Butler, Octavia - Kindred

Rufus let out a whoop and swung down literally on top of me. I fell under his weight, and the fall twisted my club out of my hand, set it in just the right position for me to fall on.

I heard my stolen shirt tear, felt the splintered wood scrape my side … “She’s here!” called Rufus. “I’ve got her!”

He would get something else too if I could reach my knife. I twisted downward toward the ankle sheath with him still on top of me. My side was suddenly aflame with pain.

“Come help me hold her,” he called.

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His father strode over and kicked me in the face.

That held me, all right. From far away, I could hear Rufus shout—

strangely soft shouting—“You didn’t have to do that!”

Weylin’s reply was lost to me as I drifted into unconsciousness.

13

I awoke tied hand and foot, my side throbbing rhythmically, my jaw not throbbing at all. The pain there was a steady scream. I probed with my tongue and found that two teeth on the right side were gone.

I had been thrown over Rufus’s horse like a grain sack, head and feet hanging, blood dripping from my mouth onto the familiar boot that let me know it was Rufus I rode with.

I made a noise, a kind of choked moan, and the horse stopped. I felt Rufus move, then I was lifted down, placed in the tall grass beside the road. Rufus looked down at me.

“You damn fool,” he said softly. He took his handkerchief and wiped blood from my face. I winced away, tears suddenly filling my eyes at the startlingly increased pain.

“Fool!” repeated Rufus.

I closed my eyes and felt the tears run back into my hair.

“You give me your word you won’t fight me, and I’ll untie you.” After a while, I nodded. I felt his hands at my wrists, at my ankles. “What’s this?”

He had found my knife, I thought. Now he would tie me again. That’s what I would have done in his place. I looked at him.

He was untying the empty sheath from my ankle. Just a piece of rough- cut, poorly sewn leather. I had apparently lost the knife in my struggle with him. No doubt, though, the shape of the sheath told him what it had held. He looked at it, then at me. Finally, he nodded grimly and, with a sharp motion, threw the sheath away.

“Get up.”

I tried. In the end, he had to help me. My feet were numb from being tied, and were just coming back to painful life. If Rufus decided to make me run behind his horse, I would be dragged to death.

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He noticed that I was holding my side as he half-carried me back to his horse, and he stopped to move my hand and look at the wound.

“Scratch,” he pronounced. “You were lucky. Going to hit me with a stick, were you? And what else were you going to do?”

I said nothing, thought of him sending his horse charging over the spot

I had barely leaped from in time.

As I leaned against his horse, he wiped more blood from my face, one hand firmly holding the top of my head so that I couldn’t wince away. I bore it somehow.

“Now you’ve got a gap in your teeth,” he observed. “Well, if you don’t laugh big, nobody’ll notice. They weren’t the teeth right in front.”

I spat blood and he never realized that I had made my comment on such good luck.

“All right,” he said, “let’s go.”

I waited for him to tie me behind the horse or throw me over it grain- sack fashion again. Instead, he put me in front of him in the saddle. Not until then did I see Weylin waiting for us a few paces down the road.

“See there,” the old man said. “Educated nigger don’t mean smart nigger, do it?” He turned away as though he didn’t expect an answer. He didn’t get one.

I sat stiffly erect, holding my body straight somehow until Rufus said, “Will you lean back on me before you fall off! You got more pride than sense.”

He was wrong. At that moment, I couldn’t manage any pride at all. I leaned back against him, desperate for any support I could find, and closed my eyes.

He didn’t say anything more for a long while—not until we were near- ing the house. Then,

“You awake, Dana?” I sat straight. “Yes.”

“You’re going to get the cowhide,” he said. “You know that.” Somehow, I hadn’t known. His gentleness had lulled me. Now the

thought of being hurt even more terrified me. The whip, again. “No!” Without thinking about it or intending to do it, I threw one leg over and

slid from the horse. My side hurt, my mouth hurt, my face was still bleeding, but none of that was as bad as the whip. I ran toward the dis- tant trees.

Rufus caught me easily and held me, cursing me, hurting me. “You

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take your whipping!” he hissed. “The more you fight, the more he’ll hurt you.”

He? Was Weylin to whip me, then, or the overseer, Edwards?

“Act like you’ve got some sense!” demanded Rufus as I struggled. What I acted like was a wild woman. If I’d had my knife, I would

surely have killed someone. As it was, I managed to leave scratches and bruises on Rufus, his father, and Edwards who was called over to help. I was totally beyond reasoning. I had never in my life wanted so desper- ately to kill another human being.

They took me to the barn and tied my hands and raised whatever they had tied them to high over my head. When I was barely able to touch the floor with my toes, Weylin ripped my clothes off and began to beat me.

He beat me until I swung back and forth by my wrists, half-crazy with pain, unable to find my footing, unable to stand the pressure of hanging, unable to get away from the steady slashing blows …

He beat me until I tried to make myself believe he was going to kill me. I said it aloud, screamed it, and the blows seemed to emphasize my words. He would kill me. Surely, he would kill me if I didn’t get away, save myself, go home!

It didn’t work. This was only punishment, and I knew it. Nigel had borne it. Alice had borne worse. Both were alive and healthy. I wasn’t going to die—though as the beating went on, I wanted to. Anything to stop the pain! But there was nothing. Weylin had ample time to finish whipping me.

I was not aware of Rufus untying me, carrying me out of the barn and into Carrie’s and Nigel’s cabin. I was not aware of him directing Alice and Carrie to wash me and care for me as I had cared for Alice. That, Alice told me about later—how he demanded that everything used on me be clean, how he insisted on the deep ugly wound in my side—the scratch—being carefully cleaned and bandaged.

He was gone when I awoke, but he left me Alice. She was there to calm me and feed me pills that I saw were my own inadequate aspirins, and to assure me that my punishment was over, that I was all right. My face was almost too swollen for me to ask for salt water to wash my mouth. After several tries, though, she understood and brought it to me.

“Just rest,” she said. “Carrie and me’ll take care of you as good as you took care of me.”

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I didn’t try to answer. Her words touched something in me, though, started me crying silently. We were both failures, she and I. We’d both run and been brought back, she in days, I in only hours. I probably knew more than she did about the general layout of the Eastern Shore. She knew only the area she’d been born and raised in, and she couldn’t read a map. I knew about towns and rivers miles away—and it hadn’t done me a damned bit of good! What had Weylin said? That educated didn’t mean smart. He had a point. Nothing in my education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape. Yet in a few years an illiterate runaway named Harriet Tubman would make nineteen trips into this country and lead three hundred fugitives to freedom. What had I done wrong? Why was I still slave to a man who had repaid me for saving his life by nearly killing me. Why had I taken yet another beating. And why … why was I so frightened now—frightened sick at the thought that sooner or later, I would have to run again?