Kindred

The Storm

1

Home.

I couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a minute. I came to on the living room floor to find Kevin bending over me. There was no one for me to mistake him for this time. It was him, and he was home. We were home. My back felt as though I’d taken another beating, but it didn’t matter. I’d gotten us home without either of us being shot.

“I’m sorry,” said Kevin.

I focused on him clearly. “Sorry about what?” “Doesn’t your back hurt?”

I lowered my head, rested it on my hand. “It hurts.”

“I fell on you. Between Rufus and the horse and you screaming, I

don’t know how it happened, but …”

“Thank God it did happen. Don’t be sorry, Kevin, you’re here. You’d be stranded again if you hadn’t fallen on me.”

He sighed, nodded. “Can you get up? I think I’d hurt you more by lift- ing you than you’d hurt yourself by walking.”

I got up slowly, cautiously, found that it didn’t hurt any more to stand than it did to lie down. My head was clear now, and I could walk with- out trouble.

“Go to bed,” said Kevin. “Get some rest.” “Come with me.”

Something of the expression he’d had when we met in the laundry

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yard came back to him and he took my hands. “Come with me,” I repeated softly.

“Dana, you’re hurt. Your back …” “Hey.”

He stopped, pulled me closer. “Five years?” I whispered. “That long. Yes.”

“They hurt you.” I fingered the scar on his forehead. “That’s nothing. It healed years ago. But you …” “Please come with me.”

He did. He was so careful, so fearful of hurting me. He did hurt me, of course. I had known he would, but it didn’t matter. We were safe. He was home. I’d brought him back. That was enough.

Eventually, we slept.

He wasn’t in the room when I awoke. I lay still listening until I heard him opening and closing doors in the kitchen. And I heard him cursing. He had a slight accent, I realized. Nothing really noticeable, but he did sound a little like Rufus and Tom Weylin. Just a little.

I shook my head and tried to put the comparison out of my mind. He sounded as though he were looking for something, and after five years didn’t know where to find it. I got up and went to help.

I found him fiddling with the stove, turning the burners on, staring into the blue flame, turning them off, opening the oven, peering in. He had his back to me and didn’t see or hear me. Before I could say anything, he slammed the oven door and stalked away shaking his head. “Christ,” he muttered. “If I’m not home yet, maybe I don’t have a home.”

He went into the dining room without noticing me. I stayed where I

was, thinking, remembering.

I could recall walking along the narrow dirt road that ran past the Weylin house and seeing the house, shadowy in twilight, boxy and famil- iar, yellow light showing from some of the windows—Weylin was sur- prisingly extravagant with his candles and oil. I had heard that other peo- ple were not. I could recall feeling relief at seeing the house, feeling that I had come home. And having to stop and correct myself, remind myself that I was in an alien, dangerous place. I could recall being surprised that I would come to think of such a place as home.

That was more than two months ago when I went to get help for Rufus. I had been home to 1976, to this house, and it hadn’t felt that homelike.

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It didn’t now. For one thing, Kevin and I had lived here together for only two days. The fact that I’d had eight extra days here alone didn’t really help. The time, the year, was right, but the house just wasn’t familiar enough. I felt as though I were losing my place here in my own time. Rufus’s time was a sharper, stronger reality. The work was harder, the smells and tastes were stronger, the danger was greater, the pain was worse … Rufus’s time demanded things of me that had never been demanded before, and it could easily kill me if I did not meet its demands. That was a stark, powerful reality that the gentle conveniences and luxuries of this house, of now, could not touch.

And if I felt that way after spending only short periods in the past, what must Kevin be feeling after five years. His white skin had saved him from much of the trouble I had faced, but still, he couldn’t have had an easy time.

I found him in the living room trying knobs on the television set. It was new to us, that television, like the house. The on/off switch was under the screen out of sight, and Kevin clearly didn’t remember.

I went to it, reached under, and switched the set on. There was a pub- lic service announcement on advising women to see their doctors and take care of themselves while they were pregnant.

“Turn it off,” said Kevin. I obeyed.

“I saw a woman die in childbirth once,” he said.

I nodded. “I never saw it, but I kept hearing about it happening. It was pretty common back then, I guess. Poor medical care or none at all.”

“No, medical care had nothing to do with the case I saw. This woman’s master strung her up by her wrists and beat her until the baby came out of her—dropped onto the ground.”

I swallowed, looked away, rubbing my wrists. “I see.” Would Weylin have done such a thing to one of his pregnant slave women, I wondered. Probably not. He had more business sense than that. Dead mother, dead baby—dead loss. I’d heard stories, though, about other slaveholders who didn’t care what they did. There was a woman on Weylin’s plantation whose former master had cut three fingers from her right hand when he caught her writing. She had a baby nearly every year, that woman. Nine so far, seven surviving. Weylin called her a good breeder, and he never whipped her. He was selling off her children, though, one by one.

Kevin stared at the blank TV screen, then turned away with a bitter

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laugh. “I feel like this is just another stopover,” he said. “A little less real than the others, maybe.”

“Stopover?”

“Like Philadelphia. Like New York and Boston. Like that farm in

Maine …”

“You did get to Maine, then?”

“Yes. Almost bought a farm there. Would have been a stupid mistake. Then a friend in Boston forwarded me Weylin’s letter. Home at last, I thought, and you …” He looked at me. “Well. I got half of what I wanted. You’re still you.”

I went to him with relief that surprised me. I hadn’t realized how much I’d worried, even now, that I might not be “still me” as far as he was concerned.

“Everything is so soft here,” he said, “so easy …” “I know.”

“It’s good. Hell, I wouldn’t go back to some of the pestholes I’ve lived in for pay. But still …”

We were walking through the dining room, through the hall. We stopped at my office and he went in to look at the map of the United States that I had on the wall. “I kept going farther and farther up the east coast,” he said. “I guess I would have wound up in Canada next. But in all my traveling, do you know the only time I ever felt relieved and eager to be going to a place?”

