Kindred

The Fight

1

We never really moved in together, Kevin and I. I had a sardine-can sized apartment on Crenshaw Boulevard and he had a bigger one on Olympic not too far away. We both had books shelved and stacked and boxed and crowding out the furniture. Together, we would never have fitted into either of our apartments. Kevin did suggest once that I get rid of some of my books so that I’d fit into his place.

“You’re out of your mind!” I told him.

“Just some of that book-club stuff that you don’t read.”

We were at my apartment then, so I said, “Let’s go to your place and I’ll help you decide which of your books you don’t read. I’ll even help you throw them out.”

He looked at me and sighed, but he didn’t say anything else. We just sort of drifted back and forth between our two apartments and I got less sleep than ever. But it didn’t seem to bother me as much as it had before. Nothing seemed to bother me much. I didn’t love the agency now, but, on the other hand, I didn’t kick the furniture in the morning anymore, either.

“Quit,” Kevin told me. “I’ll help you out until you find a better job.” If I hadn’t already loved him by then, that would have done it. But I

didn’t quit. The independence the agency gave me was shaky, but it was real. It would hold me together until my novel was finished and I was ready to look for something more demanding. When that time came, I

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could walk away from the agency not owing anybody. My memory of my aunt and uncle told me that even people who loved me could demand more of me than I could give—and expect their demands to be met sim- ply because I owed them.

I knew Kevin wasn’t that way. The situation was completely different. But I kept my job.

Then about four months after we’d met, Kevin said, “How would you feel about getting married?”

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. “You want to marry me?” “Yeah, don’t you want to marry me?” He grinned. “I’d let you type all

my manuscripts.”

I was drying our dinner dishes just then, and I threw the dish towel at him. He really had asked me to do some typing for him three times. I’d done it the first time, grudgingly, not telling him how much I hated typ- ing, how I did all but the final drafts of my stories in longhand. That was why I was with a blue-collar agency instead of a white-collar agency. The second time he asked, though, I told him, and I refused. He was annoyed. The third time when I refused again, he was angry. He said if I couldn’t do him a little favor when he asked, I could leave. So I went home.

When I rang his doorbell the next day after work, he looked surprised. “You came back.”

“Didn’t you want me to?”

“Well … sure. Will you type those pages for me now?” “No.”

“Damnit, Dana …!”

I stood waiting for him to either shut the door or let me in. He let me in.

And now he wanted to marry me.

I looked at him. Just looked, for a long moment. Then I looked away because I couldn’t think while I was watching him. “You, uh … don’t have any relatives or anything who’ll give you a hard time about me, do you?” As I spoke, it occurred to me that one of the reasons his proposal surprised me was that we had never talked much about our families, about how his would react to me and mine to him. I hadn’t been aware of us avoiding the subject, but somehow, we’d never gotten around to it. Even now, he looked surprised.

“The only close relative I’ve got left is my sister,” he said. “She’s been trying to marry me off and get me ‘settled down’ for years. She’ll love

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you, believe me.”

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I didn’t, quite. “I hope she does,” I said. “But I’m afraid my aunt and uncle won’t love you.”

He turned to face me. “No?”

I shrugged. “They’re old. Sometimes their ideas don’t have very much to do with what’s going on now. I think they’re still waiting for me to come to my senses, move back home, and go to secretarial school.”

“Are we going to get married?”

I went to him. “You know damn well we are.”

“You want me to go with you when you talk to your aunt and uncle?” “No. Go talk to your sister if you want to. Brace yourself though. She

might surprise you.”

She did. And braced or not, he wasn’t ready for his sister’s reaction. “I thought I knew her,” he told me afterward. “I mean, I did know her.

But I guess we’ve lost touch more than I thought.” “What did she say?”

“That she didn’t want to meet you, wouldn’t have you in her house— or me either if I married you.” He leaned back on the shabby purple sofa that had come with my apartment and looked up at me. “And she said a lot of other things. You don’t want to hear them.”

“I believe you.”

He shook his head. “The thing is, there’s no reason for her to react this way. She didn’t even believe the garbage she was handing me—or didn’t used to. It’s as though she was quoting someone else. Her husband, prob- ably. Pompous little bastard. I used to try to like him for her sake.”

“Her husband is prejudiced?”

“Her husband would have made a good Nazi. She used to joke about it—though never when he could hear.”

“But she married him.”

