Butler, Octavia - Kindred

“Nigel, do you know how long it would take a letter to reach Boston?” I asked.

He looked up from the silver he was polishing. “How would I know that?” He began rubbing again. “Like to find out though—follow it and see.” He spoke very softly.

He said things like that now and then when Weylin gave him a hard

152

KINDRED

time, or when the overseer, Edwards, tried to order him around. This time, I thought it was Edwards. The man had stomped out of the cook- house as I was going in. He would have knocked me down if I hadn’t jumped out of his way. Nigel was a house servant and Edwards wasn’t supposed to bother him, but he did.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Old bastard swears he’ll have me out in the field. Says I think too much of myself.”

I thought of Luke and shuddered. “Maybe you’d better take off some time soon.”

“Carrie.” “Yes.”

“Tried to run once. Followed the Star. If not for Marse Rufe, I would have been sold South when they caught me.” He shook his head. “I’d probably be dead by now.”

I went away from him not wanting to hear any more about running away—and being caught. It was pouring rain outside, but before I reached the house I saw that the hands were still in the fields, still hoe- ing corn.

I found Rufus in the library going over some papers with his father. I

swept the hall until his father left the room. Then I went in to see Rufus.

Before I could open my mouth, he said, “Have you been up to check on Alice?”

“I’ll go in a moment. Rufe, how long does it take for a letter to go from here to Boston?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Someday, you’re going to call me Rufe down here and Daddy is going to be standing right behind you.”

I looked back in sudden apprehension and Rufus laughed. “Not today,”

he said. “But someday, if you don’t remember.” “Hell,” I muttered. “How long?”

He laughed again. “I don’t know, Dana. A few days, a week, two weeks, three …” He shrugged.

“His letters were dated,” I said. “Can you remember when you received the one from Boston?”

He thought about it, finally shook his head. “No, Dana, I just didn’t pay any attention. You better go look in on Alice.”

I went, annoyed, but silent. I thought he could have given me a decent estimate if he had wanted to. But it didn’t really matter. Kevin would

THE FIGHT 153

receive the letter and he could come to get me. I couldn’t really doubt that Rufus had sent it. He didn’t want to lose my good will anymore than I wanted to lose his. And this was such a small thing.

Alice became a part of my work—an important part. Rufus had Nigel and a young field hand move another bed into Rufus’s room—a small low bed that could be pushed under Rufus’s bed. We had to move Alice from Rufus’s bed for his comfort as well as hers, because for a while, Alice was a very young child again, incontinent, barely aware of us unless we hurt her or fed her. And she did have to be fed—spoonful by spoonful.

Weylin came in to look at her once, while I was feeding her.

“Damn!” he said to Rufus. “Kindest thing you could do for her would be to shoot her.”

I think the look Rufus gave him scared him a little. He went away without saying anything else.

I changed Alice’s bandages, always checking for signs of infection, always hoping not to find any. I wondered what the incubation period was for tetanus or—or for rabies. Then I tried to make myself stop won- dering. The girl’s body seemed to be healing slowly, but cleanly. I felt superstitious about even thinking about diseases that would surely kill her. Besides, I had enough real worries just keeping her clean and help- ing her grow up all over again. She called me Mama for a while.

“Mama, it hurts.”

She knew Rufus, though. Mister Rufus. Her friend. He said she crawled into his bed at night.

In one way, that was all right. She was using the pot again. But in another …

“Don’t look at me like that,” said Rufus when he told me. “I wouldn’t bother her. It would be like hurting a baby.”

Later it would be like hurting a woman. I suspected that wouldn’t bother him at all.

As Alice progressed, she became a little more reserved with him. He was still her friend, but she slept in her trundle bed all night. And I ceased to be “Mama.”

One morning when I brought her breakfast, she looked at me and said, “Who are you?”

“I’m Dana,” I said. “Remember?” I always answered her questions. “No.”

154

“How do you feel?”

KINDRED

“Kind of stiff and sore.” She put a hand down to her thigh where a dog had literally torn away a mouthful. “My leg hurts.”

I looked at the wound. She would have a big ugly scar there for the rest of her life, but the wound still seemed to be healing all right—no unusual darkening or swelling. It was as though she had just noticed this specific pain in the same way she had just noticed me.

“Where is this?” she asked.

The way she was just really noticing a lot of things. “This is the

Weylin house,” I said. “Mister Rufus’s room.”

“Oh.” She seemed to relax, content, no longer curious. I didn’t push her. I had already decided I wouldn’t. I thought she would return to real- ity when she was strong enough to face it. Tom Weylin, in his loud silence, clearly thought she was hopeless. Rufus never said what he thought. But like me, he didn’t push her.

“I almost don’t want her to remember,” he said once. “She could be like she was before Isaac. Then maybe …” He shrugged.

“She remembers more every day,” I said. “And she asks questions.” “Don’t answer her!”

“If I don’t, someone else will. She’ll be up and around soon.” He swallowed. “All this time, it’s been so good …”

“Good?”

“She hasn’t hated me!”

10

Alice continued to heal and to grow. She came down to the cookhouse with me for the first time on the day Carrie had her baby.

Alice had been with us for three weeks. She might have been twelve or thirteen mentally now. That morning, she had told Rufus she wanted to sleep in the attic with me. To my surprise, Rufus had agreed. He hadn’t wanted to, but he had done it. I thought, not for the first time, that if Alice could manage to go on not hating him, there would be very little she couldn’t ask of him. If.

Now, slowly, cautiously, she followed me down the stairs. She was

THE FIGHT 155

weak and thinner than ever, looking like a child in one of Margaret

Weylin’s old dresses. But boredom had driven her from her bed.

“I’ll be glad when I get well,” she muttered as she paused on a step. “I hate to be like this.”

“You’re getting well,” I said. I was a little ahead of her, watching to see that she did not stumble. I had taken her arm at the top of the stairs, but she had tried to pull away.

“I can walk.”

I let her walk.

We got to the cookhouse just as Nigel did, but he was in a bigger hurry. We stood aside and let him rush through the door ahead of us.

“Huh!” said Alice as he went by. “’Scuse me!”

He ignored her. “Aunt Sarah,” he called, “Aunt Sarah, Carrie’s having pains!”

Old Mary had been the midwife of the plantation before her age caught up with her. Now, the Weylins may have expected her to go on doctoring the slaves, but the slaves knew better. They helped each other as best they could. I hadn’t seen Sarah called to help with a birth before, but it was natural that she should be called to this one. She dropped a pan of corn meal and started to follow Nigel out.

“Can I help?” I asked.