Butler, Octavia - Kindred

It would have been a pleasure to tell him where to go, but I spoke civilly. “It’s a long way from here,” I said. “I had to pass someone else’s house and fields on my way to you.”

“The judge’s place. You could have got help there.”

“I didn’t know.” And wouldn’t have tried if I had known. I wondered, though, whether this was the Judge Holman who would soon be sending men out to chase Isaac. It seemed likely.

“Did you leave Rufus by the side of the road?” Weylin asked. “No, sir. He’s in the woods.”

“You sure you know where in the woods?” “Yes, sir.”

“You’d better.”

He said nothing else.

I found Rufus with no particular difficulty and Nigel lifted him as gen- tly and as easily as Luke once had. On the wagon, he held his side, then he held my hand. Once, he said, “I’ll keep my word.”

I nodded and touched his forehead in case he couldn’t see me nodding. His forehead was hot and dry.

“He’ll keep his word about what?” asked Weylin.

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He was looking back at me, so I frowned and looked perplexed and said, “I think he has a fever as well as broken ribs, sir.”

Weylin made a sound of disgust. “He was sick yesterday, puking all over. But he would get up and go out today. Damn fool!”

And he fell silent again until we reached his house. Then, as Nigel car- ried Rufus inside and up the stairs, Weylin steered me into his forbidden library. He pushed me close to a whale-oil lamp, and there, in the bright yellow light, he stared at me silently, critically until I looked toward the door.

“You’re the same one, all right,” he said finally. “I didn’t want to believe it.”

I said nothing.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “What are you?”

I hesitated not knowing what to answer because I didn’t know how much he knew. The truth might make him decide I was out of my mind, but I didn’t want to be caught in a lie.

“Well!”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I told him. “I’m Dana. You know me.”

“Don’t tell me what I know!”

I stood silent, confused, frightened. Kevin wasn’t here now. There was no one for me to call if I needed help.

“I’m someone who may have just saved your son’s life,” I said softly. “He might have died out there sick and injured and alone.”

“And you think I ought to be grateful?”

Why did he sound angry? And why shouldn’t he be grateful? “I can’t tell you how you ought to feel, Mr. Weylin.”

“That’s right. You can’t.”

There was a moment of silence that he seemed to expect me to fill. Eagerly, I changed the subject. “Mr. Weylin, do you know where Mr. Franklin went?”

Oddly, that seemed to reach him. His expression softened a little. “Him,” he said. “Damn fool.”

“Where did he go?”

“Somewhere North. I don’t know. Rufus has some letters from him.” He gave me another long stare. “I guess you want to stay here.”

He sounded as though he was giving me a choice, which was surpris- ing because he didn’t have to. Maybe gratitude meant something to him

after all.

THE FIGHT 131

“I’d like to stay for a while,” I said. Better to try to reach Kevin from here than go wandering around some Northern city trying to find him. Especially since I had no money, and since I was still so ignorant of this time.

“You got to work for your keep,” said Weylin. “Like you did before.” “Yes, sir.”

“That Franklin comes back, he’ll stop here. He came back once—

hoping to find you, I think.” “When?”

“Last year sometime. You go up and stay with Rufus until the doctor comes. Take care of him.”

“Yes, sir.” I turned to go.

“That seems to be what you’re for, anyway,” he muttered.

I kept going, glad to get away from him. He had known more about me than he wanted to talk about. That was clear from the questions he hadn’t asked. He had seen me vanish twice now. And Kevin and Rufus had probably told him at least something about me. I wondered how much. And I wondered what Kevin had said or done that made him a “damn fool.”

Whatever it was, I’d learn about it from Rufus. Weylin was too dan- gerous to question.

6

I sponged Rufus off as best I could and bandaged his ribs with pieces of cloth that Nigel brought me. The ribs were very tender on the left side. Rufus said the bandage made breathing a little less painful, though, and I was glad of that. But he was still sick. His fever was still with him. And the doctor didn’t come. Rufus had fits of coughing now and then, and that seemed to be agonizing to him because of his ribs. Sarah came in to see him—and to hug me—and she was more alarmed at the marks of his beating than at his ribs or his fever. His face was black and blue and deformed-looking with its lumpy swellings.

“He will fight,” she said angrily. Rufus opened his puffy slits of eyes

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and looked at her, but she went on anyway. “I’ve seen him pick a fight just out of meanness,” she said. “He’s out to get himself killed!”

She could have been his mother, caught between anger and concern and not knowing which to express. She took away the basin Nigel had brought me and returned it full of clean cool water.

“Where’s his mother?” I asked her softly as she was leaving. She drew back from me a little. “Gone.”

“Dead?”

“Not yet.” She glanced at Rufus to see whether he was listening. His face was turned away from us. “Gone to Baltimore,” she whispered. “I’ll tell you ’bout it tomorrow.”

I let her go without questioning her further. It was enough to know that I would not be suddenly attacked. For once, there would be no Margaret to protect Rufus from me.

He was thrashing about weakly when I went back to him. He cursed the pain, cursed me, then remembered himself enough to say he didn’t mean it. He was burning up.

“Rufe?”

He moved his head from side to side and did not seem to hear me. I dug into my denim bag and found the plastic bottle of aspirin—a big bot- tle nearly full. There was enough to share.

“Rufe!”

He squinted at me.

“Listen, I have medicine from my own time.” I poured him a glass of water from the pitcher beside his bed, and shook out two aspirin tablets. “These could lower your fever,” I said. “They might ease your pain too. Will you take them?”

“What are they?”

“They’re called aspirin. In my time, people use them against headache, fever, other kinds of pain.”

He looked at the two tablets in my hand, then at me. “Give them to me.”

He had trouble swallowing them and had to chew them up a little. “My Lord,” he muttered. “Anything tastes that bad must be good for

you.”

I laughed and wet a cloth in the basin to bathe his face. Nigel came in with a blanket and told me the doctor was held up at a difficult childbirth. I was to stay the night with Rufus.

THE FIGHT 133

I didn’t mind. Rufus was in no condition to take an interest in me. I would have thought it would be more natural, though, for Nigel to stay. I asked him about it.

“Marse Tom knows about you,” said Nigel softly. “Marse Rufe and Mister Kevin both told him. He figures you know enough to do some doctoring. More than doctoring, maybe. He saw you go home.”

“I know.”

“I saw it too.”

I looked up at him—he was a head taller than me now—and saw noth- ing but curiosity in his eyes. If my vanishing had frightened him, the fear was long dead. I was glad of that. I wanted his friendship.

“Marse Tom says you s’pose to take care of him and you better do a good job. Aunt Sarah says you call her if you need help.”