Kindred Read online

  I sat down on the bed and looked over at him, but I could read noth- ing other than interest and remembered excitement in his eyes. “She said I was what?” I asked.

  THE FIRE 25

  “Just a strange nigger. She and Daddy both knew they hadn’t seen you before.”

  “That was a hell of a thing for her to say right after she saw me save her son’s life.”

  Rufus frowned. “Why?” I stared at him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Why are you mad?”

  “Your mother always call black people niggers, Rufe?” “Sure, except when she has company. Why not?”

  His air of innocent questioning confused me. Either he really didn’t know what he was saying, or he had a career waiting in Hollywood. Whichever it was, he wasn’t going to go on saying it to me.

  “I’m a black woman, Rufe. If you have to call me something other than my name, that’s it.”

  “But …”

  “Look, I helped you. I put the fire out, didn’t I?” “Yeah.”

  “All right then, you do me the courtesy of calling me what I want to be called.”

  He just stared at me.

  “Now,” I spoke more gently, “tell me, did you see me again when the draperies started to burn? I mean, did you see me the way you did when you were drowning?”

  It took him a moment to shift gears. Then he said, “I didn’t see any- thing but fire.” He sat down in the old ladder-back chair near the fireplace and looked at me. “I didn’t see you until you got here. But I was so scared … it was kind of like when I was drowning … but not like any- thing else I can remember. I thought the house would burn down and it would be my fault. I thought I would die.”

  I nodded. “You probably wouldn’t have died because you would have been able to get out in time. But if your parents are asleep here, the fire might have reached them before they woke up.”

  The boy stared into the fireplace. “I burned the stable once,” he said. “I wanted Daddy to give me Nero—a horse I liked. But he sold him to Reverend Wyndham just because Reverend Wyndham offered a lot of money. Daddy already has a lot of money. Anyway, I got mad and burned down the stable.”

  I shook my head wonderingly. The boy already knew more about

  26 KINDRED

  revenge than I did. What kind of man was he going to grow up into? “Why did you set this fire?” I asked. “To get even with your father for something else?”

  “For hitting me. See?” He turned and pulled up his shirt so that I could see the crisscross of long red welts. And I could see old marks, ugly scars of at least one much worse beating.

  “For Godsake …!”

  “He said I took money from his desk, and I said I didn’t.” Rufus shrugged. “He said I was calling him a liar, and he hit me.”

  “Several times.”

  “All I took was a dollar.” He put his shirt down and faced me.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. The boy would be lucky to stay out of prison when he grew up—if he grew up. He went on.

  “I started thinking that if I burned the house, he would lose all his money. He ought to lose it. It’s all he ever thinks about.” Rufus shud- dered. “But then I remembered the stable, and the whip he hit me with after I set that fire. Mama said if she hadn’t stopped him, he would have killed me. I was afraid this time he would kill me, so I wanted to put the fire out. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to do.”

  So he had called me. I was certain now. The boy drew me to him some- how when he got himself into more trouble than he could handle. How he did it, I didn’t know. He apparently didn’t even know he was doing it. If he had, and if he had been able to call me voluntarily, I might have found myself standing between father and son during one of Rufus’s beatings. What would have happened then, I couldn’t imagine. One meeting with Rufus’s father had been enough for me. Not that the boy sounded like that much of a bargain either. But, “Did you say he used a whip on you, Rufe?”

  “Yeah. The kind he whips niggers and horses with.”

  That stopped me for a moment. “The kind he whips … who?” He looked at me warily. “I wasn’t talking about you.”

  I brushed that aside. “Say blacks anyway. But … your father whips black people?”

  “When they need it. But Mama said it was cruel and disgraceful for him to hit me like that no matter what I did. She took me to Baltimore City to Aunt May’s house after that, but he came and got me and brought me home. After a while, she came home too.”

  For a moment, I forgot about the whip and the “niggers.” Baltimore

  THE FIRE 27

  City. Baltimore, Maryland? “Are we far from Baltimore now, Rufe?” “Across the bay.”

  “But … we’re still in Maryland, aren’t we?” I had relatives in Maryland

  —people who would help me if I needed them, and if I could reach them. I was beginning to wonder, though, whether I would be able to reach any- one I knew. I had a new, slowly growing fear.

  “Sure we’re in Maryland,” said Rufus. “How could you not know that.”

  “What’s the date?” “I don’t know.”

  “The year! Just tell me the year!”

  He glanced across the room toward the door, then quickly back at me. I realized I was making him nervous with my ignorance and my sudden intensity. I forced myself to speak calmly. “Come on, Rufe, you know what year it is, don’t you?”

