Kindred

by Octavia E. Butler

  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 stumbled 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, moving 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 plantation, 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. Luckily, 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 people out to investigate. The experience did make me a little more confident 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 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 involuntary 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 usually 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.

  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.

  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.

  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 nearing 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 distant trees.

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

  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?

  I moaned and tried not to think about it. The pain of my body was enough for me to contend with. But now there was a question in my mind that had to be answered.

  Would I really try again? Could I?

  I moved, twisted myself somehow, from my stomach onto my side. I tried to get away from my thoughts, but they still came.

  See how easily slaves are made? they said.

  I cried out as though from the pain of my side, and Alice came to ease me into a less agonizing position. She wiped my face with a cool damp cloth.

  “I’ll try again,” I said to her. And I wondered why I was saying it, boasting, maybe lying.

  “What?” she asked.

  My swollen face and mouth were still distorting my speech. I would have to repeat the words. Maybe they would give me courage if I said them often enough.

  “I’ll try again.” I spoke as slowly and as clearly as I could.

  “You rest!” Her voice was suddenly rough, and I knew she had understood. “Time enough later for talking. Go to sleep.”

  But I couldn’t sleep. The pain kept me awake; my own thoughts kept me awake. I caught myself wondering whether I would be sold to some passing trader this time … or next time … I longed for my sleeping pills to give me oblivion, but some small part of me was glad I didn’t have them. I didn’t quite trust myself with them just now. I wasn’t quite sure how many of them I might take.

  14

  Liza, the sewing woman, fell and hurt herself. Alice told me all about it. Liza was bruised and battered. She lost some teeth. She was black and blue all over. Even Tom Weylin was concerned.

  “Who did it to you?” he demanded. “Tell me, and they’ll be punished!”

  “I fell,” she said sullenly. “Fell on the stairs.”

  Weylin cursed her for a fool and told her to get out of his sight.

  And Alice, Tess, and Carrie concealed their few scratches and gave Liza quiet meaningful glances. Glances that Liza turned away from in anger and fear.

  “She heard you get up in the night,” Alice told me. “She got up after you and went straight to Mister Tom. She knew better than to go to Mister Rufe. He might have let you go. Mister Tom never let a nigger go in his life.”

  “But why?” I asked from my pallet. I was stronger now, but Rufus had forbidden me to get up. For once, I was glad to obey. I knew that when I got up, Tom Weylin would expect me to work as though I we
re completely well. Thus, I had missed Liza’s “accident” completely.

  “She did it to get at me,” said Alice. “She would have liked it better if I had been the one slipping out at night, but she hates you too—almost as much. She figures I would have died if not for you.”

  I was startled. I had never had a serious enemy—someone who would go out of her way to get me hurt or killed. To slaveholders and patrollers, I was just one more nigger, worth so many dollars. What they did to me didn’t have much to do with me personally. But here was a woman who hated me and who, out of sheer malice, had nearly killed me.

  “She’ll keep her mouth shut next time,” said Alice. “We let her know what would happen to her if she didn’t. Now she’s more scared of us than of Mister Tom.”

  “Don’t get yourselves into trouble over me,” I said.

  “Don’t be telling us what to do,” she replied.

  15

  The first day I was up, Rufus called me to his room and handed me a letter—from Kevin to Tom Weylin.

  “Dear Tom,” it said, “There may be no need for this letter since I hope to reach you ahead of it. If I’m held up, however, I want you—and Dana—to know that I’m coming. Please tell her I’m coming.”

  It was Kevin’s handwriting—slanted, neat, clear. In spite of the years of note taking and longhand drafts, his writing had never gone to hell the way mine had. I looked blankly at Rufus.

  “I said once that Daddy was a fair man,” he said. “You all but laughed out loud.”

  “He wrote to Kevin about me?”

  “He did after … after …”

  “After he learned that you hadn’t sent my letters?”

  His eyes widened with surprise, then slowly took on a look of understanding. “So that’s why you ran. How did you find out?”

  “By being curious.” I glanced at the bed chest. “By satisfying my curiosity.”