Kindred

The Fall

1

I think Kevin was as lonely and out of place as I was when I met him, though he was handling it better. But then, he was about to escape.

I was working out of a casual labor agency—we regulars called it a slave market. Actually, it was just the opposite of slavery. The people who ran it couldn’t have cared less whether or not you showed up to do the work they offered. They always had more job hunters than jobs any- way. If you wanted them to think about using you, you went to their office around six in the morning, signed in, and sat down to wait. Wait- ing with you were winos trying to work themselves into a few more bot- tles, poor women with children trying to supplement their welfare checks, kids trying to get a first job, older people who’d lost one job too many, and usually a poor crazy old street lady who talked to herself con- stantly and who wasn’t going to be hired no matter what because she only wore one shoe.

You sat and sat until the dispatcher either sent you out on a job or sent you home. Home meant no money. Put another potato in the oven. Or in desperation, sell some blood at one of the store fronts down the street from the agency. I had only done that once.

Getting sent out meant the minimum wage—minus Uncle Sam’s share—for as many hours as you were needed. You swept floors, stuffed envelopes, took inventory, washed dishes, sorted potato chips (really!),

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cleaned toilets, marked prices on merchandise … you did whatever you were sent out to do. It was nearly always mindless work, and as far as most employers were concerned, it was done by mindless people. Nonpeople rented for a few hours, a few days, a few weeks. It didn’t matter.

I did the work, I went home, I ate, and then slept for a few hours. Finally, I got up and wrote. At one or two in the morning, I was fully awake, fully alive, and busy working on my novel. During the day, I car- ried a little box of No Doz. I kept awake with them, but not very wide awake. The first thing Kevin ever said to me was, “Why do you go around looking like a zombie all the time?”

He was just one of several regular employees at an auto-parts ware- house where a group of us from the agency were doing an inventory. I was wandering around between shelves of nuts, bolts, hubcaps, chrome, and heaven knew what else checking other people’s work. I had a habit of showing up every day and of being able to count, so the supervisor decided that zombie or not, I should check the others. He was right. Peo- ple came in after a hard night of drinking and counted five units per clearly-marked, fifty-unit container.

“Zombie?” I repeated, looking up from a tray of short black wires at

Kevin.

“You look like you sleepwalk through the day,” he said. “Are you high on something or what?”

He was just a stock helper or some such bottom-of-the-ladder type. He had no authority over me, and I didn’t owe him any explanations.

“I do my work,” I said quietly. I turned back to the wires, counted them, corrected the inventory slip, initialed it, and moved down to the next shelf.

“Buz told me you were a writer,” said the voice that I thought had gone away.

“Look, I can’t count with you talking to me.” I pulled out a tray full of large screws—twenty-five to a box.

“Take a break.”

“Did you see that agency guy they sent home yesterday? He took one break too many. Unfortunately, I need this job.”

“Are you a writer?”

“I’m a joke as far as Buz is concerned. He thinks people are strange if they even read books. Besides,” I added bitterly, “what would a writer be

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doing working out of a slave market?”

“Keeping herself in rent and hamburgers, I guess. That’s what I’m doing working at a warehouse.”

I woke up a little then and really looked at him. He was an unusual- looking white man, his face young, almost unlined, but his hair com- pletely gray and his eyes so pale as to be almost colorless. He was muscular, well-built, but no taller than my own five-eight so that I found myself looking directly into the strange eyes. I looked away startled, wondering whether I had really seen anger there. Maybe he was more important in the warehouse than I had thought. Maybe he had some authority …

“Are you a writer?” I asked.

“I am now,” he said. And he smiled. “Just sold a book. I’m getting out of here for good on Friday.”

I stared at him with a terrible mixture of envy and frustration. “Congratulations.”

“Look,” he said, still smiling, “it’s almost lunch time. Eat with me. I

want to hear about what you’re writing.”

And he was gone. I hadn’t said yes or no, but he was gone.

“Hey!” whispered another voice behind me. Buz. The agency clown when he was sober. Wine put him into some kind of trance, though, and he just sat and stared and looked retarded—which he wasn’t, quite. He just didn’t give a damn about anything, including himself. He drank up his pay and walked around in rags. Also, he never bathed. “Hey, you two gonna get together and write some books?” he asked, leering.

“Get out of here,” I said, breathing as shallowly as possible.

“You gonna write some poor-nography together!” He went away laughing.

Later, at one of the round rusting metal tables in the corner of the warehouse that served as the lunch area, I found out more about my new writer friend. Kevin Franklin, his name was, and he’d not only gotten his book published, but he’d made a big paperback sale. He could live on the money while he wrote his next book. He could give up shitwork, hope- fully forever …

“Why aren’t you eating?” he asked when he stopped for breath. The warehouse was in a newly built industrial section of Compton, far enough from coffee shops and hot dog stands to discourage most of us from going out to eat. Some people brought their lunches. Others

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bought them from the catering truck. I had done neither. All I was hav- ing was a cup of the free dishwater coffee available to all the warehouse workers.

“I’m on a diet,” I said.

He stared at me for a moment, then got up, motioned me up. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“To the truck if it’s still there.”

“Wait a minute, you don’t have to …” “Listen, I’ve been on that kind of diet.”

“I’m all right,” I lied, embarrassed. “I don’t want anything.”

He left me sitting there, went to the truck, and came back with a ham- burger, milk, a small wedge of apple pie.

“Eat,” he said. “I’m still not rich enough to waste money, so eat.”

To my own surprise, I ate. I hadn’t intended to. I was caffeine jittery and surly and perfectly capable of wasting his money. After all, I’d told him not to spend it. But I ate.

Buz sidled by. “Hey,” he said, low-voiced. “Porn!” He moved on. “What?” said Kevin.

“Nothing,” I said. “He’s crazy.” Then, “Thanks for the lunch.” “Sure. Now tell me, what is it you write?”

“Short stories, so far. But I’m working on a novel.” “Naturally. Have any of your stories sold?”

“Some. To little magazines no one ever heard of. The kind that pay in copies of the magazine.”

He shook his head. “You’re going to starve.”

“No. After a while, I’ll convince myself that my aunt and uncle were right.”

“About what? That you should have been an accountant?”

I surprised myself again by laughing aloud. The food was reviving me. “They didn’t think of accounting,” I said. “But they would have approved of it. It’s what they would call sensible. They wanted me to be a nurse, a secretary, or a teacher like my mother. At the very best, a teacher.”

“Yes.” He sighed. “I was supposed to be an engineer, myself.” “That’s better, at least.”

“Not to me.”

