Now every day seem like a new day as I wait and watch for him return. I don’t tell Calla, is our little secret. I have a friend. We watch and wait together in the lazy heat of the afternoon. Him to spot him prey, and me to not have to run when Busha Davis call. To come and go as I please. To live a life that belong only to me. To be free like William the Second circling in a blue and mostly cloudless sky, high up above the world of bondage.

I open up to the glimmering and do the same thing. Run me mind through the seeing and hearing of things. Circling, twisting, turning them inside out, till them become like a story I collect. A story I keep, one on top of the other inside the breadfruit tree.

One story is bout old cripple Jonnie. Him have a hut right in the middle of them dogwood trees. Whenever I walk past, him call me over. Tell me the same story over and over again. His story is one of the saddest that sit inside the breadfruit tree.

‘See dis funny leg,’ him say, when him pull up him pants leg to show me the stump. ‘A horse done dat. Rear up pon him back legs and trample me.’

‘Me know, Jonnie. Me know.’ But it don’t stop him telling the story.

‘Leg swell up. Turn yello’ and green. Start to ooze pus. Everybody come have a look. Many oohs and aahs and head shaking. Not even Calla medicine can help me. “Have to chop it off,” Doctor Watson say. Mek me drink plenty rum. Put a piece a wood in’a me mouth. Tell the other slave dem to hold me down. Tell me to bite down hard when him saw through the bone. Lawd of mercy! Even with all dat rum. It hurt me, little Will. It hurt me so bad. Me bite straight through dat little old dutty piece’a wood.’

Feel sorry for old cripple Jonnie, but I hear that story so many times, all I can do is nod.

‘Is a hard ting to lose a leg. Me can still feel the pain of it. Was a good leg too,’ him say, holding up him stump.

‘Was a long time ago,’ I say, trying to cheer him up. But Jonnie just ignore me, keep rubbing him old dried-up stump. Don’t know why I bother, Jonnie never going get cheered up.

Only time I see him happy is when the Maroon man, Robert McKellar, come for a visit. Jonnie help him to catch a runaway slave when him was two-legged. McKellar was grateful, gave him a little of the reward him got. After that, whenever him come down from the hills and passing through, him always looking in on Jonnie. One day I ask Melon bout him.