Kindred

by Butler, Octavia

  40 KINDRED

  She nodded sadly. “You saw?” “Yes.”

  “He shouldn’t have come. I told him not to.” “Did he really have a pass?”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “No. He won’t get one either. Not to come see

  me. Mister Tom said for him to choose a new wife there on the planta- tion. That way, Mister Tom’ll own all his children.”

  I looked at Alice. The woman followed my gaze. “He’ll never own a child of mine,” she said flatly.

  I wondered. They seemed so vulnerable here. I doubted that this was their first visit from the patrol, or their last. In a place like this, how could the woman be sure of anything. And then there was history. Rufus and Alice would get together somehow.

  “Where are you from?” asked the woman suddenly. “The way you talk, you not from ’round here.”

  The new subject caught me by surprise and I almost said Los Angeles. “New York,” I lied quietly. In 1815, California was nothing more than a distant Spanish colony—a colony this woman had probably never heard of.

  “That’s a long way off,” said the woman.

  “My husband is there.” Where had that lie come from? And I had said it with all the longing I felt for Kevin who was now too far away for me to reach through any effort of my own.

  The woman came over and stood staring down at me. She looked tall and straight and grim and years older.

  “They carried you off?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Maybe in a way I had been kidnapped. “You sure they didn’t get him too?”

  “Just me. I’m sure.”

  “And now you’re going back.”

  “Yes!” fiercely, hopefully. “Yes!” Lie and truth had merged.

  There was silence. The woman looked at her daughter, then back at me. “You stay here until tomorrow night,” she said. “Then there’s another place you can head for. They’ll let you have some food and … oh!” She looked contrite. “You must be hungry now. I’ll get you some

  —”

  “No, I’m not hungry. Just tired.”

  “Get into bed then. Alice, you too. There’s room for all of us there …

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  now.” She went to the child and began brushing off some of the dirt Alice had brought in from outside. I saw her close her eyes for a moment, then glance at the door. “Dana … you said your name was Dana?”

  “Yes.”

  “I forgot the blanket,” she said. “I left it outside when … I left it out- side.”

  “I’ll get it,” I said. I went to the door and looked outside. The blanket lay where the patroller had thrown it—on the ground not far from the house. I went over to pick it up, but just as I reached it, someone grabbed me and swung me around. Suddenly, I was facing a young white man, broad-faced, dark-haired, stocky, and about half-a-foot taller than I was. “What in hell …?” he sputtered. “You … you’re not the one.” He peered at me as though he wasn’t sure. Apparently, I looked enough like Alice’s mother to confuse him—briefly. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “What are you doing here?”

  What to do? He held me easily, barely noticing my efforts to pull away. “I live here,” I lied. “What are you doing here?” I thought he’d be more likely to believe me if I sounded indignant.

  Instead, he slapped me stunningly with one hand while he held me with the other. He spoke very softly. “You got no manners, nigger, I’ll teach you some!”

  I said nothing. My ears still rang from his blow, but I heard him say, “You could be her sister, her twin sister, almost.”

  That seemed to be a good thing for him to think, so I kept silent. Silence seemed safest anyway.

  “Her sister dressed up like a boy!” He began to smile. “Her runaway sister. I wonder what you’re worth.”

  I panicked. Having him catch and hold me was bad enough. Now he meant to turn me in as a runaway … I dug the nails of my free hand into his arm and tore the flesh from elbow to wrist.

  Surprise and pain made the man loosen his grip on me slightly, and I

  wrenched away.

  I heard him yell, heard him start after me.

  I ran mindlessly toward the cabin door only to find Alice’s mother there barring my way.

  “Don’t come in here,” she whispered. “Please don’t come in here.”

  I had no chance to go in. The man caught me, pulled me backward, threw me to the ground. He would have kicked me, but I rolled aside and

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  jumped to my feet. Terror gave me speed and agility I never knew I had.

  Again I ran, this time for the trees. I didn’t know where I was going, but the sounds of the man behind me sent me zigzagging on. Now I longed for darker denser woods that I could lose myself in.

  The man tackled me and brought me down hard. At first, I lay stunned, unable to move or defend myself even when he began hitting me, punch- ing me with his fists. I had never been beaten that way before—would never have thought I could absorb so much punishment without losing consciousness.

  When I tried to scramble away, he pulled me back. When I tried to push him away, he hardly seemed to notice. At one point, I did get his attention though. He had leaned down close to me, pinning me flat on my back. I raised my hands to his face, my fingers partly covering his eyes. In that instant, I knew I could stop him, cripple him, in this primitive age, destroy him.

  His eyes.

  I had only to move my fingers a little and jab them into the soft tissues, gouge away his sight and give him more agony than he was giving me.