“Desperation. She would have married almost anybody.” He smiled a little. “In high school, she and this friend of hers spent all their time together because neither of them could get a boyfriend. The other girl was black and fat and homely, and Carol was white and fat and homely. Half the time, we couldn’t figure out whether she lived at the girl’s house or the girl lived with us. My friends knew them both, but they were too young for them—Carol’s three years older than I am. Anyway, she and this girl sort of comforted each other and fell off their diets together and planned to go to the same college so they wouldn’t have to break up the

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partnership. The other girl really went, but Carol changed her mind and trained to become a dental assistant. She wound up marrying the first dentist she ever worked for—a smug little reactionary twenty years older than she was. Now she lives in a big house in La Canada and quotes clichéd bigotry at me for wanting to marry you.”

I shrugged, not knowing what to say. I-told-you-so? Hardly. “My mother’s car broke down in La Canada once,” I told him. “Three people called the police on her while she was waiting for my uncle to come and get her. Suspicious character. Five-three, she was. About a hundred pounds. Real dangerous.”

“Sounds like the reactionary moved to the right town.”

“I don’t know, that was back in nineteen sixty just before my mother died. Things may have improved by now.”

“What did your aunt and uncle say about me, Dana?”

I looked at my hands, thinking about all they had said, paring it down wearily. “I think my aunt accepts the idea of my marrying you because any children we have will be light. Lighter than I am, anyway. She always said I was a little too ‘highly visible.’”

He stared at me.

“You see? I told you they were old. She doesn’t care much for white people, but she prefers light-skinned blacks. Figure that out. Anyway, she ‘forgives’ me for you. But my uncle doesn’t. He’s sort of taken this personally.”

“Personally, how?”

“He … well, he’s my mother’s oldest brother, and he was like a father to me even before my mother died because my father died when I was a baby. Now … it’s as though I’ve rejected him. Or at least that’s the way he feels. It bothered me, really. He was more hurt than mad. Honestly hurt. I had to get away from him.”

“But, he knew you’d marry some day. How could a thing as natural as that be a rejection?”

“I’m marrying you.” I reached up and twisted a few strands of his straight gray hair between my fingers. “He wants me to marry someone like him—someone who looks like him. A black man.”

“Oh.”

“I was always close to him. He and my aunt wanted kids, and they couldn’t have any. I was their kid.”

“And now?”

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“Now … well, they have a couple of apartment houses over in Pasadena—small places, but nice. The last thing my uncle said to me was that he’d rather will them to his church than leave them to me and see them fall into white hands. I think that was the worst thing he could think of to do to me. Or he thought it was the worst thing.”

“Oh hell,” muttered Kevin. “Look, are you sure you still want to marry me?”

“Yes. I wish … never mind, just yes. Definitely, yes.”

“Then let’s go to Vegas and pretend we haven’t got relatives.”

So we drove to Las Vegas, got married, and gambled away a few dol- lars. When we came home to our bigger new apartment, we found a gift—a blender—from my best friend, and a check from The Atlantic waiting for us. One of my stories had finally made it.

2

I awoke.

I was lying flat on my stomach, my face pressed uncomfortably against something cold and hard. My body below the neck rested on something slightly softer. Slowly, I became aware of sunlight and shadow, of shapes.

I lifted my head, started to sit up, and my back suddenly caught fire. I fell forward, hit my head hard on the bare floor of the bathroom. My bathroom. I was home.

“Kevin?”

I listened. I could have looked around, but I didn’t want to. “Kevin?”

I got up, aware that my eyes were streaming muddy tears, aware of the pain. God, the pain! For several seconds, all I could do was lean against the wall and bear it.

Slowly, I discovered that I wasn’t as weak as I had thought. In fact, by the time I was fully conscious, I wasn’t weak at all. It was only the pain that made me move slowly, carefully, like a woman three times my age.

I could see now that I had been lying with my head in the bathroom and my body in the bedroom. Now I went into the bathroom and turned

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on the water to fill the tub. Warm water. I don’t think I could have stood hot. Or cold.

My blouse was stuck to my back. It was cut to pieces, really, but the pieces were stuck to me. My back was cut up pretty badly too from what I could feel. I had seen old photographs of the backs of people who had been slaves. I could remember the scars, thick and ugly. Kevin had always told me how smooth my skin was …

I took off my pants and shoes and got into the tub still wearing my blouse. I would let the water soften it until I could ease it from my back.

In the tub, I sat for a long while without moving, without thinking, lis- tening for what I knew I would not hear elsewhere in the house. The pain was a friend. Pain had never been a friend to me before, but now it kept me still. It forced reality on me and kept me sane.

But Kevin …

I leaned forward and cried into the dirty pink water. The skin of my back stretched agonizingly, and the water got pinker.

And it was all pointless. There was nothing I could do. I had no con- trol at all over anything. Kevin might as well be dead. Abandoned in

1819, Kevin was dead. Decades dead, perhaps a century dead.

Maybe I would be called back again, and maybe he would still be there waiting for me and maybe only a few years would have passed for him, and maybe he would be all right … But what had he said once about going West watching history happen?

