Kindred (30 page)

“Marse Tom is sick,” she said. “Marse Rufe wants you to come.”

“Oh no,” I muttered. “Tell him to send for the doctor.”

“Already sent for. But Marse Tom is having bad pains in his chest.”

The significance of that filtered through to me slowly. “Pains in his chest?”

“Yeah. Come on. They in the parlor.”

“God, that sounds like a heart attack. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Just come. They want you.”

I pulled on a pair of pants and threw on a shirt as I ran. What did these people want from me? Magic? If Weylin was having a heart attack, he was going to either recover or die without my help.

I ran down the stairs and into the parlor where Weylin lay on a sofa, ominously still and silent.

“Do something!” Rufus pleaded. “Help him!” His voice sounded as thin and weak as he looked. His sickness had left its marks on him. I wondered how he had gotten downstairs.

Weylin wasn’t breathing, and I couldn’t find a pulse. For a moment, I stared at him, undecided, repelled, not wanting to touch him again, let alone breathe into him. Then quelling disgust, I began mouth to mouth resuscitation and external heart massage—what did they call it? Cardiopulmonary resuscitation. I knew the name, and I’d seen someone doing it on television. Beyond that, I was completely ignorant. I didn’t even know why I was trying to save Weylin. He wasn’t worth it. And I didn’t know if CPR could do any good in an era when there was no ambulance to call, no one to take over for me even if I somehow got Weylin’s heart going—which I didn’t expect to do.

Which I didn’t do.

Finally, I gave up. I looked around to see Rufus on the floor near me. I didn’t know whether he had sat down or fallen, but I was glad he was sitting now.

“I’m sorry, Rufe. He’s dead.”

“You let him die?”

“He was dead when I got here. I tried to bring him back the way I brought you back when you were drowning. I failed.”

“You let him die.”

He sounded like a child about to cry. His illness had weakened him so, I thought he might cry. Even healthy people cried and said irrational things when their parents died.

“I did what I could, Rufe. I’m sorry.”

“Damn you to hell, you let him die!” He tried to lunge at me, succeeded only in falling over. I moved to help him up, but stopped when he tried to push me away.

“Send Nigel to me,” he whispered. “Get Nigel.”

I got up and went to find Nigel. Behind me, I heard Rufus say once more, “You just let him die.”

5

Things were happening too fast for me. I was almost glad to find myself put back to work with Sarah and Carrie, ignored by Rufus. I needed time to catch up with myself—and catch up with life on the plantation. Carrie and Nigel had three sons now, and Nigel had never mentioned it to me because the youngest was two years old. He had forgotten that I didn’t know. I was with him once, as he watched them playing. “It’s good to have children,” he said softly. “Good to have sons. But it’s so hard to see them be slaves.”

I met Alice’s thin pale little boy and saw with relief that in spite of the way she talked, she obviously loved the child.

“I keep thinking I might wake up and find him cold like the others,” she said one day in the cookhouse.

“What did they die of?” I asked.

“Fevers. The doctor came and bled them and purged them, but they still died.”

“He bled and purged babies?”

“They were two and three. He said it would break the fever. And it did. But they … they died anyway.”

“Alice, if I were you, I wouldn’t ever let that man near Joe.”

She looked at her son sitting on the floor of the cookhouse eating mush and milk. He was five years old and he looked almost white in spite of Alice’s dark skin. “I never wanted no doctor near the other two,” said Alice. “Marse Rufe sent for him—sent for him and made me let him kill my babies.”

Rufus’s intentions had been good. Even the doctor’s intentions had probably been good. But all Alice knew was that her children were dead and she blamed Rufus. Rufus himself was to teach me about that attitude.

On the day after Weylin was buried, Rufus decided to punish me for letting the old man die. I didn’t know whether he honestly believed I had done such a thing. Maybe he just needed to hurt someone. He did lash out at others when he was hurt; I had already seen that.

So on the morning after the funeral, he sent the current overseer, a burly man named Evan Fowler, to get me from the cookhouse. Jake Edwards had either quit or been fired sometime during my six-year absence. Fowler came to tell me I was to work in the fields.