“Well anyway, now you have proof that you were right.”

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He shrugged and didn’t tell me what he would later—that his parents,

like mine, were dead. They had died years before in an auto accident still hoping that he might come to his senses and become an engineer.

“My aunt and uncle said I could write in my spare time if I wanted to,” I told him. “Meanwhile, for the real future, I was to take something sen- sible in school if I expected them to support me. I went from the nursing program into a secretarial major, and from there to elementary education. All in two years. It was pretty bad. So was I.”

“What did you do?” he asked. “Flunk out?”

I choked on a piece of pie crust. “Of course not! I always got good grades. They just didn’t mean anything to me. I couldn’t manufacture enough interest in the subjects to keep me going. Finally, I got a job, moved away from home, and quit school. I still take extension classes at UCLA, though, when I can afford them. Writing classes.”

“Is this the job you got?”

“No, I worked for a while at an aerospace company. I was just a clerk- typist, but I talked my way into their publicity office. I was doing articles for their company newspaper and press releases to send out. They were glad to have me do it once I showed them I could. They had a writer for the price of a clerk-typist.”

“Sounds like something you could have stayed with and moved up.” “I meant to. Ordinary clerical work, I couldn’t stand, but that was

good. Then about a year ago, they laid off the whole department.” He laughed, but it sounded like sympathetic laughter.

Buz, coming back from the coffee machine, muttered, “Chocolate and vanilla porn!”

I closed my eyes in exasperation. He always did that. Started a “joke” that wasn’t funny to begin with, then beat it to death. “God, I wish he’d get drunk and shut up!”

“Does getting drunk shut him up?” asked Kevin. I nodded. “Nothing else will do it.”

“No matter. I heard what he said this time.”

The bell rang ending the lunch half-hour, and he grinned. He had a grin that completely destroyed the effect of his eyes. Then he got up and left.

But he came back. He came back all week at breaks, at lunch. My daily draw back at the agency gave me money enough to buy my own lunches—and pay my landlady a few dollars—but I still looked forward

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to seeing him, talking to him. He had written and published three nov- els, he told me, and outside members of his family, he’d never met anyone who’d read one of them. They’d brought so little money that he’d gone on taking mindless jobs like this one at the warehouse, and he’d gone on writing—unreasonably, against the advice of saner people. He was like me—a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on try- ing. And now, finally …

“I’m even crazier than you,” he said. “After all I’m older than you. Old enough to recognize failure and stop dreaming, so I’m told.”

He was a prematurely gray thirty-four. He had been surprised to learn that I was only twenty-two.

“You look older,” he said tactlessly. “So do you,” I muttered.

He laughed. “I’m sorry. But at least it looks good on you.”

I wasn’t sure what “it” was that looked good on me, but I was glad he liked it. His likes and dislikes were becoming important to me. One of the women from the agency told me with typical slave-market candor that he and I were “the weirdest-looking couple” she had ever seen.

I told her, not too gently, that she hadn’t seen much, and that it was none of her business anyway. But from then on, I thought of Kevin and I as a couple. It was pleasant thinking.

My time at the warehouse and his job there ended on the same day. Buz’s matchmaking had given us a week together.

“Listen,” said Kevin on the last day, “you like plays?”

“Plays? Sure. I wrote a couple while I was in high school. One-acters. Pretty bad.”

“I did something like that myself.” He took something from his pocket and held it out to me. Tickets. Two tickets to a hit play that had just come to Los Angeles. I think my eyes glittered.

“I don’t want you to get away from me just because we won’t be co- workers any more,” he said. “Tomorrow evening?”

“Tomorrow evening,” I agreed.

It was a good evening. I brought him home with me when it was over, and the night was even better. Sometime during the early hours of the next morning when we lay together, tired and content in my bed, I real- ized that I knew less about loneliness than I had thought—and much less than I would know when he went away.

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2

I decided not to go to the library with Kevin to look for forgeable free papers. I was worried about what might happen if Rufus called me from the car while it was moving. Would I arrive in his time still moving, but without the car to protect me? Or would I arrive safe and still, but have trouble when I returned home—because this time the home I returned to might be the middle of a busy street?

I didn’t want to find out. So while Kevin got ready to go to the library, I sat on the bed, fully dressed, stuffing a comb, a brush, and a bar of soap into my canvas bag. I was afraid I might be trapped in Rufus’s time for a longer period if I went again. My first trip had lasted only a few min- utes, my second a few hours. What was next? Days?

Kevin came in to tell me he was going. I didn’t want him to leave me alone, but I thought I had done enough whining for one morning. I kept my fear to myself—or I thought I did.

“You feel all right?” he asked me. “You don’t look so good.”

I had just had my first look in the mirror since the beating, and I didn’t think I looked so good either. I opened my mouth to reassure him, but before I could get the words out, I realized that something really was wrong. The room was beginning to darken and spin.

“Oh no,” I moaned. I closed my eyes against the sickening dizziness. Then I sat hugging the canvas bag and waiting.

Suddenly, Kevin was beside me holding me. I tried to push him away. I was afraid for him without knowing why. I shouted for him to let me go.

Then the walls around me and the bed beneath me vanished. I lay sprawled on the ground under a tree. Kevin lay beside me still holding me. Between us was the canvas bag.

“Oh God!” I muttered, sitting up. Kevin sat up too and looked around wildly. We were in the woods again, and it was day this time. The coun- try was much like what I remembered from my first trip, though there was no river in sight this time.

“It happened,” said Kevin. “It’s real!”

I took his hand and held it, glad of its familiarity. And yet I wished he

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were back at home. In this place, he was probably better protection for me than free papers would have been, but I didn’t want him here. I didn’t want this place to touch him except through me. But it was too late for that.

I looked around for Rufus, knowing that he must be nearby. He was. And the moment I saw him, I knew I was too late to get him out of trou- ble this time.

He was lying on the ground, his body curled in a small knot, his hands clutching one leg. Beside him was another boy, black, about twelve years old. All Rufus’s attention seemed to be on his leg, but the other boy had seen us. He might even have seen us appear from nowhere. That might be why he looked so frightened now.

I stood up and went over to Rufus. He didn’t see me at first. His face was twisted with pain and streaked with tears and dirt, but he wasn’t cry- ing aloud. Like the black boy, he looked about twelve years old.

“Rufus.”

He looked up, startled. “Dana?”

“Yes.” I was surprised that he recognized me after the years that had passed for him.

“I saw you again,” he said. “You were on a bed. Just as I started to fall, I saw you.”

“You did more than just see me,” I said. “I fell. My leg …”

“Who are you?” demanded the other boy.

