Butler, Octavia - Kindred

“I’m even crazier than you,” he said. “After all I’m older than you. Old enough to recognize failure and stop dreaming, so I’m told.”

He was a prematurely gray thirty-four. He had been surprised to learn that I was only twenty-two.

“You look older,” he said tactlessly. “So do you,” I muttered.

He laughed. “I’m sorry. But at least it looks good on you.”

I wasn’t sure what “it” was that looked good on me, but I was glad he liked it. His likes and dislikes were becoming important to me. One of the women from the agency told me with typical slave-market candor that he and I were “the weirdest-looking couple” she had ever seen.

I told her, not too gently, that she hadn’t seen much, and that it was none of her business anyway. But from then on, I thought of Kevin and I as a couple. It was pleasant thinking.

My time at the warehouse and his job there ended on the same day. Buz’s matchmaking had given us a week together.

“Listen,” said Kevin on the last day, “you like plays?”

“Plays? Sure. I wrote a couple while I was in high school. One-acters. Pretty bad.”

“I did something like that myself.” He took something from his pocket and held it out to me. Tickets. Two tickets to a hit play that had just come to Los Angeles. I think my eyes glittered.

“I don’t want you to get away from me just because we won’t be co- workers any more,” he said. “Tomorrow evening?”

“Tomorrow evening,” I agreed.

It was a good evening. I brought him home with me when it was over, and the night was even better. Sometime during the early hours of the next morning when we lay together, tired and content in my bed, I real- ized that I knew less about loneliness than I had thought—and much less than I would know when he went away.

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2

I decided not to go to the library with Kevin to look for forgeable free papers. I was worried about what might happen if Rufus called me from the car while it was moving. Would I arrive in his time still moving, but without the car to protect me? Or would I arrive safe and still, but have trouble when I returned home—because this time the home I returned to might be the middle of a busy street?

I didn’t want to find out. So while Kevin got ready to go to the library, I sat on the bed, fully dressed, stuffing a comb, a brush, and a bar of soap into my canvas bag. I was afraid I might be trapped in Rufus’s time for a longer period if I went again. My first trip had lasted only a few min- utes, my second a few hours. What was next? Days?

Kevin came in to tell me he was going. I didn’t want him to leave me alone, but I thought I had done enough whining for one morning. I kept my fear to myself—or I thought I did.

“You feel all right?” he asked me. “You don’t look so good.”

I had just had my first look in the mirror since the beating, and I didn’t think I looked so good either. I opened my mouth to reassure him, but before I could get the words out, I realized that something really was wrong. The room was beginning to darken and spin.

“Oh no,” I moaned. I closed my eyes against the sickening dizziness. Then I sat hugging the canvas bag and waiting.

Suddenly, Kevin was beside me holding me. I tried to push him away. I was afraid for him without knowing why. I shouted for him to let me go.

Then the walls around me and the bed beneath me vanished. I lay sprawled on the ground under a tree. Kevin lay beside me still holding me. Between us was the canvas bag.

“Oh God!” I muttered, sitting up. Kevin sat up too and looked around wildly. We were in the woods again, and it was day this time. The coun- try was much like what I remembered from my first trip, though there was no river in sight this time.

“It happened,” said Kevin. “It’s real!”

I took his hand and held it, glad of its familiarity. And yet I wished he

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were back at home. In this place, he was probably better protection for me than free papers would have been, but I didn’t want him here. I didn’t want this place to touch him except through me. But it was too late for that.

I looked around for Rufus, knowing that he must be nearby. He was. And the moment I saw him, I knew I was too late to get him out of trou- ble this time.

He was lying on the ground, his body curled in a small knot, his hands clutching one leg. Beside him was another boy, black, about twelve years old. All Rufus’s attention seemed to be on his leg, but the other boy had seen us. He might even have seen us appear from nowhere. That might be why he looked so frightened now.

I stood up and went over to Rufus. He didn’t see me at first. His face was twisted with pain and streaked with tears and dirt, but he wasn’t cry- ing aloud. Like the black boy, he looked about twelve years old.

“Rufus.”

He looked up, startled. “Dana?”

“Yes.” I was surprised that he recognized me after the years that had passed for him.

“I saw you again,” he said. “You were on a bed. Just as I started to fall, I saw you.”

“You did more than just see me,” I said. “I fell. My leg …”

“Who are you?” demanded the other boy.

“She’s all right, Nigel,” said Rufus. “She’s the one I told you about. The one who put out the fire that time.”

Nigel looked at me, then back at Rufus. “Can she fix your leg?” Rufus looked at me questioningly.

“I doubt it,” I said, “but let me see anyway.” I moved his hands away and as gently as I could, pulled his pants leg up. His leg was discolored and swollen. “Can you move your toes?” I asked.

He tried, managed to move two toes feebly.

“It’s broken,” commented Kevin. He had come closer to look. “Yes.” I looked at the other boy, Nigel. “Where’d he fall from?” “There.” The boy pointed upward. There was a tree limb hanging high

above us. A broken tree limb.

“You know where he lives?” I asked. “Sure. I live there too.”

The boy was probably a slave, I realized, the property of Rufus’s

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family.

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“You sure do talk funny,” said Nigel.

“Matter of opinion,” I said. “Look, if you care what happens to Rufus, you’d better go tell his father to send a … a wagon for him. He won’t be walking anywhere.”

“He could lean on me.”

“No. The best way for him to go home is flat on his back—the least painful way, anyhow. You go tell Rufus’s father that Rufus broke his leg. Tell him to send for the doctor. We’ll stay with Rufus until you get back with the wagon.”

“You?” He looked from me to Kevin, making no secret of the fact that he didn’t find us all that trustworthy. “How come you’re dressed like a man?” he asked me.

“Nigel,” said Kevin quietly, “don’t worry about how she’s dressed. Just go get some help for your friend.”

Friend?

Nigel gave Kevin a frightened glance, then looked at Rufus.

“Go, Nigel,” whispered Rufus. “It hurts something awful. Say I said for you to go.”

Nigel went, finally. Unhappily.

“What’s he afraid of ?” I asked Rufus. “Will he get into trouble for leaving you?”

“Maybe.” Rufus closed his eyes for a moment in pain. “Or for letting me get hurt. I hope not. It depends on whether anybody’s made Daddy mad lately.”

Well, Daddy hadn’t changed. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting him at all. At least I wouldn’t have to do it alone. I glanced at Kevin. He knelt down beside me to take a closer look at Rufus’s leg.

“Good thing he was barefoot,” he said. “A shoe would have to be cut off that foot now.”

“Who’re you?” asked Rufus.

“My name’s Kevin—Kevin Franklin.” “Does Dana belong to you now?”