“It’s like I said. The confusion doesn’t go away all at once. It doesn’t for me either.”
“It was so good coming home at first.”
“It was good. It still is.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
“You’re in too much of a hurry. You …” I stopped, realized I was swaying a little on my chair. “Oh God, no!” I whispered.
“I suppose I am,” said Kevin. “I wonder how people just out of prison manage to readjust.”
“Kevin, go get my bag. I left it in the bedroom.”
“What? Why …?”
“Go, Kevin!”
He went, understanding finally. I sat still, praying that he would come back in time. I could feel tears streaming down my face. So soon, so soon … Why couldn’t I have had just a few days with him—a few days of peace at home?
I felt something pressed into my hands and I grasped it. My bag. I opened my eyes to the dark blur of it, and the larger blur of Kevin standing near me. I was suddenly afraid of what he might do.
“Get away, Kevin!”
He said something, but suddenly, there was too much noise for me to hear him—even if he had still been there.
2
There was water, rain pouring down on me. I was sitting in mud clutching my bag.
I got up sheltering my bag as much as I could so that eventually, I’d have something dry to change into. I looked around grimly for Rufus.
I couldn’t find him. I peered through the dim gray light, looked around until I realized where I was. I could see the familiar boxy Weylin house in the distance, yellow light at one window. At least there would be no long walk for me this time. In this storm, that was something to be grateful for. But where was Rufus? If he was in trouble inside the house, why had I arrived outside?
I shrugged and started toward the house. If he was there, it would be stupid for me to waste time out here. Not that I could get any wetter.
I tripped over him.
He was lying face down in a puddle so deep the water almost covered his head. Face down.
I grabbed him and pulled him out of the water and over to a tree that would shelter us a little from the rain. A moment later, there was thunder and a flash of lightning, and I dragged him away from the tree again. With his ability to draw bad luck I didn’t want to take chances.
He was alive. As I moved him, he threw up on himself and partly on me. I almost joined him. He began to cough and mutter and I realized that he was either drunk or sick. More probably drunk. He was also heavy. He didn’t look any bigger than he had when I saw him last, but he was soaking wet now, and he was beginning to struggle feebly.
I had been dragging him toward the house while he was still. Now, I dropped him in disgust and went to the house alone. Some stronger, more tolerant person could drag or carry him the rest of the way.
Nigel answered the door, stood peering down at me. “Who the devil …?”
“It’s Dana, Nigel.”
“Dana?” He was suddenly alert. “What happened? Where’s Marse Rufe?”
“Out there. He was too heavy for me.”
“Where?”
I looked back the way I had come and could not see Rufus. If he had flipped himself over again …
“Damn!” I muttered. “Come on.” I led him back to the gray lump—still face up—that was Rufus. “Watch it,” I said. “He threw up on me.”
Nigel picked Rufus up like a sack of grain, threw him over his shoulder, and strode back to the house in such quick long strides that I had to run to keep up. Rufus threw up again down Nigel’s back, but Nigel paid no attention. The rain washed them both fairly clean before we reached the house.
Inside, we met Weylin who was coming down the stairs. He stopped short as he saw us. “You!” he said, staring at me.
“Hello, Mr. Weylin,” I said wearily. He looked bent and old—thinner than ever. He walked with a cane.
“Is Rufus all right? Is he …?”
“He’s alive,” I said. “I found him unconscious, face down in a ditch. A little more and he would have drowned.”
“If you’re here, I suppose he would have.” The old man looked at Nigel. “Take him up to his room and put him to bed. Dana, you …” He stopped, looked at my dripping, clinging—to him—immodestly short dress. It was the kind of loose smocklike garment that little children of both sexes wore before they were old enough to work. It clearly offended Weylin more than my pants ever had. “Haven’t you got something decent to put on?” he asked.
I looked at my wet bag. “Decent, maybe, but probably not dry.”
“Go put on what you’ve got, then come back down to the library.”
He wanted to talk to me, I thought. Just what I needed at the end of a long jumbled day. Weylin didn’t talk to me normally except to give orders. When he did, it was always harrowing. There was so much that I coudn’t say; he took offense so easily.
