I’d just figure you were one crazy nigger. But I haven’t ever seen any- body do what you did. I don’t want to believe you, but I guess I do.”
“Good.” I took a deep breath. “Where I’m from, people have learned that mosquitoes carry ague. They bite someone who’s sick with it, then later they bite healthy people and give them the disease.”
“How?”
“They suck blood from the sick and … pass on some of that blood when they bite a healthy person. Like a mad dog that bites a man and drives the man mad.” No talk about micro-organisms. Nigel not only wouldn’t believe me, he might decide I really was crazy.
“Doc says it’s something in the air that spreads ague—something off bad water and garbage. A miasma, he called it.”
“He’s wrong. He’s wrong about the bleeding and purging and the rest, he was wrong when he dosed you, and he’s wrong now. It’s a wonder any of his patients survive.”
“I heard he was good and quick when it comes to cutting off legs or arms.”
I had to look at Nigel to see whether he was making a grisly joke. He wasn’t. “Get the mosquito net,” I said wearily. “Let’s do what we can to keep that butcher away from here.”
He nodded and went away. I wondered whether or not he believed me, but it didn’t really matter. It wouldn’t cost anyone anything to take this small precaution.
I looked down at Rufus to see that he had stopped trembling and closed his eyes. His breathing was regular and I thought he was asleep.
“Why do you keep trying to kill yourself ?” I said softly.
I hadn’t expected an answer so I was surprised when he spoke quietly. “Most of the time, living just isn’t worth the trouble.”
I sat down next to his bed. “It never occurred to me that you might really want to die.”
“I don’t.” He opened his eyes, looked at me, then shut them again and covered them with his hands. “But if your eyes and your head and your leg hurt the way mine do, dying might start to look good.”
“Your eyes hurt?” “When I look around.”
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“Did they hurt before when you had ague?”
“No. This isn’t ague. Ague is bad enough. My leg feels like it’s com- ing off, and my head …!”
He scared me. His pain seemed to increase and he twisted his body as though to move away from it, then untwisted quickly and lay panting.
“Rufe, I’m going to get your father. If he sees how sick you are, he’ll send for the doctor.”
He seemed to be too involved with his own pain to answer. I didn’t want to leave him until Nigel came back, though I had no idea what I could do for him. My problem was solved when Weylin came in with Nigel.
“What is all this about mosquitoes giving people ague?” he demanded. “We may be able to forget about that,” I said. “This doesn’t look like malaria. Ague. He’s in a lot of pain. I think someone should go for the
doctor.”
“You’re doctor enough for him.”
“But …” I stopped, took a deep breath, made myself calm down. Rufus was groaning behind me. “Mr. Weylin, I’m no doctor. I don’t have any idea what’s wrong with him. Whatever professional help is available, you should get it for him.”
“Should I now?”
“His life may be at stake.”
Weylin’s mouth was set in a straight hard line. “If he dies, you die, and you won’t die easy.”
“You already said that. But no matter what you do to me, your son will still be dead. Is that what you want?”
“You do your job,” he said stubbornly, “and he’ll live. You’re some- thing different. I don’t know what—witch, devil, I don’t care. Whatever you are, you just about brought a girl back to life when you came here last, and she wasn’t even the one you came to help. You come out of nowhere and go back into nowhere. Years ago, I would have sworn there couldn’t even be anybody like you. You’re not natural! But you can feel pain—and you can die. Remember that and do your job. Take care of your master.”
“But, I tell you …”
He walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.
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We got the mosquito netting and used it, just in case. Nigel said Weylin didn’t really mind letting us have it. He just didn’t want to hear any more damned nonsense about mosquitoes. He didn’t like to be taken for a fool. “He’s as close to being scared of you as he’s ever been of anything,”
said Nigel. “I think he’d rather try to kill you than admit it though.” “I don’t see any sign of fear in him.”
“You don’t know him the way I do.” Nigel paused. “Could he kill you, Dana?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”
“We better get Marse Rufe well then. Sarah has a kind of tea she makes that kind of helps the ague. Maybe it will help whatever Marse Rufe has now.”
“Would you ask her to brew up a pot?” He nodded and went out.
Sarah came upstairs with Nigel to bring Rufus the tea and to see me. She looked old now. Her hair was streaked with gray and her face lined. She walked with a limp.
“Dropped a kettle on my foot,” she said. “Couldn’t walk at all for a while.” She gave me the feeling that everyone was getting older, passing me by. She brought me roast beef and bread to eat.
Rufus had a fever now. He didn’t want the tea, but I coaxed and bul- lied until he swallowed it. Then we all waited, but all that happened was that Rufus’s other leg began to hurt. His eyes bothered him most because moving them hurt him, and he couldn’t help following my movements or Nigel’s around the room. Finally, I put a cool damp cloth over them. That seemed to help. He still had a lot of pain in his joints—his arms, his legs, everywhere. I thought I could ease that, so I took his candle and went up to the attic for my bag. I was just in time to catch a little girl trying to get the top off my Excedrin bottle. It scared me. She could just as easily have chosen the sleeping pills. The attic wasn’t as safe a place as I had thought.
“No, honey, give those to me.” “They yours?”
“Yes.”
“They candy?”
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Good Lord. “No, they’re medicine. Nasty medicine.”
“Ugh!” she said, and handed them back to me. She went back to her pallet next to another child. They were new children. I wondered whether the two little boys who had preceded them had been sold or sent to the fields.
I took the Excedrin, what was left of the aspirin, and the sleeping pills back down with me. I would have to keep them somewhere in Rufus’s room or eventually one of the kids would figure out how to get the safety caps off.
Rufus had thrown off the damp cloth and was knotted on his side in pain when I got back to him. Nigel had lain down on the floor before the fireplace and gone to sleep. He could have gone back to his cabin, but he had asked me if I wanted him to stay since this was my first night back, and I’d said yes.
I dissolved three aspirins in water and tried to get Rufus to drink it. He wouldn’t even open his mouth. So I woke Nigel, and Nigel held him down while I held his nose and poured the bad-tasting solution into his mouth as he gasped for air. He cursed us both, but after a while he began to feel a little better. Temporarily.
It was a bad night. I didn’t get much sleep. Nor was I to get much for six days and nights following. Whatever Rufus had, it was terrible. He was in constant pain, he had fever—once I had to call Nigel to hold him while I tied him down to keep him from hurting himself. I gave him aspirins—too many, but not as many as he wanted. I made him take broth and soup and fruit and vegetable juices. He didn’t want them. He never wanted to eat, but he didn’t want Nigel holding him down either. He ate.
Alice came in now and then to relieve me. Like Sarah, she looked older. She also looked harder. She was a cool, bitter older sister to the girl I had known.
“Folks treat her bad because of Marse Rufe,” Nigel told me. “They figure if she’s been with him this long, she must like it.”
And Alice said contemptuously, “Who cares what a bunch of niggers think!”
“She lost two babies,” Nigel told me. “And the one she’s got left is sickly.”
“White babies,” Alice said. “Look more like him than me. Joe is even red-headed.” Joe was the single survivor. I almost cried when I heard
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