“She’s all right, Nigel,” said Rufus. “She’s the one I told you about. The one who put out the fire that time.”

Nigel looked at me, then back at Rufus. “Can she fix your leg?” Rufus looked at me questioningly.

“I doubt it,” I said, “but let me see anyway.” I moved his hands away and as gently as I could, pulled his pants leg up. His leg was discolored and swollen. “Can you move your toes?” I asked.

He tried, managed to move two toes feebly.

“It’s broken,” commented Kevin. He had come closer to look. “Yes.” I looked at the other boy, Nigel. “Where’d he fall from?” “There.” The boy pointed upward. There was a tree limb hanging high

above us. A broken tree limb.

“You know where he lives?” I asked. “Sure. I live there too.”

The boy was probably a slave, I realized, the property of Rufus’s

60

family.

KINDRED

“You sure do talk funny,” said Nigel.

“Matter of opinion,” I said. “Look, if you care what happens to Rufus, you’d better go tell his father to send a … a wagon for him. He won’t be walking anywhere.”

“He could lean on me.”

“No. The best way for him to go home is flat on his back—the least painful way, anyhow. You go tell Rufus’s father that Rufus broke his leg. Tell him to send for the doctor. We’ll stay with Rufus until you get back with the wagon.”

“You?” He looked from me to Kevin, making no secret of the fact that he didn’t find us all that trustworthy. “How come you’re dressed like a man?” he asked me.

“Nigel,” said Kevin quietly, “don’t worry about how she’s dressed. Just go get some help for your friend.”

Friend?

Nigel gave Kevin a frightened glance, then looked at Rufus.

“Go, Nigel,” whispered Rufus. “It hurts something awful. Say I said for you to go.”

Nigel went, finally. Unhappily.

“What’s he afraid of ?” I asked Rufus. “Will he get into trouble for leaving you?”

“Maybe.” Rufus closed his eyes for a moment in pain. “Or for letting me get hurt. I hope not. It depends on whether anybody’s made Daddy mad lately.”

Well, Daddy hadn’t changed. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting him at all. At least I wouldn’t have to do it alone. I glanced at Kevin. He knelt down beside me to take a closer look at Rufus’s leg.

“Good thing he was barefoot,” he said. “A shoe would have to be cut off that foot now.”

“Who’re you?” asked Rufus.

“My name’s Kevin—Kevin Franklin.” “Does Dana belong to you now?”

“In a way,” said Kevin. “She’s my wife.” “Wife?” Rufus squealed.

I sighed. “Kevin, I think we’d better demote me. In this time …” “Niggers can’t marry white people!” said Rufus.

I laid a hand on Kevin’s arm just in time to stop him from saying what- ever he would have said. The look on his face was enough to tell me he

should keep quiet.

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“The boy learned to talk that way from his mother,” I said softly. “And from his father, and probably from the slaves themselves.”

“Learned to talk what way?” asked Rufus.

“About niggers,” I said. “I don’t like that word, remember? Try call- ing me black or Negro or even colored.”

“What’s the use of saying all that? And how can you be married to him?”

“Rufe, how’d you like people to call you white trash when they talk to you?”

“What?” He started up angrily, forgetting his leg, then fell back. “I am not trash!” he whispered. “You damn black …”

“Hush, Rufe.” I put my hand on his shoulder to quiet him. Apparently I’d hit the nerve I’d aimed at. “I didn’t say you were trash. I said how’d you like to be called trash. I see you don’t like it. I don’t like being called nigger either.”

He lay silent, frowning at me as though I were speaking a foreign lan- guage. Maybe I was.

“Where we come from,” I said, “it’s vulgar and insulting for whites to call blacks niggers. Also, where we come from, whites and blacks can marry.”

“But it’s against the law.”

“It is here. But it isn’t where we come from.” “Where do you come from?”

I looked at Kevin.

“You asked for it,” he said. “You want to try telling him?” He shook his head. “No point.”

“Not for you, maybe. But for me …” I thought for a moment trying to find the right words. “This boy and I are liable to have a long association whether we like it or not. I want him to know.”

“Good luck.”

“Where do you come from?” repeated Rufus. “You sure don’t talk like anybody I ever heard.”

I frowned, thought, and finally shook my head. “Rufe, I want to tell you, but you probably won’t understand. We don’t understand ourselves, really.”

“I already don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t know how I can see you when you’re not here, or how you get here, or anything. My leg hurts so

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much I can’t even think about it.”

“Let’s wait then. When you feel better …”

“When I feel better, maybe you’ll be gone. Dana, tell me!”

“All right, I’ll try. Have you ever heard of a place called California?” “Yeah. Mama’s cousin went there on a ship.”

Luck. “Well, that’s where we’re from. California. But … it’s not the California your cousin went to. We’re from a California that doesn’t exist yet, Rufus. California of nineteen seventy-six.”

“What’s that?”

“I mean we come from a different time as well as a different place. I

told you it was hard to understand.” “But what’s nineteen seventy-six?”

“That’s the year. That’s what year it is for us when we’re at home.” “But it’s eighteen nineteen. It’s eighteen nineteen everywhere. You’re

talking crazy.”

“No doubt. This is a crazy thing that’s happened to us. But I’m telling you the truth. We come from a future time and place. I don’t know how we get here. We don’t want to come. We don’t belong here. But when you’re in trouble, somehow you reach me, call me, and I come— although as you can see now, I can’t always help you.” I could have told him about our blood relationship. Maybe I would if I saw him again when he was older. For now, though, I had confused him enough.

“This is crazy stuff,” he repeated. He looked at Kevin. “You tell me. Are you from California?”

Kevin nodded. “Yes.”

“Then are you Spanish? California is Spanish.”

“It is now, but it will be part of the United States eventually, just like

Maryland or Pennsylvania.” “When?”

“It will become a state in eighteen fifty.”

“But it’s only eighteen nineteen. How could you know …?” He broke off, looked from Kevin to me in confusion. “This isn’t real,” he said. “You’re making it all up.”

“It’s real,” said Kevin quietly. “But how could it be?”

“We don’t know. But it is.”

He thought for a while looking from one to the other of us. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

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Kevin made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I don’t blame you.”

I shrugged. “All right, Rufe. I wanted you to know the truth, but I can’t blame you for not being able to accept it either.”

“Nineteen seventy-six,” said the boy slowly. He shook his head and closed his eyes. I wondered why I had bothered to try to convince him. After all, how accepting would I be if I met a man who claimed to be from eighteen nineteen—or two thousand nineteen, for that matter. Time travel was science fiction in nineteen seventy-six. In eighteen nineteen— Rufus was right—it was sheer insanity. No one but a child would even have listened to Kevin and me talk about it.