  “It’s … eighteen fifteen.” “When?”

  “Eighteen fifteen.”

  I sat still, breathed deeply, calming myself, believing him. I did believe him. I wasn’t even as surprised as I should have been. I had already accepted the fact that I had moved through time. Now I knew I was farther from home than I had thought. And now I knew why Rufus’s father used his whip on “niggers” as well as horses.

  I looked up and saw that the boy had left his chair and come closer to me.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded. “You keep acting sick.” “It’s nothing, Rufe. I’m all right.” No, I was sick. What was I going to do? Why hadn’t I gone home? This could turn out to be such a deadly place for me if I had to stay in it much longer. “Is this a plantation?” I

  asked.

  “The Weylin plantation. My daddy’s Tom Weylin.”

  “Weylin …” The name triggered a memory, something I hadn’t thought of for years. “Rufus, do you spell your last name, W-e-y-l-i-n?”

  “Yeah, I think that’s right.”

  I frowned at him impatiently. A boy his age should certainly be sure of the spelling of his own name—even a name like this with an unusual spelling.

  “It’s right,” he said quickly.

  28 KINDRED

  “And … is there a black girl, maybe a slave girl, named Alice living

  around here somewhere?” I wasn’t sure of the girl’s last name. The mem- ory was coming back to me in fragments.

  “Sure. Alice is my friend.”

  “Is she?” I was staring at my hands, trying to think. Every time I got used to one impossibility, I ran into another.

  “She’s no slave, either,” said Rufus. “She’s free, born free like her mother.”

  “Oh? Then maybe somehow …” I let my voice trail away as my thoughts raced ahead of it fitting things together. The state was right, and the time, the unusual name, the girl, Alice …

  “Maybe what?” prompted Rufus.

  Yes, maybe what? Well, maybe, if I wasn’t completely out of my mind, if I wasn’t in the middle of the most perfect hallucination I’d ever heard of, if the child before me was real and was telling the truth, maybe he was one of my ancestors.

  Maybe he was my several times great grandfather, but still vaguely alive in the memory of my family because his daughter had bought a large Bible in an ornately carved, wooden chest and had begun keeping family records in it. My uncle still had it.

  Grandmother Hagar. Hagar Weylin, born in 1831. Hers was the first name listed. And she h
ad given her parents’ names as Rufus Weylin and Alice Green-something Weylin.

  “Rufus, what’s Alice’s last name?”

  “Greenwood. What were you talking about? Maybe what?” “Nothing. I … just thought I might know someone in her family.” “Do you?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the person I’m thinking of.” Weak lies. But they were better than the truth. As young as the boy was, I thought he would question my sanity if I told the truth.

  Alice Greenwood. How would she marry this boy? Or would it be marriage? And why hadn’t someone in my family mentioned that Rufus Weylin was white? If they knew. Probably, they didn’t. Hagar Weylin Blake had died in 1880, long before the time of any member of my fam- ily that I had known. No doubt most information about her life had died with her. At least it had died before it filtered down to me. There was only the Bible left.

  Hagar had filled pages of it with her careful script. There was a record

  THE FIRE 29

  of her marriage to Oliver Blake, and a list of her seven children, their marriages, some grandchildren … Then someone else had taken up the listing. So many relatives that I had never known, would never know.

  Or would I?

  I looked over at the boy who would be Hagar’s father. There was noth- ing in him that reminded me of any of my relatives. Looking at him con- fused me. But he had to be the one. There had to be some kind of reason for the link he and I seemed to have. Not that I really thought a blood relationship could explain the way I had twice been drawn to him. It wouldn’t. But then, neither would anything else. What we had was some- thing new, something that didn’t even have a name. Some matching strangeness in us that may or may not have come from our being related. Still, now I had a special reason for being glad I had been able to save him. After all … after all, what would have happened to me, to my mother’s family, if I hadn’t saved him?

  Was that why I was here? Not only to insure the survival of one accident-prone small boy, but to insure my family’s survival, my own birth.

  Again, what would have happened if the boy had drowned? Would he have drowned without me? Or would his mother have saved him some- how? Would his father have arrived in time to save him? It must be that one of them would have saved him somehow. His life could not depend on the actions of his unconceived descendant. No matter what I did, he would have to survive to father Hagar, or I could not exist. That made sense.

  But somehow, it didn’t make enough sense to give me any comfort. It didn’t make enough sense for me to test it by ignoring him if I found him in trouble again—not that I could have ignored any child in trouble. But this child needed special care. If I was to live, if others were to live, he must live. I didn’t dare test the paradox.

  “You know,” he said, peering at me, “you look a little like Alice’s mother. If you wore a dress and tied your hair up, you’d look a lot like her.” He sat down companionably beside me on the bed.