“I think so,” I said quietly.

“It was when …” He stopped, realizing what I had said, and frowned at me.

“It was when you went back to Maryland,” I said. “When you visited the Weylins to see whether I was there.”

He looked surprised, but strangely pleased. “How could you know that?”

“It’s true, isn’t it?” “It’s true.”

“I felt it the last time Rufus called me. I’ve got no love at all for that place, but so help me, when I saw it again, it was so much like coming home that it scared me.”

Kevin stroked his beard. “I grew this to come back.” “Why?”

“To disguise myself. You ever hear of a man named Denmark Vesey?”

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“The freedman who plotted rebellion down in South Carolina.”

“Yes. Well, Vesey never got beyond the planning stage, but he scared the hell out of a lot of white people. And a lot of black people suffered for it. Around that time, I was accused of helping slaves to escape. I barely got out ahead of the mob.”

“Were you at the Weylins’ then?”

“No, I had a job teaching school.” He rubbed the scar on his forehead. “I’ll tell you all about it, Dana, but some other time. Now, somehow, I’ve got to fit myself back into nineteen seventy-six. If I can.”

“You can.” He shrugged.

“One more thing. Just one.”

He looked at me questioningly.

“Were you helping slaves to escape?”

“Of course I was! I fed them, hid them during the day, and when night came, I pointed them toward a free black family who would feed and hide them the next day.”

I smiled and said nothing. He sounded angry, almost defensive about what he had done.

“I guess I’m not used to saying things like that to people who under- stand them,” he said.

“I know. It’s enough that you did what you did.”

He rubbed his head again. “Five years is longer than it sounds. So much longer.”

We went on to his office. Both our offices were ex-bedrooms in the solidly built old frame house we had bought. They were big comfortable rooms that reminded me a little of the rooms in the Weylin house.

No. I shook my head, denying the impression. This house was nothing like the Weylin house. I watched Kevin look around his office. He circled the room, stopping at his desk, at the file cabinets, at the book cases. He stood for a moment looking at the shelf filled with copies of The Water of Meribah, his most successful novel—the novel that had bought us this house. He touched a copy as though to take it down, then left it and drifted back to his typewriter. He fumbled with that for a moment, remembered how to turn it on, then looked at the stack of blank paper beside it and turned it off again. Abruptly, he brought his fist down hard on it.

I jumped at the sudden sound. “You’ll break it, Kevin.”

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“What difference would that make?”

I winced, remembered my own attempts to write when I’d been home last. I had tried and tried and only managed to fill my wastebasket.

“What am I going to do?” said Kevin, turning his back on the type- writer. “Christ, if I can’t feel anything even in here …”

“You will. Give yourself time.”

He picked up his electric pencil sharpener, examined it as though he did not know what it was, then seemed to remember. He put it down, took a pencil from a china cup on the desk, and put it in the sharpener. The little machine obligingly ground the pencil to a fine point. Kevin stared at the point for a moment, then at the sharpener.

“A toy,” he said. “Nothing but a damned toy.”

“That’s what I said when you bought it,” I told him. I tried to smile and make it a joke, but there was something in his voice that scared me.

With a sudden slash of his hand, he knocked both the sharpener and the cup of pencils from his desk. The pencils scattered and the cup broke. The sharpener bounced hard on the bare floor, just missing the rug. I unplugged it quickly.

“Kevin …” He stalked out of the room before I could finish. I ran after him, caught his arm. “Kevin!”

He stopped, glared at me as though I was some stranger who had dared to lay hands on him.

“Kevin, you can’t come back all at once any more than you can leave all at once. It takes time. After a while, though, things will fall into place.”

His expression did not change.

I took his face between my hands and looked into his eyes, now truly cold. “I don’t know what it was like for you,” I said, “being gone so long, having so little control over whether you’d ever get back. I can’t really know, I guess. But I do know … that I almost didn’t want to be alive when I thought I’d left you behind for good. But now that you’re back …”

He pulled away from me and walked out of the room. The expression on his face was like something I’d seen, something I was used to seeing on Tom Weylin. Something closed and ugly.

I didn’t go after him when I left his office. I didn’t know what to do to help him, and I didn’t want to look at him and see things that reminded me of Weylin. But because I went to the bedroom, I found him.

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He was standing beside the dresser looking at a picture of himself— himself as he had been. He had always hated having his picture taken, but I had talked him into this one, a close-up of the young face under a cap of thick gray hair, dark brows, pale eyes …

I was afraid he would throw the picture down, smash it as he had tried to smash the pencil sharpener. I took it from his hand. He let it go easily and turned to look at himself in the dresser mirror. He ran a hand through his hair, still thick and gray. He would probably never be bald. But he looked old now; the young face had changed more than could be accounted for by the new lines in his face or the beard.

“Kevin?”

He closed his eyes. “Leave me alone for a while, Dana,” he said softly. “I just need to be by myself and get used to … to things again.”

There was suddenly a loud, house-shaking sonic boom and Kevin jumped back against the dresser looking around wildly.

“Just a jet passing overhead,” I told him.

He gave me what almost seemed to be a look of hatred, then brushed past me, went to his office and shut the door.

I left him alone. I didn’t know what else to do—or even whether there was anything I could do. Maybe this was something he had to work out for himself. Maybe it was something that only time could help. Maybe anything. But I felt so damned helpless as I looked down the hall at his closed door. Finally, I went to bathe, and that hurt enough to hold my attention for a while. Then I checked my denim bag, put in a bottle of antiseptic, Kevin’s large bottle of Excedrin, and an old pocket knife to replace the switchblade. The knife was large and easily as deadly as the switchblade I had lost, but I wouldn’t be able to use it as quickly, and I would have a harder time surprising an opponent with it. I considered taking a kitchen knife of some kind instead, but I thought one big enough to be effective would be too hard to hide. Not that any kind of knife had been very effective for me so far. Having one just made me feel safer.