By the time my wounds had softened and my rag of a blouse had come unstuck from them, I was exhausted. I felt the weakness now that I hadn’t felt before. I got out of the tub and dried myself as best I could, then stumbled into the bedroom and fell across the bed. In spite of the pain, I fell asleep at once.

The house was dark when I awoke, and the bed was empty except for me. I had to remember why all over again. I got up stiffly, painfully, and went to find something that would make me sleep again quickly. I didn’t want to be awake. I barely wanted to be alive. Kevin had gotten a pre- scription for some pills once when he was having trouble sleeping.

I found what was left of them. I was about to take two of them when I got a look at myself in the medicine cabinet mirror. My face had swollen and was puffy and old-looking. My hair was in tangled patches, brown with dirt and matted with blood. In my semihysterical state earlier, I had not thought to wash it.

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I put the pills down and climbed back into the tub. This time I turned on the shower and somehow managed to wash my hair. Raising my arms hurt. Bending forward hurt. The shampoo that got into my cuts hurt. I started slowly, wincing, grimacing. Finally I got angry and moved vigor- ously in spite of the pain.

When I looked passably human again, I took some aspirins. They didn’t help much, but I was sane enough now to know that I had some- thing to do before I could afford to sleep again.

I needed a replacement for my lost canvas bag. Something that didn’t look too good for a “nigger” to be carrying. I finally settled on an old denim gym bag that I’d made and used back in high school. It was tough and roomy like the canvas bag, and faded enough to look properly shabby.

I would have put in a long dress this time if I’d had one. All I had, though, were a couple of bright filmy evening dresses that would have drawn attention to me, and, under the circumstances, made me look ridiculous. Best to go on being the woman who dressed like a man.

I rolled up a couple of pairs of jeans and stuffed them into the bag. Then shoes, shirts, a wool sweater, comb, brush, tooth paste and tooth brush—Kevin and I had really missed those—two large cakes of soap, my washcloth, the bottle of aspirins—if Rufus called me while my back was sore, I would need them—my knife. The knife had come back with me because I happened to be wearing it in a makeshift leather sheath at my ankle. I didn’t know whether to be glad or not that I hadn’t had a chance to use it against Weylin. I might have killed him. I had been angry enough, frightened enough, humiliated enough to try. Then if Rufus called me again, I would have to answer for the killing. Or maybe Kevin would have to answer for it. I was suddenly very glad that I had left Weylin alive. Kevin was in for enough trouble. And, too, when I saw Rufus again—if I saw him again—I would need his help. I wouldn’t be likely to get it if I had killed his father—even a father he didn’t like.

I stuffed another pencil, pen, and scratch pad into the bag. I was slowly emptying Kevin’s desk. All my things were still packed. And I found a compact paperback history of slavery in America that might be useful. It listed dates and events that I should be aware of, and it contained a map of Maryland.

The bag was too full to close completely by the time everything was in, but I tied it shut with its own rope drawstring, and tied the drawstring

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around my arm. I couldn’t have stood anything tied around my waist.

Then, incongruously, I was hungry. I went to the kitchen and found half-a-box of raisins and a full can of mixed nuts. To my surprise, I finished both, then slept again easily.

It was morning when I awoke, and I was still at home. My back hurt whenever I moved. I managed to spray it with an ointment Kevin had used for sunburn. The whip lacerations hurt like burns. The ointment cooled them and seemed to help. I had the feeling I should have used something stronger, though. Heaven knew what kind of infection you could get from a whip kept limber with oil and blood. Tom Weylin had ordered brine thrown onto the back of the field hand he had whipped. I could remember the man screaming as the solution hit him. But his wounds had healed without infection.

As I thought of the field hand, I felt strangely disoriented. For a moment, I thought Rufus was calling me again. Then I realized that I wasn’t really dizzy—only confused. My memory of a field hand being whipped suddenly seemed to have no place here with me at home.

I came out of the bathroom into the bedroom and looked around. Home. Bed—without canopy—dresser, closet, electric light, television, radio, electric clock, books. Home. It didn’t have anything to do with where I had been. It was real. It was where I belonged.

I put on a loose dress and went out to the front yard. The tiny blue- haired woman who lived next door noticed me and wished me a good morning. She was on her hands and knees digging in her flower garden and obviously enjoying herself. She reminded me of Margaret Weylin who also had flowers. I had heard Margaret’s guests compliment her on her flowers. But, of course, she didn’t take care of them herself …

Today and yesterday didn’t mesh. I felt almost as strange as I had after my first trip back to Rufus—caught between his home and mine.

There was a Volvo parked across the street and there were powerlines overhead. There were palm trees and paved streets. There was the bath- room I had just left. Not a hole-in-the-ground privy toilet that you had to hold your breath to go into, but a bathroom.