“If you know California’s going to be a state,” said Rufus, “you must know some other things that are going to happen.”

“We do,” I admitted. “Some things. Not very much. We’re not histo- rians.”

“But you ought to know everything if it already happened in your time.”

“How much do you know about seventeen nineteen, Rufe?” He stared at me blankly.

“People don’t learn everything about the times that came before them,” I said. “Why should they?”

He sighed. “Tell me something, Dana. I’m trying to believe you.”

I dug back into the American history that I had learned both in and out of school. “Well, if this is eighteen nineteen, the President is James Monroe, right?”

“Yeah.”

“The next President will be John Quincy Adams.” “When?”

I frowned, calling back more of the list of Presidents I had memorized for no particular reason when I was in school. “In eighteen twenty-four. Monroe had—will have—two terms.”

“What else?”

I looked at Kevin.

He shrugged. “All I can think of is something I got from those books we looked through last night. In eighteen twenty, the Missouri Compro- mise opened the way for Missouri to come into the Union as a slave state and Maine to come in as a free state. Do you have any idea what I’m talk- ing about, Rufus?”

“No, sir.”

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“I didn’t think so. Have you got any money?” “Money? Me? No.”

“Well, you’ve seen money, haven’t you?” “Yes, sir.”

“Coins should have the year they were made stamped on them, even

now.”

“They do.”

Kevin reached into his pocket and brought out a handful of change. He held it out to Rufus and Rufus picked out a few coins. “Nineteen sixty- five,” he read, “nineteen sixty-seven, nineteen seventy-one, nineteen sev- enty. None of them say nineteen seventy-six.”

“None of them say eighteen-anything either,” said Kevin. “But here.” He picked out a bicentennial quarter and handed it to Rufus.

“Seventeen seventy-six, nineteen seventy-six,” the boy read. “Two dates.”

“The country’s two hundred years old in nineteen seventy-six,” said Kevin. “Some of the money was changed to commemorate the anniver- sary. Are you convinced?”

“Well, I guess you could have made these yourself.”

Kevin took back his money. “You might not know about Missouri, kid,” he said wearily. “But you’d have made a good Missourian.”

“What?”

“Just a joke. Hasn’t come into fashion yet.”

Rufus looked troubled. “I believe you. I don’t understand, like Dana said, but I guess I believe.”

Kevin sighed. “Thank God.”

Rufus looked up at Kevin and managed to grin. “You aren’t as bad as

I thought you’d be.”

“Bad?” Kevin looked at me accusingly.

“I didn’t tell him anything about you,” I said.

“I saw you,” said Rufus. “You were fighting with Dana just before you came here, or … it looked like fighting. Did you make all those marks on her face?”

“No, he didn’t,” I said quickly. “And he and I weren’t fighting.” “Wait a minute,” said Kevin. “How could he know about that?”

“Like he said.” I shrugged. “He saw us before we got here. I don’t know how he does it, but he’s done it before.” I looked down at Rufus. “Have you told anyone else about seeing me?”

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“Just Nigel. Nobody else would believe me.”

“Good. Best not to tell anyone else about us now either. Nothing about California or nineteen seventy-six.” I took Kevin’s hand and held it. “We’re going to have to fit in as best we can with the people here for as long as we have to stay. That means we’re going to have to play the roles you gave us.”

“You’ll say you belong to him?”

“Yes. I want you to say it too if anyone asks you.”

“That’s better than saying you’re his wife. Nobody would believe that.”

Kevin made a sound of disgust. “I wonder how long we’ll be stuck here,” he muttered. “I think I’m getting homesick already.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But stay close to me. You got here because you were holding me. I’m afraid that may be the only way you can get home.”

3

Rufus’s father arrived on a flat-bed wagon, carrying his familiar long rifle—an old muzzleloader, I realized. With him in the wagon was Nigel and a tall stocky black man. Tom Weylin was tall himself, but too lean to be as impressive as his massive slave. Weylin didn’t look especially vicious or depraved. Right now, he only looked annoyed. We stood up as he climbed down from the wagon and came to face us.

“What happened here?” he asked suspiciously.

“The boy has broken his leg,” said Kevin. “Are you his father?” “Yes. Who are you?”

“My name’s Kevin Franklin.” He glanced at me, but caught himself and didn’t introduce me. “We came across the two boys right after the accident happened, and I thought we should stay with your son until you came for him.”

Weylin grunted and knelt to look at Rufus’s leg. “Guess it’s broken all right. Wonder how much that’ll cost me.”

The black man gave him a look of disgust that would surely have angered him if he had seen it.

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“What were you doing climbing a damn tree?” Weylin demanded of

Rufus.

Rufus stared at him silently.

Weylin muttered something I didn’t quite catch. He stood up and ges- tured sharply to the black man. The man came forward, lifted Rufus gen- tly, and placed him on the wagon. Rufus’s face twisted in pain as he was lifted, and he cried out as he was lowered into the wagon. Kevin and I should have made a splint for that leg, I thought belatedly. I followed the black man to the wagon.

Rufus grabbed my arm and held it, obviously trying not to cry. His voice was a husky whisper.

“Don’t go, Dana.”

I didn’t want to go. I liked the boy, and from what I’d heard of early nineteenth-century medicine, they were going to pour some whiskey down him and play tug of war with his leg. And he was going to learn brand new things about pain. If I could give him any comfort by staying with him, I wanted to stay.

But I couldn’t.

His father had spoken a few private words with Kevin and was now climbing back up onto the seat of the wagon. He was ready to leave and Kevin and I weren’t invited. That didn’t say much for Weylin’s hospital- ity. People in his time of widely scattered plantations and even more widely scattered hotels had a reputation for taking in strangers. But then, a man who could look at his injured son and think of nothing but how much the doctor bill would be wasn’t likely to be concerned about strangers.

“Come with us,” pleaded Rufus. “Daddy, let them come.”

Weylin glanced back, annoyed, and I tried gently to loosen Rufus’s grip on me. After a moment, I realized that Weylin was looking at me— staring hard at me. Perhaps he was seeing my resemblance to Alice’s mother. He couldn’t have seen me clearly enough or long enough at the river to recognize me now as the woman he had once come so near shoot- ing. At first, I stared back. Then I looked away, remembering that I was supposed to be a slave. Slaves lowered their eyes respectfully. To stare back was insolent. Or at least, that was what my books said.

“Come along and have dinner with us,” Weylin told Kevin. “You may as well. Where were you going to stay the night, anyway?”