I dropped the knife into the bag and replaced soap, tooth paste, some clothing, a few other things. My thoughts went back to Kevin. Did he blame me for the five years he had lost, I wondered. Or if he didn’t now, would he when he tried to write again? He would try. Writing was his profession. I wondered whether he had been able to write during the five years, or rather, whether he had been able to publish. I was sure he had been writing. I couldn’t imagine either of us going for five years without

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writing. Maybe he’d kept a journal or something. He had changed— in five years he couldn’t help changing. But the markets he wrote for hadn’t changed. He might have a frustrating time for a while. And he might blame me.

It had been so good seeing him again, loving him, knowing his exile was ended. I had thought everything would be all right. Now I wondered if anything would be all right.

I put on a loose dress and went to the kitchen to see what we could make a meal of—if I could get Kevin to eat. The chops I had put out to defrost over two months ago were still icy. How long had we been away, then? What day was it? Somehow, neither of us had bothered to find out.

I turned on the radio and found a news station—tuned in right in the middle of a story about the war in Lebanon. The war there was worse. The President was ordering an evacuation of nonofficial Americans. That sounded like what he had been ordering on the day Rufus called me. A moment later, the announcer mentioned the day, confirming what I had thought. I had been away for only a few hours. Kevin had been away for eight days. Nineteen seventy-six had not gone on without us.

The news switched to a story about South Africa—blacks rioting there and dying wholesale in battles with police over the policies of the white supremacist government.

I turned off the radio and tried to cook the meal in peace. South African whites had always struck me as people who would have been happier living in the nineteenth century, or the eighteenth. In fact, they were living in the past as far as their race relations went. They lived in ease and comfort supported by huge numbers of blacks whom they kept in poverty and held in contempt. Tom Weylin would have felt right at home.

After a while, the smell of food brought Kevin out of his office, but he ate in silence.

“Can’t I help?” I asked finally. “Help with what?”

There was an edge to his voice that made me wary. I didn’t answer. “I’m all right,” he said grudgingly.

“No you’re not.”

He put his fork down. “How long were you away this time?” “A few hours. Or just over two months. Take your pick.”

“There was a newspaper in my office. I was reading it. I don’t know

how old it is, but …”

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“It’s today’s paper. It came the morning Rufus called me last. That’s this morning if you want to believe the calendar. June eighteenth.”

“It doesn’t matter. I wasted my time reading that paper. I didn’t know what the hell it was talking about most of the time.”

“It’s like I said. The confusion doesn’t go away all at once. It doesn’t for me either.”

“It was so good coming home at first.” “It was good. It still is.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

“You’re in too much of a hurry. You …” I stopped, realized I was swaying a little on my chair. “Oh God, no!” I whispered.

“I suppose I am,” said Kevin. “I wonder how people just out of prison manage to readjust.”

“Kevin, go get my bag. I left it in the bedroom.” “What? Why …?”

“Go, Kevin!”

He went, understanding finally. I sat still, praying that he would come back in time. I could feel tears streaming down my face. So soon, so soon

… Why couldn’t I have had just a few days with him—a few days of peace at home?

I felt something pressed into my hands and I grasped it. My bag. I opened my eyes to the dark blur of it, and the larger blur of Kevin stand- ing near me. I was suddenly afraid of what he might do.

“Get away, Kevin!”

He said something, but suddenly, there was too much noise for me to hear him—even if he had still been there.

2

There was water, rain pouring down on me. I was sitting in mud clutching my bag.

I got up sheltering my bag as much as I could so that eventually, I’d have something dry to change into. I looked around grimly for Rufus.

I couldn’t find him. I peered through the dim gray light, looked around

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until I realized where I was. I could see the familiar boxy Weylin house in the distance, yellow light at one window. At least there would be no long walk for me this time. In this storm, that was something to be grate- ful for. But where was Rufus? If he was in trouble inside the house, why had I arrived outside?

I shrugged and started toward the house. If he was there, it would be stupid for me to waste time out here. Not that I could get any wetter.

I tripped over him.

He was lying face down in a puddle so deep the water almost covered his head. Face down.

I grabbed him and pulled him out of the water and over to a tree that would shelter us a little from the rain. A moment later, there was thunder and a flash of lightning, and I dragged him away from the tree again. With his ability to draw bad luck I didn’t want to take chances.

He was alive. As I moved him, he threw up on himself and partly on me. I almost joined him. He began to cough and mutter and I realized that he was either drunk or sick. More probably drunk. He was also heavy. He didn’t look any bigger than he had when I saw him last, but he was soak- ing wet now, and he was beginning to struggle feebly.

I had been dragging him toward the house while he was still. Now, I dropped him in disgust and went to the house alone. Some stronger, more tolerant person could drag or carry him the rest of the way.

Nigel answered the door, stood peering down at me. “Who the devil …?”

“It’s Dana, Nigel.”

“Dana?” He was suddenly alert. “What happened? Where’s Marse

Rufe?”

“Out there. He was too heavy for me.” “Where?”

I looked back the way I had come and could not see Rufus. If he had flipped himself over again …

“Damn!” I muttered. “Come on.” I led him back to the gray lump—

still face up—that was Rufus. “Watch it,” I said. “He threw up on me.” Nigel picked Rufus up like a sack of grain, threw him over his shoul-

der, and strode back to the house in such quick long strides that I had to run to keep up. Rufus threw up again down Nigel’s back, but Nigel paid no attention. The rain washed them both fairly clean before we reached the house.

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Inside, we met Weylin who was coming down the stairs. He stopped short as he saw us. “You!” he said, staring at me.

“Hello, Mr. Weylin,” I said wearily. He looked bent and old—thinner than ever. He walked with a cane.

“Is Rufus all right? Is he …?”

