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“Oh God. All because our little jackass here drank too much and decided to rape somebody!”

She hushed me with a sharp hiss. “You got to learn to watch what you say! Don’t you know there’s folks in this house who love to carry tales?”

I sighed. “Yes.”

“You ain’t no field nigger, but you still a nigger. Marse Rufe can get mad and make things mighty hard for you.”

“I know. All right.” Luke’s being sold must have frightened her badly. He used to be the one who hushed her.

“Marse Rufe keeping Alice in his room?” “Yes.”

“Lord, I hope he’ll let her ’lone. Tonight, anyway.”

“I think he will. Hell, I think he’ll be gentle and patient with her now that he’s got her.”

“Huh!” A sound of disgust. “What’ll you do now?”

“Me? Try to keep the girl clean and comfortable until she gets well.” “I don’t mean that.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?” “She’ll be in. You’ll be out.”

I stared at her, tried to see her expression. I couldn’t, but I decided she was serious. “It’s not like that, Sarah. She’s the only one he seems to want. And me, I’m content with my husband.”

There was a long silence. “Your husband … was that Mister Kevin?” “Yes.”

“Nigel said you and him was married. I didn’t believe it.” “We kept quiet about it because it’s not legal here.”

“Legal!” Another sound of disgust. “I guess what Marse Rufe done to that girl is legal.”

I shrugged.

“Your husband … he’d get in trouble every now and then ’cause he couldn’t tell the difference ’tween black and white. Guess now I know why.”

I grinned. “I’m not why. He was like that when I married him—or I wouldn’t have married him. Rufus just sent him a letter telling him to come back and get me.”

She hesitated. “You sure Marse Rufe sent it?” “He said he did.”

“Ask Nigel.” She lowered her voice. “Sometimes Marse Rufe says

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what will make you feel good—not what’s true.” “But … he’d have no reason to lie about it.” “Didn’t say he was lyin.’ Just said ask Nigel.” “All right.”

She was silent for a moment, then, “You think he’ll come back for you, Dana, your … husband?”

“I know he will.” He would. Surely he would. “He ever beat you?”

“No! Of course not!”

“My man used to. He’d tell me I was the only one he cared about. Then, next thing I knew, he’d say I was looking at some other man, and he’d go to hittin’.”

“Carrie’s father?”

“No … my oldest boy’s father. Miss Hannah, her father. He always said he’d free me in his will, but he didn’t. It was just another lie.” She stood up, joints creaking. “Got to get some rest.” She started away. “Don’t you forget now, Dana. Ask Nigel.”

“Yes.”

9

I asked Nigel the next day, but he didn’t know. Rufus had sent him on an errand. When Nigel saw Rufus again, it was at the jail where Rufus had just bought Alice.

“She was standing up then,” he said remembering. “I don’t know how. When Marse Rufe was ready to go, he took her by the arm, and she fell over and everybody around laughed. He had paid way too much for her and anybody could see she was more dead than alive. Folks figured he didn’t have much sense.”

“Nigel, do you know how long it would take a letter to reach Boston?” I asked.

He looked up from the silver he was polishing. “How would I know that?” He began rubbing again. “Like to find out though—follow it and see.” He spoke very softly.

He said things like that now and then when Weylin gave him a hard

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time, or when the overseer, Edwards, tried to order him around. This time, I thought it was Edwards. The man had stomped out of the cook- house as I was going in. He would have knocked me down if I hadn’t jumped out of his way. Nigel was a house servant and Edwards wasn’t supposed to bother him, but he did.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Old bastard swears he’ll have me out in the field. Says I think too much of myself.”

I thought of Luke and shuddered. “Maybe you’d better take off some time soon.”

“Carrie.” “Yes.”

“Tried to run once. Followed the Star. If not for Marse Rufe, I would have been sold South when they caught me.” He shook his head. “I’d probably be dead by now.”

I went away from him not wanting to hear any more about running away—and being caught. It was pouring rain outside, but before I reached the house I saw that the hands were still in the fields, still hoe- ing corn.

I found Rufus in the library going over some papers with his father. I

swept the hall until his father left the room. Then I went in to see Rufus.

Before I could open my mouth, he said, “Have you been up to check on Alice?”

“I’ll go in a moment. Rufe, how long does it take for a letter to go from here to Boston?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Someday, you’re going to call me Rufe down here and Daddy is going to be standing right behind you.”

I looked back in sudden apprehension and Rufus laughed. “Not today,”

he said. “But someday, if you don’t remember.” “Hell,” I muttered. “How long?”

He laughed again. “I don’t know, Dana. A few days, a week, two weeks, three …” He shrugged.

“His letters were dated,” I said. “Can you remember when you received the one from Boston?”

He thought about it, finally shook his head. “No, Dana, I just didn’t pay any attention. You better go look in on Alice.”

I went, annoyed, but silent. I thought he could have given me a decent estimate if he had wanted to. But it didn’t really matter. Kevin would

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receive the letter and he could come to get me. I couldn’t really doubt that Rufus had sent it. He didn’t want to lose my good will anymore than I wanted to lose his. And this was such a small thing.

Alice became a part of my work—an important part. Rufus had Nigel and a young field hand move another bed into Rufus’s room—a small low bed that could be pushed under Rufus’s bed. We had to move Alice from Rufus’s bed for his comfort as well as hers, because for a while, Alice was a very young child again, incontinent, barely aware of us unless we hurt her or fed her. And she did have to be fed—spoonful by spoonful.

Weylin came in to look at her once, while I was feeding her.

“Damn!” he said to Rufus. “Kindest thing you could do for her would be to shoot her.”

I think the look Rufus gave him scared him a little. He went away without saying anything else.

I changed Alice’s bandages, always checking for signs of infection, always hoping not to find any. I wondered what the incubation period was for tetanus or—or for rabies. Then I tried to make myself stop won- dering. The girl’s body seemed to be healing slowly, but cleanly. I felt superstitious about even thinking about diseases that would surely kill her. Besides, I had enough real worries just keeping her clean and help- ing her grow up all over again. She called me Mama for a while.

“Mama, it hurts.”

She knew Rufus, though. Mister Rufus. Her friend. He said she crawled into his bed at night.

In one way, that was all right. She was using the pot again. But in another …

“Don’t look at me like that,” said Rufus when he told me. “I wouldn’t bother her. It would be like hurting a baby.”

Later it would be like hurting a woman. I suspected that wouldn’t bother him at all.

As Alice progressed, she became a little more reserved with him. He was still her friend, but she slept in her trundle bed all night. And I ceased to be “Mama.”

One morning when I brought her breakfast, she looked at me and said, “Who are you?”

“I’m Dana,” I said. “Remember?” I always answered her questions. “No.”

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“How do you feel?”

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“Kind of stiff and sore.” She put a hand down to her thigh where a dog had literally torn away a mouthful. “My leg hurts.”

I looked at the wound. She would have a big ugly scar there for the rest of her life, but the wound still seemed to be healing all right—no unusual darkening or swelling. It was as though she had just noticed this specific pain in the same way she had just noticed me.

“Where is this?” she asked.

The way she was just really noticing a lot of things. “This is the

Weylin house,” I said. “Mister Rufus’s room.”

“Oh.” She seemed to relax, content, no longer curious. I didn’t push her. I had already decided I wouldn’t. I thought she would return to real- ity when she was strong enough to face it. Tom Weylin, in his loud silence, clearly thought she was hopeless. Rufus never said what he thought. But like me, he didn’t push her.

“I almost don’t want her to remember,” he said once. “She could be like she was before Isaac. Then maybe …” He shrugged.

“She remembers more every day,” I said. “And she asks questions.” “Don’t answer her!”

“If I don’t, someone else will. She’ll be up and around soon.” He swallowed. “All this time, it’s been so good …”

“Good?”

“She hasn’t hated me!”

10

Alice continued to heal and to grow. She came down to the cookhouse with me for the first time on the day Carrie had her baby.

Alice had been with us for three weeks. She might have been twelve or thirteen mentally now. That morning, she had told Rufus she wanted to sleep in the attic with me. To my surprise, Rufus had agreed. He hadn’t wanted to, but he had done it. I thought, not for the first time, that if Alice could manage to go on not hating him, there would be very little she couldn’t ask of him. If.

Now, slowly, cautiously, she followed me down the stairs. She was

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weak and thinner than ever, looking like a child in one of Margaret

Weylin’s old dresses. But boredom had driven her from her bed.

“I’ll be glad when I get well,” she muttered as she paused on a step. “I hate to be like this.”

