Butler, Octavia - Kindred

“What?”

“Just a joke. Hasn’t come into fashion yet.”

Rufus looked troubled. “I believe you. I don’t understand, like Dana said, but I guess I believe.”

Kevin sighed. “Thank God.”

Rufus looked up at Kevin and managed to grin. “You aren’t as bad as

I thought you’d be.”

“Bad?” Kevin looked at me accusingly.

“I didn’t tell him anything about you,” I said.

“I saw you,” said Rufus. “You were fighting with Dana just before you came here, or … it looked like fighting. Did you make all those marks on her face?”

“No, he didn’t,” I said quickly. “And he and I weren’t fighting.” “Wait a minute,” said Kevin. “How could he know about that?”

“Like he said.” I shrugged. “He saw us before we got here. I don’t know how he does it, but he’s done it before.” I looked down at Rufus. “Have you told anyone else about seeing me?”

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“Just Nigel. Nobody else would believe me.”

“Good. Best not to tell anyone else about us now either. Nothing about California or nineteen seventy-six.” I took Kevin’s hand and held it. “We’re going to have to fit in as best we can with the people here for as long as we have to stay. That means we’re going to have to play the roles you gave us.”

“You’ll say you belong to him?”

“Yes. I want you to say it too if anyone asks you.”

“That’s better than saying you’re his wife. Nobody would believe that.”

Kevin made a sound of disgust. “I wonder how long we’ll be stuck here,” he muttered. “I think I’m getting homesick already.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But stay close to me. You got here because you were holding me. I’m afraid that may be the only way you can get home.”

3

Rufus’s father arrived on a flat-bed wagon, carrying his familiar long rifle—an old muzzleloader, I realized. With him in the wagon was Nigel and a tall stocky black man. Tom Weylin was tall himself, but too lean to be as impressive as his massive slave. Weylin didn’t look especially vicious or depraved. Right now, he only looked annoyed. We stood up as he climbed down from the wagon and came to face us.

“What happened here?” he asked suspiciously.

“The boy has broken his leg,” said Kevin. “Are you his father?” “Yes. Who are you?”

“My name’s Kevin Franklin.” He glanced at me, but caught himself and didn’t introduce me. “We came across the two boys right after the accident happened, and I thought we should stay with your son until you came for him.”

Weylin grunted and knelt to look at Rufus’s leg. “Guess it’s broken all right. Wonder how much that’ll cost me.”

The black man gave him a look of disgust that would surely have angered him if he had seen it.

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“What were you doing climbing a damn tree?” Weylin demanded of

Rufus.

Rufus stared at him silently.

Weylin muttered something I didn’t quite catch. He stood up and ges- tured sharply to the black man. The man came forward, lifted Rufus gen- tly, and placed him on the wagon. Rufus’s face twisted in pain as he was lifted, and he cried out as he was lowered into the wagon. Kevin and I should have made a splint for that leg, I thought belatedly. I followed the black man to the wagon.

Rufus grabbed my arm and held it, obviously trying not to cry. His voice was a husky whisper.

“Don’t go, Dana.”

I didn’t want to go. I liked the boy, and from what I’d heard of early nineteenth-century medicine, they were going to pour some whiskey down him and play tug of war with his leg. And he was going to learn brand new things about pain. If I could give him any comfort by staying with him, I wanted to stay.

But I couldn’t.

His father had spoken a few private words with Kevin and was now climbing back up onto the seat of the wagon. He was ready to leave and Kevin and I weren’t invited. That didn’t say much for Weylin’s hospital- ity. People in his time of widely scattered plantations and even more widely scattered hotels had a reputation for taking in strangers. But then, a man who could look at his injured son and think of nothing but how much the doctor bill would be wasn’t likely to be concerned about strangers.

“Come with us,” pleaded Rufus. “Daddy, let them come.”

Weylin glanced back, annoyed, and I tried gently to loosen Rufus’s grip on me. After a moment, I realized that Weylin was looking at me— staring hard at me. Perhaps he was seeing my resemblance to Alice’s mother. He couldn’t have seen me clearly enough or long enough at the river to recognize me now as the woman he had once come so near shoot- ing. At first, I stared back. Then I looked away, remembering that I was supposed to be a slave. Slaves lowered their eyes respectfully. To stare back was insolent. Or at least, that was what my books said.

“Come along and have dinner with us,” Weylin told Kevin. “You may as well. Where were you going to stay the night, anyway?”

“Under the trees if necessary,” said Kevin. He and I climbed onto the

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wagon beside the silent Nigel. “Not much choice, as I told you.”

I looked at him, wondering what he had told Weylin. Then I had to catch myself as the black man prodded the horses forward.

“You, girl,” Weylin said to me. “What’s your name?” “Dana, sir.”

He turned to stare at me again, this time as though I’d said something wrong. “Where do you come from?”

I glanced at Kevin, not wanting to contradict anything he had said. He gave me a slight nod, and I assumed I was free to make up my own lies. “I’m from New York.”

Now the look he was giving me was really ugly, and I wondered whether he’d heard a New York accent recently and found mine a poor match. Or was I saying something wrong? I hadn’t said ten words to him. What could be wrong?

Weylin looked sharply at Kevin, then turned around and ignored us for the rest of the trip.

We went through the woods to a road, and along the road past a field of tall golden wheat. In the field, slaves, mostly men, worked steadily swinging scythes with attached wooden racks that caught the cut wheat in neat piles. Other slaves, mostly women, followed them tying the wheat into bundles. None of them seemed to pay any attention to us. I looked around for a white overseer and was surprised not to see one. The Weylin house surprised me too when I saw it in daylight. It wasn’t white. It had no columns, no porch to speak of. I was almost disappointed. It was a red-brick Georgian Colonial, boxy but handsome in a quiet kind of way, two and a half stories high with dormered windows and a chimney on each end. It wasn’t big or imposing enough to be called a mansion. In Los Angeles, in our own time, Kevin and I could have afforded it.

As the wagon took us up to the front steps, I could see the river off to one side and some of the land I had run through a few hours—a few years—before. Scattered trees, unevenly cut grass, the row of cabins far off to one side almost hidden by the trees, the fields, the woods. There were other buildings lined up beside and behind the house opposite the slave cabins. As we stopped, I was almost sent off to one of these.

“Luke,” said Weylin to the black man, “take Dana around back and get her something to eat.”

“Yes, sir,” said the black man softly. “Want me to take Marse Rufe upstairs first?”

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“Do what I told you. I’ll take him up.”

I saw Rufus set his teeth. “I’ll see you later,” I whispered, but he

wouldn’t let go of my hand until I spoke to his father.

“Mr. Weylin, I don’t mind staying with him. He seems to want me to.” Weylin looked exasperated. “Well, come on then. You can wait with him until the doctor comes.” He lifted Rufus with no particular care, and