I didn’t believe it, even when the man pushed me out of the cookhouse. I thought he was just another Jake Edwards throwing his weight around. But outside, Rufus stood waiting, watching. I looked at him, then back at Fowler.

“This the one?” Fowler asked Rufus.

“That’s her,” said Rufus. And he turned and went back into the main house.

Stunned, I took the sicklelike corn knife Fowler thrust into my hands and let myself be herded out toward the cornfield. Herded. Fowler got his horse and rode a little behind me as I walked. It was a long walk. The cornfield wasn’t where I’d left it. Apparently, even in this time, planters practiced some form of crop rotation. Not that that mattered to me. What in the world could I do in a cornfield?

I glanced back at Fowler. “I’ve never done field work before,” I told him. “I don’t know how.”

“You’ll learn,” he said. He used the handle of his whip to scratch his shoulder.

I began to realize that I should have resisted, should have refused to let Fowler bring me out here where only other slaves could see what happened to me. Now it was too late. It was going to be a grim day.

Slaves were walking down rows of corn, chopping the stalks down with golf-swing strokes of their knives. Two slaves worked a row, moving toward each other. Then they gathered the stalks they had cut and stood them in bunches at opposite ends of the row. It looked easy, but I suspected that a day of it could be backbreaking.

Fowler dismounted and pointed toward a row.

“You chop like the others,” he said. “Just do what they do. Now get to work.” He shoved me toward the row. There was already someone at the other end of it working toward me. Someone quick and strong, I hoped, because I doubted that I would be quick or strong for a while. I hoped that the washing and the scrubbing at the house and the factory and warehouse work back in my own time had made me strong enough just to survive.

I raised the knife and chopped at the first stalk. It bent over, partially cut.

At almost the same moment, Fowler lashed me hard across the back.

I screamed, stumbled, and spun around to face him, still holding my knife. Unimpressed, he hit me across the breasts.

I fell to my knees and doubled over in a blaze of pain. Tears ran down my face. Even Tom Weylin hadn’t hit slave women that way—any more than he’d kicked slave men in the groin. Fowler was an animal. I glared up at him in pain and hatred.

“Get up!” he said.

I couldn’t. I didn’t think anything could make me get up just then—until I saw Fowler raising his whip again.

Somehow, I got up.

“Now do what the others do,” he said. “Chop close to the ground. Chop hard!”

I gripped the knife, felt myself much more eager to chop him.

“All right,” he said. “Try it and get it over with. I thought you was supposed to be smart.”

He was a big man. He hadn’t impressed me as being very quick, but he was strong. I was afraid that even if I managed to hurt him, I wouldn’t hurt him enough to keep him from killing me. Maybe I should make him try to kill me. Maybe it would get me out of this Godawful place where people punished you for helping them. Maybe it would get me home. But in how many pieces? Fowler would take the knife away from me and give it back edge first.

I turned and slashed furiously at the corn stalk, then at the next. Behind me, Fowler laughed.

“Maybe you got some sense after all,” he said.

He watched me for a while, urging me on, literally cracking the whip. By the time he left, I was sweating, shaking, humiliated. I met the woman who had been working toward me and she whispered, “Slow down! Take a lick or two if you have to. You kill yourself today, he’ll push you to kill yourself every day.”

There was sense in that. Hell, if I went on the way I had been, I wouldn’t even last through today. My shoulders were already beginning to ache.

Fowler came back as I was gathering the cut stalks. “What the devil do you think you’re doing!” he demanded. “You ought to be halfway down the next row by now.” He hit me across the back as I bent down. “Move! You’re not in the cookhouse getting fat and lazy now. Move!”

He did that all day. Coming up suddenly, shouting at me, ordering me to go faster no matter how fast I went, cursing me, threatening me. He didn’t hit me that often, but he kept me on edge because I never knew when a blow would fall. It got so just the sound of his coming terrified me. I caught myself cringing, jumping at the sound of his voice.

The woman in my row explained, “He’s always hard on a new nigger. Make ’em go fast so he can see how fast they can work. Then later on if they slow down, he whip ’em for gettin’ lazy.”