“You’re getting well,” I said. I was a little ahead of her, watching to see that she did not stumble. I had taken her arm at the top of the stairs, but she had tried to pull away.

“I can walk.”

I let her walk.

We got to the cookhouse just as Nigel did, but he was in a bigger hurry. We stood aside and let him rush through the door ahead of us.

“Huh!” said Alice as he went by. “’Scuse me!”

He ignored her. “Aunt Sarah,” he called, “Aunt Sarah, Carrie’s having pains!”

Old Mary had been the midwife of the plantation before her age caught up with her. Now, the Weylins may have expected her to go on doctoring the slaves, but the slaves knew better. They helped each other as best they could. I hadn’t seen Sarah called to help with a birth before, but it was natural that she should be called to this one. She dropped a pan of corn meal and started to follow Nigel out.

“Can I help?” I asked.

She looked at me as though she’d just noticed me. “See to the supper,” she said. “I was going to send somebody in to finish cooking, but you can, can’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She and Nigel hurried away. Nigel had a cabin away from the quarter, not far from the cookhouse. A neat wood-floored brick- chimneyed cabin that he had built for himself and Carrie. He had shown it to me. “Don’t have to sleep on rags up in the attic no more,” he’d said. He’d built a bed and two chairs. Rufus had let him hire his time, work for other whites in the area, until he had money enough to buy the things he couldn’t make. It had been a good investment for Rufus. Not only did he get part of Nigel’s earnings, but he got the assurance that Nigel, his only valuable piece of property, was not likely to run away again soon.

“Can I go see?” Alice asked me.

“No,” I said reluctantly. I wanted to go myself, but Sarah didn’t need either of us getting in her way. “No, you and I have work to do here. Can you peel potatoes?”

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“Sure.”

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I sat her down at the table and gave her a knife and some potatoes to peel. The scene reminded me of my own first time in the cookhouse when I had sat peeling potatoes until Kevin called me away. Kevin might have my letter by now. He almost surely did. He might already be on his way here.

I shook my head and began cutting up a chicken. No sense tormenting myself.

“Mama used to make me cook,” said Alice. She frowned as though try- ing to remember. “She said I’d have to be cooking for my husband.” She frowned again, and I almost cut myself trying to watch her. What was she remembering?

“Dana?” “Yes?”

“Don’t you have a husband? I remember once … something about you having a husband.”

“I do. He’s up North now.” “He free?”

“Yes.”

“Good to marry a freeman. Mama always said I should.” Mama was right, I thought. But I said nothing.

“My father was a slave, and they sold him away from her. She said marrying a slave is almost bad as being a slave.” She looked at me. “What’s it like to be a slave?”

I managed not to look surprised. It hadn’t occurred to me that she didn’t realize she was a slave. I wondered how she had explained her presence here to herself.

“Dana?”

I looked at her.

“I said what’s it like to be a slave?”

“I don’t know.” I took a deep breath. “I wonder how Carrie is doing—

in all that pain, and not even able to scream.”

“How could you not know what it’s like to be a slave. You are one.” “I haven’t been one for very long.”

“You were free?” “Yes.”

“And you let yourself be made a slave? You should run away.”

I glanced at the door. “Be careful how you say things like that. You

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could get into trouble.” I felt like Sarah, cautioning. “Well it’s true.”

“Sometimes it’s better to keep the truth to yourself.”

She stared at me with concern. “What will happen to you?”

“Don’t worry about me, Alice. My husband will help me get free.” I went to the door to look out toward Carrie’s cabin. Not that I expected to see anything. I just wanted to distract Alice. She was getting too close, “growing” too fast. Her life would change so much for the worse when she remembered. She would be hurt more, and Rufus would do much of the hurting. And I would have to watch and do nothing.

“Mama said she’d rather be dead than be a slave,” she said.

“Better to stay alive,” I said. “At least while there’s a chance to get free.” I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.

Suddenly, she threw the potato she had been peeling into the fire. I jumped, looked at her. “Why’d you do that?”

“There’s things you ain’t saying.” I sighed.

“I’m here too,” she said. “Been here a long time.” She narrowed her eyes. “Am I a slave too?”

I didn’t answer.

“I said am I a slave?” “Yes.”

She had risen half off the bench, her whole body demanding that I answer her. Now that I had, she sat down again heavily, her back and shoulders rounded, her arms crossed over her stomach hugging herself. “But I’m supposed to be free. I was free. Born free!”

“Yes.”

“Dana, tell me what I don’t remember. Tell me!” “It will come back to you.”

“No, you tell—”

“Oh, hush, will you!”

She drew back a little in surprise. I had shouted at her. She probably thought I was angry—and I was. But not at her. I wanted to pull her back from the edge of a cliff. It was too late though. She would have to take her fall.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” I said wearily. “But believe

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me, you don’t want to know as much as you think you do.” “Yes I do!”

I sighed. “All right. What do you want to know?”

She opened her mouth, then frowned and closed it again. Finally, “There’s so much … I want to know everything, but I don’t know where to start. Why am I a slave?”

“You committed a crime.” “A crime? What’d I do?”

“You helped a slave to escape.” I paused. “Do you realize that in all the time you’ve been here, you never asked me how you were hurt?”

That seemed to touch something in her. She sat blank-faced for several seconds, then frowned and stood up. I watched her carefully. If she was going to have hysterics, I wanted her to have them where she was, out of sight of the Weylins. There were too many things she could say that Tom Weylin in particular would resent.

“They beat me,” she whispered. “I remember. The dogs, the rope … They tied me behind a horse and I had to run, but I couldn’t … Then they beat me … But … but …”

I walked over to her, stood in front of her, but she seemed to look through me. She had that same look of pain and confusion she’d had when Rufus brought her from town.

“Alice?”

She seemed not to hear me. “Isaac?” she whispered. But it was more a soundless moving of her lips than a whisper. Then,

“Isaac!” An explosion of sound. She bolted for the door. I let her take about three steps before I grabbed her.

“Let go of me! Isaac! Isaac!”

“Alice, stop. You’ll make me hurt you.” She was struggling against me with all her feeble strength.

“They cut him! They cut off his ears!”

I had been hoping she hadn’t seen that. “Alice!” I held her by the shoulders and shook her.

“I’ve got to get away,” she wept. “Find Isaac.”

“Maybe. When you can walk more than ten steps without getting tired.” She stopped her struggles, stared at me through streaming tears.

“Where’d they send him?” “Mississippi.”

“Oh Jesus …” She collapsed against me, crying. She would have

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fallen if I hadn’t held her and half-dragged and half-carried her back to the bench. She sat slumped where I put her, crying, praying, cursing. I sat with her for a while, but she didn’t tire, or at least, she didn’t stop. I had to leave her to finish preparing supper. I was afraid I would anger Weylin and get Sarah into trouble if I didn’t. There would be trouble enough in the house now that Alice had her memory back, and somehow, it had become my job to ease troubles—first Rufus’s, now Alice’s—as best I could.

I finished the meal somehow, though my mind wasn’t on it. There was the soup that Sarah had left simmering; fish to fry; ham that had been rock-hard before Sarah soaked it, then boiled it; chicken to fry and corn bread and gravy to make; Alice’s forgotten potatoes to finish; bread to bake in the little brick oven alongside the fireplace; vegetables, including salad; a sugary peach dessert—Weylin raised peaches; a cake that Sarah had already made, thank God; and both coffee and tea. There would be company to help eat it all. There usually was. And they would all eat too much. It was no wonder the main medicines of this era were laxatives.

I got the food ready, almost on time, then had to hunt down the two lit- tle boys whose job it was to ferry it from cookhouse to table and then serve it. When I found them, they wasted some time staring at the now silent Alice, then they grumbled because I made them wash. Finally, my washhouse friend Tess, who also worked in the main house, ran out and said, “Marse Tom say get food on the table!”

“Is the table set?”

“Been set! Even though you didn’t say nothin’.”

Oops. “I’m sorry, Tess. Here, help me out.” I thrust a covered dish of soup into her hands. “Carrie is having her baby now and Sarah’s gone to help her. Take that in, would you?”

“And come back for more?” “Please.”

She hurried away. I had helped her with the washing several times— had done as much of it as I could myself recently because Weylin had casually begun taking her to bed, and had hurt her. Apparently, she paid her debts.

I went out to the well and got the boys just as they were starting a water fight.

“If you two don’t get yourselves into the house with that food …!” “You sound just like Sarah.”

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“No I don’t. You know what she’d be saying. You know what she’d be doing too. Now move! Or I’ll get a switch and really be like her.”