“Under the trees if necessary,” said Kevin. He and I climbed onto the

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wagon beside the silent Nigel. “Not much choice, as I told you.”

I looked at him, wondering what he had told Weylin. Then I had to catch myself as the black man prodded the horses forward.

“You, girl,” Weylin said to me. “What’s your name?” “Dana, sir.”

He turned to stare at me again, this time as though I’d said something wrong. “Where do you come from?”

I glanced at Kevin, not wanting to contradict anything he had said. He gave me a slight nod, and I assumed I was free to make up my own lies. “I’m from New York.”

Now the look he was giving me was really ugly, and I wondered whether he’d heard a New York accent recently and found mine a poor match. Or was I saying something wrong? I hadn’t said ten words to him. What could be wrong?

Weylin looked sharply at Kevin, then turned around and ignored us for the rest of the trip.

We went through the woods to a road, and along the road past a field of tall golden wheat. In the field, slaves, mostly men, worked steadily swinging scythes with attached wooden racks that caught the cut wheat in neat piles. Other slaves, mostly women, followed them tying the wheat into bundles. None of them seemed to pay any attention to us. I looked around for a white overseer and was surprised not to see one. The Weylin house surprised me too when I saw it in daylight. It wasn’t white. It had no columns, no porch to speak of. I was almost disappointed. It was a red-brick Georgian Colonial, boxy but handsome in a quiet kind of way, two and a half stories high with dormered windows and a chimney on each end. It wasn’t big or imposing enough to be called a mansion. In Los Angeles, in our own time, Kevin and I could have afforded it.

As the wagon took us up to the front steps, I could see the river off to one side and some of the land I had run through a few hours—a few years—before. Scattered trees, unevenly cut grass, the row of cabins far off to one side almost hidden by the trees, the fields, the woods. There were other buildings lined up beside and behind the house opposite the slave cabins. As we stopped, I was almost sent off to one of these.

“Luke,” said Weylin to the black man, “take Dana around back and get her something to eat.”

“Yes, sir,” said the black man softly. “Want me to take Marse Rufe upstairs first?”

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“Do what I told you. I’ll take him up.”

I saw Rufus set his teeth. “I’ll see you later,” I whispered, but he

wouldn’t let go of my hand until I spoke to his father.

“Mr. Weylin, I don’t mind staying with him. He seems to want me to.” Weylin looked exasperated. “Well, come on then. You can wait with him until the doctor comes.” He lifted Rufus with no particular care, and

strode up the steps to the house. Kevin followed him.

“You watch out,” said the black man softly as I started after them. I looked at him, surprised, not sure he was talking to me. He was. “Marse Tom can turn mean mighty quick,” he said. “So can the boy,

now that he’s growing up. Your face looks like maybe you had enough white folks’ meanness for a while.”

I nodded. “I have, all right. Thanks for the warning.”

Nigel had come to stand next to the man, and I realized as I spoke that the two looked much alike, the boy a smaller replica of the man. Father and son, probably. They resembled each other more than Rufus and Tom Weylin did. As I hurried up the steps and into the house, I thought of Rufus and his father, of Rufus becoming his father. It would happen some day in at least one way. Someday Rufus would own the plantation. Someday, he would be the slaveholder, responsible in his own right for what happened to the people who lived in those half-hidden cabins. The boy was literally growing up as I watched—growing up because I watched and because I helped to keep him safe. I was the worst possible guardian for him—a black to watch over him in a society that considered blacks subhuman, a woman to watch over him in a society that consid- ered women perennial children. I would have all I could do to look after myself. But I would help him as best I could. And I would try to keep friendship with him, maybe plant a few ideas in his mind that would help both me and the people who would be his slaves in the years to come. I might even be making things easier for Alice.

Now, I followed Weylin up the stairs to a bedroom—not the same one Rufus had occupied on my last trip. The bed was bigger, its full canopy and draperies blue instead of green. The room itself was bigger. Weylin dumped Rufus onto the bed, ignoring the boy’s cries of pain. It did not look as though Weylin was trying to hurt Rufus. He just didn’t seem to pay any attention to how he handled the boy—as though he didn’t care.

Then, as Weylin was leading Kevin out of the room, a red-haired woman hurried in.

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“Where is he?” she demanded breathlessly. “What happened?” Rufus’s mother. I remembered her. She pushed her way into the room

just as I was putting Rufus’s pillow under his head.

“What are you doing to him?” she cried. “Leave him alone!” She tried to pull me away from her son. She had only one reaction when Rufus was in trouble. One wrong reaction.

Fortunately for both of us, Weylin reached her before I forgot my- self and pushed her away from me. He caught her, held her, spoke to her quietly.

“Margaret, now listen. The boy has a broken leg, that’s all. There’s nothing you can do for a broken leg. I’ve already sent for the doctor.”

Margaret Weylin seemed to calm down a little. She stared at me. “What’s she doing here?”

“She belongs to Mr. Kevin Franklin here.” Weylin waved a hand pre- senting Kevin who, to my surprise, bowed slightly to the woman. “Mr. Franklin is the one who found Rufus hurt,” Weylin continued. He shrugged. “Rufus wanted the girl to stay with him. Can’t do any harm.” He turned and walked away. Kevin followed him reluctantly.

The woman may have been listening as her husband spoke, but she didn’t look as though she was. She was still staring at me, frowning at me as though she was trying to remember where she’d seen me before. The years hadn’t changed her much, and, of course, they hadn’t changed me at all. But I didn’t expect her to remember. Her glimpse of me had been too brief, and her mind had been on other things.

“I’ve seen you before,” she said.

Hell! “Yes, ma’am, you may have.” I looked at Rufus and saw that he was watching us.

“Mama?” he said softly.

The accusing stare vanished, and the woman turned quickly to attend him. “My poor baby,” she murmured, cradling his head in her hands. “Seems like everything happens to you, doesn’t it? A broken leg!” She looked close to tears. And there was Rufus, swung from his father’s indifference to his mother’s sugary concern. I wondered whether he was too used to the contrast to find it dizzying.

“Mama, can I have some water?” he asked.

The woman turned to look at me as though I had offended her. “Can’t you hear? Get him some water!”

“Yes, ma’am. Where shall I get it?”

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She made a sound of disgust and rushed toward me. Or at least I

thought she was rushing toward me. When I jumped out of her way, she kept right on going through the door that I had been standing in front of.

I looked after her and shook my head. Then I took the chair that was near the fireplace and put it beside Rufus’s bed. I sat down and Rufus looked up at me solemnly.

