollars.
    And that be Nightjohn.

THREE
    Old Waller brought him in bad.
    Sometimes they come in not so bad. Spec’lators bring them to sell sometimes all in a wagon, sell them from the wagon and Waller he buys them one or two or whatever, right from the wagon.
    Sometimes Waller he goes for to buy them at some other place and brings them home in the wagon, sitting in the back. Old Waller on the seat with a pistol in his belt, sitting like he thinks he’s big. Other places, near here, otherplaces have what they call overseers to use the whip and to use the gun and go to get them. But not here. Waller he loves to carry the whip and carry the gun and so he rides in the wagon his ownself and makes on to be big. Sitting there like he don’t know we hate him.
    But he can bring them in good or he can bring them in bad and with Nightjohn he brought him in bad.
    Not in the wagon. He was walking, all alone in front of the horse. Waller riding the big brown horse in back. Had a rope down and over to a shackle on Nightjohn’s neck. Rope tied to the saddle. So when the horse stopped, Nightjohn he stopped, jerked on his neck.
    Waller he brought Nightjohn into the main yard near the quarters out in the open, yelling and swearing at him. Yanking on the rope. Nightjohn he didn’t have any clothes on, stood nakedin the sun. I was by the quarters, carrying water to wash the eating trough before it was time for the evening feeding and I saw them.
    Standing in the sun with the rope going from his neck up to the saddle, tired and sweating because Waller ran him. Dust all over him. Flies around his shoulders.
    His back was all over scars from old whippings. The skin across his shoulders and down was raised in ripples, thick as my hand, up and down his back and onto his rear end and down his legs some.
    I wondered why he was bought with all the marks. When they be marked that way people don’t buy them because it means they hard to work, hard to get to work.
    But he did. Waller he brought Nightjohn home and ran him naked till he sweated and the biting flies took athim and I was there and saw him come in.
    I’m brown. Same as dark sassafras tea. But I had seen black people, true black. And Nightjohn was that way. Beautiful. So black he was like the marble stone by the front of the white house; so black it seemed I could see inside, down into him. See almost through him somehow.
    In a little, Waller he untied the rope. Then he cracked the whip once or twice like he be a big man and drives Nightjohn past the quarters and out to the field to work. Didn’t matter that he’d been run or might be thirsty. He didn’t stop at the pump but ran him right on through and out to the fields, naked as he was born, to get to hoeing.
    He come in bad and it wasn’t until late that night, after dark in the quarters, that I learned his name.
    Mammy she made canvas pants forthe new men when they came. Sewed them from the roll of tarp-cloth we used for all our clothes. She gave a pair to Nightjohn when they came in from the field but he didn’t have time to say nothing because it was time for the evening food.
    Two times a day at the wooden trough—that’s how we eat. Mornings they pour buttermilk down the trough and we dip cornbread in it and sometimes pieces of pork fat. We take turns on a calabash gourd for a dipper to get all the milk out except the little ones don’t always get much of a turn and have to lick the bottom of the trough when it’s done. For midday meal the field hands—men and women both, ’less a woman is a breeder in her last month, then