  “I’m surprised your mother didn’t mistake me for her then,” I said. “Not with you dressed like that! She thought you were a man at first,

  just like I did—and like Daddy did.”

  “Oh.” That mistake was a little easier to understand now. “Are you sure you aren’t related to Alice yourself?”

  30 KINDRED

  “Not that I know of,” I lied. And I changed the subject abruptly. “Rufe,

  are there slaves here?”

  He nodded. “Thirty-eight slaves, Daddy said.” He drew his bare feet up and sat cross-legged on the bed facing me, still examining me with interest. “You’re not a slave, are you?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. You don’t talk right or dress right or act right. You don’t even seem like a runaway.”

  “I’m not.”

  “And you don’t call me ‘Master’ either.”

  I surprised myself by laughing. “Master?”

  “You’re supposed to.” He was very serious. “You want me to call you black.”

  His seriousness stopped my laughter. What was funny, anyway? He was probably right. No doubt I was supposed to give him some title of respect. But “Master”?

  “You have to say it,” he insisted. “Or ‘Young Master’ or … or ‘Mis- ter’ like Alice does. You’re supposed to.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Not unless things get a lot worse than they are.”

  The boy gripped my arm. “Yes!” he whispered. “You’ll get into trou- ble if you don’t, if Daddy hears you.”

  I’d get into trouble if “Daddy” heard me say anything at all. But the boy was obviously concerned, even frightened for me. His father sounded like a man who worked at inspiring fear. “All right,” I said. “If anyone else comes, I’ll call you ‘Mister Rufus.’ Will that do?” If anyone else came, I’d be lucky to survive.

  “Yes,” said Rufus. He looked relieved. “I still have scars on my back where Daddy hit me with the whip.”

  “I saw them.” It was time for me to get out of this house. I had done enough talking and learning and hoping to be transported home. It was clear that whatever power had used me to protect Rufus had not provided for my own protection. I had to get out of the house and to a place of safety before day came—if there was a place of safety for me here. I wondered how Alice’s parents managed, how they survived.

  “Hey!” said Rufus suddenly.

  I jumped, looked at him, and realized that he had been saying something—something I had missed.

  THE FIRE 31

  “I said what’s your name?” he repeated. “You never told me.” Was that all? “Edana,” I said. “Most people call me Dana.”

  “Oh, no!” he said softly. He stared at me the way he had when he thought I might be a ghost.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I guess, but … well, you wanted to know if I had seen you this time before you got here the way I did at the river. Well, I didn’t see you, but I think I heard you.”

  “How? When?”

  “I don’t know how. You weren’t here. But when the fire started and I got so scared, I heard a voice, a man. He said, ‘Dana?’ Then he said, ‘Is it happening again?’ And someone else—you—whispered, ‘I think so.’ I heard you!”

  I sighed wearily, longing for my own bed and an end to questions that had no answers. How had Rufus heard Kevin and me across time and space? I didn’t know. I didn’t even have time to care. I had other more immediate problems.

  “Who was the man?” Rufus asked.

  “My husband.” I rubbed a hand across my face. “Rufe, I have to get out of here before your father wakes up. Will you show me the way downstairs so that I don’t awaken anyone?”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know, but I can’t stay here.” I paused for a moment wonder- ing how much he could help me—how much he would help me. “I’m a long way from home,” I said, “and I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back there. Do you know of anyplace I could go?”

  Rufus uncrossed his legs and scratched his head. “You could go out- side and hide until morning. Then you could come out and ask Daddy if you could work here. He hires free niggers sometimes.”

  “Does he? If you were free and black, do you think you’d want to work for him?”

  He looked away from me, shook his head. “I guess not. He’s pretty mean sometimes.”

  “Is there someplace else I could go?”

  He did some more thinking. “You could go to town and find work there.”

  “What’s the name of the town?” “Easton.”

  32

  “Is it far?”

  KINDRED

  “Not so far. The niggers walk there sometimes when Daddy gives them a pass. Or maybe …”

  “What?”

  “Alice’s mother lives closer. You could go to her, and she could tell you the best places to go to get work. You could stay with her too, maybe. Then I might see you again before you go home.
”

  I was surprised he wanted to see me again. I hadn’t had much contact with children since I’d been one myself. Somehow, I found myself liking this one, though. His environment had left its unlikable marks on him, but in the ante bellum South, I could have found myself at the mercy of someone much worse—could have been descended from someone much worse.

  “Where can I find Alice’s mother?” I asked.

  “She lives in the woods. Come on outside, and I’ll tell you how to get there.”