“Did you ever break your leg?” he asked. “No. I broke my wrist once, though.” “When they fixed it, did it hurt much?”

I drew a deep breath. “Yes.” “I’m scared.”

“So was I,” I said remembering. “But … Rufe, it won’t take long. And when the doctor is finished, the worst will be over.”

“Won’t it still hurt after?”

“For a while. But it will heal. If you stay off it and give it a chance, it will heal.”

Margaret Weylin rushed back into the room with water for Rufus and more hostility for me than I could see any reason for.

“You’re to go out to the cookhouse and get some supper!” she told me as I got out of her way. But she made it sound as though she were say- ing, “You’re to go straight to hell!” There was something about me that these people didn’t like—except for Rufus. It wasn’t just racial. They were used to black people. Maybe I could get Kevin to find out what it was.

“Mama, can’t she stay?” asked Rufus.

The woman threw me a dirty look, then turned gentler eyes on her son. “She can come back later,” she told him. “Your father wants her down- stairs now.”

More likely, it was his mother who wanted me downstairs now, and possibly for no more substantial reason than that her son liked me. She gave me another look, and I left the room. The woman would have made me uncomfortable even if she’d liked me. She was too much nervous energy compacted into too small a container. I didn’t want to be around when she exploded. But at least she loved Rufus. And he must have been used to her fussing over him. He hadn’t seemed to mind.

I found myself in a wide hallway. I could see the stairs a few feet away and I started toward them. Just then, a young black girl in a long blue dress came out of a door at the other end of the hall. She came toward

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me, staring at me with open curiosity. She wore a blue scarf on her head and she tugged at it as she came toward me.

“Could you tell me where the cookhouse is, please?” I said when she was near enough. She seemed a safer person to ask than Margaret Weylin.

Her eyes opened a little wider and she continued to stare at me. No doubt I sounded as strange to her as I looked.

“The cookhouse?” I said.

She looked me over once more, then started down the stairs without a word. I hesitated, finally followed her because I didn’t know what else to do. She was a light-skinned girl no older than fourteen or fifteen. She kept looking back at me, frowning. Once she stopped and turned to face me, her hand tugging absently at her scarf, then moving lower to cover her mouth, and finally dropping to her side again. She looked so frus- trated that I realized something was wrong.

“Can you talk?” I asked.

She sighed, shook her head.

“But you can hear and understand.”

She nodded, then plucked at my blouse, at my pants. She frowned at me. Was that the problem, then—hers and the Weylins’?

“They’re the only clothes I have right now,” I said. “My master will buy me some better ones sooner or later.” Let it be Kevin’s fault that I was “dressed like a man.” It was probably easier for the people here to understand a master too poor or too stingy to buy me proper clothing than it would be for them to imagine a place where it was normal for women to wear pants.

As though to assure me that I had said the right thing, the girl gave me a look of pity, then took my hand and led me out to the cookhouse.

As we went, I took more notice of the house than I had before—more notice of the downstairs hall, anyway. Its walls were a pale green and it ran the length of the house. At the front, it was wide and bright with light from the windows beside and above the door. It was strewn with oriental rugs of different sizes. Near the front door, there was a wooden bench, a chair, and two small tables. Past the stairs the hall narrowed, and at its end there was a back door that we went through.

Outside was the cookhouse, a little white frame cottage not far behind the main house. I had read about outdoor kitchens and outdoor toilets. I hadn’t been looking forward to either. Now, though, the cookhouse

72 KINDRED

looked like the friendliest place I’d seen since I arrived. Luke and Nigel were inside eating from wooden bowls with what looked like wooden spoons. And there were two younger children, a girl and boy, sitting on the floor eating with their fingers. I was glad to see them there because I’d read about kids their age being rounded up and fed from troughs like pigs. Not everywhere, apparently. At least, not here.

There was a stocky middle-aged woman stirring a kettle that hung over the fire in the fireplace. The fireplace itself filled one whole wall. It was made of brick and above it was a huge plank from which hung a few utensils. There were more utensils off to one side hanging from hooks on the wall. I stared at them and realized that I didn’t know the proper names of any of them. Even things as commonplace as that. I was in a different world.

The cook finished stirring her kettle and turned to look at me. She was as light-skinned as my mute guide—a handsome middle-aged woman, tall and heavy-set. Her expression was grim, her mouth turned down at the corners, but her voice was soft and low.

“Carrie,” she said. “Who’s this?” My guide looked at me.

“My name is Dana,” I said. “My master’s visiting here. Mrs. Weylin told me to come out for supper.”

“Mrs. Weylin?” The woman frowned at me.

“The red-haired woman—Rufus’s mother.” I didn’t quite catch myself in time to say Mister Rufus. I didn’t really see why I should have to say anything. How many Mrs. Weylins were there on the place anyway?

“Miss Margaret,” said the woman, and under her breath, “Bitch!” I stared at her in surprise thinking she meant me.

“Sarah!” Luke’s tone was cautioning. He couldn’t have heard what the cook said from where he was. Either she said it often, or he had read her lips. But at least now I understood that it was Mrs. Weylin—Miss Margaret—who was supposed to be the bitch.

The cook said nothing else. She got me a wooden bowl, filled it with something from a pot near the fire, and handed it to me with a wooden spoon.

Supper was corn meal mush. The cook saw that I was looking at it instead of eating it, and she misread my expression.

“That’s not enough?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s plenty!” I held my bowl protectively, fearful that she might

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give me more of the stuff. “Thank you.”

I sat down at the end of a large heavy table across from Nigel and Luke. I saw that they were eating the same mush, though theirs had milk on it. I considered asking for milk on mine, but I didn’t really think it would help.

Whatever was in the kettle smelled good enough to remind me that I hadn’t had breakfast, hadn’t had more than a few bites of dinner the night before. I was starving and Sarah was cooking meat—probably a stew. I took a bite of the mush and swallowed it without tasting it.

“We get better food later on after the white folks eat,” said Luke. “We get whatever they leave.”

Table scraps, I thought bitterly. Someone else’s leftovers. And, no doubt, if I was here long enough, I would eat them and be glad to get them. They had to be better than boiled meal. I spooned the mush into my mouth, quickly fanning away several large flies. Flies. This was an era of rampant disease. I wondered how clean our leftovers would be by the time they reached us.

“Say you was from New York?” asked Luke. “Yes.”

“Free state?”

“Yes,” I repeated. “That’s why I was brought here.” The words, the questions made me think of Alice and her mother. I looked at Luke’s broad face, wondering whether it would do any harm to ask about them. But how could I admit to knowing them—knowing them years ago— when I was supposed to be new here? Nigel knew I had been here before, but Sarah and Luke might not. It would be safer to wait—save my ques- tions for Rufus.