Dinner was served. Somehow. And it was all edible. There may have been more of it if Sarah had been cooking, but it wouldn’t have tasted any better. Sarah had managed to overcome my uncertainty, my igno- rance of cooking on an open hearth and teach me quite a bit.

As the meal progressed and the leftovers began to come back, I tried to get Alice to eat. I fixed her a plate but she pushed it away, turned her back to me.

She had sat either staring into space or resting her head on the table for hours. Now, finally, she spoke.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked bitterly. “You could have said something, got me out of his room, his bed … Oh Lord, his bed! And he may as well have cut my Isaac’s ears off with his own hand.”

“He never told anyone Isaac beat him.” “Shit!”

“It’s true. He never did because he didn’t want you to get hurt. I know because I was with him until he got back on his feet. I took care of him.”

“If you had any sense, you would have let him die!”

“If I had, it wouldn’t have kept you and Isaac from being caught. It might have gotten you both killed though if anyone guessed what Isaac had done.”

“Doctor-nigger,” she said with contempt. “Think you know so much. Reading-nigger. White-nigger! Why didn’t you know enough to let me die?”

I said nothing. She was getting angrier and angrier, shouting at me. I turned away from her sadly, telling myself it was better, safer for her to vent her feelings on me than on anyone else.

Along with her shouting now, I could hear the thin faint cries of a baby.

11

Carrie and Nigel named their thin, wrinkled, brown son, Jude. Nigel did a lot of strutting and happy babbling until Weylin told him to shut up and

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get back to work on the covered passageway he was supposed to be build- ing to connect the house and the cookhouse. A few days after the baby’s birth, though, Weylin called him into the library and gave him a new dress for Carrie, a new blanket, and a new suit of clothes for himself.

“See,” Nigel told me later with some bitterness. “’Cause of Carrie and me, he’s one nigger richer.” But before the Weylins, he was properly grateful.

“Thank you, Marse Tom. Yes, sir. Sure do thank you. Fine clothes, yes, sir …”

Finally he escaped back to the covered passageway.

Meanwhile, in the library, I heard Weylin tell Rufus, “You should have been the one to give him something—instead of wasting all your money on that worthless girl.”

“She’s well!” Rufus answered. “Dana got her well. Why do you say she’s worthless?”

“Because you’re going to have to whip her sick again to get what you want from her!”

Silence.

“Dana should have been enough for you. She’s got some sense.” He paused. “Too much sense for her own good, I’d say, but at least she wouldn’t give you trouble. She’s had that Franklin fellow to teach her a few things.”

Rufus walked away from him without answering. I had to get away from the library door where I had been eavesdropping very quickly as I heard him approach. I ducked into the dining room and came out again just as he was passing by.

“Rufe.”

He gave me a look that said he didn’t want to be bothered, but he stopped anyway.

“I want to write another letter.”

He frowned. “You’ve got to be patient, Dana. It hasn’t been that long.” “It’s been over a month.”

“Well … I don’t know. Kevin could have moved again, could have done anything. I think you should give him a little more time to answer.” “Answer what?” asked Weylin. He’d done what Rufus had pre-

dicted—come up behind us so silently that I hadn’t noticed him.

Rufus glanced at his father sourly. “Letter to Kevin Franklin telling him she’s here.”

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“She wrote a letter?”

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“I told her to write it. Why should I do it when she can?”

“Boy, you don’t have the sense you—” He cut off abruptly. “Dana, go do your work!”

I left wondering whether Rufus had shown lack of sense by letting me write the letter—instead of writing it himself—or by sending it. After all, if Kevin never came back for me, Weylin’s property was increased by one more slave. Even if I proved not to be very useful, he could always sell me.

I shuddered. I had to talk Rufus into letting me write another letter. The first one could have been lost or destroyed or sent to the wrong place. Things like that were still happening in 1976. How much worse might they be in this horse-and-buggy era? And surely Kevin would give up on me if I went home without him again—left him here for more long years. If he hadn’t already given up on me.

I tried to put that thought out of my mind. It came to me now and then even though everything people told me seemed to indicate that he was waiting. Still waiting.

I went out to the laundry yard to help Tess. I had come to almost wel- come the hard work. It kept me from thinking. White people thought I was industrious. Most blacks thought I was either stupid or too intent on pleasing the whites. I thought I was keeping my fears and doubts at bay as best I could, and managing to stay relatively sane.

I caught Rufus alone again the next day—in his room this time where we weren’t likely to be interrupted. But he wouldn’t listen when I brought up the letter. His mind was on Alice. She was stronger now, and his patience with her was gone. I had thought that eventually, he would just rape her again—and again. In fact, I was surprised that he hadn’t already done it. I didn’t realize that he was planning to involve me in that rape. He was, and he did.

“Talk to her, Dana,” he said once he’d brushed aside the matter of my letter. “You’re older than she is. She thinks you know a lot. Talk to her!” He was sitting on his bed staring into the cold fireplace. I sat at his desk looking at the clear plastic pen I had loaned him. He’d used half its

ink already. “What the hell have you been writing with this?” I asked. “Dana, listen to me!”

I turned to face him. “I heard you.” “Well?”

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“I can’t stop you from raping the woman, Rufe, but I’m not going to help you do it either.”

“You want her to get hurt?”

“Of course not. But you’ve already decided to hurt her, haven’t you?” He didn’t answer.

“Let her go, Rufe. Hasn’t she suffered enough because of you?” He wouldn’t. I knew he wouldn’t.

His green eyes glittered. “She’ll never get away from me again. Never!” He drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “You know, Daddy wants me to send her to the fields and take you.”

“Does he?”

“He thinks all I want is a woman. Any woman. So you, then. He says you’d be less likely to give me trouble.”

“Do you believe him?”

He hesitated, managed to smile a little. “No.” I nodded. “Good.”

“I know you, Dana. You want Kevin the way I want Alice. And you had more luck than I did because no matter what happens now, for a while he wanted you too. Maybe I can’t ever have that—both wanting, both loving. But I’m not going to give up what I can have.”

“What do you mean, ‘no matter what happens now?’ ”

“What in hell do you think I mean? It’s been five years! You want to write another letter. Did you ever think maybe he threw the first letter out? Maybe he got like Alice—wanted to be with one of his own kind.” I said nothing. I knew what he was doing—trying to share his pain, hurt me as he was hurting. And of course, he knew just where I was vul-

nerable. I tried to keep a neutral expression, but he went on.

“He told me once that you two had been married for four years. That means he’s been here away from you even longer than you’ve been together. I doubt if he’d have waited as long as he did if you weren’t the only one who could get him back to his home time. But now … who knows. The right woman could make this time mighty sweet to him.”

“Rufe, nothing you say to me is going to ease your way with Alice.” “No? How about this: You talk to her—talk some sense into her—or

you’re going to watch while Jake Edwards beats some sense into her!” I stared at him in revulsion. “Is that what you call love?”

He was on his feet and across the room to me before I could take another breath. I sat where I was, watching him, feeling frightened, and

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suddenly very much aware of my knife, of how quickly I could reach it. He wasn’t going to beat me. Not him, not ever.

“Get up!” he ordered. He didn’t order me around much, and he’d never done it in that tone. “Get up, I said!”

I didn’t move.

“I’ve been too easy on you,” he said. His voice was suddenly low and ugly. “I treated you like you were better than the ordinary niggers. I see I made a mistake!”

“That’s possible,” I said. “I’m waiting for you to show me I made a mistake.”

For several seconds, he stood frozen, towering over me, glaring down as though he meant to hit me. Finally, though, he relaxed, leaned against his desk. “You think you’re white!” he muttered. “You don’t know your place any better than a wild animal.”

I said nothing.

“You think you own me because you saved my life!”

And I relaxed, glad not to have to take the life I had saved—glad not to have to risk other lives, including my own.

“If I ever caught myself wanting you like I want her, I’d cut my throat,” he said.

I hoped that problem would never arise. If it did, one of us would do some cutting all right.

“Help me, Dana.” “I can’t.”

“You can! You and nobody else. Go to her. Send her to me. I’ll have her whether you help or not. All I want you to do is fix it so I don’t have to beat her. You’re no friend of hers if you won’t do that much!”

Of hers! He had all the low cunning of his class. No, I couldn’t refuse to help the girl—help her avoid at least some pain. But she wouldn’t think much of me for helping her this way. I didn’t think much of myself.

“Do it!” hissed Rufus.

I got up and went out to find her.