I went back into the house and turned the radio on to an all-news sta- tion. There, eventually, I learned that it was Friday, June 11, 1976. I’d gone away for nearly two months and come back yesterday—the same day I left home. Nothing was real.

Kevin could be gone for years even if I went after him today and

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brought him back tonight.

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I found a music station and turned the radio up loud to drown out my thinking.

The time passed and I did more unpacking, stopping often, taking too many aspirins. I began to bring some order to my own office. Once I sat down at my typewriter and tried to write about what had happened, made about six attempts before I gave up and threw them all away. Someday when this was over, if it was ever over, maybe I would be able to write about it.

I called my favorite cousin in Pasadena—my father’s sister’s daughter

—and had her buy groceries for me. I told her I was sick and Kevin wasn’t around. Something about my tone must have reached her. She didn’t ask any questions.

I was still afraid to leave the house, walking or driving. Driving, I could easily kill myself, and the car could kill other people if Rufus called me from it at the wrong time. Walking, I could get dizzy and fall while crossing the street. Or I could fall on the sidewalk and attract atten- tion. Someone could come to help me—a cop, anyone. Then I could be guilty of taking someone else back with me and stranding them.

My cousin was a good friend. She took one look at me and recom- mended a doctor she knew. She also advised me to send the police after Kevin. She assumed that my bruises were his work. But when I swore her to silence, I knew she would be silent. She and I had grown up keeping each other’s secrets.

“I never thought you’d be fool enough to let a man beat you,” she said as she left. She was disappointed in me, I think.

“I never thought I would either,” I whispered when she was gone.

I waited inside the house with my denim bag always nearby. The days passed slowly, and sometimes I thought I was waiting for something that just wasn’t going to happen. But I went on waiting.

I read books about slavery, fiction and nonfiction. I read everything I had in the house that was even distantly related to the subject—even Gone With the Wind, or part of it. But its version of happy darkies in ten- der loving bondage was more than I could stand.

Then, somehow, I got caught up in one of Kevin’s World War II books—a book of excerpts from the recollections of concentration camp survivors. Stories of beatings, starvation, filth, disease, torture, every possible degradation. As though the Germans had been trying to do in

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only a few years what the Americans had worked at for nearly two hundred.

The books depressed me, scared me, made me stuff Kevin’s sleeping pills into my bag. Like the Nazis, ante bellum whites had known quite a bit about torture—quite a bit more than I ever wanted to learn.

3

I had been at home for eight days when the dizziness finally came again. I didn’t know whether to curse it for my own sake or welcome it for Kevin’s—not that it mattered what I did.

I went to Rufus’s time fully clothed, carrying my denim bag, wearing my knife. I arrived on my knees because of the dizziness, but I was immediately alert and wary.

I was in the woods either late in the day or early in the morning. The sun was low in the sky and surrounded as I was by trees, I had no refer- ence point to tell me whether it was rising or setting. I could see a stream not far from me, running between tall trees. Off to my opposite side was a woman, black, young—just a girl, really—with her dress torn down the front. She was holding it together as she watched a black man and a white man fighting.

The white man’s red hair told me who he must be. His face was already too much of a mess to tell me. He was losing his fight—had already lost it. The man he was fighting was his size with the same slen- der build, but in spite of the black man’s slenderness, he looked wiry and strong. He had probably been conditioned by years of hard work. He didn’t seem much affected when Rufus hit him, but he was killing Rufus.

Then it occurred to me that he might really be doing just that—killing the only person who might be able to help me find Kevin. Killing my ancestor. What had happened here seemed obvious. The girl, her torn dress. If everything was as it seemed, Rufus had earned his beating and more. Maybe he had grown up to be even worse than I had feared. But no matter what he was, I needed him alive—for Kevin’s sake and for my own.

I saw him fall, get up, and be knocked down again. This time, he got

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up more slowly, but he got up. I had a feeling he’d done a lot of getting up. He wouldn’t be doing much more.

I went closer, and the woman saw me. She called out something I didn’t quite understand, and the man turned his head to look at her. Then he followed her gaze to me. Just then, Rufus hit him on the jaw.

Surprisingly, the black man stumbled backward, almost fell. But Rufus was too tired and hurt to follow up his advantage. The black man hit him one more solid blow, and Rufus collapsed. There was no question of his getting up this time. He was out cold.

As I approached, the black man reached down and caught Rufus by the hair as though to hit him again. I stepped up to the man quickly. “What will they do to you if you kill him?” I said.

The man twisted around to glare at me.

“What will they do to the woman if you kill him?” I asked.

