I untied the cord of the canvas bag and got up, discovering sore mus- cles as I moved. I limped over to him, took one of the rulers, looked at it, rubbed my face groggily, and in a sudden slashing motion, drew the ruler across his abdomen just as he was opening his mouth to speak.
“That’s it,” I said. He frowned.
“Kevin, I’m not going to be in any fair fights.”
48
He said nothing.
KINDRED
“You understand? I’m a poor dumb scared nigger until I get my chance. They won’t even see the knife if I have my way. Not until it’s too late.”
He shook his head. “What else don’t I know about you?”
I shrugged and got back into bed. “I’ve been watching the violence of this time go by on the screen long enough to have picked up a few things.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“It doesn’t matter much.”
He sat down next to where I lay. “What do you mean?”
“That most of the people around Rufus know more about real violence than the screenwriters of today will ever know.”
“That’s … debatable.”
“I just can’t make myself believe I can survive in that place. Not with a knife, not even with a gun.”
He took a deep breath. “Look, if you’re drawn back there again, what can you do but try to survive? You’re not going to just let them kill you.” “Oh, they won’t kill me. Not unless I’m silly enough to resist the other things they’d rather do—like raping me, throwing me into jail as a run- away, and then selling me to the highest bidder when they see that my owner isn’t coming to claim me.” I rubbed my forehead. “I almost wish
I hadn’t read about it.”
“But it doesn’t have to happen that way. There were free blacks. You could pose as one of them.”
“Free blacks had papers to prove they were free.”
“You could have papers too. We could forge something …”
“If we knew what to forge. I mean, a certificate of freedom is what we need, but I don’t know what they looked like. I’ve read about them, but I’ve never seen one.”
He got up and went to the living room. Moments later, he came back and dumped an armload of books on the bed. “I brought everything we had on black history,” he said. “Start hunting.”
There were ten books. We checked indexes and even leafed through some of the books page by page to be sure. Nothing. I hadn’t really thought there would be anything in these books. I hadn’t read them all, but I’d at least glanced through them before.
“We’ll have to go to the library then,” said Kevin. “We’ll go today as soon as it’s open.”
THE FIRE 49
“If I’m still here when it opens.”
He put the books on the floor and got back under the cover. Then he lay there frowning at me. “What about the pass Alice’s father was sup- posed to have?”
“A pass … that was just written permission for a slave to be some- where other than at home at a certain time.”
“Sounds like just a note.”
“It is,” I said. “You’ve got it! One of the reasons it was against the law in some states to teach slaves to read and write was that they might escape by writing themselves passes. Some did escape that way.” I got up, went to Kevin’s office and took a small scratch pad and a new pen from his desk and the large atlas from his bookcase.
“I’m going to tear Maryland out,” I told him as I returned.
“Go ahead. I wish I had a road atlas for you. The roads in it wouldn’t exist in those days but it might show you the easiest way through the country.”
“This one shows main highways. Shows a lot of rivers too, and in eighteen fifteen there were probably not many bridges.” I looked closely at it, then got up again.
“What now?” asked Kevin.
“Encyclopedia. I want to see when the Pennsylvania Railroad built this nice long track through the peninsula. I’d have to go into Delaware to pick it up, but it would take me right into Pennsylvania.”
“Forget it,” he said. “Eighteen fifteen is too early for railroads.”
I looked anyway and found that the Pennsylvania Railroad hadn’t even been begun until 1846. I went back to bed and stuffed the pen, the map, and the scratch pad into my canvas bag.
“Tie that cord around you again,” said Kevin. I obeyed silently.
“I think we may have missed something,” he said. “Getting home may be simpler for you than you realize.”
“Getting home? Here?”
“Here. You may have more control over your returning than you think.”
“I don’t have any control at all.”
“You might. Listen, remember the rabbit or whatever it was that you said ran across the road in front of you?”
“Yes.”
50
“It scared you.”
KINDRED
“Terrified me. For a second, I thought it was … I don’t know, some- thing dangerous.”
“And your fear made you dizzy, and you thought you were coming home. Does fear usually make you dizzy?”
“No.”
“I don’t think it did this time either—at least not in any normal way. I think you were right. You did almost come home. Your fear almost sent you home.”