I followed Nigel up the stairs, then went on to the narrow, ladderlike attic stairs. My old corner was empty so I went there to put my bag down and search through it. I found a nearly dry shirt and a pair of Levi’s that were wet only at the ankles. I dried myself, changed, combed my hair, and spread out some of my wettest clothing to dry. Then I went down to Weylin. I had learned not to worry about leaving my things in the attic. Other house servants examined them. I knew that because I had caught them at it now and then. But nothing was ever missing.
Apprehensively, I went through the library door.
“You look as young as you ever did,” Weylin complained sourly when he saw me.
“Yes, sir.” I’d agree with anything he said if it would get me away from him sooner.
“What happened to you there? Your face.”
I touched the scab. “That’s where you kicked me, Mr. Weylin.”
He had been sitting in a worn old arm chair, but now he surged out of it like a young man, his cane a blunt wooden sword before him. “What are you talking about! It’s been six years since I’ve seen you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well!”
“For me, it’s only been a few hours.” I thought Rufus and Kevin had probably told him enough to enable him to understand, whether he believed or not. And perhaps he did understand. He seemed to get angrier.
“Who in hell ever said you were an educated nigger? You can’t even tell a decent lie. Six years for me is six years for you!”
“Yes, sir,” Why did he bother to ask me questions? Why did I bother to answer them?
He sat down again and leaned forward, one hand resting on his cane. His voice was softer, though, when he spoke. “That Franklin get back home all right?”
“Yes, sir.” What would happen if I asked him where he thought that home was? But no, he had done at least one decent thing for Kevin and me, no matter what he was. I met his eyes for a moment. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t do it for you.”
My temper flared suddenly. “I don’t give a damn why you did it! I’m just telling you, one human being to another, that I’m grateful. Why can’t you leave it at that!”
The old man’s face went pale. “You want a good whipping!” he said. “You must not have had one for a while.”
I said nothing. I realized then, though, that if he ever hit me again, I would break his scrawny neck. I would not endure it again.
Weylin leaned back in his chair. “Rufus always said you didn’t know your place any better than a wild animal,” he muttered. “I always said you were just another crazy nigger.”
I stood watching him.
“Why’d you help my son again?” he asked.
I settled down a little, shrugged. “Nobody ought to die the way he would have—lying in a ditch, drowning in mud and whiskey and his own vomit.”
“Stop it!” Weylin shouted. “I’ll take the cowhide to you myself! I’ll …” He fell silent, gasped for breath. His face was still dead white. He’d make himself really sick if he didn’t regain some of his
old control.
I dropped back into indifference. “Yes, sir.”
After a moment he had control of himself. In fact, he sounded perfectly calm again. “You and Rufus had some trouble when you saw him last.”
“Yes, sir.” Having Rufus try to shoot me had been troublesome.
“I hoped you would go on helping him. You know there’s always a home for you here if you do.”
I smiled a little in spite of myself. “Bad nigger that I am, eh?”
“Is that the way you think of yourself?”
I laughed bitterly. “No. I don’t kid myself much. Your son is still alive, isn’t he?”
“You’re bad enough. I don’t know any other white man who would put up with you.”
“If you can manage to put up with me a little more humanely, I’ll go on doing what I can for Mister Rufus.”
He frowned. “Now what are you talking about?”
“I’m saying the day I’m beaten just once more, your son is on his own.”
His eyes widened, perhaps in surprise. Then he began to tremble. I had never before seen a man literally trembling with anger. “You’re threatening him!” he stammered. “By God, you are crazy!”
“Crazy or sane, I mean what I say.” My back and side ached as though to warn me, but for the moment, I wasn’t afraid. He loved his son no matter how he behaved toward him, and he knew I could do as I threatened. “At the rate Mister Rufus has accidents,” I said, “he might live another six or seven years without me. I wouldn’t count on more than that.”
“You damned black bitch!” He shook his cane at me like an extended forefinger. “If you think you can get away with making threats … giving orders …” He ran out of breath and began gasping again. I watched without sympathy, wondering whether he was already sick. “Get out!” he gasped. “Go to Rufus. Take care of him. If anything happens to him, I’ll flay you alive!”
