she said one day in the cookhouse. “What did they die of ?” I asked.
“Fevers. The doctor came and bled them and purged them, but they still died.”
“He bled and purged babies?”
“They were two and three. He said it would break the fever. And it did. But they … they died anyway.”
“Alice, if I were you, I wouldn’t ever let that man near Joe.”
She looked at her son sitting on the floor of the cookhouse eating mush and milk. He was five years old and he looked almost white in spite of Alice’s dark skin. “I never wanted no doctor near the other two,” said Alice. “Marse Rufe sent for him—sent for him and made me let him kill my babies.”
Rufus’s intentions had been good. Even the doctor’s intentions had probably been good. But all Alice knew was that her children were dead and she blamed Rufus. Rufus himself was to teach me about that attitude.
On the day after Weylin was buried, Rufus decided to punish me for letting the old man die. I didn’t know whether he honestly believed I had done such a thing. Maybe he just needed to hurt someone. He did lash out at others when he was hurt; I had already seen that.
So on the morning after the funeral, he sent the current overseer, a burly man named Evan Fowler, to get me from the cookhouse. Jake Edwards had either quit or been fired sometime during my six-year absence. Fowler came to tell me I was to work in the fields.
I didn’t believe it, even when the man pushed me out of the cook- house. I thought he was just another Jake Edwards throwing his weight around. But outside, Rufus stood waiting, watching. I looked at him, then back at Fowler.
“This the one?” Fowler asked Rufus.
“That’s her,” said Rufus. And he turned and went back into the main house.
Stunned, I took the sicklelike corn knife Fowler thrust into my hands and let myself be herded out toward the cornfield. Herded. Fowler got his horse and rode a little behind me as I walked. It was a long walk. The cornfield wasn’t where I’d left it. Apparently, even in this time, planters practiced some form of crop rotation. Not that that mattered to me. What
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in the world could I do in a cornfield?
I glanced back at Fowler. “I’ve never done field work before,” I told him. “I don’t know how.”
“You’ll learn,” he said. He used the handle of his whip to scratch his shoulder.
I began to realize that I should have resisted, should have refused to let Fowler bring me out here where only other slaves could see what hap- pened to me. Now it was too late. It was going to be a grim day.
Slaves were walking down rows of corn, chopping the stalks down with golf-swing strokes of their knives. Two slaves worked a row, mov- ing toward each other. Then they gathered the stalks they had cut and stood them in bunches at opposite ends of the row. It looked easy, but I suspected that a day of it could be backbreaking.
Fowler dismounted and pointed toward a row.
“You chop like the others,” he said. “Just do what they do. Now get to work.” He shoved me toward the row. There was already someone at the other end of it working toward me. Someone quick and strong, I hoped, because I doubted that I would be quick or strong for a while. I hoped that the washing and the scrubbing at the house and the factory and warehouse work back in my own time had made me strong enough just to survive.
I raised the knife and chopped at the first stalk. It bent over, partially cut.
At almost the same moment, Fowler lashed me hard across the back.
I screamed, stumbled, and spun around to face him, still holding my knife. Unimpressed, he hit me across the breasts.
I fell to my knees and doubled over in a blaze of pain. Tears ran down my face. Even Tom Weylin hadn’t hit slave women that way—any more than he’d kicked slave men in the groin. Fowler was an animal. I glared up at him in pain and hatred.
“Get up!” he said.
I couldn’t. I didn’t think anything could make me get up just then—
until I saw Fowler raising his whip again.
Somehow, I got up.
“Now do what the others do,” he said. “Chop close to the ground. Chop hard!”
I gripped the knife, felt myself much more eager to chop him.
“All right,” he said. “Try it and get it over with. I thought you was sup-
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posed to be smart.”
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He was a big man. He hadn’t impressed me as being very quick, but he was strong. I was afraid that even if I managed to hurt him, I wouldn’t hurt him enough to keep him from killing me. Maybe I should make him try to kill me. Maybe it would get me out of this Godawful place where people punished you for helping them. Maybe it would get me home. But in how many pieces? Fowler would take the knife away from me and give it back edge first.
I turned and slashed furiously at the corn stalk, then at the next. Behind me, Fowler laughed.
“Maybe you got some sense after all,” he said.
He watched me for a while, urging me on, literally cracking the whip. By the time he left, I was sweating, shaking, humiliated. I met the woman who had been working toward me and she whispered, “Slow down! Take a lick or two if you have to. You kill yourself today, he’ll push you to kill yourself every day.”
There was sense in that. Hell, if I went on the way I had been, I wouldn’t even last through today. My shoulders were already beginning to ache.