“But … but I was afraid the whole time I was there. And I was scared half out of my mind while that patroller was beating me. But I didn’t come home until I’d knocked him out—saved myself.”
“Not too helpful.” “No.”
“But look, was your fight with the patroller really over? You said you were afraid that if he found you there, passed out, he’d kill you.”
“He would have, for revenge. I fought back, actually hurt him. I can’t believe he’d let me get away with that.”
“You may be right.” “I am right.”
“The point is, you believe you are.” “Kevin …”
“Wait. Hear me out. You believed your life was in danger, that the patroller would kill you. And on your last trip, you believed your life was in danger when you found Rufus’s father aiming a rifle at you.”
“Yes.”
“And even with the animal—you mistook it for something dangerous.” “But I saw it in time—just as a dark blur, but clearly enough to see that
it was small and harmless. And I see what you’re saying.”
“That you might have been better off if your animal had been a snake. Your danger then—or assumed danger—might have sent you home before you ever met the patroller.”
“Then … Rufus’s fear of death calls me to him, and my own fear of death sends me home.”
“So it seems.”
“That doesn’t really help, you know.” “It could.”
“Think about it, Kevin. If the thing I’m afraid of isn’t really dangerous
THE FIRE 51
—a rabbit instead of a snake—then I stay where I am. If it is dangerous, it’s liable to kill me before I get home. Going home does take a while, you know. I have to get through the dizziness, the nausea …”
“Seconds.”
“Seconds count when something is trying to kill you. I wouldn’t dare put myself in danger in the hope of getting home before the ax fell. And if I got into trouble by accident, I wouldn’t dare just wait passively to be saved. I might wind up coming home in pieces.”
“Yes … I see your point.”
I sighed. “So the more I think about it, the harder it is for me to believe I could survive even a few more trips to a place like that. There’s just too much that could go wrong.”
“Will you stop that! Look, your ancestors survived that era—survived it with fewer advantages than you have. You’re no less than they are.”
“In a way I am.” “What way?”
“Strength. Endurance. To survive, my ancestors had to put up with more than I ever could. Much more. You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’
t,” he said with annoyance. “You’re working yourself into a mood that could be suicidal if you’re not careful.”
“Oh, but I’m talking about suicide, Kevin—suicide or worse. For instance, I would have used your knife against that patroller last night if I’d had it. I would have killed him. That would have ended the immedi- ate danger to me and I probably wouldn’t have come home. But if that patroller’s friends had caught me, they would have killed me. And if they hadn’t caught me, they would probably have gone after Alice’s mother. They … they may have anyway. So either I would have died, or I would have caused another innocent person to die.”
“But the patroller was trying to …” He stopped, looked at me. “I see.” “Good.”
There was a long silence. He pulled me closer to him. “Do I really look like that patroller?”
“No.”
“Do I look like someone you can come home to from where you may be going?”
“I need you here to come home to. I’ve already learned that.”
He gave me a long thoughtful look. “Just keep coming home,” he said finally. “I need you here too.”
The Fall
1
I think Kevin was as lonely and out of place as I was when I met him, though he was handling it better. But then, he was about to escape.
I was working out of a casual labor agency—we regulars called it a slave market. Actually, it was just the opposite of slavery. The people who ran it couldn’t have cared less whether or not you showed up to do the work they offered. They always had more job hunters than jobs any- way. If you wanted them to think about using you, you went to their office around six in the morning, signed in, and sat down to wait. Wait- ing with you were winos trying to work themselves into a few more bot- tles, poor women with children trying to supplement their welfare checks, kids trying to get a first job, older people who’d lost one job too many, and usually a poor crazy old street lady who talked to herself con- stantly and who wasn’t going to be hired no matter what because she only wore one shoe.
You sat and sat until the dispatcher either sent you out on a job or sent you home. Home meant no money. Put another potato in the oven. Or in desperation, sell some blood at one of the store fronts down the street from the agency. I had only done that once.
Getting sent out meant the minimum wage—minus Uncle Sam’s share—for as many hours as you were needed. You swept floors, stuffed envelopes, took inventory, washed dishes, sorted potato chips (really!),
THE F ALL 53
cleaned toilets, marked prices on merchandise … you did whatever you were sent out to do. It was nearly always mindless work, and as far as most employers were concerned, it was done by mindless people. Nonpeople rented for a few hours, a few days, a few weeks. It didn’t matter.
