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boy but Ned was nearly as old as Mud Albert. "... better than some white men. Take that no good lowlife Andrew Pike. From the looks of him you'd think that he was better than any nigger. But it ain't so. That man right there sold me a horse that he said could work pullin' a plow or a carriage. He took two good slaves for it but it wasn't four days before Dr. Boggs told me that the horse had heartworm. When I complained, Pike didn't
    even apologize. Took my niggers and left it for me to put his horse down.
    "Ned, you can go up to heaven knowin' that you were a better man than that."
    Tobias slapped his hands together as if he had dug the grave himself, or maybe it was that he felt dirty having to speak at a slave's burial. Anyway he walked away from the grave and up to his mansion. He left Mr. Stewart and nine or ten men armed with rifles to guard us while we sang over the death of our fellow man and friend.
    Seeing those armed men was the first time I ever enter tained the notion that white people were afraid of us. As I said, there were plenty of black folk at that burial. We could have overrun those few white riflemen and killed the Master and his plantation boss. We could have taken the Corinthian Plantation for our own.
    For a moment I imagined screaming black men and women overrunning the riflemen, beating them with their own weapons and burning down the mansion. I saw the overboss and his men on their knees, begging for their lives like Pritchard had done when Tobias considered kill ing him. I saw us all sitting in the Master's dining room, eating ham, and putting our bare feet right up on his table.
    I knew it was a sin to have these thoughts and it scared me to the bone. I started shivering, fearful that someone could see the blasphemy in my eyes. And if they did, and they told Master, I'd be in Mr. Stewart's killin' shack quicker than they could call my number.
    "Are you all right, babychile?" Mama Flore asked.
    She had come up beside me while I was having my evil thoughts and while all the other slaves were singing.
    "Fine," I said, letting my head hang down and holding my wounded hands behind my back.
    "Mud Albert told me that that dog Pritchard knocked you down and branded you," she said.
    "It's okay. Albert put some lard on it and it hardly even hurt except if I move." I shifted around, making sure to keep my hands behind me.
    "What's wrong with yo hands, sugah?"
    "I got to go back to the cabin," I said. "Mud Albert said that he wanted me to clean out from under his bed."
    Most of the slaves were singing "Blessed Soul." Flore reached out for me but I moved away and she only grazed my cheek with her finger. She called after me but I just ran, crying bitterly at my sad fate and for the soul of the slave they called Nigger Ned.
    5.
    Nobody tried to stop me when I ran away from the funeral. That's because I was so small that I was still seen as a plan tation child and not of an age to try and escape. And nei ther did I consider flight because where would I run? There was nothing but plantations for hundreds of miles and if ever a white man saw me he was bound by law to catch me and beat me and return me to my owner.
    My hands were hurting and so was my heart as I walked through the piney path that led from the colored graveyard to the slave quarters. The sun was setting and birds were singing all around. Big fat lazy bugs were floating in the air on waxen wings, and a slight breeze cooled my brow. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered that times like that were magic and if you looked hard enough you might just see some fairy or saint in amongst the trees. And laying eyes on such a magical creature would change everything in your life.
    But that was the first day of my transition from childhood to maturity. Between the death of Ned and the callous manner of Master Tobias I was beginning to see that there might not be magic in the world after all. The man we called Nigger Ned was in his grave with no one to give