Fowler came back as I was gathering the cut stalks. “What the devil do you think you’re doing!” he demanded. “You ought to be halfway down the next row by now.” He hit me across the back as I bent down. “Move! You’re not in the cookhouse getting fat and lazy now. Move!”
He did that all day. Coming up suddenly, shouting at me, ordering me to go faster no matter how fast I went, cursing me, threatening me. He didn’t hit me that often, but he kept me on edge because I never knew when a blow would fall. It got so just the sound of his coming terrified me. I caught myself cringing, jumping at the sound of his voice.
The woman in my row explained, “He’s always hard on a new nigger. Make ’em go fast so he can see how fast they can work. Then later on if they slow down, he whip ’em for gettin’ lazy.”
I made myself slow down. It wasn’t hard. I didn’t think my shoulders could have hurt much worse if they’d been broken. Sweat ran down into my eyes and my hands were beginning to blister. My back hurt from the blows I’d taken as well as from sore muscles. After a while, it was more painful for me to push myself than it was for me to let Fowler hit me. After a while, I was so tired, I didn’t care either way. Pain was pain. After a while, I just wanted to lie down between the rows and not get up again.
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I stumbled and fell, got up and fell again. Finally, I lay face-down in the dirt, unable to get up. Then came a welcome blackness. I could have been going home or dying or passing out; it made no difference to me. I was going away from the pain. That was all.
6
I was on my back when I came to and there was a white face floating just above me. For a wild moment, I thought it was Kevin, thought I was home. I said his name eagerly.
“It’s me, Dana.”
Rufus’s voice. I was still in hell. I closed my eyes, not caring what would happen next.
“Dana, get up. You’ll be hurt more if I carry you than if you walk.” The words echoed strangely in my head. Kevin had said something
like that to me once. I opened my eyes again to be sure it was Rufus.
It was. I was still in the cornfield, still lying in the dirt.
“I came to get you,” said Rufus. “Not soon enough, I guess.”
I struggled to my feet. He offered a hand to help me, but I ignored it. I brushed myself off a little and followed him down the row toward his horse. From there, we rode together back to the house without a word passing between us. At the house, I went straight to the well, got a bucket of water, carried it up the sta
irs somehow, then washed, spread antisep- tic on my new cuts, and put on clean clothes. I had a headache that even- tually drove me down to Rufus’s room for some Excedrin. Rufus had used all the aspirins.
Unfortunately, he was in his room.
“Well, you’re no good in the fields,” he said when he saw me. “That’s clear.”
I stopped, turned, and stared at him. Just stared. He had been sitting on his bed, leaning back against the headboard, but now he straightened, faced me.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Dana.”
“Right,” I said softly. “I’ve done enough stupid things. How many times have I saved your life so far?” My aching head sent me to his desk
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where I had left the Excedrin. I shook three of them into my hand. I had never taken so many before. I had never needed so many before. My hands were trembling.
“Fowler would have given you a good whipping if I hadn’t stopped him,” said Rufus. “That’s not the first beating I’ve saved you from.”
I had my Excedrin. I turned to leave the room. “Dana!”
I stopped, looked at him. He was thin and weak and hollow-eyed; his illness had left its marks on him. He probably couldn’t have carried me to his horse if he’d tried. And he couldn’t stop me from leaving now—I thought.
“You walk away from me, Dana, you’ll be back in the fields in an hour!”
The threat stunned me. He meant it. He’d send me back out. I stood straring at him, not with anger now, but with surprise—and fear. He could do it. Maybe later, I would have a chance to make him pay, but for now, he could do as he pleased. He sounded more like his father than himself. In that moment, he even looked like his father.
“Don’t you ever walk away from me again!” he said. Strangely, he began to sound a little afraid. He repeated the words, spacing them, emphasizing each one. “Don’t you ever walk away from me again!”
I stood where I was, my head throbbing, my expression as neutral as I
could make it. I still had some pride left. “Get back in here!” he said.
I stood there for a moment longer, then went back to his desk and sat down. And he wilted. The look I associated with his father vanished. He was himself again—whoever that was.
“Dana, don’t make me talk to you like that,” he said wearily. “Just do what I tell you.”
I shook my head, unable to think of anything safe to say. And I guess I wilted. To my shame, I realized I was almost crying. I needed desper- ately to be alone. Somehow, I kept back the tears.
If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. I remembered I still had the Excedrin tablets in my hand, and I took them, swallowed them without water, hoping they’d work quickly, steady me a little. Then I looked at Rufus, saw that he’d lain back again. Was I supposed to stay and watch him sleep?
