Butler, Octavia - Kindred

She took two letters from her apron pocket. Two letters, their seals broken, their faces covered with my handwriting.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. “Yours?”

“Yes.”

“Thought so. I can read some words. Got to take these back now.” “Yes.”

She turned to go. “Alice.”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. Be careful when you put them back.”

“You be careful too,” she said. Our eyes met and we both knew what she was talking about.

I left that night.

I collected the food and “borrowed” one of Nigel’s old hats, to pull down over my hair—which wasn’t very long, luckily. When I asked Nigel for the hat, he just looked at me for a long moment, then got it for me. No questions. I didn’t think he expected to see it again.

I stole a pair of Rufus’s old trousers and a worn shirt. My jeans and shirts were too well known to Rufus’s neighbors, and the dress Alice had made me looked too much like the dresses every other slave woman on the place wore. Besides, I had decided to become a boy. In the loose, shabby, but definitely male clothing I had chosen, my height and my con- tralto voice would get me by. I hoped.

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I packed everything I could into my denim bag and left it in its place on my pallet where I normally used it as a pillow. My freedom of move- ment was more useful to me now than it had ever been. I could go where I wanted to and no one said, “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you working?” Everyone assumed I was working. Wasn’t I the industrious stupid one who always worked?

So I was left alone, allowed to make my preparations. I even got a chance to prowl through Weylin’s library. Finally, at day’s end, I went to the attic with the other house servants and lay down to wait until they were asleep. That was my mistake.

I wanted the others to be able to say they saw me go to bed. I wanted Rufus and Tom Weylin to waste time looking around the plantation for me tomorrow when they realized they hadn’t seen me for a while. They wouldn’t do that if some house servant—one of the children, perhaps— said, “She never went to bed last night.”

Overplanning.

I got up when the others had been quiet for some time. It was about midnight, and I knew I could be past Easton before morning. I had talked to others who had walked the distance. Before the sun rose, though, I’d have to find a place to hide and sleep. Then I could write myself a pass to one of the other places whose names and general locations I had learned in Weylin’s library. There was a place near the county line called Wye Mills. Beyond that, I would veer northeast, slanting toward the plantation of a cousin of Weylin’s and toward Delaware to travel up the highest part of the peninsula. In that way, I hoped to avoid many of the rivers. I had a feeling they were what would make my trip long and difficult.

I crept away from the Weylin house, moving through the darkness with even less confidence than I had felt when I fled to Alice’s house months before. Years before. I hadn’t known quite as well then what there was to fear. I had never seen a captured runaway like Alice. I had never felt the whip across my own back. I had never felt a man’s fists.

I felt almost sick to my stomach with fear, but I kept walking. I stum- bled over a stick that lay in the road and first cursed it, then picked it up. It felt good in my hand, solid. A stick like this had saved me once. Now, it quenched a little of my fear, gave me confidence. I walked faster, mov- ing into the woods alongside the road as soon as I passed Weylin’s fields.

The way was north toward Alice’s old cabin, toward the Holman plan-

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tation, toward Easton which I would have to skirt. The walking was easy, at least. This was flat country with only a few barely noticeable rolling hills to break the monotony. The road ran through thick dark woods that were probably full of good places to hide. And the only water I saw flowed in streams so tiny they barely wet my feet. That wouldn’t last, though. There would be rivers.

I hid from an old black man who drove a wagon pulled by a mule. He went by humming tunelessly, apparently fearing neither patrollers nor any other dangers of the night. I envied his calmness.

I hid from three white men who rode by on horseback. They had a dog with them, and I was afraid it would smell me and give me away. Luck- ily, the wind was in my favor, and it went on its way. Another dog found me later, though. It came racing toward me through a field and over a rail fence, barking and growling. I turned to meet it almost without thinking, and clubbed it down as it lunged at me.

I wasn’t really afraid. Dogs with white men frightened me, or dogs in packs—Sarah had told me of runaways who had been torn to pieces by the packs of dogs used to hunt them. But one lone dog didn’t seem to be much of a threat.

As it turned out, the dog was no threat at all. I hit it, it fell, then got up and limped away yelping. I let it go, glad I hadn’t had to hurt it worse. I liked dogs normally.

I hurried on, wanting to be out of sight if the dog’s noise brought peo- ple out to investigate. The experience did make me a little more confi- dent of my ability to defend myself, though, and the natural night noises disturbed me less.

I reached the town and avoided what I could see of it—a few shadowy buildings. I walked on, beginning to tire, beginning to worry that dawn was not far away. I couldn’t tell whether my worrying was legitimate or came from my desire to rest. Not for the first time, I wished I had been wearing a watch when Rufus called me.

I pushed myself on until I could see that the sky really was growing light. Then, as I looked around wondering where I could find shelter for the day, I heard horses. I moved farther from the road and crouched in a thick growth of bushes, grasses, and young trees. I was used to hiding now, and no more afraid than I had been when I’d hidden before. No one had spotted me yet.

There were two horsemen moving slowly up the road toward me. Very

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slowly. They were looking around, peering through the dimness into the trees. I could see that one of them was riding a light colored horse. A gray horse, I saw as it drew closer, a …

I jumped. I managed not to gasp, but I did make that one small invol- untary movement. And a twig that I hadn’t noticed snapped under me.

The horsemen stopped almost in front of me, Rufus on the gray he usu- ally rode, and Tom Weylin on a darker animal. I could see them clearly now. They were looking for me—already! They shouldn’t even have known yet that I was gone. They couldn’t have known—unless someone told them. Someone must have seen me leaving, someone other than Rufus or Tom Weylin. They would simply have stopped me. It must have been one of the slaves. Someone had betrayed me. And now, I had betrayed myself.

“I heard something,” said Tom Weylin.

And Rufus, “So did I. She’s around here somewhere.”

I shrank down, tried to make myself smaller without moving enough to make more noise.

“Damn that Franklin,” I heard Rufus say. “You’re damning the wrong man,” said Weylin. Rufus let that go unanswered.

“Look over there!” Weylin was pointing away from me, pointing into the woods ahead of me. He headed his horse over to investigate what he had seen—and frightened out a large bird.

Rufus’s eyes were better. He ignored his father and headed straight for me. He couldn’t have seen me, couldn’t have seen anything other than a possible hiding place. He plunged his horse into the bushes that hid me, plunged it in to either trample me or drive me out.

He drove me out. I threw myself to one side away from the horse’s hooves.