She was strange now, erratic, sometimes needing my friendship, trust- ing me with her dangerous longings for freedom, her wild plans to run away again; and sometimes hating me, blaming me for her trouble.

One night in the attic, she was crying softly and telling me something about Isaac. She stopped suddenly and asked, “Have you heard from your husband yet, Dana?”

“Not yet.”

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“Write another letter. Even if you have to do it in secret.” “I’m working on it.”

“No sense in you losing your man too.”

Yet moments later for no reason that I could see, she attacked me, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, whining and crying after some poor white trash of a man, black as you are. You always try to act so white. White nigger, turning against your own people!”

I never really got used to her sudden switches, her attacks, but I put up with them. I had taken her through all the other stages of healing, and somehow, I couldn’t abandon her now. Most of the time, I couldn’t even get angry. She was like Rufus. When she hurt, she struck out to hurt oth- ers. But she had been hurting less as the days passed, and striking out less. She was healing emotionally as well as physically. I had helped her to heal. Now I had to help Rufus tear her wounds open again.

She was at Carrie’s cabin watching Jude and two other older babies someone had left with her. She had no regular duties yet, but like me, she had found her own work. She liked children, and she liked sewing. She would take the coarse blue cloth Weylin bought for the slaves and make neat sturdy clothing of it while small children played around her feet. Weylin complained that she was like old Mary with the children and the sewing, but he brought her his clothing to be mended. She worked better and faster than the slave woman who had taken over much of old Mary’s sewing—and if she had an enemy on the plantation, it was that woman, Liza, who was now in danger of being sent to more onerous work.

I went into the cabin and sat down with Alice before the cold fireplace. Jude slept beside her in the crib Nigel had made for him. The other two babies were awake lying naked on blankets on the floor quietly playing with their feet.

Alice looked up at me, then held up a long blue dress. “This is for you,” she said. “I’m sick of seeing you in them pants.”

I looked down at my jeans. “I’m so used to dressing like this, I forget sometimes. At least it keeps me from having to serve at the table.”

“Serving ain’t bad.” She’d done it a few times. “And if Mister Tom wasn’t so stingy, you’d have had a dress a long time ago. Man loves a dollar more than he loves Jesus.”

That, I believed literally. Weylin had dealings with banks. I knew because he complained about them. But I had never known him to have

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any dealings with churches or hold any kind of prayer meeting in his home. The slaves had to sneak away in the night and take their chances with the patrollers if they wanted to have any kind of religious meeting. “Least you can look like a woman when your man comes for you,”

Alice said.

I drew a deep breath. “Thanks.”

“Yeah. Now tell me what you come here to say … that you don’t want to say.”

I looked at her, startled.

“You think I don’t know you after all this time? You got a look that says you don’t want to be here.”

“Yes. Rufus sent me to talk to you.” I hesitated. “He wants you tonight.” Her expression hardened. “He sent you to tell me that?”

“No.”

She waited, glaring at me, silently demanding that I tell her more. I said nothing.

“Well! What did he send you for then?”

“To talk you into going to him quietly, and to tell you you’d be whipped this time if you resist.”

“Shit! Well, all right, you told me. Now get out of here before I throw this dress in the fireplace and light it.”

“I don’t give a damn what you do with that dress.”

Now it was her turn to be startled. I didn’t usually talk to her that way, even when she deserved it.

I leaned back comfortably in Nigel’s homemade chair. “Message delivered,” I said. “Do what you want.”

“I mean to.”

“You might look ahead a little though. Ahead and in all three direc- tions.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, it looks as though you have three choices. You can go to him as he orders; you can refuse, be whipped, and then have him take you by force; or you can run away again.”

She said nothing, bent to her sewing and drew the needle in quick neat tiny stitches even though her hands were shaking. I bent down to play with one of the babies—one who had forgotten his own feet and crawled over to investigate my shoe. He was a fat curious little boy of several months who began trying to pull the buttons off my blouse as soon as I

picked him up.

THE FIGHT 167

“He go’ pee all over you in a minute,” said Alice. “He likes to let go just when somebody’s holding him.”

I put the baby down quickly—just in time, as it turned out. “Dana?”

I looked at her.

“What am I going to do?”

I hesitated, shook my head. “I can’t advise you. It’s your body.”

“Not mine.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper. “Not mine, his. He paid for it, didn’t he?”

“Paid who? You?”

“You know he didn’t pay me! Oh, what’s the difference? Whether it’s right or wrong, the law says he owns me now. I don’t know why he hasn’t already whipped the skin off me. The things I’ve said to him …”

“You know why.”

She began to cry. “I ought to take a knife in there with me and cut his damn throat.” She glared at me. “Now go tell him that! Tell him I’m talk- ing ’bout killing him!”

“Tell him yourself.”

“Do your job! Go tell him! That’s what you for—to help white folks keep niggers down. That’s why he sent you to me. They be calling you mammy in a few years. You be running the whole house when the old man dies.”

I shrugged and stopped the curious baby from sucking on my shoe string.

“Go tell on me, Dana. Show him you the kind of woman he needs, not me.”

I said nothing.

“One white man, two white men, what difference do it make?” “One black man, two black men, what difference does that make?” “I could have ten black men without turning against my own.”

I shrugged again, refusing to argue with her. What could I win?

She made a wordless sound and covered her face with her hands. “What’s the matter with you?” she said wearily. “Why you let me run you down like that? You done everything you could for me, maybe even saved my life. I seen people get lockjaw and die from way less than I had wrong with me. Why you let me talk about you so bad?”

“Why do you do it?”

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She sighed, bent her body into a “c” as she crouched in the chair. “Because I get so mad … I get so mad I can taste it in my mouth. And you’re the only one I can take it out on—the only one I can hurt and not be hurt back.”

“Don’t keep doing it,” I said. “I have feelings just like you do.” “Do you want me to go to him?”

“I can’t tell you that. You have to decide.” “Would you go to him?”

I glanced at the floor. “We’re in different situations. What I’d do doesn’t matter.”

“Would you go to him?”

“No.”

“Even though he’s just like your husband?” “He isn’t.”

“But … All right, even though you don’t … don’t hate him like I do?” “Even so.”

“Then I won’t go either.” “What will you do?”

“I don’t know. Run away?” I got up to leave.

“Where you going?” she asked quickly.

“To stall Rufus. If I really work at it, I think I can get him to let you off tonight. That will give you a start.”

She dropped the dress to the floor and came out of her chair to grab me. “No, Dana! Don’t go.” She drew a deep breath, then seemed to sag. “I’m lying. I can’t run again. I can’t. You be hungry and cold and sick out there, and so tired you can’t walk. Then they find you and set dogs on you … My Lord, the dogs …” She was silent for a moment. “I’m going to him. He knew I would sooner or later. But he don’t know how I wish I had the nerve to just kill him!”

12

She went to him. She adjusted, became a quieter more subdued person. She didn’t kill, but she seemed to die a little.

THE FIGHT 169

Kevin didn’t come to me, didn’t write. Rufus finally let me write another letter—payment for services rendered, I supposed—and he mailed it for me. Yet another month went by, and Kevin didn’t reply.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rufus told me. “He probably did move again. We’ll be getting a letter from him in Maine any day now.”

I didn’t say anything. Rufus had become talkative and happy, openly affectionate to a quietly tolerant Alice. He drank more than he should have sometimes, and one morning after he’d really overdone it, Alice came downstairs with her whole face swollen and bruised.

That was the morning I stopped wondering whether I should ask him to help me go North to find Kevin. I wouldn’t have expected him to give me money, but he could have gotten me some damned official-looking free papers. He could even have gone with me, at least to the Pennsyl- vania State Line. Or he could have stopped me cold.

He had already found the way to control me—by threatening others. That was safer than threatening me directly, and it worked. It was a lesson he had no doubt learned from his father. Weylin, for instance, had known just how far to push Sarah. He had sold only three of her children—left her one to live for and protect. I didn’t doubt now that he could have found a buyer for Carrie, afflicted as she was. But Carrie was a useful young woman. Not only did she work hard and well herself, not only had she produced a healthy new slave, but she had kept first her mother, and now her husband in line with no effort at all on Weylin’s part. I didn’t want to find out how much Rufus had learned from his father’s handling of her.

I longed for my map now. It contained names of towns I could write myself passes to. No doubt some of the towns on it didn’t exist yet, but at least it would have given me a better idea of what was ahead. I would have to take my chances without it.