I made myself slow down. It wasn’t hard. I didn’t think my shoulders could have hurt much worse if they’d been broken. Sweat ran down into my eyes and my hands were beginning to blister. My back hurt from the blows I’d taken as well as from sore muscles. After a while, it was more painful for me to push myself than it was for me to let Fowler hit me. After a while, I was so tired, I didn’t care either way. Pain was pain. After a while, I just wanted to lie down between the rows and not get up again.

I stumbled and fell, got up and fell again. Finally, I lay face-down in the dirt, unable to get up. Then came a welcome blackness. I could have been going home or dying or passing out; it made no difference to me. I was going away from the pain. That was all.

6

I was on my back when I came to and there was a white face floating just above me. For a wild moment, I thought it was Kevin, thought I was home. I said his name eagerly.

“It’s me, Dana.”

Rufus’s voice. I was still in hell. I closed my eyes, not caring what would happen next.

“Dana, get up. You’ll be hurt more if I carry you than if you walk.”

The words echoed strangely in my head. Kevin had said something like that to me once. I opened my eyes again to be sure it was Rufus.

It was. I was still in the cornfield, still lying in the dirt.

“I came to get you,” said Rufus. “Not soon enough, I guess.”

I struggled to my feet. He offered a hand to help me, but I ignored it. I brushed myself off a little and followed him down the row toward his horse. From there, we rode together back to the house without a word passing between us. At the house, I went straight to the well, got a bucket of water, carried it up the stairs somehow, then washed, spread antiseptic on my new cuts, and put on clean clothes. I had a headache that eventually drove me down to Rufus’s room for some Excedrin. Rufus had used all the aspirins.

Unfortunately, he was in his room.

“Well, you’re no good in the fields,” he said when he saw me. “That’s clear.”

I stopped, turned, and stared at him. Just stared. He had been sitting on his bed, leaning back against the headboard, but now he straightened, faced me.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Dana.”

“Right,” I said softly. “I’ve done enough stupid things. How many times have I saved your life so far?” My aching head sent me to his desk where I had left the Excedrin. I shook three of them into my hand. I had never taken so many before. I had never needed so many before. My hands were trembling.

“Fowler would have given you a good whipping if I hadn’t stopped him,” said Rufus. “That’s not the first beating I’ve saved you from.”

I had my Excedrin. I turned to leave the room.

“Dana!”

I stopped, looked at him. He was thin and weak and hollow-eyed; his illness had left its marks on him. He probably couldn’t have carried me to his horse if he’d tried. And he couldn’t stop me from leaving now—I thought.

“You walk away from me, Dana, you’ll be back in the fields in an hour!”

The threat stunned me. He meant it. He’d send me back out. I stood straring at him, not with anger now, but with surprise—and fear. He could do it. Maybe later, I would have a chance to make him pay, but for now, he could do as he pleased. He sounded more like his father than himself. In that moment, he even looked like his father.

“Don’t you ever walk away from me again!” he said. Strangely, he began to sound a little afraid. He repeated the words, spacing them, emphasizing each one. “
Don’t you ever walk away from me again!
”

I stood where I was, my head throbbing, my expression as neutral as I could make it. I still had some pride left.

“Get back in here!” he said.

I stood there for a moment longer, then went back to his desk and sat down. And he wilted. The look I associated with his father vanished. He was himself again—whoever that was.

“Dana, don’t make me talk to you like that,” he said wearily. “Just do what I tell you.”

I shook my head, unable to think of anything safe to say. And I guess I wilted. To my shame, I realized I was almost crying. I needed desperately to be alone. Somehow, I kept back the tears.

If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. I remembered I still had the Excedrin tablets in my hand, and I took them, swallowed them without water, hoping they’d work quickly, steady me a little. Then I looked at Rufus, saw that he’d lain back again. Was I supposed to stay and watch him sleep?

“I don’t see how you can swallow those things like that,” he said, rubbing his throat. There was a long silence, then another command. “Say something! Talk to me!”

“Or what?” I asked. “Are you going to have me beaten for not talking to you?”

He muttered something I didn’t quite hear.

“What?”

Silence. Then a rush of bitterness from me.

“I saved your life, Rufus! Over and over again.” I stopped for a moment, caught my breath. “And I tried to save your father’s life. You know I did. You know I didn’t kill him or let him die.”