That seemed to reach him. He released Rufus and stood straight to face me. “Who’s going to say I did anything to him?” His voice was low and threatening, and I began to wonder whether I might wind up joining Rufus unconscious on the ground.

I made myself shrug. “You’ll say yourself what you did if they ask you right. So will the woman.”

“What are you going to say?”

“Not a word if I can help it. But … I’m asking you not to kill him.” “You belong to him?”

“No. It’s just that he might know where my husband is. And I might be able to get him to tell me.”

“Your husband …?” He looked me over from head to foot. “Why you go ’round dressed like a man?”

I said nothing. I was so tired of answering that question that I wished I had risked going out to buy a long dress. I looked down at Rufus’s bloody face and said, “If you leave him here now, it will be a long while before he can send anyone after you. You’ll have time to get away.”

“You think you’d want him alive if you was her?” He gestured toward the woman.

“Is she your wife?” “Yeah.”

He was like Sarah, holding himself back, not killing in spite of anger I could only imagine. A lifetime of conditioning could be overcome, but not easily. I looked at the woman. “Do you want your husband to kill this

man?”

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She shook her head and I saw that her face was swollen on one side. “’While ago, I could have killed him myself,” she said. “Now … Isaac, let’s just get away!”

“Get away and leave her here?” He stared at me, suspicious and hos- tile. “She sure don’t talk like no nigger I ever heard. Talks like she been mighty close with the white folks—for a long time.”

“She talks like that ’cause she comes from a long way off,” said the girl.

I looked at her in surprise. Tall and slender and dark, she was. A little like me. Maybe a lot like me.

“You’re Dana, aren’t you?” she asked. “Yes … how did you know?”

“He told me about you.” She nudged Rufus with her foot. “He used to talk about you all the time. And I saw you once, when I was little.”

I nodded. “You’re Alice, then. I thought so.”

She nodded and rubbed her swollen face. “I’m Alice.” And she looked at the black man with pride. “Alice Jackson now.”

I tried to see her again as the thin, frightened child I remembered—the child I had seen only two months before. It was impossible. But I should have been used to the impossible by now—just as I should have been used to white men preying on black women. I had Weylin as my exam- ple, after all. But somehow, I had hoped for better from Rufus. I won- dered whether the girl was pregnant with Hagar already.

“My name was Greenwood when you saw me last,” Alice continued. “I married Isaac last year … just before Mama died.”

“She died then?” I caught myself visualizing a woman my age dying, even though I knew that was wrong. But still, the woman must have died fairly young. “I’m sorry,” I said. “She tried to help me.”

“She helped lot of folks,” said Isaac. “She used to treat this little no- good bastard better than his own people treated him.” He kicked Rufus hard in the side.

I winced and wished I could move Rufus out of his reach. “Alice,” I said, “wasn’t Rufus a friend of yours? I mean … did he just grow out of the friendship or what?”

“Got to where he wanted to be more friendly than I did,” she said. “He tried to get Judge Holman to sell Isaac South to keep me from marrying him.”

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“You’re a slave?” I said to Isaac, surprised. “My God, you’d better get out of here.”

Isaac gave Alice a look that said very clearly, You talk too much. Alice answered the look.

“Isaac, she’s all right. She got a whipping once for teaching a slave how to read. Tom Weylin was the one whipped her.”

“I want to know what she’s going to do when we leave,” said Isaac. “I’m going to stay with Rufus,” I told him. “When he comes to, I’m

going to help him home—as slowly as possible. I’m not going to tell him where you went because I won’t know.”

Isaac looked at Alice, and she tugged at his arm. “Let’s go!” she urged. “But …”

“You can’t whip everybody! Let’s go!”

He seemed on the verge of going when I said, “Isaac, if you want me to, I can write you a pass. It doesn’t have to be to where you’re really going, but it might help you if you’re stopped.”

He looked at me with no trust at all, then turned and walked away without answering.

Alice hesitated, spoke softly to me. “Your man went away,” she said. “He waited a long time for you, then he left.”

“Where did he go?”

“Somewhere North. I don’t know. Mister Rufe knows. You got to be careful, though. Mister Rufe gets mighty crazy sometimes.”

“Thank you.”

She turned and followed Isaac, leaving me alone with the unconscious Rufus—alone to wonder where she and Isaac would go. North to Penn- sylvania? I hoped so. And where had Kevin gone? Why had he gone any- where? What if Rufus wouldn’t help me find him? Or what if I didn’t stay in this time long enough to find him? Why couldn’t he have waited …?

4

I knelt down beside Rufus and rolled him over onto his back. His nose was bleeding. His split lip was bleeding. I thought he had probably lost a few teeth, but I didn’t look closely enough to be sure. His face was a

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lumpy mess, and he would be looking out of a couple of black eyes for a while. All in all, though, he probably looked worse off than he was. No doubt he had some bruises that I couldn’t see without undressing him, but I didn’t think he was badly hurt. He would be in some pain when he came to, but he had earned that.