“He’s alive,” I said. “I found him unconscious, face down in a ditch. A little more and he would have drowned.”

“If you’re here, I suppose he would have.” The old man looked at Nigel. “Take him up to his room and put him to bed. Dana, you …” He stopped, looked at my dripping, clinging—to him—immodestly short dress. It was the kind of loose smocklike garment that little children of both sexes wore before they were old enough to work. It clearly offended Weylin more than my pants ever had. “Haven’t you got something decent to put on?” he asked.

I looked at my wet bag. “Decent, maybe, but probably not dry.” “Go put on what you’ve got, then come back down to the library.”

He wanted to talk to me, I thought. Just what I needed at the end of a long jumbled day. Weylin didn’t talk to me normally except to give orders. When he did, it was always harrowing. There was so much that I coudn’t say; he took offense so easily.

I followed Nigel up the stairs, then went on to the narrow, ladderlike attic stairs. My old corner was empty so I went there to put my bag down and search through it. I found a nearly dry shirt and a pair of Levi’s that were wet only at the ankles. I dried myself, changed, combed my hair, and spread out some of my wettest clothing to dry. Then I went down to Weylin. I had learned not to worry about leaving my things in the attic. Other house servants examined them. I knew that because I had caught them at it now and then. But nothing was ever missing.

Apprehensively, I went through the library door.

“You look as young as you ever did,” Weylin complained sourly when he saw me.

“Yes, sir.” I’d agree with anything he said if it would get me away from him sooner.

“What happened to you there? Your face.”

I touched the scab. “That’s where you kicked me, Mr. Weylin.”

He had been sitting in a worn old arm chair, but now he surged out of it like a young man, his cane a blunt wooden sword before him. “What are you talking about! It’s been six years since I’ve seen you.”

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“Yes, sir.” “Well!”

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“For me, it’s only been a few hours.” I thought Rufus and Kevin had probably told him enough to enable him to understand, whether he believed or not. And perhaps he did understand. He seemed to get angrier.

“Who in hell ever said you were an educated nigger? You can’t even tell a decent lie. Six years for me is six years for you!”

“Yes, sir,” Why did he bother to ask me questions? Why did I bother to answer them?

He sat down again and leaned forward, one hand resting on his cane. His voice was softer, though, when he spoke. “That Franklin get back home all right?”

“Yes, sir.” What would happen if I asked him where he thought that home was? But no, he had done at least one decent thing for Kevin and me, no matter what he was. I met his eyes for a moment. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

My temper flared suddenly. “I don’t give a damn why you did it! I’m just telling you, one human being to another, that I’m grateful. Why can’t you leave it at that!”

The old man’s face went pale. “You want a good whipping!” he said. “You must not have had one for a while.”

I said nothing. I realized then, though, that if he ever hit me again, I

would break his scrawny neck. I would not endure it again.

Weylin leaned back in his chair. “Rufus always said you didn’t know your place any better than a wild animal,” he muttered. “I always said you were just another crazy nigger.”

I stood watching him.

“Why’d you help my son again?” he asked.

I settled down a little, shrugged. “Nobody ought to die the way he would have—lying in a ditch, drowning in mud and whiskey and his own vomit.”

“Stop it!” Weylin shouted. “I’ll take the cowhide to you myself! I’ll

…” He fell silent, gasped for breath. His face was still dead white. He’d make himself really sick if he didn’t regain some of his old control.

I dropped back into indifference. “Yes, sir.”

After a moment he had control of himself. In fact, he sounded per- fectly calm again. “You and Rufus had some trouble when you saw him

last.”

THE ST ORM 201

“Yes, sir.” Having Rufus try to shoot me had been troublesome.

“I hoped you would go on helping him. You know there’s always a home for you here if you do.”

I smiled a little in spite of myself. “Bad nigger that I am, eh?” “Is that the way you think of yourself ?”

I laughed bitterly. “No. I don’t kid myself much. Your son is still alive, isn’t he?”

“You’re bad enough. I don’t know any other white man who would put up with you.”

“If you can manage to put up with me a little more humanely, I’ll go on doing what I can for Mister Rufus.”

He frowned. “Now what are you talking about?”

“I’m saying the day I’m beaten just once more, your son is on his own.”

His eyes widened, perhaps in surprise. Then he began to tremble. I had never before seen a man literally trembling with anger. “You’re threat- ening him!” he stammered. “By God, you are crazy!”

“Crazy or sane, I mean what I say.” My back and side ached as though to warn me, but for the moment, I wasn’t afraid. He loved his son no mat- ter how he behaved toward him, and he knew I could do as I threatened. “At the rate Mister Rufus has accidents,” I said, “he might live another six or seven years without me. I wouldn’t count on more than that.”

“You damned black bitch!” He shook his cane at me like an extended forefinger. “If you think you can get away with making threats … giving orders …” He ran out of breath and began gasping again. I watched with- out sympathy, wondering whether he was already sick. “Get out!” he gasped. “Go to Rufus. Take care of him. If anything happens to him, I’ll flay you alive!”

My aunt used to say things like that to me when I was little and did something to annoy her—“Girl, I’m going to skin you alive!” And she’d get my uncle’s belt and use it on me. But it had never occurred to me that anyone could make such a threat and mean it literally as Weylin meant it now. I turned and left him before he could see that my courage had vanished. He could get help from his neighbors, from the patrollers, probably even from whatever police officials the area had. He could do anything he wanted to to me, and I had no enforceable rights. None at all.

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3

Rufus was sick again. When I reached his room I found him lying in bed shaking violently while Nigel tried to keep him wrapped in blankets.

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said Nigel. “Got the ague again, I guess.” “Ague?”

“Yeah, he’s had it before. He’ll be all right.”

He didn’t look all right to me. “Has anyone gone for the doctor?” “Marse Tom don’t hardly get Doc West for ague. He says all the doc

knows is bleeding and blistering and purging and puking and making folks sicker than they was to start.”

