and brought me down hard. At first, I lay stunned, unable to move or defend myself even when he began hitting me, punch- ing me with his fists. I had never been beaten that way before—would never have thought I could absorb so much punishment without losing consciousness.
When I tried to scramble away, he pulled me back. When I tried to push him away, he hardly seemed to notice. At one point, I did get his attention though. He had leaned down close to me, pinning me flat on my back. I raised my hands to his face, my fingers partly covering his eyes. In that instant, I knew I could stop him, cripple him, in this primitive age, destroy him.
His eyes.
I had only to move my fingers a little and jab them into the soft tissues, gouge away his sight and give him more agony than he was giving me.
But I couldn’t do it. The thought sickened me, froze my hands where they were. I had to do it! But I couldn’t …
The man knocked my hands from his face and moved back from me— and I cursed myself for my utter stupidity. My chance was gone, and I’d done nothing. My squeamishness belonged in another age, but I’d brought it along with me. Now I would be sold into slavery because I didn’t have the stomach to defend myself in the most effective way. Slav- ery! And there was a more immediate threat.
The man had stopped beating me. Now he simply kept a tight hold on me and looked at me. I could see that I had left a few scratches on his face. Shallow insignificant scratches. The man rubbed his hand across them, looked at the blood, then looked at me.
“You know you’re going to pay for that, don’t you?” he said.
I said nothing. Stupidity was what I would pay for, if anything.
“I guess you’ll do as well as your sister,” he said. “I came back for her, but you’re just like her.”
That told me who he probably was. One of the patrollers—the one who had hit Alice’s mother, probably. He reached out and ripped my blouse open. Buttons flew everywhere, but I didn’t move. I understood what the man was going to do. He was going to display some stupidity of his own.
THE FIRE 43
He was going to give me another chance to destroy him. I was almost relieved.
He tore loose my bra and I prepared to move. Just one quick lunge. Then suddenly, for no reason that I could see, he reared above me, fist drawn back to hit me again. I jerked my head aside, hit it on something hard just as his fist glanced off my jaw.
The new pain shattered my resolve, sent me scrambling away again. I was only able to move a few inches before he pinned me down, but that was far enough for me to discover that the thing I had hit my head on was a heavy stick—a tree limb, perhaps. I grasped it with both hands and brought it down as hard as I could on his head.
He collapsed across my body.
I lay still, panting, trying to find the strength to get up and run. The man had a horse around somewhere. If I could find it …
I dragged myself from beneath his heavy body and tried to stand up. Halfway up, I felt myself losing consciousness, falling back. I caught hold of a tree and willed myself to stay conscious. If the man came to and found me nearby, he would kill me. He would surely kill me! But I couldn’t keep my hold on the tree. I fell, slowly it seemed, into a deep starless darkness.
5
Pain dragged me back to consciousness. At first, it was all I was aware of; every part of my body hurt. Then I saw a blurred face above me—the face of a man—and I panicked.
I scrambled away, kicking him, clawing the hands that reached out for me, trying to bite, lunging up toward his eyes. I could do it now. I could do anything.
“Dana!”
I froze. My name? No patroller would know that. “Dana, look at me for God’s sake!”
Kevin! It was Kevin’s voice! I stared upward, managed to focus on him clearly at last. I was at home. I was lying on my own bed, bloody and dirty, but safe. Safe!
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Kevin lay half on top of me, holding me, smearing himself with my
blood and his own. I could see where I had scratched his face—so near the eye.
“Kevin, I’m sorry!”
“Are you all right now?”
“Yes. I thought … I thought you were the patroller.” “The what?”
“The … I’ll tell you later. God, I hurt, and I’m so tired. But it doesn’t matter. I’m home.”
“You were gone two or three minutes this time. I didn’t know what to think. You don’t know how good it is to have you back again.”
“Two or three minutes?”
“Almost three minutes. I watched the clock. But it seemed to be longer.”
I closed my eyes in pain and weariness. It hadn’t just seemed longer to me. I had been gone for hours and I knew it. But at that moment, I couldn’t have argued it. I couldn’t have argued anything. The surge of strength that helped me to fight when I thought I was fighting for my life was gone.
“I’m going to take you to the hospital,” said Kevin. “I don’t know how
I’m going to explain you, but you need help.” “No.”
He got up. I felt him lift me. “No, Kevin, please.”
“Listen, don’t be afraid. I’ll be with you.”
“No. Look, all he did was hit me a few times. I’ll be all right.” Sud- denly I had strength again, now that I needed it. “Kevin, I went from here the first time, and this second time. And I came back here. What will hap- pen if I go from the hospital and come back there?”
“Probably nothing.” But he had stopped. “No one who sees you leave or come back will believe it. And they wouldn’t dare tell anybody.”
“Please. Just let me sleep. That’s all I need really—rest. The cuts and bruises will heal. I’ll be fine.”
He took me back to the bed, probably against his better judgment, and put me down. “How long was it for you?” he asked.
“Hours. But it was only bad at the end.” “Who did this to you?”
“A patroller. He … he thought I was a runaway.” I frowned. “I have to
THE FIRE 45
sleep, Kevin. I’ll make more sense in the morning, I promise.” My voice trailed away.
“Dana!”
I jumped, tried to refocus my attention on him. “Did he rape you?”
I sighed. “No. I hit him with a stick—knocked him out. Let me sleep.” “Wait a minute …”
I seemed to drift away from him. It became too much trouble for me to go on listening and trying to understand, too much trouble to answer.
I sighed again and closed my eyes. I heard him get up and go away, heard water running somewhere. Then I slept.
6
I was clean when I awoke before dawn the next morning. I was wear- ing an old flannel nightgown that I hadn’t worn since Kevin and I were married and that I’d never worn in June. On one side of me was a canvas tote bag containing a pair of pants, a blouse, underclothing, a sweater, shoes, and the biggest switchblade knife I had ever seen. The tote bag was tied to my waist with a length of cord. On the other side of me lay Kevin, still asleep. But he woke up when I kissed him.
“You’re still here,” he said with obvious relief, and he hugged me, reminding me painfully of a few bruises. Then he remembered, let me go, and switched on the light. “How do you feel?”
“Pretty well.” I sat up, got out of bed, managed to stand up for a moment. Then I got back under the cover. “I’m healing.”
“Good. You’re rested, you’re healing, now you can tell me what the hell happened to you. And what’s a patroller? All I could think of was the Highway Patrol.”
I thought back to my reading. “A patroller is … was a white man, usu- ally young, often poor, sometimes drunk. He was a member of a group of such men organized to keep the blacks in line.”
“What?”
“Patrollers made sure the slaves were where they were supposed to be at night, and they punished those who weren’t. They chased down
46 KINDRED
runaways—for a fee. And sometimes they just raised hell, had a little fun terrorizing people who weren’t allowed to fight back.”
Kevin leaned on one elbow and looked down at me. “What are you talking about? Where were you?”
“In Maryland. Somewhere on the Eastern Shore if I understood
Rufus.”
“Maryland! Three thousand miles away in … in what? A few minutes?”
“More than three thousand miles. More than any number of miles.” I moved to relieve pressure on an especially tender bruise. “Let me tell you all of it.”
I remembered it for him in detail as I had the first time. Again, he lis- tened without interrupting. This time
