THE FIGHT 135
“Stay,” said Rufus. “No matter what you think of him, I won’t let him hurt you. And it’s good to eat with someone I can talk to for a change.” That was nice. I began to eat again, wondering why he was in such a good mood this morning. He had come a long way from his anger the
night before—from threatening not to tell me where Kevin was.
“You know,” said Rufus thoughtfully, “you still look mighty young. You pulled me out of that river thirteen or fourteen years ago, but you look like you would have been just a kid back then.”
Uh-oh. “Kevin didn’t explain that part, I guess.” “Explain what?”
I shook my head. “Just … let me tell you how it’s been for me. I can’t tell you why things are happening as they are, but I can tell you the order of their happening.” I hesitated, gathering my thoughts. “When I came to you at the river, it was June ninth, nineteen seventy-six for me. When I got home, it was still the same day. Kevin told me I had only been gone a few seconds.”
“Seconds …?”
“Wait. Let me tell it all to you at once. Then you can have all the time you need to digest it and ask questions. Later, on that same day, I came to you again. You were three or four years older and busy trying to set the house afire. When I went home, Kevin told me only a few minutes had passed. The next morning, June tenth, I came to you because you’d fallen out of a tree…. Kevin and I came to you. I was here nearly two months. But when I went home, I found that I had lost only a few min- utes or hours of June tenth.”
“You mean after two months, you …”
“I arrived home on the same day I had left. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. After eight days at home, I came back here.” I faced him silently for a moment. “And, Rufe, now that I’m here, now that you’re safe, I want to find my husband.”
He absorbed this slowly, frowning as though he was translating it from another language. Then he waved vaguely toward his desk—a new larger desk than he had had on my last visit. The old one had been nothing more than a little table. This one had a roll-top and plenty of drawer space both above and below the work surface.
“His letters are in the middle drawer there. You can have them if you want them. They have his addresses … But Dana, you’re saying while
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KINDRED
I’ve been growing up, somehow, time has been almost standing still for you.”
I was at the desk hunting through the cluttered drawer for the letters. “It hasn’t stood still,” I said. “I’m sure my last two visits here have aged me quite a bit, no matter what my calendar at home says.” I found the let- ters. Three of them—short notes on large pieces of paper that had been folded, sealed with sealing wax, and mailed without an envelope. “Here’s my Philadelphia address,” Kevin said in one. “If I can get a decent job, I’ll be here for a while.” That was all, except for the address. Kevin wrote books, but he’d never cared much for writing letters. At home he tried to catch me in a good mood and get me to take care of his correspondence for him.
“I’ll be an old man,” said Rufus, “and you’ll still come to me looking just like you do now.”
I shook my head. “Rufe, if you don’t start being more careful, you’ll never live to be an old man. Now that you’re grown up, I might not be able to help you much. The kind of trouble you get into as a man might be as overwhelming to me as it is to you.”
“Yes. But this time thing …” I shrugged.
“Damnit, there must be something mighty crazy about both of us, Dana. I never heard of anything like this happening to anybody else.”
“Neither have I.” I looked at the other two letters. One from New York, and one from Boston. In the Boston one, he was talking about going to Maine. I wondered what was driving him farther and farther north. He had been interested in the West, but Maine …?
“I’ll write to him,” said Rufus. “I’ll tell him you’re here. He’ll come running back.”
“I’ll write him, Rufe.”
“I’ll have to mail the letter.” “All right.”
“I just hope he hasn’t already taken off for Maine.”
Weylin opened the door before I could answer. He brought in another man who turned out to be the doctor, and my leisure time was over. I put Kevin’s letters back into Rufus’s desk—that seemed the best place to keep them—took away the breakfast tray, brought the doctor the empty basin he asked for, stood by while the doctor asked Weylin whether I had any sense or not and whether I could be trusted to answer simple ques-
tions accurately.
THE FIGHT 137
Weylin said yes twice without looking at me, and the doctor asked his questions. Was I sure Rufus had had a fever? How did I know? Had he been delirious? Did I know what delirious meant? Smart nigger, wasn’t I?
I hated the man. He was short and slight, black-haired and black-eyed, pompous, condescending, and almost as ignorant medically as I was. He guessed he wouldn’t bleed Rufus since the fever seemed to be gone— bleed him! He guessed a couple of ribs were broken, yes. He rebandaged them sloppily. He guessed I could go now; he had no more use for me.
I escaped to the cookhouse.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Sarah when she saw me.
I shook my head. “Nothing important. Just a stupid little man who may be one step up from spells and good luck charms.”
“What?”
“Don’t pay any attention to me, Sarah. Do you have anything for me to do out here? I’d like to stay out of the house for a while.”
“Always something to do out here. You have anything to eat?” I nodded.
She lifted her head and gave me one of her down-the-nose looks. “Well, I put enough on his tray. Here. Knead this dough.”
She gave me a bowl of bread dough that had risen and was ready to be kneaded down. “He all right?” she asked.
“He’s healing.”
“Was Isaac all right?”
I glanced at her. “Yes.”
“Nigel said he didn’t think Marse Rufe told what happened.” “He didn’t. I managed to talk him out of it.”
She laid a hand on my shoulder for a moment. “I hope you stay around for a while, girl. Even his daddy can’t talk him out of much these days.” “Well, I’m glad I was able to. But look, you promised to tell me about
his mother.”
“Not much to tell. She had two more babies—twins. Sickly little things. They lingered awhile, then died one after the other. She almost died too. She went kind of crazy. The birth had left her pretty bad off any- how—sick, hurt inside. She fought with Marse Tom, got so she’d scream at him every time she saw him—cussin’ and goin’ on. She was hurtin’ most of the time, couldn’t get out of bed. Finally, her sister came and got
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her, took her to Baltimore.” “And she’s still there?”
KINDRED
“Still there, still sick. Still crazy, for all I know. I just hope she stays there. That overseer, Jake Edwards, he’s a cousin of hers, and he’s all the mean low white trash we need around here.”
Jake Edwards was the overseer then. Weylin had begun hiring over- seers. I wondered why. But before I could ask, two house servants came in and Sarah deliberately turned her back to me, ending the conversation. I began to understand what had happened later, though, when I asked Nigel where Luke was.
“Sold,” said Nigel quietly. And he wouldn’t say anything more. Rufus told me the rest.
“You shouldn’t have asked Nigel about that,” he told me when I men- tioned the incident.
“I wouldn’t have, if I’d known.” Rufus was still in bed. The doctor had given him a purgative and left. Rufus had poured the purgative into his chamber pot and ordered me to tell his father he’d taken it. He had had his father send me back to him so that I could write my letter to Kevin. “Luke did his work,” I said. “How could your father sell him?”
“He worked all right. And the hands would work hard for him— mostly without the cowhide. But sometimes he didn’t show much sense.” Rufus stopped, began a deep breath, caught himself and grimaced in pain. “You’re like Luke in some ways,” he continued. “So you’d better show some sense yourself, Dana. You’re on your own this time.”
“But what did he do wrong? What am I doing wrong?”
“Luke