I swallowed, remembered the pompous little man I had disliked so. “Is the doctor really that bad, Nigel?”

“He gave me some stuff once, nearly killed me. From then on, I just let Sarah doctor me when I’m sick. ’Least she don’t dose niggers like they was horses or mules.”

I shook my head and went close to Rufus’s bed. He looked miserable, seemed to be in pain. I tried to think what the ague might be; the word was familiar, but I couldn’t remember what I’d heard or read about it.

Rufus looked up at me, red-eyed, and tried to smile, though the gri- mace he managed was far from pleasant. To my surprise, his attempt touched me. I hadn’t expected to still care about him except for my own and my family’s sake. I didn’t want to care.

“Idiot,” I muttered down at him. He managed to look hurt.

I looked at Nigel, wondered whether the disease could be as unimpor- tant as he thought. Would he think it was important if he had been the one on his back shaking?

Nigel was busy plucking his wet shirt away from his skin. No one had given him a chance to change his clothes, I realized.

“Nigel, I’ll stay here if you want to go dry off,” I said.

He looked up, smiled at me. “You go away for six years,” he said, “then come back and fit right in. It’s like you never left.”

“Every time I go I keep hoping I’ll never come back.”

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He nodded. “But at least you get some time of freedom.”

I looked away, feeling strangely guilty that, yes, I did get some time of freedom. Not enough, but probably more than Nigel would ever know. I didn’t like feeling guilty about it. Then something bit me on my ear and I forgot my guilt. As I slapped at my ear, I remembered, finally, what the ague was.

Malaria.

I wondered dully whether the mosquito that had just bitten me was car- rying the disease. In my reading I’d come across a lot of information on malaria and none of it led me to believe the disease was as harmless as Nigel seemed to think. It might not kill, but it weakened and it recurred and it could lower one’s resistance to other diseases. Also, with Rufus lying exposed as he was to new mosquito attacks, the disease could be spread over the plantation and beyond.

“Nigel, is there anything we can hang up to keep the mosquitoes off him?”

“Mosquitoes! He wouldn’t feel it if twenty mosquitoes bit him now.” “No, but the rest of us would be feeling it eventually.”

“What do you mean?”

“Does anyone else have it now?”

“Don’t think so. Some of the children are sick, but I think they have something wrong with their faces—one side all swollen up.”

Mumps? Never mind. “Well, let’s see if we can keep this from spread- ing. Is there any kind of mosquito netting—or whatever people use here?”

“Sure, for white folks. But …”

“Would you get some? With the help of the canopy, we should be able to enclose him completely.”

“Dana, listen!”

I looked at him.

“What do mosquitoes have to do with the ague?”

I blinked, stared at him in surprise. He didn’t know. Of course he didn’t. Doctors of the day didn’t know. Which probably meant that Nigel wouldn’t believe me when I told him. After all, how could a thing as tiny as a mosquito make anybody sick? “Nigel, you know where I’m from, don’t you?”

He gave me something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Not New York.” “No.”

“I know where Marse Rufe said you was from.”

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“It shouldn’t be that hard for you to believe him. You’ve seen me go home at least once.”

“Twice.” “Well?”

He shrugged. “I can’t say. If I hadn’t seen … the way you go home, I’d just figure you were one crazy nigger. But I haven’t ever seen any- body do what you did. I don’t want to believe you, but I guess I do.”

“Good.” I took a deep breath. “Where I’m from, people have learned that mosquitoes carry ague. They bite someone who’s sick with it, then later they bite healthy people and give them the disease.”

“How?”

“They suck blood from the sick and … pass on some of that blood when they bite a healthy person. Like a mad dog that bites a man and drives the man mad.” No talk about micro-organisms. Nigel not only wouldn’t believe me, he might decide I really was crazy.

“Doc says it’s something in the air that spreads ague—something off bad water and garbage. A miasma, he called it.”

“He’s wrong. He’s wrong about the bleeding and purging and the rest, he was wrong when he dosed you, and he’s wrong now. It’s a wonder any of his patients survive.”

“I heard he was good and quick when it comes to cutting off legs or arms.”

I had to look at Nigel to see whether he was making a grisly joke. He wasn’t. “Get the mosquito net,” I said wearily. “Let’s do what we can to keep that butcher away from here.”

He nodded and went away. I wondered whether or not he believed me, but it didn’t really matter. It wouldn’t cost anyone anything to take this small precaution.

I looked down at Rufus to see that he had stopped trembling and closed his eyes. His breathing was regular and I thought he was asleep.

“Why do you keep trying to kill yourself ?” I said softly.

I hadn’t expected an answer so I was surprised when he spoke quietly. “Most of the time, living just isn’t worth the trouble.”

I sat down next to his bed. “It never occurred to me that you might really want to die.”

“I don’t.” He opened his eyes, looked at me, then shut them again and covered them with his hands. “But if your eyes and your head and your leg hurt the way mine do, dying might start to look good.”

“Your eyes hurt?” “When I look around.”

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“Did they hurt before when you had ague?”

“No. This isn’t ague. Ague is bad enough. My leg feels like it’s com- ing off, and my head …!”

He scared me. His pain seemed to increase and he twisted his body as though to move away from it, then untwisted quickly and lay panting.

“Rufe, I’m going to get your father. If he sees how sick you are, he’ll send for the doctor.”

He seemed to be too involved with his own pain to answer. I didn’t want to leave him until Nigel came back, though I had no idea what I could do for him. My problem was solved when Weylin came in with Nigel.

“What is all this about mosquitoes giving people ague?” he demanded. “We may be able to forget about that,” I said. “This doesn’t look like malaria. Ague. He’s in a lot of pain. I think someone should go for the

doctor.”

“You’re doctor enough for him.”