I sat on my knees, watching him, first wishing he would hurry and regain consciousness, then wanting him to stay unconscious so that Alice and her husband could get a good start. I looked at the stream, thinking that a little cold water might bring him around faster. But I stayed where I was. Isaac’s life was at stake. If Rufus was vindictive enough, he could surely have the man killed. A slave had no rights, and certainly no excuse for striking a white man.

If it was possible, if Rufus was in any way still the boy I had known, I would try to keep him from going after Isaac at all. He looked about eighteen or nineteen now. I would be able to bluff and bully him a little. It shouldn’t take him long to realize that he and I needed each other. We would be taking turns helping each other now. Neither of us would want the other to hesitate. We would have to learn to co-operate with each other—to make compromises.

“Who’s there?” said Rufus suddenly. His voice was weak, barely audible.

“It’s Dana, Rufe.”

“Dana?” He opened his swollen eyes a little wider. “You came back!” “You keep trying to get yourself killed. I keep coming back.” “Where’s Alice?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know where we are. I’ll help you get home, though, if you’ll point the way.”

“Where did she go?” “I don’t know, Rufe.”

He tried to sit up, managed to raise himself about six inches before he fell back, groaning. “Where’s Isaac?” he muttered. “That’s the son-of-a- bitch I want to catch up with.”

“Rest awhile,” I said. “Get your strength back. You couldn’t catch him now if he was standing next to you.”

He moaned and felt his side gingerly. “He’s going to pay!” I got up and walked toward the stream.

“Where are you going?” he called. I didn’t answer.

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“Dana? Come back here! Dana!”

I could hear his increasing desperation. He was hurt and alone except for me. He couldn’t even get up, and I seemed to be abandoning him. I wanted him to experience a little of that fear.

“Dana!”

I dug the washcloth out of my denim bag, wet it, and took it back to him. Kneeling beside him, I began wiping blood from his face.

“Why didn’t you tell me that’s where you were going?” he said petu- lantly. He was panting and holding his side.

I watched him, wondering how much he had really grown up. “Dana, say something!”

“I want you to say something.”

He squinted at me. “What?” I was leaning close to him, and I caught a whiff of his breath when he spoke. He had been drinking. He didn’t seem drunk, but he had definitely been drinking. That worried me, but there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t dare wait until he was com- pletely sober.

“I want you to tell me about the men who attacked you,” I said. “What men? Isaac …”

“The men you were drinking with,” I improvised. “They were strangers—white men. They got you drinking, then tried to rob you.” Kevin’s old story was coming in handy.

“What in hell are you talking about? You know Isaac Jackson did this to me!” The words came out in a harsh whisper.

“All right, Isaac beat you up,” I agreed. “Why?” He glared at me without answering.

“You raped a woman—or tried to—and her husband beat you up,” I said. “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you. He would have if Alice and I hadn’t talked him out of it. Now what are you going to do to repay us for saving your life?”

The bewilderment and anger left his face, and he stared at me blankly. After a while, he closed his eyes and I went over to rinse my washcloth. When I got back to him, he was trying—and failing—to stand up. Finally, he collapsed back panting and holding his side. I wondered whether he was hurt more than he appeared to be—hurt inside. His ribs, perhaps.

I knelt beside him again and wiped the rest of the blood and dirt from his face. “Rufe, did you manage to rape that girl?”

He looked away guiltily.

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“Why would you do such a thing? She used to be your friend.” “When we were little, we were friends,” he said softly. “We grew up.

She got so she’d rather have a buck nigger than me!”

“Do you mean her husband?” I asked. I managed to keep my voice even.

“Who in hell else would I mean!”

“Yes.” I gazed down at him bitterly. Kevin had been right. I’d been foolish to hope to influence him. “Yes,” I repeated. “How dare she choose her own husband. She must have thought she was a free woman or something.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” he demanded. Then his voice dropped to almost a whisper. “I would have taken better care of her than any field hand could. I wouldn’t have hurt her if she hadn’t just kept saying no.”

“She had the right to say no.” “We’ll see about her rights!”

“Oh? Are you planning to hurt her more? She just helped me save your life, remember?”

“She’ll get what’s coming to her. She’ll get it whether I give it to her or not.” He smiled. “If she ran off with Isaac, she’ll get plenty.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“She did run off with Isaac, then?”

“I don’t know. Isaac figured I was on your side so he didn’t trust me enough to tell me what they were going to do.”

“He didn’t have to. Isaac just attacked a white man. He’s not going back to Judge Holman after doing that. Some other nigger might, but not Isaac. He’s run away, and Alice is with him, helping him to escape. Or at least, that’s the way the Judge will see it.”

