“You could be whipped for snooping through my things.”
I shrugged, and small pains shot through my scabby shoulders.
“I never even saw that they had been moved. I’ll have to watch you better from now on.”
“Why? Are you planning to hide more lies from me?”
He jumped, started to get up, then sat back down heavily and rested one polished boot on his bed. “Watch what you say, Dana. There are things I won’t take, even from you.”
“You lied,” I repeated deliberately. “You lied to me over and over. Why, Rufe?”
It took several seconds for his anger to dissolve and be replaced by something else. I watched him at first, then looked away, uncomfortably. “I wanted to keep you here,” he whispered. “Kevin hates this place. He would have taken you up North.”
I looked at him again and let myself understand. It was that destructive single-minded love of his. He loved me. Not the way he loved Alice, thank God. He didn’t seem to want to sleep with me. But he wanted me around—someone to talk to, someone who would listen to him and care what he said, care about him.
And I did. However little sense it made, I cared. I must have. I kept forgiving him for things …
I stared out the window guiltily, feeling that I should have been more like Alice. She forgave him nothing, forgot nothing, hated him as deeply as she had loved Isaac. I didn’t blame her. But what good did her hating do? She couldn’t bring herself to run away again or to kill him and face her own death. She couldn’t do anything at all except make herself more miserable. She said, “My stomach just turns every time he puts his hands on me!” But she endured. Eventually, she would bear him at least one child. And as much as I cared for him, I would not have done that. I couldn’t have. Twice, he had made me lose control enough to try to kill him. I could get that angry with him, even though I knew the consequences of killing him. He could drive me to a kind of unthinking fury. Somehow, I couldn’t take from him the kind of abuse I took from others. If he ever raped me, it wasn’t likely that either of us would survive.
Maybe that was why we didn’t hate each other. We could hurt each other too badly, kill each other too quickly in hatred. He was like a younger brother to me. Alice was like a sister. It was so hard to watch him hurting her—to know that he had to go on hurting her if my family was to exist at all. And, at the moment, it was hard for me to talk calmly about what he had done to me.
“North,” I said finally. “Yes, at least there I could keep the skin on my back.”
He sighed. “I never wanted Daddy to whip you. But hell, don’t you know you got off easy! He didn’t hurt you nearly as much as he’s hurt others.”
I said nothing.
“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! 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 promising.” 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 casually 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 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 leaving 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, especially 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 I tell you to do!” Edwards loomed over me. “You think you been whipped? You don’t know what a whippin’ is yet!” He carried his whip around with him. It was like part of his arm—long and black with its lead-weighted butt. He dropped the coil of it free.
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 frustration 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?”
I looked around. There was a white man, gray-bearded and dusty, riding 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 children gathered around this man as he rode. The kids always mobbed the minister—and his wife too when he brought her along. The couple dispensed 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 letting 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 anything 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 too.
She was watching us—watching dry-eyed, but with more pain than I had ever seen on another person’s face. My husband had come to me, finally. Hers would not be coming to her. Then the look was gone and her mask of toughness was in place again.
“You better do like she says,” she told Kevin softly. “Get her out of here while you can. No telling what our ‘good masters’ will do if you don’t.”
“You’re Alice, aren’t you?” asked Kevin.
She nodded as she would not have to Weylin or Rufus. They would have gotten a dull dry “yes, sir.” “Used to see you ’round here sometimes,” she said. “Back when things made sense.”
He made a sound, not quite a laugh. “Was there ever such a time?” He glanced at me, then back at her again, comparing. “Good Lord,” he murmured to himself. Then to her, “You going to be all right here, finishing this work by yourself?”
“Go’ be fine,” she said. “Just get her out of here.”
He finally seemed convinced. “Get your things,” he told me.
I almost told him to forget about my things. Extra clothing, medicine, tooth brush, pens, paper, whatever. But here, some of those things were irreplaceable. I climbed the fence, went to the house and up to the attic as quickly as I could and stuffed everything into my bag. Somehow, I got out again without being seen, without having to answer questions.
At the laundry yard fence, Kevin waited, feeding something to his mare. I looked at the mare, wondering how tired she was. How far could she carry two people before she had to rest? How far could Kevin go before he had to rest? I looked at him as I reached him and could read weariness now in the dusty lines of his face. I wondered how fast he had traveled to reach me. When had he slept last?
For a moment, we stood wasting time, staring at each other. We couldn’t help it—I couldn’t anyway. New lines and all, he was so damned beautiful.
“It’s been five years for me,” he said.
“I know,” I whispered.
Abruptly, he turned away. “Let’s go! Let’s put this place behind us for good.”