“But …” I stopped, took a deep breath, made myself calm down. Rufus was groaning behind me. “Mr. Weylin, I’m no doctor. I don’t have any idea what’s wrong with him. Whatever professional help is available, you should get it for him.”

“Should I now?”

“His life may be at stake.”

Weylin’s mouth was set in a straight hard line. “If he dies, you die, and you won’t die easy.”

“You already said that. But no matter what you do to me, your son will still be dead. Is that what you want?”

“You do your job,” he said stubbornly, “and he’ll live. You’re some- thing different. I don’t know what—witch, devil, I don’t care. Whatever you are, you just about brought a girl back to life when you came here last, and she wasn’t even the one you came to help. You come out of nowhere and go back into nowhere. Years ago, I would have sworn there couldn’t even be anybody like you. You’re not natural! But you can feel pain—and you can die. Remember that and do your job. Take care of your master.”

“But, I tell you …”

He walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.

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4

We got the mosquito netting and used it, just in case. Nigel said Weylin didn’t really mind letting us have it. He just didn’t want to hear any more damned nonsense about mosquitoes. He didn’t like to be taken for a fool. “He’s as close to being scared of you as he’s ever been of anything,”

said Nigel. “I think he’d rather try to kill you than admit it though.” “I don’t see any sign of fear in him.”

“You don’t know him the way I do.” Nigel paused. “Could he kill you, Dana?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“We better get Marse Rufe well then. Sarah has a kind of tea she makes that kind of helps the ague. Maybe it will help whatever Marse Rufe has now.”

“Would you ask her to brew up a pot?” He nodded and went out.

Sarah came upstairs with Nigel to bring Rufus the tea and to see me. She looked old now. Her hair was streaked with gray and her face lined. She walked with a limp.

“Dropped a kettle on my foot,” she said. “Couldn’t walk at all for a while.” She gave me the feeling that everyone was getting older, passing me by. She brought me roast beef and bread to eat.

Rufus had a fever now. He didn’t want the tea, but I coaxed and bul- lied until he swallowed it. Then we all waited, but all that happened was that Rufus’s other leg began to hurt. His eyes bothered him most because moving them hurt him, and he couldn’t help following my movements or Nigel’s around the room. Finally, I put a cool damp cloth over them. That seemed to help. He still had a lot of pain in his joints—his arms, his legs, everywhere. I thought I could ease that, so I took his candle and went up to the attic for my bag. I was just in time to catch a little girl trying to get the top off my Excedrin bottle. It scared me. She could just as easily have chosen the sleeping pills. The attic wasn’t as safe a place as I had thought.

“No, honey, give those to me.” “They yours?”

“Yes.”

“They candy?”

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Good Lord. “No, they’re medicine. Nasty medicine.”

“Ugh!” she said, and handed them back to me. She went back to her pallet next to another child. They were new children. I wondered whether the two little boys who had preceded them had been sold or sent to the fields.

I took the Excedrin, what was left of the aspirin, and the sleeping pills back down with me. I would have to keep them somewhere in Rufus’s room or eventually one of the kids would figure out how to get the safety caps off.

Rufus had thrown off the damp cloth and was knotted on his side in pain when I got back to him. Nigel had lain down on the floor before the fireplace and gone to sleep. He could have gone back to his cabin, but he had asked me if I wanted him to stay since this was my first night back, and I’d said yes.

I dissolved three aspirins in water and tried to get Rufus to drink it. He wouldn’t even open his mouth. So I woke Nigel, and Nigel held him down while I held his nose and poured the bad-tasting solution into his mouth as he gasped for air. He cursed us both, but after a while he began to feel a little better. Temporarily.

It was a bad night. I didn’t get much sleep. Nor was I to get much for six days and nights following. Whatever Rufus had, it was terrible. He was in constant pain, he had fever—once I had to call Nigel to hold him while I tied him down to keep him from hurting himself. I gave him aspirins—too many, but not as many as he wanted. I made him take broth and soup and fruit and vegetable juices. He didn’t want them. He never wanted to eat, but he didn’t want Nigel holding him down either. He ate.

Alice came in now and then to relieve me. Like Sarah, she looked older. She also looked harder. She was a cool, bitter older sister to the girl I had known.

“Folks treat her bad because of Marse Rufe,” Nigel told me. “They figure if she’s been with him this long, she must like it.”

And Alice said contemptuously, “Who cares what a bunch of niggers think!”

“She lost two babies,” Nigel told me. “And the one she’s got left is sickly.”

“White babies,” Alice said. “Look more like him than me. Joe is even red-headed.” Joe was the single survivor. I almost cried when I heard

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that. No Hagar yet. I was so tired of this going back and forth; I wanted so much for it to be over. I couldn’t even feel sorry for the friend who had fought for me and taken care of me when I was hurt. I was too busy feeling sorry for myself.

On the third day of his illness, Rufus’s fever left him. He was weak and several pounds lighter, but so relieved to be rid of the fever and the pain that nothing else mattered. He thought he was getting well. He wasn’t.

The fever and the pain returned for three more days and he got a rash that itched and eventually peeled …

At last, he got well and stayed well. I prayed that whatever his disease had been, I wouldn’t get it, wouldn’t ever have to care for anyone else who had it. A few days after the worst of his symptoms had disappeared, I was allowed to sleep in the attic. I collapsed gratefully onto the pallet Sarah had made me there, and it felt like the world’s softest bed. I didn’t awaken until late the next morning after long hours of deep, unbroken sleep. I was still a little groggy when Alice came running up the steps and into the attic to get me.

“Marse Tom is sick,” she said. “Marse Rufe wants you to come.” “Oh no,” I muttered. “Tell him to send for the doctor.”

“Already sent for. But Marse Tom is having bad pains in his chest.” The significance of that filtered through to me slowly. “Pains in his

chest?”

“Yeah. Come on. They in the parlor.”

