"Fs still useful, Mastah," I remember the miserable man crying. "Don't do me like a dawg. Fs still a useful nigger, you'll see."

Tobias told Pritchard that he would think about it on the ride to Atlanta. He said that he'd be gone for nine days and when he came back he would make the decision of whether or not to put Twenty-five to sleep.

Before Tobias left that rat-faced Mr. Stewart asked what he should do about replacing Holland.

"What was his number?" Tobias asked.

"Forty-seven, sir."

"Save that number and give it to Psalma's bastard when he's ready."

It was the custom on the Corinthian Plantation to give all field slaves numbers. If they got a name along the way that was fine but they would be known to Master and the overseer by number in all of their record-keeping books.

For the first years of my life the only name I knew was babychile because that was all Mama Flore ever called me. Her friends in the big house all called me Baby for short, and if Master Tobias referred to me all he ever said was Psalma's bastardwith acid on his tongue.

For nine days after the accident that maimed him Pritchard cried and dragged himself around the yard trying to work even though his leg must have hurt terribly. At night he would cry to himself and pray out loud to God to save him from being put down.

Master Tobias came back to find that Pritchard had made himself a rude crutch and a toolbox and he hobbled right up to Tobias's horse and said, "What you want me to fix up first, Mastuh?"

The sight of Pritchard's pain made Master laugh. I guess he thought it was funny how a pitiful slave would struggle so hard to keep his miserable life. Anyway, he let Pritchard live and in the days after that Pritchard would always say that going lame under that stone was the best thing that ever happened to him. He ate better and staggered around the yard fixing fences and doing odd jobs. And if the Master and Mr. Stewart weren't looking he'd sleep up in the trees on the south side of the plantation.

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.