Well, at least I knew that Easton was a few miles to the north, and that the road that ran past the Weylin house would take me to it. Unfortu- nately, it would also take me through a lot of open fields—places where it would be nearly impossible to hide. And pass or no pass, I would hide from whites if I could.

I would have to carry food—johnnycake, smoked meat, dried fruit, a bottle of water. I had access to what I needed. I had heard of runaway slaves starving before they reached freedom, or poisoning themselves because they were as ignorant as I was about which wild plants were

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In fact, I had read and heard enough scare stories about the fate of run- aways to keep me with the Weylins for several days longer than I meant to stay. I might not have believed them, but I had the example of Isaac and Alice before me. Fittingly, then, it was Alice who gave me the push I needed.

I was helping Tess with the wash—sweating and stirring dirty clothes as they boiled in their big iron pot—when Alice came to me, crept to me, looking back over her shoulder, her eyes wide with what I read as fear.

“You look at this,” she said to me, not even glancing at Tess who had stopped pounding a pair of Weylin’s pants to watch us. She trusted Tess. “See,” she said. “I been looking where I wasn’t s’pose to look—in Mis- ter Rufe’s bed chest. But what I found don’t look like it ought to be there.”

She took two letters from her apron pocket. Two letters, their seals broken, their faces covered with my handwriting.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. “Yours?”

“Yes.”

“Thought so. I can read some words. Got to take these back now.” “Yes.”

She turned to go. “Alice.”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. Be careful when you put them back.”

“You be careful too,” she said. Our eyes met and we both knew what she was talking about.

I left that night.

I collected the food and “borrowed” one of Nigel’s old hats, to pull down over my hair—which wasn’t very long, luckily. When I asked Nigel for the hat, he just looked at me for a long moment, then got it for me. No questions. I didn’t think he expected to see it again.

I stole a pair of Rufus’s old trousers and a worn shirt. My jeans and shirts were too well known to Rufus’s neighbors, and the dress Alice had made me looked too much like the dresses every other slave woman on the place wore. Besides, I had decided to become a boy. In the loose, shabby, but definitely male clothing I had chosen, my height and my con- tralto voice would get me by. I hoped.

THE FIGHT 171

I packed everything I could into my denim bag and left it in its place on my pallet where I normally used it as a pillow. My freedom of move- ment was more useful to me now than it had ever been. I could go where I wanted to and no one said, “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you working?” Everyone assumed I was working. Wasn’t I the industrious stupid one who always worked?

So I was left alone, allowed to make my preparations. I even got a chance to prowl through Weylin’s library. Finally, at day’s end, I went to the attic with the other house servants and lay down to wait until they were asleep. That was my mistake.

I wanted the others to be able to say they saw me go to bed. I wanted Rufus and Tom Weylin to waste time looking around the plantation for me tomorrow when they realized they hadn’t seen me for a while. They wouldn’t do that if some house servant—one of the children, perhaps— said, “She never went to bed last night.”

Overplanning.

I got up when the others had been quiet for some time. It was about midnight, and I knew I could be past Easton before morning. I had talked to others who had walked the distance. Before the sun rose, though, I’d have to find a place to hide and sleep. Then I could write myself a pass to one of the other places whose names and general locations I had learned in Weylin’s library. There was a place near the county line called Wye Mills. Beyond that, I would veer northeast, slanting toward the plantation of a cousin of Weylin’s and toward Delaware to travel up the highest part of the peninsula. In that way, I hoped to avoid many of the rivers. I had a feeling they were what would make my trip long and difficult.

I crept away from the Weylin house, moving through the darkness with even less confidence than I had felt when I fled to Alice’s house months before. Years before. I hadn’t known quite as well then what there was to fear. I had never seen a captured runaway like Alice. I had never felt the whip across my own back. I had never felt a man’s fists.

I felt almost sick to my stomach with fear, but I kept walking. I stum- bled over a stick that lay in the road and first cursed it, then picked it up. It felt good in my hand, solid. A stick like this had saved me once. Now, it quenched a little of my fear, gave me confidence. I walked faster, mov- ing into the woods alongside the road as soon as I passed Weylin’s fields.

The way was north toward Alice’s old cabin, toward the Holman plan-

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tation, toward Easton which I would have to skirt. The walking was easy, at least. This was flat country with only a few barely noticeable rolling hills to break the monotony. The road ran through thick dark woods that were probably full of good places to hide. And the only water I saw flowed in streams so tiny they barely wet my feet. That wouldn’t last, though. There would be rivers.

I hid from an old black man who drove a wagon pulled by a mule. He went by humming tunelessly, apparently fearing neither patrollers nor any other dangers of the night. I envied his calmness.

I hid from three white men who rode by on horseback. They had a dog with them, and I was afraid it would smell me and give me away. Luck- ily, the wind was in my favor, and it went on its way. Another dog found me later, though. It came racing toward me through a field and over a rail fence, barking and growling. I turned to meet it almost without thinking, and clubbed it down as it lunged at me.

I wasn’t really afraid. Dogs with white men frightened me, or dogs in packs—Sarah had told me of runaways who had been torn to pieces by the packs of dogs used to hunt them. But one lone dog didn’t seem to be much of a threat.

As it turned out, the dog was no threat at all. I hit it, it fell, then got up and limped away yelping. I let it go, glad I hadn’t had to hurt it worse. I liked dogs normally.

I hurried on, wanting to be out of sight if the dog’s noise brought peo- ple out to investigate. The experience did make me a little more confi- dent of my ability to defend myself, though, and the natural night noises disturbed me less.

I reached the town and avoided what I could see of it—a few shadowy buildings. I walked on, beginning to tire, beginning to worry that dawn was not far away. I couldn’t tell whether my worrying was legitimate or came from my desire to rest. Not for the first time, I wished I had been wearing a watch when Rufus called me.

I pushed myself on until I could see that the sky really was growing light. Then, as I looked around wondering where I could find shelter for the day, I heard horses. I moved farther from the road and crouched in a thick growth of bushes, grasses, and young trees. I was used to hiding now, and no more afraid than I had been when I’d hidden before. No one had spotted me yet.

There were two horsemen moving slowly up the road toward me. Very

THE FIGHT 173

slowly. They were looking around, peering through the dimness into the trees. I could see that one of them was riding a light colored horse. A gray horse, I saw as it drew closer, a …

I jumped. I managed not to gasp, but I did make that one small invol- untary movement. And a twig that I hadn’t noticed snapped under me.

The horsemen stopped almost in front of me, Rufus on the gray he usu- ally rode, and Tom Weylin on a darker animal. I could see them clearly now. They were looking for me—already! They shouldn’t even have known yet that I was gone. They couldn’t have known—unless someone told them. Someone must have seen me leaving, someone other than Rufus or Tom Weylin. They would simply have stopped me. It must have been one of the slaves. Someone had betrayed me. And now, I had betrayed myself.

“I heard something,” said Tom Weylin.

And Rufus, “So did I. She’s around here somewhere.”

I shrank down, tried to make myself smaller without moving enough to make more noise.

“Damn that Franklin,” I heard Rufus say. “You’re damning the wrong man,” said Weylin. Rufus let that go unanswered.

“Look over there!” Weylin was pointing away from me, pointing into the woods ahead of me. He headed his horse over to investigate what he had seen—and frightened out a large bird.

Rufus’s eyes were better. He ignored his father and headed straight for me. He couldn’t have seen me, couldn’t have seen anything other than a possible hiding place. He plunged his horse into the bushes that hid me, plunged it in to either trample me or drive me out.

He drove me out. I threw myself to one side away from the horse’s hooves.

Rufus let out a whoop and swung down literally on top of me. I fell under his weight, and the fall twisted my club out of my hand, set it in just the right position for me to fall on.

I heard my stolen shirt tear, felt the splintered wood scrape my side … “She’s here!” called Rufus. “I’ve got her!”

He would get something else too if I could reach my knife. I twisted downward toward the ankle sheath with him still on top of me. My side was suddenly aflame with pain.

“Come help me hold her,” he called.

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His father strode over and kicked me in the face.

That held me, all right. From far away, I could hear Rufus shout—

strangely soft shouting—“You didn’t have to do that!”

Weylin’s reply was lost to me as I drifted into unconsciousness.

13

I awoke tied hand and foot, my side throbbing rhythmically, my jaw not throbbing at all. The pain there was a steady scream. I probed with my tongue and found that two teeth on the right side were gone.

I had been thrown over Rufus’s horse like a grain sack, head and feet hanging, blood dripping from my mouth onto the familiar boot that let me know it was Rufus I rode with.