“God, that sounds like a heart attack. There’s nothing I can do.” “Just come. They want you.”

I pulled on a pair of pants and threw on a shirt as I ran. What did these people want from me? Magic? If Weylin was having a heart attack, he was going to either recover or die without my help.

I ran down the stairs and into the parlor where Weylin lay on a sofa, ominously still and silent.

“Do something!” Rufus pleaded. “Help him!” His voice sounded as thin and weak as he looked. His sickness had left its marks on him. I wondered how he had gotten downstairs.

Weylin wasn’t breathing, and I couldn’t find a pulse. For a moment, I stared at him, undecided, repelled, not wanting to touch him again, let alone breathe into him. Then quelling disgust, I began mouth to mouth resuscitation and external heart massage—what did they call it? Car- diopulmonary resuscitation. I knew the name, and I’d seen someone

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doing it on television. Beyond that, I was completely ignorant. I didn’t even know why I was trying to save Weylin. He wasn’t worth it. And I didn’t know if CPR could do any good in an era when there was no ambulance to call, no one to take over for me even if I somehow got Weylin’s heart going—which I didn’t expect to do.

Which I didn’t do.

Finally, I gave up. I looked around to see Rufus on the floor near me. I didn’t know whether he had sat down or fallen, but I was glad he was sitting now.

“I’m sorry, Rufe. He’s dead.” “You let him die?”

“He was dead when I got here. I tried to bring him back the way I

brought you back when you were drowning. I failed.” “You let him die.”

He sounded like a child about to cry. His illness had weakened him so, I thought he might cry. Even healthy people cried and said irrational things when their parents died.

“I did what I could, Rufe. I’m sorry.”

“Damn you to hell, you let him die!” He tried to lunge at me, suc- ceeded only in falling over. I moved to help him up, but stopped when he tried to push me away.

“Send Nigel to me,” he whispered. “Get Nigel.”

I got up and went to find Nigel. Behind me, I heard Rufus say once more, “You just let him die.”

5

Things were happening too fast for me. I was almost glad to find myself put back to work with Sarah and Carrie, ignored by Rufus. I needed time to catch up with myself—and catch up with life on the plan- tation. Carrie and Nigel had three sons now, and Nigel had never men- tioned it to me because the youngest was two years old. He had forgot- ten that I didn’t know. I was with him once, as he watched them playing. “It’s good to have children,” he said softly. “Good to have sons. But it’s so hard to see them be slaves.”

I met Alice’s thin pale little boy and saw with relief that in spite of the

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way she talked, she obviously loved the child.

“I keep thinking I might wake up and find him cold like the others,”

she said one day in the cookhouse. “What did they die of ?” I asked.

“Fevers. The doctor came and bled them and purged them, but they still died.”

“He bled and purged babies?”

“They were two and three. He said it would break the fever. And it did. But they … they died anyway.”

“Alice, if I were you, I wouldn’t ever let that man near Joe.”

She looked at her son sitting on the floor of the cookhouse eating mush and milk. He was five years old and he looked almost white in spite of Alice’s dark skin. “I never wanted no doctor near the other two,” said Alice. “Marse Rufe sent for him—sent for him and made me let him kill my babies.”

Rufus’s intentions had been good. Even the doctor’s intentions had probably been good. But all Alice knew was that her children were dead and she blamed Rufus. Rufus himself was to teach me about that attitude.

On the day after Weylin was buried, Rufus decided to punish me for letting the old man die. I didn’t know whether he honestly believed I had done such a thing. Maybe he just needed to hurt someone. He did lash out at others when he was hurt; I had already seen that.

So on the morning after the funeral, he sent the current overseer, a burly man named Evan Fowler, to get me from the cookhouse. Jake Edwards had either quit or been fired sometime during my six-year absence. Fowler came to tell me I was to work in the fields.

I didn’t believe it, even when the man pushed me out of the cook- house. I thought he was just another Jake Edwards throwing his weight around. But outside, Rufus stood waiting, watching. I looked at him, then back at Fowler.

“This the one?” Fowler asked Rufus.

“That’s her,” said Rufus. And he turned and went back into the main house.

Stunned, I took the sicklelike corn knife Fowler thrust into my hands and let myself be herded out toward the cornfield. Herded. Fowler got his horse and rode a little behind me as I walked. It was a long walk. The cornfield wasn’t where I’d left it. Apparently, even in this time, planters practiced some form of crop rotation. Not that that mattered to me. What

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in the world could I do in a cornfield?

I glanced back at Fowler. “I’ve never done field work before,” I told him. “I don’t know how.”

“You’ll learn,” he said. He used the handle of his whip to scratch his shoulder.

I began to realize that I should have resisted, should have refused to let Fowler bring me out here where only other slaves could see what hap- pened to me. Now it was too late. It was going to be a grim day.

Slaves were walking down rows of corn, chopping the stalks down with golf-swing strokes of their knives. Two slaves worked a row, mov- ing toward each other. Then they gathered the stalks they had cut and stood them in bunches at opposite ends of the row. It looked easy, but I suspected that a day of it could be backbreaking.

Fowler dismounted and pointed toward a row.

“You chop like the others,” he said. “Just do what they do. Now get to work.” He shoved me toward the row. There was already someone at the other end of it working toward me. Someone quick and strong, I hoped, because I doubted that I would be quick or strong for a while. I hoped that the washing and the scrubbing at the house and the factory and warehouse work back in my own time had made me strong enough just to survive.

I raised the knife and chopped at the first stalk. It bent over, partially cut.

At almost the same moment, Fowler lashed me hard across the back.

I screamed, stumbled, and spun around to face him, still holding my knife. Unimpressed, he hit me across the breasts.

I fell to my knees and doubled over in a blaze of pain. Tears ran down my face. Even Tom Weylin hadn’t hit slave women that way—any more than he’d kicked slave men in the groin. Fowler was an animal. I glared up at him in pain and hatred.