  But I couldn’t do it. The thought sickened me, froze my hands where they were. I had to do it! But I couldn’t …

  The man knocked my hands from his face and moved back from me— and I cursed myself for my utter stupidity. My chance was gone, and I’d done nothing. My squeamishness belonged in another age, but I’d brought it along with me. Now I would be sold into slavery because I didn’t have the stomach to defend myself in the most effective way. Slav- ery! And there was a more immediate threat.

  The man had stopped beating me. Now he simply kept a tight hold on me and looked at me. I could see that I had left a few scratches on his face. Shallow insignificant scratches. The man rubbed his hand across them, looked at the blood, then looked at me.

  “You know you’re going to pay for that, don’t you?” he said.

  I said nothing. Stupidity was what I would pay for, if anything.

  “I guess you’ll do as well as your sister,” he said. “I came back for her, but you’re just like her.”

  That told me who he probably was. One of the patrollers—the one who had hit Alice’s mother, probably. He reached out and ripped my blouse open. Buttons flew everywhere, but I didn’t move. I understood what the man was going to do. He was going to display some stupidity of his own.

  THE FIRE 43

  He was going to give me another chance to destroy him. I was almost relieved.

  He tore loose my bra and I prepared to move. Just one quick lunge. Then suddenly, for no reason that I could see, he reared above me, fist drawn back to hit me again. I jerked my head aside, hit it on something hard just as his fist glanced off my jaw.

  The new pain shattered my resolve, sent me scrambling away again. I was only able to move a few inches before he pinned me down, but that was far enough for me to discover that the thing I had hit my head on was a heavy stick—a tree limb, perhaps. I grasped it with both hands and brought it down as hard as I could on his head.

  He collapsed across my body.

  I lay still, panting, trying to find the strength to get up and run. The man had a horse around somewhere. If I could find it …

  I dragged myself from beneath his heavy body and tried to stand up. Halfway up, I felt myself losing consciousness, falling back. I caught hold of a tree and willed myself to stay conscious. If the man came to and found me nearby, he would kill me. He would surely kill me! But I couldn’t keep my hold on the tree. I
fell, slowly it seemed, into a deep starless darkness.

  5

  Pain dragged me back to consciousness. At first, it was all I was aware of; every part of my body hurt. Then I saw a blurred face above me—the face of a man—and I panicked.

  I scrambled away, kicking him, clawing the hands that reached out for me, trying to bite, lunging up toward his eyes. I could do it now. I could do anything.

  “Dana!”

  I froze. My name? No patroller would know that. “Dana, look at me for God’s sake!”

  Kevin! It was Kevin’s voice! I stared upward, managed to focus on him clearly at last. I was at home. I was lying on my own bed, bloody and dirty, but safe. Safe!

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  Kevin lay half on top of me, holding me, smearing himself with my

  blood and his own. I could see where I had scratched his face—so near the eye.

  “Kevin, I’m sorry!”

  “Are you all right now?”

  “Yes. I thought … I thought you were the patroller.” “The what?”

  “The … I’ll tell you later. God, I hurt, and I’m so tired. But it doesn’t matter. I’m home.”

  “You were gone two or three minutes this time. I didn’t know what to think. You don’t know how good it is to have you back again.”

  “Two or three minutes?”

  “Almost three minutes. I watched the clock. But it seemed to be longer.”

  I closed my eyes in pain and weariness. It hadn’t just seemed longer to me. I had been gone for hours and I knew it. But at that moment, I couldn’t have argued it. I couldn’t have argued anything. The surge of strength that helped me to fight when I thought I was fighting for my life was gone.

  “I’m going to take you to the hospital,” said Kevin. “I don’t know how

  I’m going to explain you, but you need help.” “No.”

  He got up. I felt him lift me. “No, Kevin, please.”

  “Listen, don’t be afraid. I’ll be with you.”

  “No. Look, all he did was hit me a few times. I’ll be all right.” Sud- denly I had strength again, now that I needed it. “Kevin, I went from here the first time, and this second time. And I came back here. What will hap- pen if I go from the hospital and come back there?”

  “Probably nothing.” But he had stopped. “No one who sees you leave or come back will believe it. And they wouldn’t dare tell anybody.”

  “Please. Just let me sleep. That’s all I need really—rest. The cuts and bruises will heal. I’ll be fine.”

  He took me back to the bed, probably against his better judgment, and put me down. “How long was it for you?” he asked.

  “Hours. But it was only bad at the end.” “Who did this to you?”

  “A patroller. He … he thought I was a runaway.” I frowned. “I have to

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  sleep, Kevin. I’ll make more sense in the morning, I promise.” My voice trailed away.