I made a noise, a kind of choked moan, and the horse stopped. I felt Rufus move, then I was lifted down, placed in the tall grass beside the road. Rufus looked down at me.

“You damn fool,” he said softly. He took his handkerchief and wiped blood from my face. I winced away, tears suddenly filling my eyes at the startlingly increased pain.

“Fool!” repeated Rufus.

I closed my eyes and felt the tears run back into my hair.

“You give me your word you won’t fight me, and I’ll untie you.” After a while, I nodded. I felt his hands at my wrists, at my ankles. “What’s this?”

He had found my knife, I thought. Now he would tie me again. That’s what I would have done in his place. I looked at him.

He was untying the empty sheath from my ankle. Just a piece of rough- cut, poorly sewn leather. I had apparently lost the knife in my struggle with him. No doubt, though, the shape of the sheath told him what it had held. He looked at it, then at me. Finally, he nodded grimly and, with a sharp motion, threw the sheath away.

“Get up.”

I tried. In the end, he had to help me. My feet were numb from being tied, and were just coming back to painful life. If Rufus decided to make me run behind his horse, I would be dragged to death.

THE FIGHT 175

He noticed that I was holding my side as he half-carried me back to his horse, and he stopped to move my hand and look at the wound.

“Scratch,” he pronounced. “You were lucky. Going to hit me with a stick, were you? And what else were you going to do?”

I said nothing, thought of him sending his horse charging over the spot

I had barely leaped from in time.

As I leaned against his horse, he wiped more blood from my face, one hand firmly holding the top of my head so that I couldn’t wince away. I bore it somehow.

“Now you’ve got a gap in your teeth,” he observed. “Well, if you don’t laugh big, nobody’ll notice. They weren’t the teeth right in front.”

I spat blood and he never realized that I had made my comment on such good luck.

“All right,” he said, “let’s go.”

I waited for him to tie me behind the horse or throw me over it grain- sack fashion again. Instead, he put me in front of him in the saddle. Not until then did I see Weylin waiting for us a few paces down the road.

“See there,” the old man said. “Educated nigger don’t mean smart nigger, do it?” He turned away as though he didn’t expect an answer. He didn’t get one.

I sat stiffly erect, holding my body straight somehow until Rufus said, “Will you lean back on me before you fall off! You got more pride than sense.”

He was wrong. At that moment, I couldn’t manage any pride at all. I leaned back against him, desperate for any support I could find, and closed my eyes.

He didn’t say anything more for a long while—not until we were near- ing the house. Then,

“You awake, Dana?” I sat straight. “Yes.”

“You’re going to get the cowhide,” he said. “You know that.” Somehow, I hadn’t known. His gentleness had lulled me. Now the

thought of being hurt even more terrified me. The whip, again. “No!” Without thinking about it or intending to do it, I threw one leg over and

slid from the horse. My side hurt, my mouth hurt, my face was still bleeding, but none of that was as bad as the whip. I ran toward the dis- tant trees.

Rufus caught me easily and held me, cursing me, hurting me. “You

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take your whipping!” he hissed. “The more you fight, the more he’ll hurt you.”

He? Was Weylin to whip me, then, or the overseer, Edwards?

“Act like you’ve got some sense!” demanded Rufus as I struggled. What I acted like was a wild woman. If I’d had my knife, I would

surely have killed someone. As it was, I managed to leave scratches and bruises on Rufus, his father, and Edwards who was called over to help. I was totally beyond reasoning. I had never in my life wanted so desper- ately to kill another human being.

They took me to the barn and tied my hands and raised whatever they had tied them to high over my head. When I was barely able to touch the floor with my toes, Weylin ripped my clothes off and began to beat me.

He beat me until I swung back and forth by my wrists, half-crazy with pain, unable to find my footing, unable to stand the pressure of hanging, unable to get away from the steady slashing blows …

He beat me until I tried to make myself believe he was going to kill me. I said it aloud, screamed it, and the blows seemed to emphasize my words. He would kill me. Surely, he would kill me if I didn’t get away, save myself, go home!

It didn’t work. This was only punishment, and I knew it. Nigel had borne it. Alice had borne worse. Both were alive and healthy. I wasn’t going to die—though as the beating went on, I wanted to. Anything to stop the pain! But there was nothing. Weylin had ample time to finish whipping me.

I was not aware of Rufus untying me, carrying me out of the barn and into Carrie’s and Nigel’s cabin. I was not aware of him directing Alice and Carrie to wash me and care for me as I had cared for Alice. That, Alice told me about later—how he demanded that everything used on me be clean, how he insisted on the deep ugly wound in my side—the scratch—being carefully cleaned and bandaged.

He was gone when I awoke, but he left me Alice. She was there to calm me and feed me pills that I saw were my own inadequate aspirins, and to assure me that my punishment was over, that I was all right. My face was almost too swollen for me to ask for salt water to wash my mouth. After several tries, though, she understood and brought it to me.

“Just rest,” she said. “Carrie and me’ll take care of you as good as you took care of me.”

THE FIGHT 177

I didn’t try to answer. Her words touched something in me, though, started me crying silently. We were both failures, she and I. We’d both run and been brought back, she in days, I in only hours. I probably knew more than she did about the general layout of the Eastern Shore. She knew only the area she’d been born and raised in, and she couldn’t read a map. I knew about towns and rivers miles away—and it hadn’t done me a damned bit of good! What had Weylin said? That educated didn’t mean smart. He had a point. Nothing in my education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape. Yet in a few years an illiterate runaway named Harriet Tubman would make nineteen trips into this country and lead three hundred fugitives to freedom. What had I done wrong? Why was I still slave to a man who had repaid me for saving his life by nearly killing me. Why had I taken yet another beating. And why … why was I so frightened now—frightened sick at the thought that sooner or later, I would have to run again?

I moaned and tried not to think about it. The pain of my body was enough for me to contend with. But now there was a question in my mind that had to be answered.

Would I really try again? Could I?

I moved, twisted myself somehow, from my stomach onto my side. I

tried to get away from my thoughts, but they still came.

See how easily slaves are made? they said.

I cried out as though from the pain of my side, and Alice came to ease me into a less agonizing position. She wiped my face with a cool damp cloth.

“I’ll try again,” I said to her. And I wondered why I was saying it, boasting, maybe lying.

“What?” she asked.

My swollen face and mouth were still distorting my speech. I would have to repeat the words. Maybe they would give me courage if I said them often enough.

“I’ll try again.” I spoke as slowly and as clearly as I could.

“You rest!” Her voice was suddenly rough, and I knew she had under- stood. “Time enough later for talking. Go to sleep.”

But I couldn’t sleep. The pain kept me awake; my own thoughts kept me awake. I caught myself wondering whether I would be sold to some passing trader this time … or next time … I longed for my sleeping pills to give me oblivion, but some small part of me was glad I didn’t have

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them. I didn’t quite trust myself with them just now. I wasn’t quite sure how many of them I might take.

14

Liza, the sewing woman, fell and hurt herself. Alice told me all about it. Liza was bruised and battered. She lost some teeth. She was black and blue all over. Even Tom Weylin was concerned.

“Who did it to you?” he demanded. “Tell me, and they’ll be punished!” “I fell,” she said sullenly. “Fell on the stairs.”

Weylin cursed her for a fool and told her to get out of his sight.

And Alice, Tess, and Carrie concealed their few scratches and gave Liza quiet meaningful glances. Glances that Liza turned away from in anger and fear.

“She heard you get up in the night,” Alice told me. “She got up after you and went straight to Mister Tom. She knew better than to go to Mis- ter Rufe. He might have let you go. Mister Tom never let a nigger go in his life.”

“But why?” I asked from my pallet. I was stronger now, but Rufus had forbidden me to get up. For once, I was glad to obey. I knew that when I got up, Tom Weylin would expect me to work as though I were com- pletely well. Thus, I had missed Liza’s “accident” completely.

“She did it to get at me,” said Alice. “She would have liked it better if I had been the one slipping out at night, but she hates you too—almost as much. She figures I would have died if not for you.”

I was startled. I had never had a serious enemy—someone who would go out of her way to get me hurt or killed. To slaveholders and patrollers, I was just one more nigger, worth so many dollars. What they did to me didn’t have much to do with me personally. But here was a woman who hated me and who, out of sheer malice, had nearly killed me.

“She’ll keep her mouth shut next time,” said Alice. “We let her know what would happen to her if she didn’t. Now she’s more scared of us than of Mister Tom.”

“Don’t get yourselves into trouble over me,” I said. “Don’t be telling us what to do,” she replied.