“People in New York talk like you?” asked Nigel. “Some do. Not all.”

“Dress like you?” asked Luke.

“No. I dress in what Master Kevin gives me to dress in.” I wished they’d stop asking questions. I didn’t want them to make me tell lies I might forget later. Best to keep my background as simple as possible.

The cook came over and looked at me, at my pants. She pinched up a little of the material, feeling it. “What cloth is this?” she asked.

Polyester double knit, I thought. But I shrugged. “I don’t know.” She shook her head and went back to her pot.

“You know,” I said to her back, “I think I agree with you about Miss

74

Margaret.”

KINDRED

She said nothing. The warmth I’d felt when I came into the room was turning out to be nothing more than the heat of the fire.

“Why you try to talk like white folks?” Nigel asked me.

“I don’t,” I said, surprised. “I mean, this is really the way I talk.” “More like white folks than some white folks.”

I shrugged, hunted through my mind for an acceptable explanation. “My mother taught school,” I said, “and …”

“A nigger teacher?”

I winced, nodded. “Free blacks can have schools. My mother talked the way I do. She taught me.”

“You’ll get into trouble,” he said. “Marse Tom already don’t like you. You talk too educated and you come from a free state.”

“Why should either of those things matter to him? I don’t belong to him.”

The boy smiled. “He don’t want no niggers ’round here talking better than him, putting freedom ideas in our heads.”

“Like we so dumb we need some stranger to make us think about free- dom,” muttered Luke.

I nodded, but I hoped they were wrong. I didn’t think I had said enough to Weylin for him to make that kind of judgment. I hoped he wasn’t going to make that kind of judgment. I wasn’t good at accents. I had deliberately decided not to try to assume one. But if that meant I was going to be in trouble every time I opened my mouth, my life here would be even worse than I had imagined.

“How can Marse Rufe see you before you get here?” Nigel asked.

I choked down a swallow of mush. “I don’t know,” I said. “But I wish to heaven he couldn’t!”

4

I stayed in the cookhouse when I finished eating because it was near the main house, and because I thought I could make it from the cook- house into the hall if I started to feel dizzy—just in case. Wherever Kevin was in the house, he would hear me if I called from the hallway.

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Luke and Nigel finished their meal and went to the fireplace to say something privately to Sarah. At that moment, Carrie, the mute, slipped me bread and a chunk of ham. I looked at it, then smiled at her gratefully. When Luke and Nigel took Sarah out of the room with them, I feasted on a shapeless sandwich. In the middle of it, I caught myself wondering about the ham, wondering how well it had been cooked. I tried to think of something else, but my mind was full of vaguely remembered horror stories of the diseases that ran wild during this time. Medicine was just a little better than witchcraft. Malaria came from bad air. Surgery was per- formed on struggling wide-awake patients. Germs were question marks even in the minds of many doctors. And people casually, unknowingly ingested all kinds of poorly preserved ill-cooked food that could make them sick or kill them.

Horror stories.

Except that they were true, and I was going to have to live with them for as long as I was here. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten the ham, but if I hadn’t, it would be the table leavings later. I would have to take some chances.

Sarah came back with Nigel and gave him a pot of peas to shell. Life went on around me as though I wasn’t there. People came into the cook- house—always black people—talked to Sarah, lounged around, ate whatever they could put their hands on until Sarah shouted at them and chased them away. I was in the middle of asking her whether there was anything I could do to help out when Rufus began to scream. Nineteenth- century medicine was apparently at work.

The walls of the main house were thick and the sound seemed to come from a long way off—thin high-pitched screaming. Carrie, who had left the cookhouse, now ran back in and sat down beside me with her hands covering her ears.

Abruptly, the screaming stopped and I moved Carrie’s hands gently. Her sensitivity surprised me. I would have thought she would be used to hearing people scream in pain. She listened for a moment, heard nothing, then looked at me.

“He probably fainted,” I said. “That’s best. He won’t feel the pain for a while.”

She nodded dully and went back out to whatever she had been doing. “She always did like him,” remarked Sarah into the silence. “He kept

the children from bothering her when she was little.”

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I was surprised. “Isn’t she a few years older than he is?”

“Born the year before him. Children listened to him though. He’s

white.”

“Is Carrie your daughter?”

Sarah nodded. “My fourth baby. The only one Marse Tom let me keep.” Her voice trailed away to a whisper.

“You mean he … he sold the others?”

“Sold them. First my man died—a tree he was cutting fell on him. Then Marse Tom took my children, all but Carrie. And, bless God, Carrie ain’t worth much as the others ’cause she can’t talk. People think she ain’t got good sense.”

I looked away from her. The expression in her eyes had gone from sadness—she seemed almost ready to cry—to anger. Quiet, almost frightening anger. Her husband dead, three children sold, the fourth defective, and her having to thank God for the defect. She had reason for more than anger. How amazing that Weylin had sold her children and still kept her to cook his meals. How amazing that he was still alive. I didn’t think he would be for long, though, if he found a buyer for Carrie.

As I was thinking, Sarah turned and threw a handful of something into the stew or soup she was cooking. I shook my head. If she ever decided to take her revenge, Weylin would never know what hit him.

“You can peel these potatoes for me,” she said.

I had to think a moment to remember that I had offered my help. I took the large pan of potatoes that she was handing me and a knife and a wooden bowl, and I worked silently, sometimes peeling, and sometimes driving away the bothersome flies. Then I heard Kevin outside calling me. I had to make myself put the potatoes down calmly and cover them with a cloth Sarah had left on the table. Then I went to him without haste, without any sign of the eagerness or relief I felt at having him nearby again. I went to him and he looked at me strangely.

“Are you all right?” “Fine now.”

He reached for my hand, but I drew back, looking at him. He dropped his hand to his side. “Come on,” he said wearily. “Let’s go where we can talk.”

He led the way past the main house away from the slave cabins and other buildings, away from the small slave children who chased each other and shouted and didn’t understand yet that they were slaves.

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We found a huge oak with branches thick as separate trees spread wide to shade a large area. A handsome lonely old tree. We sat beside it put- ting it between ourselves and the house. I settled close to Kevin, relax- ing, letting go of tension I had hardly been aware of. We said nothing for a while, as he leaned back and seemed to let go of tensions of his own.

Finally, he said, “There are so many really fascinating times we could have gone back to visit.”

I laughed without humor. “I can’t think of any time I’d like to go back to. But of all of them, this must be one of the most dangerous—for me anyway.”