My aunt used to say things like that to me when I was little and did something to annoy her—“Girl, I’m going to skin you alive!” And she’d get my uncle’s belt and use it on me. But it had never occurred to me that anyone could make such a threat and mean it literally as Weylin meant it now. I turned and left him before he could see that my courage had vanished. He could get help from his neighbors, from the patrollers, probably even from whatever police officials the area had. He could do anything he wanted to to me, and I had no enforceable rights. None at all.
3
Rufus was sick again. When I reached his room I found him lying in bed shaking violently while Nigel tried to keep him wrapped in blankets.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.
“Nothing,” said Nigel. “Got the ague again, I guess.”
“Ague?”
“Yeah, he’s had it before. He’ll be all right.”
He didn’t look all right to me. “Has anyone gone for the doctor?”
“Marse Tom don’t hardly get Doc West for ague. He says all the doc knows is bleeding and blistering and purging and puking and making folks sicker than they was to start.”
I swallowed, remembered the pompous little man I had disliked so. “Is the doctor really that bad, Nigel?”
“He gave me some stuff once, nearly killed me. From then on, I just let Sarah doctor me when I’m sick. ’Least she don’t dose niggers like they was horses or mules.”
I shook my head and went close to Rufus’s bed. He looked miserable, seemed to be in pain. I tried to think what the ague might be; the word was familiar, but I couldn’t remember what I’d heard or read about it.
Rufus looked up at me, red-eyed, and tried to smile, though the grimace he managed was far from pleasant. To my surprise, his attempt touched me. I hadn’t expected to still care about him except for my own and my family’s sake. I didn’t want to care.
“Idiot,” I muttered down at him.
He managed to look hurt.
I looked at Nigel, wondered whether the disease could be as unimportant as he thought. Would he think it was important if he had been the one on his back shaking?
Nigel was busy plucking his wet shirt away from his skin. No one had given him a chance to change his clothes, I realized.
“Nigel, I’ll stay here if you want to go dry off,” I said.
He looked up, smiled at me. “You go away for six years,” he said, “then come back and fit right in. It’s like you never left.”
“Every time I go I keep hoping I’ll never come back.”
He nodded. “But at least you get some time of freedom.”
I looked away, feeling strangely guilty that, yes, I did get some time of freedom. Not enough, but probably more than Nigel would ever know. I didn’t like feeling guilty about it. Then something bit me on my ear and I forgot my guilt. As I slapped at my ear, I remembered, finally, what the ague was.
Malaria.
I wondered dully whether the mosquito that had just bitten me was carrying the disease. In my reading I’d come across a lot of information on malaria and none of it led me to believe the disease was as harmless as Nigel seemed to think. It might not kill, but it weakened and it recurred and it could lower one’s resistance to other diseases. Also, with Rufus lying exposed as he was to new mosquito attacks, the disease could be spread over the plantation and beyond.
“Nigel, is there anything we can hang up to keep the mosquitoes off him?”
“Mosquitoes! He wouldn’t feel it if twenty mosquitoes bit him now.”
“No, but the rest of us would be feeling it eventually.”
“What do you mean?”
“Does anyone else have it now?”
“Don’t think so. Some of the children are sick, but I think they have something wrong with their faces—one side all swollen up.”
Mumps? Never mind. “Well, let’s see if we can keep this from spreading. Is there any kind of mosquito netting—or whatever people use here?”
“Sure, for white folks. But …”
“Would you get some? With the help of the canopy, we should be able to enclose him completely.”
“Dana, listen!”
I looked at him.
“What do mosquitoes have to do with the ague?”
I blinked, stared at him in surprise. He didn’t know. Of course he didn’t. Doctors of the day didn’t know. Which probably meant that Nigel wouldn’t believe me when I told him. After all, how could a thing as tiny as a mosquito make anybody sick? “Nigel, you know where I’m from, don’t you?”
He gave me something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Not New York.”
“No.”
“I know where Marse Rufe said you was from.”
“It shouldn’t be that hard for you to believe him. You’ve seen me go home at least once.”
“Twice.”
“Well?”
He shrugged. “I can’t say. If I hadn’t seen … the way you go home, I’d just figure you were one crazy nigger. But I haven’t ever seen anybody 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.”
“Did they hurt before when you had ague?”
“No. This isn’t ague. Ague is bad enough. My leg feels like it’s coming 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.”