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15

The first day I was up, Rufus called me to his room and handed me a letter—from Kevin to Tom Weylin.

“Dear Tom,” it said, “There may be no need for this letter since I hope to reach you ahead of it. If I’m held up, however, I want you—and Dana—to know that I’m coming. Please tell her I’m coming.”

It was Kevin’s handwriting—slanted, neat, clear. In spite of the years of note taking and longhand drafts, his writing had never gone to hell the way mine had. I looked blankly at Rufus.

“I said once that Daddy was a fair man,” he said. “You all but laughed out loud.”

“He wrote to Kevin about me?” “He did after … after …”

“After he learned that you hadn’t sent my letters?”

His eyes widened with surprise, then slowly took on a look of under- standing. “So that’s why you ran. How did you find out?”

“By being curious.” I glanced at the bed chest. “By satisfying my curiosity.”

“You could be whipped for snooping through my things.”

I shrugged, and small pains shot through my scabby shoulders.

“I never even saw that they had been moved. I’ll have to watch you better from now on.”

“Why? Are you planning to hide more lies from me?”

He jumped, started to get up, then sat back down heavily and rested one polished boot on his bed. “Watch what you say, Dana. There are things I won’t take, even from you.”

“You lied,” I repeated deliberately. “You lied to me over and over.

Why, Rufe?”

It took several seconds for his anger to dissolve and be replaced by something else. I watched him at first, then looked away, uncomfortably. “I wanted to keep you here,” he whispered. “Kevin hates this place. He would have taken you up North.”

I looked at him again and let myself understand. It was that destruc-

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tive single-minded love of his. He loved me. Not the way he loved Alice, thank God. He didn’t seem to want to sleep with me. But he wanted me around—someone to talk to, someone who would listen to him and care what he said, care about him.

And I did. However little sense it made, I cared. I must have. I kept forgiving him for things …

I stared out the window guiltily, feeling that I should have been more like Alice. She forgave him nothing, forgot nothing, hated him as deeply as she had loved Isaac. I didn’t blame her. But what good did her hating do? She couldn’t bring herself to run away again or to kill him and face her own death. She couldn’t do anything at all except make herself more miserable. She said, “My stomach just turns every time he puts his hands on me!” But she endured. Eventually, she would bear him at least one child. And as much as I cared for him, I would not have done that. I couldn’t have. Twice, he had made me lose control enough to try to kill him. I could get that angry with him, even though I knew the conse- quences of killing him. He could drive me to a kind of unthinking fury. Somehow, I couldn’t take from him the kind of abuse I took from others. If he ever raped me, it wasn’t likely that either of us would survive.

Maybe that was why we didn’t hate each other. We could hurt each other too badly, kill each other too quickly in hatred. He was like a younger brother to me. Alice was like a sister. It was so hard to watch him hurting her—to know that he had to go on hurting her if my family was to exist at all. And, at the moment, it was hard for me to talk calmly about what he had done to me.

“North,” I said finally. “Yes, at least there I could keep the skin on my back.”

He sighed. “I never wanted Daddy to whip you. But hell, don’t you know you got off easy! He didn’t hurt you nearly as much as he’s hurt others.”

I said nothing.

“He couldn’t let a runaway go without some punishment. If he did, there’d be ten more taking off tomorrow. He was easy on you, though, because he figured your running away was my fault.”

“It was.”

“It was your own fault! If you had waited …”

“For what! You were the one I trusted. I did wait until I found out what a liar you were!”

He took the charge without anger this time. “Oh hell, Dana … all right!

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I should have sent the letters. Even Daddy said I should have sent them after I promised you I would. Then he said I was a damn fool for prom- ising.” He paused. “But that promise was the only thing that made him send for Kevin. He didn’t do it out of gratitude to you for helping me. He did it because I had given my word. If not for that, he would have kept you here until you went home. If you’re going to go home this time.”

We sat together in silence for a moment.

“Daddy’s the only man I know,” he said softly, “who cares as much about giving his word to a black as to a white.”

“Does that bother you?”

“No! It’s one of the few things about him I can respect.” “It’s one of the few things about him you should copy.”

“Yeah.” He took his foot off the bed. “Carrie’s bringing a tray up here so we can eat together.”

That surprised me, but I just nodded. “Your back doesn’t hurt much, does it?” “Yes.”

He stared out the window miserably until Carrie arrived with the tray.

16

I went back to helping Sarah and Carrie the next day. Rufus said I didn’t have to, but as tedious as the work was, I could stand it easier than I could stand more long hours of boredom. And now that I knew Kevin was coming, my back and side didn’t seem to hurt as much.

Then Jake Edwards came in to destroy my new-found peace. It was amazing how much misery the man could cause doing the same job Luke had managed to do without hurting anyone.

“You!” he said to me. He knew my name. “You go do the wash. Tess is going to the fields today.”

Poor Tess. Weylin had tired of her as a bed mate and passed her casu- ally to Edwards. She had been afraid Edwards would send her to the fields where he could keep an eye on her. With Alice and I in the house, she knew she could be spared. She had cried with the fear that she would be spared. “You do everything they tell you,” she wept, “and they still treat you like a old dog. Go here, open your legs; go there, bust your

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back. What they care! I ain’t s’pose to have no feelin’s!” She had sat with me crying while I lay on my stomach sweating and hurting and knowing I wasn’t as bad off as I thought I was.

I would be a lot worse off now, though, if I obeyed Edwards. He had no right to give me orders, and he knew it. His authority was over the field hands. But today, Rufus and Tom Weylin had gone into town leav- ing Edwards in charge, leaving him several hours to show us how “important” he was. I’d heard him outside the cookhouse trying to bully Nigel. And I’d heard Nigel’s answer, first placating—“I’m just doing what Marse Tom told me to do.” Finally threatening—“Marse Jake, you put your hands on me, you go’ get hurt. Now that’s all!”

Edwards backed off. Nigel was big and strong and not one to make idle threats. Also, Rufus tended to back Nigel, and Weylin tended to back Rufus. Edwards had cursed Nigel, then come into the cookhouse to bother me. I had neither the size nor the strength to frighten him, espe- cially now. But I knew what a day of washing would do to my back and side. I’d had enough pain, surely.

“Mr. Edwards, I’m not supposed to be washing. Mister Rufus told me not to.” It was a lie, but Rufus would back me too. In some ways, I could still trust him.

“You lyin’ nigger, you do what I tell you to do!” Edwards loomed over me. “You think you been whipped? You don’t know what a whippin’ is yet!” He carried his whip around with him. It was like part of his arm— long and black with its lead-weighted butt. He dropped the coil of it free.

And I went out, God help me, and tried to do the wash. I couldn’t face another beating so soon. I just couldn’t.

When Edwards was gone, Alice came out of Carrie’s cabin and began to help me. I felt sweat on my face mingling with silent tears of frustra- tion and anger. My back had already begun to ache dully, and I felt dully ashamed. Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.

“You stop beatin’ them clothes ’fore you fall over,” Alice told me. “I’ll do this. You go back to the cookhouse.”

“He might come back,” I said. “You might get in trouble.” It wasn’t her trouble I was worried about; it was mine. I didn’t want to be dragged out of the cookhouse and whipped again.

“Not me,” she said. “He knows where I sleep at night.”

I nodded. She was right. As long as she was under Rufus’s protection, Edwards might curse her, but he wouldn’t touch her. Just as he hadn’t touched Tess—until Weylin was finished with her …

“Thanks, Alice, but …” “Who’s that?”

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I looked around. There was a white man, gray-bearded and dusty, rid- ing around the side of the main house toward us. I thought at first that it was the Methodist minister. He was a friend and sometime dinner guest of Tom Weylin in spite of Weylin’s indifference to religion. But no chil- dren gathered around this man as he rode. The kids always mobbed the minister—and his wife too when he brought her along. The couple dis- pensed candy and “safe” Bible verses (“Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters …”). The kids got candy for repeating the verses.

I saw two little girls staring at the gray-bearded stranger, but no one approached him or spoke to him. He rode straight back to us, stopped, sat looking at both of us uncertainly.

I opened my mouth to tell him the Weylins weren’t home, but in that moment, I got a good look at him. I dropped one of Rufus’s good white shirts into the dirt and stumbled over to the fence.

“Dana?” he said softly. The question mark in his voice scared me. Didn’t he know me? Had I changed so much? He hadn’t, beard or no beard.

“Kevin, get down. I can’t reach you up there.”

And he was off the horse and over the laundry yard fence, pulling me to him before I could take another breath.

