Butler, Octavia - Kindred

He was reading my book.

“Here’s the pen,” I said casually, and I waited to grab the book the moment he put it down. But instead of putting it down, he ignored the pen and looked up at me.

“This is the biggest lot of abolitionist trash I ever saw.”

“No it isn’t,” I said. “That book wasn’t even written until a century after slavery was abolished.”

“Then why the hell are they still complaining about it?”

I pulled the book down so that I could see the page he had been read- ing. A photograph of Sojourner Truth stared back at me solemn-eyed. Beneath the picture was part of the text of one of her speeches.

“You’re reading history, Rufe. Turn a few pages and you’ll find a white man named J. D. B. DeBow claiming that slavery is good because, among other things, it gives poor whites someone to look down on. That’s history. It happened whether it offends you or not. Quite a bit of it offends me, but there’s nothing I can do about it.” And there was other history that he must not read. Too much of it hadn’t happened yet. Sojourner Truth, for instance, was still a slave. If someone bought her from her New York owners and brought her South before the Northern laws could free her, she might spend the rest of her life picking cotton. And there were two important slave children right here in Maryland. The older one, living here in Talbot County, would be called Frederick Douglass after a name change or two. The second, growing up a few miles south in Dorchester County was Harriet Ross, eventually to be Harriet Tubman. Someday, she was going to cost Eastern Shore planta-

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tion owners a huge amount of money by guiding three hundred of their runaway slaves to freedom. And farther down in Southampton, Virginia, a man named Nat Turner was biding his time. There were more. I had said I couldn’t do anything to change history. Yet, if history could be changed, this book in the hands of a white man—even a sympathetic white man—might be the thing to change it.

“History like this could send you down to join Luke,” said Rufus. “Didn’t I tell you to be careful!”

“I wouldn’t have let anyone else see it.” I took it from his hand, spoke more softly. “Or are you telling me I shouldn’t trust you either?”

He looked startled. “Hell, Dana, we have to trust each other. You said that yourself. But what if my daddy went through that bag of yours. He could if he wanted to. You couldn’t stop him.”

I said nothing.

“You’ve never had a whipping like he’d give you if he found that book. Some of that reading … He’d take you to be another Denmark Vesey. You know who Vesey was?”

“Yes.” A freedman who had plotted to free others violently. “You know what they did to him?”

“Yes.”

“Then put that book in the fire.”

I held the book for a moment, then opened it to the map of Maryland. I tore the map out.

“Let me see,” said Rufus.

I handed him the map. He looked at it and turned it over. Since there was nothing on the back but a map of Virginia, he handed it back to me. “That will be easier to hide,” he said. “But you know if a white man sees it, he’ll figure you mean to use it to escape.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

He shook his head in disgust.

I tore the book into several pieces and threw it onto the hot coals in his fireplace. The fire flared up and swallowed the dry paper, and I found my thoughts shifting to Nazi book burnings. Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of “wrong” ideas.

“Seal your letter,” said Rufus. “There’s wax and a candle on the desk there. I’ll send the letter as soon as I can get to town.”

I obeyed inexpertly, dripping hot wax on my fingers. “Dana …?”

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KINDRED

I glanced at him, caught him watching me with unexpected intensity. “Yes?”

His eyes seemed to slide away from mine. “That map is still bothering me. Listen, if you want me to get that letter to town soon, you put the map in the fire too.”

I turned to face him, dismayed. More blackmail. I had thought that was over between us. I had hoped it was over; I needed so much to trust him. I didn’t dare stay with him if I couldn’t trust him.

“I wish you hadn’t said that, Rufe,” I told him quietly. I went over to him, fighting down anger and disappointment and began putting the things that he had scattered back into my bag.

“Wait a minute.” He caught my hand. “You get so damned cold when you’re mad. Wait!”

“For what?”

“Tell me what you’re mad about.”

What, indeed? Could I make him see why I thought his blackmail was worse than my own? It was. He threatened to keep me from my husband if I did not submit to his whim and destroy a paper that might help me get free. I acted out of desperation. He acted out of whimsy or anger. Or so it seemed.

“Rufe, there are things we just can’t bargain on. This is one of them.” “You’re going to tell me what we can’t bargain on?” He sounded more

surprised than indignant.

“You’re damn right I am.” I spoke very softly. “I won’t bargain away my husband or my freedom!”

“You don’t have either to bargain.” “Neither do you.”

He stared at me with at least as much confusion as anger, and that was encouraging. He could have let his temper flare, could have driven me from the plantation very quickly. “Look,” he said through his teeth, “I’m trying to help you!”

“Are you?”

“What do you think I’m doing? Listen, I know Kevin tried to help you. He made things easier for you by keeping you with him. But he couldn’t really protect you. He didn’t know how. He couldn’t even protect him- self. Daddy almost had to shoot him when you disappeared. He was fighting and cursing … at first Daddy didn’t even know why. I’m the one who helped Kevin get back on the place.”

“You?”

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“I talked Daddy into seeing him again—and it wasn’t easy. I may not be able to talk him into anything for you if he sees that map.”

“I see.”

He waited, watching me. I wanted to ask him what he would do with my letter if I didn’t burn the map. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to hear an answer that might send me out to face another patrol or earn another whipping. I wanted to do things the easy way if I could. I wanted to stay here and let a letter go to Boston and bring Kevin back to me.

So I told myself the map was more a symbol than a necessity anyway. If I had to go, I knew how to follow the North Star at night. I had made a point of learning. And by day, I knew how to keep the rising sun to my right and the setting sun to my left.

I took the map from Rufus’s desk and dropped it into the fireplace. It darkened, then burst into flame.

“I can manage without it, you know,” I said quietly.

“No need for you to,” said Rufus. “You’ll be all right here. You’re home.”

7

Isaac and Alice had four days of freedom together. On the fifth day, they were caught. On the seventh day, I found out about it. That was the day Rufus and Nigel took the wagon into town to mail my letter and take care of some business of their own. I had heard nothing of the runaways and Rufus seemed to have forgotten about them. He was feeling better, looking better. That seemed to be enough for him. He came to me just before he left and said, “Let me have some of your aspirins. I might need them the way Nigel drives.”

Nigel heard and called out, “Marse Rufe, you can drive. I’ll just sit back and relax while you show me how to go smooth over a bumpy road.”

Rufus threw a clod of dirt at him, and he caught it, laughing, and threw it back just missing Rufus. “See there?” Rufus told me. “Here I am all crippled up and he’s taking advantage.”