3
I had been at home for eight days when the dizziness finally came again. I didn't know whether to curse it for my own sake or welcome it for Kevin's—not that it mattered what I did.
I went to Rufus's time fully clothed, carrying my denim bag, wearing my knife. I arrived on my knees because of the dizziness, but I was immediately alert and wary.
I was in the woods either late in the day or early in the morning. The sun was low in the sky and surrounded as I was by trees, I had no reference point to tell me whether it was rising or setting. I could see a stream not far from me, running between tall trees. Off to my opposite side was a woman, black, young—just a girl, really—with her dress torn down the front. She was holding it together as she watched a black man and a white man fighting.
The white man's red hair told me who he must be. His face was already too much of a mess to tell me. He was losing his fight—had already lost it. The man he was fighting was his size with the same slender build, but in spite of the black man's slenderness, he looked wiry and strong. He had probably been conditioned by years of hard work. He didn't seem much affected when Rufus hit him, but he was killing Rufus.
Then it occurred to me that he might really be doing just that—killing the only person who might be able to help me find Kevin. Killing my ancestor. What had happened here seemed obvious. The girl, her torn dress. If everything was as it seemed, Rufus had earned his beating and more. Maybe he had grown up to be even worse than I had feared. But no matter what he was, I needed him alive—for Kevin's sake and for my own.
I saw him fall, get up, and be knocked down again. This time, he got up more slowly, but he got up. I had a feeling he'd done a lot of getting up. He wouldn't be doing much more.
I went closer, and the woman saw me. She called out something I didn't quite understand, and the man turned his head to look at her. Then he followed her gaze to me. Just then, Rufus hit him on the jaw.
Surprisingly, the black man stumbled backward, almost fell. But Rufus was too tired and hurt to follow up his advantage. The black man hit him one more solid blow, and Rufus collapsed. There was no question of his getting up this time. He was out cold.
As I approached, the black man reached down and caught Rufus by the hair as though to hit him again. I stepped up to the man quickly. "What will they do to you if you kill him?" I said.
The man twisted around to glare at me.
"What will they do to the woman if you kill him?" I asked.
That seemed to reach him. He released Rufus and stood straight to face me. "Who's going to say I did anything to him?" His voice was low and threatening, and I began to wonder whether I might wind up joining Rufus unconscious on the ground.
I made myself shrug. "You'll say yourself what you did if they ask you right. So will the woman."
"What are you going to say?"
"Not a word if I can help it. But … I'm asking you not to kill him."
"You belong to him?"
"No. It's just that he might know where my husband is. And I might be able to get him to tell me."
"Your husband …?" He looked me over from head to foot. "Why you go 'round dressed like a man?"
I said nothing. I was so tired of answering that question that I wished I had risked going out to buy a long dress. I looked down at Rufus's bloody face and said, "If you leave him here now, it will be a long while before he can send anyone after you. You'll have time to get away."
"You think you'd want him alive if you was her?" He gestured toward the woman.
"Is she your wife?"
"Yeah."
He was like Sarah, holding himself back, not killing in spite of anger I could only imagine. A lifetime of conditioning could be overcome, but not easily. I looked at the woman. "Do you want your husband to kill this man?"
She shook her head and I saw that her face was swollen on one side. "'While ago, I could have killed him myself," she said. "Now … Isaac, let's just get away!"
"Get away and leave her here?" He stared at me, suspicious and hostile. "She sure don't talk like no nigger I ever heard. Talks like she been mighty close with the white folks—for a long time."
"She talks like that 'cause she comes from a long way off," said the girl.
I looked at her in surprise. Tall and slender and dark, she was. A little like me. Maybe a lot like me.
"You're Dana, aren't you?" she asked.
"Yes … how did you know?"
"He told me about you." She nudged Rufus with her foot. "He used to talk about you all the time. And I saw you once, when I was little."
I nodded. "You're Alice, then. I thought so."
She nodded and rubbed her swollen face. "I'm Alice." And she looked at the black man with pride. "Alice Jackson now."
I tried to see her again as the thin, frightened child I remembered—the child I had seen only two months before. It was impossible. But I should have been used to the impossible by now—just as I should have been used to white men preying on black women. I had Weylin as my example, after all. But somehow, I had hoped for better from Rufus. I wondered whether the girl was pregnant with Hagar already.
"My name was Greenwood when you saw me last," Alice continued. "I married Isaac last year … just before Mama died."
"She died then?" I caught myself visualizing a woman my age dying, even though I knew that was wrong. But still, the woman must have died fairly young. "I'm sorry," I said. "She tried to help me."
"She helped lot of folks," said Isaac. "She used to treat this little nogood bastard better than his own people treated him." He kicked Rufus hard in the side.
I winced and wished I could move Rufus out of his reach. "Alice," I said, "wasn't Rufus a friend of yours? I mean … did he just grow out of the friendship or what?"
"Got to where he wanted to be more friendly than I did," she said. "He tried to get Judge Holman to sell Isaac South to keep me from marrying him."
"You're a slave?" I said to Isaac, surprised. "My God, you'd better get out of here."
Isaac gave Alice a look that said very clearly, You talk too much. Alice answered the look.
"Isaac, she's all right. She got a whipping once for teaching a slave how to read. Tom Weylin was the one whipped her."
"I want to know what she's going to do when we leave," said Isaac.
"I'm going to stay with Rufus," I told him. "When he comes to, I'm going to help him home—as slowly as possible. I'm not going to tell him where you went because I won't know."
Isaac looked at Alice, and she tugged at his arm. "Let's go!" she urged.
"But …"
"You can't whip everybody! Let's go!"
He seemed on the verge of going when I said, "Isaac, if you want me to, I can write you a pass. It doesn't have to be to where you're really going, but it might help you if you're stopped."
He looked at me with no trust at all, then turned and walked away without answering.
Alice hesitated, spoke softly to me. "Your man went away," she said. "He waited a long time for you, then he left."
"Where did he go?"
"Somewhere North. I don't know. Mister Rufe knows. You got to be careful, though. Mister Rufe gets mighty crazy sometimes."
"Thank you."
She turned and followed Isaac, leaving me alone with the unconscious Rufus—alone to wonder where she and Isaac would go. North to Pennsylvania? I hoped so. And where had Kevin gone? Why had he gone anywhere? What if Rufus wouldn't help me find him? Or what if I didn't stay in this time long enough to find him? Why couldn't he have waited …?