“Get up!” he said.

I couldn’t. I didn’t think anything could make me get up just then—

until I saw Fowler raising his whip again.

Somehow, I got up.

“Now do what the others do,” he said. “Chop close to the ground. Chop hard!”

I gripped the knife, felt myself much more eager to chop him.

“All right,” he said. “Try it and get it over with. I thought you was sup-

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He was a big man. He hadn’t impressed me as being very quick, but he was strong. I was afraid that even if I managed to hurt him, I wouldn’t hurt him enough to keep him from killing me. Maybe I should make him try to kill me. Maybe it would get me out of this Godawful place where people punished you for helping them. Maybe it would get me home. But in how many pieces? Fowler would take the knife away from me and give it back edge first.

I turned and slashed furiously at the corn stalk, then at the next. Behind me, Fowler laughed.

“Maybe you got some sense after all,” he said.

He watched me for a while, urging me on, literally cracking the whip. By the time he left, I was sweating, shaking, humiliated. I met the woman who had been working toward me and she whispered, “Slow down! Take a lick or two if you have to. You kill yourself today, he’ll push you to kill yourself every day.”

There was sense in that. Hell, if I went on the way I had been, I wouldn’t even last through today. My shoulders were already beginning to ache.

Fowler came back as I was gathering the cut stalks. “What the devil do you think you’re doing!” he demanded. “You ought to be halfway down the next row by now.” He hit me across the back as I bent down. “Move! You’re not in the cookhouse getting fat and lazy now. Move!”

He did that all day. Coming up suddenly, shouting at me, ordering me to go faster no matter how fast I went, cursing me, threatening me. He didn’t hit me that often, but he kept me on edge because I never knew when a blow would fall. It got so just the sound of his coming terrified me. I caught myself cringing, jumping at the sound of his voice.

The woman in my row explained, “He’s always hard on a new nigger. Make ’em go fast so he can see how fast they can work. Then later on if they slow down, he whip ’em for gettin’ lazy.”

I made myself slow down. It wasn’t hard. I didn’t think my shoulders could have hurt much worse if they’d been broken. Sweat ran down into my eyes and my hands were beginning to blister. My back hurt from the blows I’d taken as well as from sore muscles. After a while, it was more painful for me to push myself than it was for me to let Fowler hit me. After a while, I was so tired, I didn’t care either way. Pain was pain. After a while, I just wanted to lie down between the rows and not get up again.

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I stumbled and fell, got up and fell again. Finally, I lay face-down in the dirt, unable to get up. Then came a welcome blackness. I could have been going home or dying or passing out; it made no difference to me. I was going away from the pain. That was all.

6

I was on my back when I came to and there was a white face floating just above me. For a wild moment, I thought it was Kevin, thought I was home. I said his name eagerly.

“It’s me, Dana.”

Rufus’s voice. I was still in hell. I closed my eyes, not caring what would happen next.

“Dana, get up. You’ll be hurt more if I carry you than if you walk.” The words echoed strangely in my head. Kevin had said something

like that to me once. I opened my eyes again to be sure it was Rufus.

It was. I was still in the cornfield, still lying in the dirt.

“I came to get you,” said Rufus. “Not soon enough, I guess.”

I struggled to my feet. He offered a hand to help me, but I ignored it. I brushed myself off a little and followed him down the row toward his horse. From there, we rode together back to the house without a word passing between us. At the house, I went straight to the well, got a bucket of water, carried it up the stairs somehow, then washed, spread antisep- tic on my new cuts, and put on clean clothes. I had a headache that even- tually drove me down to Rufus’s room for some Excedrin. Rufus had used all the aspirins.

Unfortunately, he was in his room.

“Well, you’re no good in the fields,” he said when he saw me. “That’s clear.”

I stopped, turned, and stared at him. Just stared. He had been sitting on his bed, leaning back against the headboard, but now he straightened, faced me.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Dana.”

“Right,” I said softly. “I’ve done enough stupid things. How many times have I saved your life so far?” My aching head sent me to his desk

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where I had left the Excedrin. I shook three of them into my hand. I had never taken so many before. I had never needed so many before. My hands were trembling.

“Fowler would have given you a good whipping if I hadn’t stopped him,” said Rufus. “That’s not the first beating I’ve saved you from.”

I had my Excedrin. I turned to leave the room. “Dana!”

I stopped, looked at him. He was thin and weak and hollow-eyed; his illness had left its marks on him. He probably couldn’t have carried me to his horse if he’d tried. And he couldn’t stop me from leaving now—I thought.

“You walk away from me, Dana, you’ll be back in the fields in an hour!”

The threat stunned me. He meant it. He’d send me back out. I stood straring at him, not with anger now, but with surprise—and fear. He could do it. Maybe later, I would have a chance to make him pay, but for now, he could do as he pleased. He sounded more like his father than himself. In that moment, he even looked like his father.

“Don’t you ever walk away from me again!” he said. Strangely, he began to sound a little afraid. He repeated the words, spacing them, emphasizing each one. “Don’t you ever walk away from me again!”

I stood where I was, my head throbbing, my expression as neutral as I

could make it. I still had some pride left. “Get back in here!” he said.

I stood there for a moment longer, then went back to his desk and sat down. And he wilted. The look I associated with his father vanished. He was himself again—whoever that was.

“Dana, don’t make me talk to you like that,” he said wearily. “Just do what I tell you.”

I shook my head, unable to think of anything safe to say. And I guess I wilted. To my shame, I realized I was almost crying. I needed desper- ately to be alone. Somehow, I kept back the tears.

If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. I remembered I still had the Excedrin tablets in my hand, and I took them, swallowed them without water, hoping they’d work quickly, steady me a little. Then I looked at Rufus, saw that he’d lain back again. Was I supposed to stay and watch him sleep?

“I don’t see how you can swallow those things like that,” he said, rub-