“What will happen to her?”

“Jail. A good whipping. Then they’ll sell her.” “She’ll be a slave?”

“Her own fault.”

I stared at him. Heaven help Alice and Isaac. Heaven help me. If Rufus could turn so quickly on a life-long friend, how long would it take him to turn on me?

“I don’t want her being sold South, though,” he whispered. “Her fault or not, I don’t want her dying in some rice swamp.”

“Why not?” I asked bitterly. “Why should it matter to you?”

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“I wish it didn’t.”

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I frowned down at him. His tone had changed suddenly. Was he going to show a little humanity then? Did he have any left to show?

“I told her about you,” he said. “I know. She recognized me.”

“I told her everything. Even about you and Kevin being married. Espe- cially about that.”

“What will you do, Rufe, if they bring her back?” “Buy her. I’ve got some money.”

“What about Isaac?”

“To hell with Isaac!” He said it too vehemently and hurt his side. His face twisted in pain.

“So you’ll be rid of the man and have possession of the woman just as you wanted,” I said with disgust. “Rape rewarded.”

He turned his head toward me and peered at me through swollen eyes. “I begged her not to go with him,” he said quietly. “Do you hear me, I begged her!”

I said nothing. I was beginning to realize that he loved the woman— to her misfortune. There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one.

“I didn’t want to just drag her off into the bushes,” said Rufus. “I never wanted it to be like that. But she kept saying no. I could have had her in the bushes years ago if that was all I wanted.”

“I know,” I said.

“If I lived in your time, I would have married her. Or tried to.” He began trying to get up again. He seemed stronger now, but in pain. I sat watching him, but not helping. I was not eager for him to recover and go home—not until I was sure what story he would tell when he got there.

Finally, the pain seemed to overwhelm him and he lay down again. “What did that bastard do to me?” he whispered.

“I could go and get help for you,” I said. “If you tell me which way to go.”

“Wait.” He caught his breath and coughed and the coughing hurt him badly. “Oh God,” he moaned.

“I think you’ve got broken ribs,” I said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised. I guess you’d better go.”

“All right. But, Rufe … white men attacked you. You hear?” He said nothing.

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“You said people would be going after Isaac anyway. All right then, so be it. But let him—and Alice—have a chance. They’ve given you one.” “It won’t make any difference whether I tell or not. Isaac’s a runaway.

They’ll have to answer for that, no matter what.” “Then your silence won’t matter.”

“Except to give them the start you want them to have.” I nodded. “I do want them to have it.”

“You’ll trust me, then?” He was watching me very closely. “If I say I

won’t tell, you’ll believe me?”

“Yes.” I paused for a moment. “We should never lie to each other, you and I. It wouldn’t be worthwhile. We both have too much opportunity for retaliation.”

He turned his face away from me. “You talk like a damn book.” “Then I hope Kevin did a good job of teaching you to read.”

“You …!” He caught my arm in a grip I could have broken, but I let him hold on. “You threaten me, I’ll threaten you. Without me, you’ll never find Kevin.”

“I know that.”

“Then don’t threaten me!”

“I said we were dangerous to each other. That’s more a reminder than a threat.” Actually, it was more a bluff.

“I don’t need reminders or threats from you.” I said nothing.

“Well? Are you going to go get some help for me?” Still I said nothing. I didn’t move.

“You go through those trees,” he said pointing. “There’s a road out there, not too far away. Go left on the road and then just follow it until you come to our place.”

I listened to his directions knowing that I would use them sooner or later. But we had to have an understanding first, he and I. He didn’t have to admit that we had one. He could keep his pride if that was what he thought was at stake. But he did have to behave as though he understood me. If he refused, he was going to get a lot more pain now. And maybe later when Kevin was safe and Hagar had at least had a chance to be born—I might never find out about that—I would walk away from Rufus and leave him to get out of his own trouble.

“Dana!”

I looked at him. I had let my attention wander.

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“I said she’ll … they’ll get their time. White men attacked me.” “Good, Rufe.” I laid a hand on his shoulder. “Look, your father will

listen to me, won’t he? I don’t know what he saw last time I went home.” “He doesn’t know what he saw either. Whatever it was, he’s seen it before—that time at the river—and he didn’t believe it then, either. But

he’ll listen to you. He might even be a little afraid of you.”

“That’s better than the other way around. I’ll get back as quickly as I

can.”

5

The road was farther away than I had expected. As it got darker—the sun was setting, not rising—I tore pages from my scratch pad and stuck them on trees now and then to mark my trail. Even then I worried that I might not be able to find my way back to Rufus.

