“He couldn’t let a runaway go without some punishment. If he did, there’d be ten more taking off tomorrow. He was easy on you, though, because he figured your running away was my fault.”
“It was.”
“It was your own fault! If you had waited …”
“For what! You were the one I trusted. I did wait until I found out what a liar you were!”
He took the charge without anger this time. “Oh hell, Dana … all right!
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I should have sent the letters. Even Daddy said I should have sent them after I promised you I would. Then he said I was a damn fool for prom- ising.” He paused. “But that promise was the only thing that made him send for Kevin. He didn’t do it out of gratitude to you for helping me. He did it because I had given my word. If not for that, he would have kept you here until you went home. If you’re going to go home this time.”
We sat together in silence for a moment.
“Daddy’s the only man I know,” he said softly, “who cares as much about giving his word to a black as to a white.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No! It’s one of the few things about him I can respect.” “It’s one of the few things about him you should copy.”
“Yeah.” He took his foot off the bed. “Carrie’s bringing a tray up here so we can eat together.”
That surprised me, but I just nodded. “Your back doesn’t hurt much, does it?” “Yes.”
He stared out the window miserably until Carrie arrived with the tray.
16
I went back to helping Sarah and Carrie the next day. Rufus said I didn’t have to, but as tedious as the work was, I could stand it easier than I could stand more long hours of boredom. And now that I knew Kevin was coming, my back and side didn’t seem to hurt as much.
Then Jake Edwards came in to destroy my new-found peace. It was amazing how much misery the man could cause doing the same job Luke had managed to do without hurting anyone.
“You!” he said to me. He knew my name. “You go do the wash. Tess is going to the fields today.”
Poor Tess. Weylin had tired of her as a bed mate and passed her casu- ally to Edwards. She had been afraid Edwards would send her to the fields where he could keep an eye on her. With Alice and I in the house, she knew she could be spared. She had cried with the fear that she would be spared. “You do everything they tell you,” she wept, “and they still treat you like a old dog. Go here, open your legs; go there, bust your
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back. What they care! I ain’t s’pose to have no feelin’s!” She had sat with me crying while I lay on my stomach sweating and hurting and knowing I wasn’t as bad off as I thought I was.
I would be a lot worse off now, though, if I obeyed Edwards. He had no right to give me orders, and he knew it. His authority was over the field hands. But today, Rufus and Tom Weylin had gone into town leav- ing Edwards in charge, leaving him several hours to show us how “important” he was. I’d heard him outside the cookhouse trying to bully Nigel. And I’d heard Nigel’s answer, first placating—“I’m just doing what Marse Tom told me to do.” Finally threatening —“Marse Jake, you put your hands on me, you go’ get hurt. Now that’s all!”
Edwards backed off. Nigel was big and strong and not one to make idle threats. Also, Rufus tended to back Nigel, and Weylin tended to back Rufus. Edwards had cursed Nigel, then come into the cookhouse to bother me. I had neither the size nor the strength to frighten him, espe- cially now. But I knew what a day of washing would do to my back and side. I’d had enough pain, surely.
“Mr. Edwards, I’m not supposed to be washing. Mister Rufus told me not to.” It was a lie, but Rufus would back me too. In some ways, I could still trust him.
“You lyin’ nigger, you do what
And I went out, God help me, and tried to do the wash. I couldn’t face another beating so soon. I just couldn’t.
When Edwards was gone, Alice came out of Carrie’s cabin and began to help me. I felt sweat on my face mingling with silent tears of frustra- tion and anger. My back had already begun to ache dully, and I felt dully ashamed. Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
“You stop beatin’ them clothes ’fore you fall over,” Alice told me. “I’ll do this. You go back to the cookhouse.”
“He might come back,” I said. “You might get in trouble.” It wasn’t her trouble I was worried about; it was mine. I didn’t want to be dragged out of the cookhouse and whipped again.
“Not me,” she said. “He knows where I sleep at night.”
I nodded. She was right. As long as she was under Rufus’s protection, Edwards might curse her, but he wouldn’t touch her. Just as he hadn’t touched Tess—until Weylin was finished with her …
“Thanks, Alice, but …” “Who’s that?”
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I looked around. There was a white man, gray-bearded and dusty, rid- ing around the side of the main house toward us. I thought at first that it was the Methodist minister. He was a friend and sometime dinner guest of Tom Weylin in spite of Weylin’s indifference to religion. But no chil- dren gathered around this man as he rode. The kids always mobbed the minister—and his wife too when he brought her along. The couple dis- pensed candy and “safe” Bible verses (“Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters …”). The kids got candy for repeating the verses.
I saw two little girls staring at the gray-bearded stranger, but no one approached him or spoke to him. He rode straight back to us, stopped, sat looking at both of us uncertainly.
I opened my mouth to tell him the Weylins weren’t home, but in that moment, I got a good look at him. I dropped one of Rufus’s good white shirts into the dirt and stumbled over to the fence.
“Dana?” he said softly. The question mark in his voice scared me. Didn’t he know me? Had I changed so much? He hadn’t, beard or no beard.
“Kevin, get down. I can’t reach you up there.”
And he was off the horse and over the laundry yard fence, pulling me to him before I could take another breath.
The dull ache in my back and shoulders roared to life. Suddenly, I was struggling to get away from him. He let me go, confused.
“What the …?”
I went to him again because I couldn’t keep away, but I caught his arms before he could get them around me. “Don’t. My back is sore.”
“Sore from what?”
“From running away to find you. Oh, Kevin …”
He held me—gently now—for several seconds, and I thought if we could just go home then, at that moment, everything would be all right.
Finally, Kevin stood back from me a little, looked at me without let- ting me go. “Who beat you?” he asked quietly.
“I told you, I ran away.”
“Who?” he insisted. “Was it Weylin again?” “Kevin, forget it.”
“Forget …?”
“Yes! Please forget it. I might have to live here again someday.” I
shook my head. “Hate Weylin all you want to. I do. But don’t do any-
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thing to him. Let’s just get out of here.” “It was him then.”
“Yes!”
He turned slowly and stared toward the main house. His face was lined and grim where it wasn’t hidden by the beard. He looked more than ten years older than when I had last seen him. There was a jagged scar across his forehead—the remnant of what must have been a bad wound. This place, this time, hadn’t been any kinder to him than it had been to me. But what had it made of him? What might he be willing to do now that he would not have done before?
“Kevin, please, let’s just go.”
He turned that same hard stare on me.
“Do anything to them and I’ll suffer for it,” I whispered urgently. “Let’s go! Now!”
He stared at me a moment longer, then sighed, rubbed his hand across his forehead. He looked at Alice, and because he didn’t speak to her, just kept looking, I turned to look at her