“Not while I’m with you.”

I glanced at him gratefully.

“Why did you try to stop me from coming?” “I was afraid for you.”

“For me!”

“At first, I didn’t know why. I just had the feeling you might be hurt trying to come with me. Then when you were here, I realized that you probably couldn’t get back without me. That means if we’re separated, you’re stranded here for years, maybe for good.”

He drew a deep breath and shook his head. “There wouldn’t be any- thing good about that.”

“Stay close to me. If I call, come quick.”

He nodded, and after a while said, “I could survive here, though, if I

had to. I mean if …” “Kevin, no ifs. Please.”

“I only mean I wouldn’t be in the danger you would be in.”

“No.” But he’d be in another kind of danger. A place like this would endanger him in a way I didn’t want to talk to him about. If he was stranded here for years, some part of this place would rub off on him. No large part, I knew. But if he survived here, it would be because he man- aged to tolerate the life here. He wouldn’t have to take part in it, but he would have to keep quiet about it. Free speech and press hadn’t done too well in the ante bellum South. Kevin wouldn’t do too well either. The place, the time would either kill him outright or mark him somehow. I didn’t like either possibility.

“Dana.”

I looked at him.

“Don’t worry. We arrived together and we’ll leave together.”

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I didn’t stop worrying, but I smiled and changed the subject. “How’s

Rufus? I heard him screaming.”

“Poor kid. I was glad when he passed out. The doctor gave him some opium, but the pain seemed to reach him right through it. I had to help hold him.”

“Opium … will he be all right?”

“The doctor thought so. Although I don’t know how much a doctor’s opinion is worth in this time.”

“I hope he’s right. I hope Rufus has used up all his bad luck just in get- ting the set of parents he’s stuck with.”

Kevin lifted one arm and turned it to show me a set of long bloody scratches.

“Margaret Weylin,” I said softly.

“She shouldn’t have been there,” he said. “When she finished with me, she started on the doctor. ‘Stop hurting my baby!’”

I shook my head. “What are we going to do, Kevin? Even if these peo- ple were sane, we couldn’t stay here among them.”

“Yes we can.”

I turned to stare at him.

“I made up a story for Weylin to explain why we were here—and why we were broke. He offered me a job.”

“Doing what?”

“Tutoring your little friend. Seems he doesn’t read or write any better than he climbs trees.”

“But … doesn’t he go to school?”

“Not while that leg is healing. And his father doesn’t want him to fall any farther behind than he already is.”

“Is he behind others his age?”

“Weylin seemed to think so. He didn’t come right out and say it, but I

think he’s afraid the kid isn’t very bright.”

“I’m surprised he cares one way or the other, and I think he’s wrong. But for once Rufus’s bad luck is our good luck. I doubt that we’ll be here long enough for you to collect any of your salary, but at least while we’re here, we’ll have food and shelter.”

“That’s what I thought when I accepted.” “And what about me?”

“You?”

“Weylin didn’t say anything about me?”

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“No. Why should he? If I stay here, he knows you stay too.”

“Yes.” I smiled. “You’re right. If you didn’t remember me in your bar- gaining, why should he? I’ll bet he won’t forget me though when he has work that needs to be done.”

“Wait a minute, you don’t have to work for him. You’re not supposed to belong to him.”

“No, but I’m here. And I’m supposed to be a slave. What’s a slave for, but to work? Believe me, he’ll find something for me to do—or he would if I didn’t plan to find my own work before he gets around to me.”

He frowned. “You want to work?”

“I want to … I have to make a place for myself here. That means work. I think everyone here, black and white, will resent me if I don’t work. And I need friends. I need all the friends I can make here, Kevin. You might not be with me when I come here again. If I come here again.”

“And unless that kid gets a lot more careful, you will come here again.”

I sighed. “It looks that way.”

“I hate to think of your working for these people.” He shook his head. “I hate to think of you playing the part of a slave at all.”

“We knew I’d have to do it.” He said nothing.

“Call me away from them now and then, Kevin. Just to remind them that whatever I am, they don’t own me … yet.”

He shook his head again angrily in what looked like a refusal, but I

knew he’d do it.

“What lies did you tell Weylin about us?” I asked him. “The way peo- ple ask questions around here, we’d better make sure we’re both telling the same story.”

For several seconds, he said nothing. “Kevin?”

He took a deep breath. “I’m supposed to be a writer from New York,” he said finally. “God help us if we meet any New Yorkers. I’m traveling through the South doing research for a book. I have no money because I drank with the wrong people a few days ago and was robbed. All I have left is you. I bought you before I was robbed because you could read and write. I thought you could help me in my work as well as be of use otherwise.”

80

“Did he believe that?”

KINDRED

“It’s possible that he did. He was already pretty sure you could read and write. That’s one reason he seemed so suspicious and mistrustful. Educated slaves aren’t popular around here.”

I shrugged. “So Nigel has been telling me.”

“Weylin doesn’t like the way you talk. I don’t think he’s had much education himself, and he resents you. I don’t think he’ll bother you—I wouldn’t stay here if I did. But keep out of his way as much as you can.” “Gladly. I plan to fit myself into the cookhouse if I can. I’m going to

tell Sarah you want me to learn how to cook for you.”

He gave a short laugh. “I’d better tell you the rest of the story I told Weylin. If Sarah hears it all, she might teach you how to put a little poi- son in my food.”

I think I jumped.

“Weylin was warning me that it was dangerous to keep a slave like you—educated, maybe kidnapped from a free state—as far north as this. He said I ought to sell you to some trader heading for Georgia or Louisiana before you ran away and I lost my investment. That gave me the idea to tell him I planned to sell you in Louisiana because that was where my journey ended—and I’d heard I could make a nice profit on you down there.

“That seemed to please him and he told me I was right—prices were better in Louisiana if I could hold on to you until I got you there. So I said educated or not, you weren’t likely to run away from me because I’d promised to take you back to New York with me and set you free. I told him you didn’t really want to leave me right now anyway. He got the idea.”

“You make yourself sound disgusting.”

“I know. I think I was trying to at the end—trying to see whether any- thing I did to you could make me someone he wouldn’t want anywhere near his kid. I think he did cool a little toward me when I said I’d prom- ised you freedom, but he didn’t say anything.”

“What were you trying to do? Lose the job you’d just gotten?”

“No, but while I was talking to him, all I could think was that you might be coming back here alone someday. I kept trying to find the humanity in him to reassure myself that you would be all right.”

“Oh, he’s human enough. If he were of a little higher social class, he might even have been disgusted enough with your bragging not to want

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