  “Dana!”

  I jumped, tried to refocus my attention on him. “Did he rape you?”

  I sighed. “No. I hit him with a stick—knocked him out. Let me sleep.” “Wait a minute …”

  I seemed to drift away from him. It became too much trouble for me to go on listening and trying to understand, too much trouble to answer.

  I sighed again and closed my eyes. I heard him get up and go away, heard water running somewhere. Then I slept.

  6

  I was clean when I awoke before dawn the next morning. I was wear- ing an old flannel nightgown that I hadn’t worn since Kevin and I were married and that I’d never worn in June. On one side of me was a canvas tote bag containing a pair of pants, a blouse, underclothing, a sweater, shoes, and the biggest switchblade knife I had ever seen. The tote bag was tied to my waist with a length of cord. On the other side of me lay Kevin, still asleep. But he woke up when I kissed him.

  “You’re still here,” he said with obvious relief, and he hugged me, reminding me painfully of a few bruises. Then he remembered, let me go, and switched on the light. “How do you feel?”

  “Pretty well.” I sat up, got out of bed, managed to stand up for a moment. Then I got back under the cover. “I’m healing.”

  “Good. You’re rested, you’re healing, now you can tell me what the hell happened to you. And what’s a patroller? All I could think of was the Highway Patrol.”

  I thought back to my reading. “A patroller is … was a white man, usu- ally young, often poor, sometimes drunk. He was a member of a group of such men organized to keep the blacks in line.”

  “What?”

  “Patrollers made sure the slaves were where they were supposed to be at night, and they punished those who weren’t. They chased down

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  runaways—for a fee. And sometimes they just raised hell, had a little fun terrorizing people who weren’t allowed to fight back.”

  Kevin leaned on one elbow and looked down at me. “What are you talking about? Where were you?”

  “In Maryland. Somewhere on the Eastern Shore if I understood

  Rufus.”

  “Maryland! Three thousand miles away in … in what? A few minutes?”

  “More than three thousand miles. More than any number of miles.” I moved to relieve pressure on an especially tender bruise. “Let me tell you all of it.”

  I remembered it for him in detail as I had the first time. Again, he lis- tened without interrupting. This time when I finished, he just shook his head.

  “This is getting crazier and crazier,” he muttered. “Not to me.”

  He glanced at me sidelong.

  “To me, it’s getting more and more believable. I don’t like it. I don’t want to be in the middle of it. I don’t understand how it can be happen- ing, but it’s real. It hurts too much not to be. And … and my ancestors, for Godsake!”

  “Maybe.”

  “Kevin, I can show you the old Bible.”

  “But the fact is, you had already seen the Bible. You knew about those people—knew their names, knew they were Marylanders, knew …”

  “What the hell is that supposed to prove! That I was hallucinating and weaving in the names of my ancestors? I’d like to give you some of this pain that I must still be hallucinating.”

  He put an arm over my chest, resting it on unbruised flesh. After a while, he said, “Do you honestly believe you traveled back over a cen- tury in time and crossed three thousand miles of space to see your dead ancestors?”

  I moved uncomfortably. “Yes,” I whispered. “No matter how it sounds, no matter what you think, it happened. And you’re not helping me deal with it by laughing.”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “They were my ancestors. Even that damn parasite, the patroller, saw the resemblance between me and Alice’s mother.”

  He said nothing.

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  “I’ll tell you … I wouldn’t dare act as though they weren’t my ances- tors. I wouldn’t let anything happen to them, the boy or girl, if I could possibly prevent it.”

  “You wouldn’t anyway.”

  “Kevin, take this seriously, please!”

  “I am. Anything I can do to help you, I’ll do.” “Believe me!”

  He sighed. “It’s like you just said.” “What?”

  “I wouldn’t dare act as though I didn’t believe. After all, when you vanish from here, you must go someplace. If that place is where you think it is—back to the ante bellum South—then we’ve got to find a way to protect you while you’re there.”

  I moved closer to him, relieved, content with even such grudging acceptance. He had become my anchor, suddenly, my tie to my own world. He couldn’t have known how much I needed him firmly on my side.

  “I’m not sure it’s possible for a lone black woman—or even a black man—to be protected in that place,” I said. “But if you have an idea, I’ll be glad to hear it.”

  He said nothing for several seconds. Then he reached over me
into the canvas bag and brought out the switchblade. “This might improve your chances—if you can bring yourself to use it.”

  “I’ve seen it.” “Can you use it?”

  “You mean, will I use it.” “That too.”

  “Yes. Before last night, I might not have been sure, but now, yes.”

  He got up, left the room for a moment, and came back with two wooden rulers. “Show me,” he said.