The dull ache in my back and shoulders roared to life. Suddenly, I was struggling to get away from him. He let me go, confused.

“What the …?”

I went to him again because I couldn’t keep away, but I caught his arms before he could get them around me. “Don’t. My back is sore.”

“Sore from what?”

“From running away to find you. Oh, Kevin …”

He held me—gently now—for several seconds, and I thought if we could just go home then, at that moment, everything would be all right.

Finally, Kevin stood back from me a little, looked at me without let- ting me go. “Who beat you?” he asked quietly.

“I told you, I ran away.”

“Who?” he insisted. “Was it Weylin again?” “Kevin, forget it.”

“Forget …?”

“Yes! Please forget it. I might have to live here again someday.” I

shook my head. “Hate Weylin all you want to. I do. But don’t do any-

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thing to him. Let’s just get out of here.” “It was him then.”

“Yes!”

He turned slowly and stared toward the main house. His face was lined and grim where it wasn’t hidden by the beard. He looked more than ten years older than when I had last seen him. There was a jagged scar across his forehead—the remnant of what must have been a bad wound. This place, this time, hadn’t been any kinder to him than it had been to me. But what had it made of him? What might he be willing to do now that he would not have done before?

“Kevin, please, let’s just go.”

He turned that same hard stare on me.

“Do anything to them and I’ll suffer for it,” I whispered urgently. “Let’s go! Now!”

He stared at me a moment longer, then sighed, rubbed his hand across his forehead. He looked at Alice, and because he didn’t speak to her, just kept looking, I turned to look at her too.

She was watching us—watching dry-eyed, but with more pain than I had ever seen on another person’s face. My husband had come to me, finally. Hers would not be coming to her. Then the look was gone and her mask of toughness was in place again.

“You better do like she says,” she told Kevin softly. “Get her out of here while you can. No telling what our ‘good masters’ will do if you don’t.”

“You’re Alice, aren’t you?” asked Kevin.

She nodded as she would not have to Weylin or Rufus. They would have gotten a dull dry “yes, sir.” “Used to see you ’round here some- times,” she said. “Back when things made sense.”

He made a sound, not quite a laugh. “Was there ever such a time?” He glanced at me, then back at her again, comparing. “Good Lord,” he mur- mured to himself. Then to her, “You going to be all right here, finishing this work by yourself?”

“Go’ be fine,” she said. “Just get her out of here.”

He finally seemed convinced. “Get your things,” he told me.

I almost told him to forget about my things. Extra clothing, medicine, tooth brush, pens, paper, whatever. But here, some of those things were irreplaceable. I climbed the fence, went to the house and up to the attic

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as quickly as I could and stuffed everything into my bag. Somehow, I got out again without being seen, without having to answer questions.

At the laundry yard fence, Kevin waited, feeding something to his mare. I looked at the mare, wondering how tired she was. How far could she carry two people before she had to rest? How far could Kevin go before he had to rest? I looked at him as I reached him and could read weariness now in the dusty lines of his face. I wondered how fast he had traveled to reach me. When had he slept last?

For a moment, we stood wasting time, staring at each other. We couldn’t help it—I couldn’t anyway. New lines and all, he was so damned beautiful.

“It’s been five years for me,” he said. “I know,” I whispered.

Abruptly, he turned away. “Let’s go! Let’s put this place behind us for good.”

Please, God. But not very likely. I turned to say good-bye to Alice, called her name once. She was beating a pair of Rufus’s pants, and she kept beating them with no break in her rhythm to indicate that she had heard me.

“Alice!” I called louder.

She did not turn, did not stop her beating and beating of those pants, though I was certain now that she heard me. Kevin laid a hand on my shoulder and I glanced at him, then again at her. “Good-bye, Alice,” I said, this time not expecting any answer. There was none.

Kevin mounted and helped me up behind him. As we headed away, I leaned against Kevin’s sweaty back and waited for the regular thump of her beating to fade. But we could still hear it faintly when we met Rufus on the road.

Rufus was alone. I was glad of that, at least. But he stopped a few feet ahead of us, frowning, deliberately blocking our way.

“Oh hell,” I muttered.

“You were just going to leave,” Rufus said to Kevin. “No thanks, noth- ing at all, just take her and go.”

Kevin stared at him silently for several seconds—stared until Rufus began to look uncomfortable instead of indignant.

“That’s right,” Kevin said.

Rufus blinked. “Look,” he said in a milder tone, “look, why don’t you

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stay for dinner. My father will be back by then. He’d want you to stay.” “You can tell your father—!”

I dug my fingers into Kevin’s shoulder, cutting off the rush of words before they became insulting in content as well as in tone. “Tell him we were in a hurry,” Kevin finished.

Rufus did not move from blocking our path. He looked at me. “Good-bye, Rufe,” I said quietly.

And without warning, with no perceptible change in mood, Rufus turned slightly and trained his rifle on us. I knew a little about firearms now. It wasn’t wise for any but the most trusted slaves to show an inter- est in them, but then I had been trusted before I ran away. Rufus’s gun was a flintlock, a long slender Kentucky rifle. He had even let me fire it a couple of times … before. And I had looked down the barrel of one like it for his sake. This one, however, was aimed more at Kevin. I stared at it, then at the young man holding it. I kept thinking I knew him, and he kept proving to me that I didn’t.

“Rufe, what are you doing!” I demanded.

“Inviting Kevin to dinner,” he said. And to Kevin, “Get down. I think

Daddy might want to talk to you.”

People kept warning me about him, dropping hints that he was meaner than he seemed to be. Sarah had warned me and most of the time, she loved him like one of the sons she had lost. And I had seen the marks he occasionally left on Alice. But he had never been that way with me—not even when he was angry enough to be. I had never feared him as I’d feared his father. Even now, I wasn’t as frightened as I probably should have been. I wasn’t frightened for myself. That was why I challenged him.

“Rufe, if you shoot anybody, it better be me.” “Dana, shut up!” said Kevin.

“You think I won’t?” said Rufus.

“I think if you don’t, I’ll kill you.”

Kevin got down quickly and hauled me down. He didn’t understand the kind of relationship Rufus and I had—how dependent we were on each other. Rufus understood though.

“No need for any talk of killing,” he said gently—as though he was quieting an angry child. And then to Kevin in a more normal tone, “I just think Daddy might have something to say to you.”

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“About what?” Kevin asked. “Well … about her keep, maybe.”

“My keep!” I exploded, pulling away from Kevin. “My keep! I’ve worked, worked hard every day I’ve been here until your father beat me so badly I couldn’t work! You people owe me! And you, Goddamnit, owe me more than you could ever pay!”

He swung the rifle to where I wanted it. Straight at me. Now I would either goad him into shooting me or shame him into letting us go— or possibly, I would go home. I might go home wounded, or even dead, but one way or another, I would be away from this time, this place. And if I went home, Kevin would go with me. I caught his hand and held it.

“What are you going to do, Rufe? Keep us here at gun point so you can rob Kevin?”

“Get back to the house,” he said. His voice had gone hard. Kevin and I looked at each other, and I spoke softly.

“I already know all I ever want to find out about being a slave,” I told him. “I’d rather be shot than go back in there.”

“I won’t let them keep you,” Kevin promised. “Come on.”

“No!” I glared at him. “You stay or go as you please. I’m not going back in that house!”

Rufus cursed in disgust. “Kevin, put her over your shoulder and bring her in.”

Kevin didn’t move. I would have been amazed if he had.

“Still trying to get other people to do your dirty work for you, aren’t you, Rufe?” I said bitterly. “First your father, now Kevin. To think I wasted my time saving your worthless life!” I stepped toward the mare and caught her reins as though to remount. At that moment, Rufus’s com- posure broke.

“You’re not leaving!” he shouted. He sort of crouched around the gun, clearly on the verge of firing. “Damn you, you’re not leaving me!”

He was going to shoot. I had pushed him too far. I was Alice all over again, rejecting him. Terrified in spite of myself, I dove past the mare’s head, not caring how I fell as long as I put something between myself and the rifle.

I hit the ground—not too hard—tried to scramble up, and found that I

couldn’t. My balance was gone. I heard shouting—Kevin’s voice,

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Rufus’s voice … Suddenly, I saw the gun, blurred, but seemingly only inches from my head. I hit at it and missed. It wasn’t quite where it appeared to be. Everything was distorted, blurred.

“Kevin!” I screamed. I couldn’t leave him behind again—not even if my scream made Rufus fire.

Something landed heavily on my back and I screamed again, this time in pain. Everything went dark.