Please, God. But not very likely. I turned to say good-bye to Alice, called her name once. She was beating a pair of Rufus’s pants, and she kept beating them with no break in her rhythm to indicate that she had heard me.
“Alice!” I called louder.
She did not turn, did not stop her beating and beating of those pants, though I was certain now that she heard me. Kevin laid a hand on my shoulder and I glanced at him, then again at her. “Good-bye, Alice,” I said, this time not expecting any answer. There was none.
Kevin mounted and helped me up behind him. As we headed away, I leaned against Kevin’s sweaty back and waited for the regular thump of her beating to fade. But we could still hear it faintly when we met Rufus on the road.
Rufus was alone. I was glad of that, at least. But he stopped a few feet ahead of us, frowning, deliberately blocking our way.
“Oh hell,” I muttered.
“You were just going to leave,” Rufus said to Kevin. “No thanks, nothing at all, just take her and go.”
Kevin stared at him silently for several seconds—stared until Rufus began to look uncomfortable instead of indignant.
“That’s right,” Kevin said.
Rufus blinked. “Look,” he said in a milder tone, “look, why don’t you stay for dinner. My father will be back by then. He’d want you to stay.”
“You can tell your father—!”
I dug my fingers into Kevin’s shoulder, cutting off the rush of words before they became insulting in content as well as in tone. “Tell him we were in a hurry,” Kevin finished.
Rufus did not move from blocking our path. He looked at me.
“Good-bye, Rufe,” I said quietly.
And without warning, with no perceptible change in mood, Rufus turned slightly and trained his rifle on us. I knew a little about firearms now. It wasn’t wise for any but the most trusted slaves to show an interest in them, but then I had been trusted before I ran away. Rufus’s gun was a flintlock, a long slender Kentucky rifle. He had even let me fire it a couple of times … before. And I had looked down the barrel of one like it for his sake. This one, however, was aimed more at Kevin. I stared at it, then at the young man holding it. I kept thinking I knew him, and he kept proving to me that I didn’t.
“Rufe, what are you doing!” I demanded.
“Inviting Kevin to dinner,” he said. And to Kevin, “Get down. I think Daddy might want to talk to you.”
People kept warning me about him, dropping hints that he was meaner than he seemed to be. Sarah had warned me and most of the time, she loved him like one of the sons she had lost. And I had seen the marks he occasionally left on Alice. But he had never been that way with me—not even when he was angry enough to be. I had never feared him as I’d feared his father. Even now, I wasn’t as frightened as I probably should have been. I wasn’t frightened for myself. That was why I challenged him.
“Rufe, if you shoot anybody, it better be me.”
“Dana, shut up!” said Kevin.
“
You think I won’t?” said Rufus.
“I think if you don’t, I’ll kill you.”
Kevin got down quickly and hauled me down. He didn’t understand the kind of relationship Rufus and I had—how dependent we were on each other. Rufus understood though.
“No need for any talk of killing,” he said gently—as though he was quieting an angry child. And then to Kevin in a more normal tone, “I just think Daddy might have something to say to you.”
“About what?” Kevin asked.
“Well … about her keep, maybe.”
“My keep!” I exploded, pulling away from Kevin. “My keep! I’ve worked, worked hard every day I’ve been here until your father beat me so badly I couldn’t work! You people owe me! And you, Goddamnit, owe me more than you could ever pay!”
He swung the rifle to where I wanted it. Straight at me. Now I would either goad him into shooting me or shame him into letting us go — or possibly, I would go home. I might go home wounded, or even dead, but one way or another, I would be away from this time, this place. And if I went home, Kevin would go with me. I caught his hand and held it.
“What are you going to do, Rufe? Keep us here at gun point so you can rob Kevin?”
“Get back to the house,” he said. His voice had gone hard.
Kevin and I looked at each other, and I spoke softly.
“I already know all I ever want to find out about being a slave,” I told him. “I’d rather be shot than go back in there.”
“I won’t let them keep you,” Kevin promised. “Come on.”
“No!” I glared at him. “You stay or go as you please. I’m not going back in that house!”
Rufus cursed in disgust. “Kevin, put her over your shoulder and bring her in.”
Kevin didn’t move. I would have been amazed if he had.
“Still trying to get other people to do your dirty work for you, aren’t you, Rufe?” I said bitterly. “First your father, now Kevin. To think I wasted my time saving your worthless life!” I stepped toward the mare and caught her reins as though to remount. At that moment, Rufus’s composure broke.
“You’re not leaving!” he shouted. He sort of crouched around the gun, clearly on the verge of firing. “Damn you, you’re not leaving me!”