“I don’t see how you can swallow those things like that,” he said, rub-
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bing his throat. There was a long silence, then another command. “Say something! Talk to me!”
“Or what?” I asked. “Are you going to have me beaten for not talking to you?”
He muttered something I didn’t quite hear. “What?”
Silence. Then a rush of bitterness from me.
“I saved your life, Rufus! Over and over again.” I stopped for a moment, caught my breath. “And I tried to save your father’s life. You know I did. You know I didn’t kill him or let him die.”
He moved uncomfortably, wincing a little. “Give me some of your medicine,” he said.
Somehow, I didn’t throw the bottle at him. I got up and handed it to him.
“Open it,” he said. “I don’t want to be bothered with that damn top.”
I opened it, shook one tablet into his hand, and snapped the top back on.
He looked at the tablet. “Only one?”
“These are stronger than the others,” I said. And also, I wanted to hang on to them for as long as I could. Who knew how many more times he would make me need them. The ones I had taken were beginning to help me already.
“You took three,” he said petulantly.
“I needed three. No one has been beating you.”
He looked away from me, put the one into his mouth. He still had to chew tablets before he could swallow them. “This tastes worse than the others,” he complained.
I ignored him, put the bottle away in the desk. “Dana?”
“What?”
“I know you tried to help Daddy. I know.”
“Then why did you send me to the field? Why did I have to go through all that, Rufe?”
He shrugged, winced, rubbed his shoulders. He still had plenty of sore muscles, apparently. “I guess I just had to make somebody pay. And it seemed that … well, people don’t die when you’re taking care of them.”
“I’m not a miracle worker.”
“No. Daddy thought you were, though. He didn’t like you, but he
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thought you could heal better than a doctor.”
“Well I can’t. Sometimes I’m less likely to kill than the doctor, that’s all.”
“Kill?”
“I don’t bleed or purge away people’s strength when they need it most. And I know enough to try to keep a wound clean.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s enough to save a few lives around here, but no, it’s not all. I
know a little about some diseases. Only a little.”
“What do you know about … about a woman who’s been hurt in child- bearing?”
“Been hurt how?” I wondered whether he meant Alice.
“I don’t know. The doctor said she wasn’t to have any more and she did. The babies died and she almost died. She hasn’t been well since.”
Now I knew who he was talking about. “Your mother?” “Yes. She’s coming home. I want you to take care of her.”
“My God! Rufe, I don’t know anything about problems like that! Believe me, nothing at all.” What if the woman died in my care. He’d have me beaten to death!
“She wants to come home, now that … She wants to come home.”
“I can’t care for her. I don’t know how.” I hesitated. “Your mother doesn’t like me anyway, Rufe. You know that as well as I do.” She hated me. She’d make my life hell out of pure spite.
“There’s no one else I’d trust,” he said. “Carrie’s got her own family now. I’d have to take her out of her cabin away from Nigel and the boys …”
“Why?”
“Mama has to have someone with her through the night. What if she needed something?”
“You mean I’d have to sleep in her room?”
“Yes. She’d never have a servant sleep in her room before. Now, though, she’s gotten used to it.”
“She won’t get used to me. I’m telling you, she won’t have me.” Please heaven!
“I think she will. She’s older now, not so full of fire. You give her her laudanum when she needs it and she won’t give you much trouble.”
“Laudanum?”
“Her medicine. She doesn’t need it so much for pain anymore, Aunt
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May says. But she still needs it.”
Since laudanum was an opium extract, I didn’t doubt that she still needed it. I was going to have a drug addict on my hands. A drug addict who hated me. “Rufe, couldn’t Alice …”
“No!” A very sharp no. It occurred to me that Margaret Weylin had more reason to hate Alice than she did to hate me.
“Alice will be having another baby in a few months anyway,” said
Rufus.
“She will? Then maybe …” I shut my mouth, but the thought went on. Maybe this one would be Hagar. Maybe for once, I had something to gain by staying here. If only …
“Maybe what?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Rufe, I’m asking you not to put your mother in my care, for her sake
and for mine.”
He rubbed his forehead. “I’ll think about it, Dana, and talk to her. Maybe she remembers someone she’d like. Let me sleep now. I’m still so damn weak.”
I started out of the room. “Dana.”
“Yes?” What now?
“Go read a book or something. Don’t do any more work today.” “Read a book?”
“Do whatever you want to.”
In other words, he was sorry. He was always sorry. He would have been amazed, uncomprehending if I refused to forgive him. I remem- bered suddenly the way he used to talk to his mother. If he couldn’t get what he wanted from her gently, he stopped being gentle. Why not? She always forgave him.
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