When I reached the road, I pulled up some bushes and made a kind of barricade speckled with bits of white paper. That would stop me at the right place when I came back—if no one moved it meanwhile.

I followed the road until it was dark, followed it through woods, through fields, past a large house much finer than Weylin’s. No one both- ered me. I hid behind a tree once when two white men rode past. They might not have paid any attention to me, but I didn’t want to take the chance. And there were three black women walking with large bundles balanced on their heads.

“ ‘Evenin’,” they said as I passed them.

I nodded and wished them a good evening. And I walked faster, won- dering suddenly what the years had done to Luke and Sarah, to Nigel and Carrie. The children who had played at selling each other might already be working in the fields now. And what would time have done to Mar- garet Weylin? I doubted that it had made her any easier to live with.

Finally, after more woods and fields, the plain square house was before me, its downstairs windows full of yellow light. I was startled to catch myself saying wearily, “Home at last.”

I stood still for a moment between the fields and the house and reminded myself that I was in a hostile place. It didn’t look alien any

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longer, but that only made it more dangerous, made me more likely to relax and make a mistake.

I rubbed my back, touched the several long scabs to remind myself that I could not afford to make mistakes. And the scabs forced me to remember that I had been away from this place for only a few days. Not that I had forgotten—exactly. But it was as though during my walk I had been getting used to the idea that years had passed for these people since I had seen them last. I had begun to feel—feel, not think—that a great deal of time had passed for me too. It was a vague feeling, but it seemed right and comfortable. More comfortable than trying to keep in mind what was really happening. Some part of me had apparently given up on time-distorted reality and smoothed things out. Well, that was all right, as long as it didn’t go too far.

I continued on toward the house, mentally prepared now, I hoped, to meet Tom Weylin. But as I approached, a tall thin shadow of a white man came toward me from the direction of the quarter.

“Hey there,” he called. “What are you doing out here?” His long steps closed the distance between us quickly, and in a moment, he stood peer- ing down at me. “You don’t belong here,” he said. “Who’s your master?” “I’ve come to get help for Mister Rufus,” I said. And then, feeling sud- denly doubtful because he was a stranger, I asked, “This is still where he

lives, isn’t it?”

The man did not answer. He continued to peer at me. I wondered whether it was my sex or my accent that he was trying to figure out. Or maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t called him sir or master. I’d have to begin that degrading nonsense again. But who was this man, anyway?

“He lives here.” An answer, finally. “What’s wrong with him?” “Some men beat him. He can’t walk.”

“Is he drunk?”

“Uh … no, sir, not quite.” “Worthless bastard.”

I jumped a little. The man had spoken softly, but there was no mistak- ing what he had said. I said nothing.

“Come on,” he ordered, and led me into the house. He left me stand- ing in the entrance hall and went to the library where I supposed Weylin was. I looked at the wooden bench a few steps from me, the settee, but although I was tired, I didn’t sit down. Margaret Weylin had once caught me sitting there tying my shoe. She had screamed and raged as though

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she’d caught me stealing her jewelry. I didn’t want to renew my acquain- tance with her in another scene like that. I didn’t want to renew my acquaintance with her at all, but it seemed inevitable.

There was a sound behind me and I turned in quick apprehension. A young slave woman stood staring at me. She was light-skinned, blue- kerchiefed, and very pregnant.

“Carrie?” I asked.

She ran to me, caught me by the shoulders for a moment, and looked into my face. Then she hugged me.

The white stranger chose that moment to come out of the library with

Tom Weylin.

“What’s going on here?” demanded the stranger.

Carrie moved away from me quickly, head down, and I said, “We’re old friends, sir.”

Tom Weylin, grayer, thinner, grimmer-looking than ever, came over to me. He stared at me for a moment, then turned to face the stranger. “When did you say his horse came in, Jake?”

“About an hour ago.”

“That long … you should have told me.” “He’s taken that long and longer before.”

Weylin sighed, glanced at me. “Yes. But I think it might be more seri- ous this time. Carrie!”

The mute woman had been walking away toward the back door. Now, she turned to look at Weylin.

“Have Nigel bring the wagon around front.”

She gave the half-nod, half-curtsey that she reserved for whites and hurried away.

Something occurred to me as she was going and I spoke to Weylin. “I think Mister Rufus might have broken ribs. He wasn’t coughing blood so his lungs are probably all right, but it might be a good idea for me to bandage him a little before you move him.” I had never bandaged any- thing worse than a cut finger in my life, but I did remember a little of the first aid I had learned in school. I hadn’t thought to act when Rufus broke his leg, but I might be able to help now.

“You can bandage him when we get him here,” said Weylin. And to the stranger, “Jake, you send somebody for the doctor.”

Jake took a last disapproving look at me and went out the back door after Carrie.