"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.