I did the work, I went home, I ate, and then slept for a few hours. Finally, I got up and wrote. At one or two in the morning, I was fully awake, fully alive, and busy working on my novel. During the day, I car- ried a little box of No Doz. I kept awake with them, but not very wide awake. The first thing Kevin ever said to me was, “Why do you go around looking like a zombie all the time?”
He was just one of several regular employees at an auto-parts ware- house where a group of us from the agency were doing an inventory. I was wandering around between shelves of nuts, bolts, hubcaps, chrome, and heaven knew what else checking other people’s work. I had a habit of showing up every day and of being able to count, so the supervisor decided that zombie or not, I should check the others. He was right. Peo- ple came in after a hard night of drinking and counted five units per clearly-marked, fifty-unit container.
“Zombie?” I repeated, looking up from a tray of short black wires at
Kevin.
“You look like you sleepwalk through the day,” he said. “Are you high on something or what?”
He was just a stock helper or some such bottom-of-the-ladder type. He had no authority over me, and I didn’t owe him any explanations.
“I do my work,” I said quietly. I turned back to the wires, counted them, corrected the inventory slip, initialed it, and moved down to the next shelf.
“Buz told me you were a writer,” said the voice that I thought had gone away.
“Look, I can’t count with you talking to me.” I pulled out a tray full of large screws—twenty-five to a box.
“Take a break.”
“Did you see that agency guy they sent home yesterday? He took one break too many. Unfortunately, I need this job.”
“Are you a writer?”
“I’m a joke as far as Buz is concerned. He thinks people are strange if they even read books. Besides,” I added bitterly, “what would a writer be
54 KINDRED
doing working out of a slave market?”
“Keeping herself in rent and hamburgers, I guess. That’s what I’m doing working at a warehouse.”
I woke up a little then and really looked at him. He was an unusual- looking white man, his face young, almost unlined, but his hair com- pletely gray and his eyes so pale as to be almost colorless. He was muscular, well-built, but no taller than my own five-eight so that I found myself looking directly into the strange eyes. I looked away startled, wondering whether I had really seen anger there. Maybe he was more important in the warehouse than I had thought. Maybe he had some authority …
“Are you a writer?” I asked.
“I am now,” he said. And he smiled. “Just sold a book. I’m getting out of here for good on Friday.”
I stared at him with a terrible mixture of envy and frustration. “Congratulations.”
“Look,” he said, still smiling, “it’s almost lunch time. Eat with me. I
want to hear about what you’re writing.”
And he was gone. I hadn’t said yes or no, but he was gone.
“Hey!” whispered another voice behind me. Buz. The agency clown when he was sober. Wine put him into some kind of trance, though, and he just sat and stared and looked retarded—which he wasn’t, quite. He just didn’t give a damn about anything, including himself. He drank up his pay and walked around in rags. Also, he never bathed. “Hey, you two gonna get together and write some books?” he asked, leering.
“Get out of here,” I said, breathing as shallowly as possible.
“You gonna write some poor-nography together!” He went away laughing.
Later, at one of the round rusting metal tables in the corner of the warehouse that served as the lunch area, I found out more about my new writer friend. Kevin Franklin, his name was, and he’d not only gotten his book published, but he’d made a big paperback sale. He could live on the money while he wrote his next book. He could give up shitwork, hope- fully forever …
“Why aren’t you eating?” he asked when he stopped for breath. The warehouse was in a newly built industrial section of Compton, far enough from coffee shops and hot dog stands to discourage most of us from going out to eat. Some people brought their lunches. Others
THE F ALL 55
bought them from the catering truck. I had done neither. All I was hav- ing was a cup of the free dishwater coffee available to all the warehouse workers.
“I’m on a diet,” I said.
He stared at me for a moment, then got up, motioned me up. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“To the truck if it’s still there.”
“Wait a minute, you don’t have to …” “Listen, I’ve been on that kind of diet.”
“I’m all right,” I lied, embarrassed. “I don’t want anything.”
He left me sitting there, went to the truck, and came back with a ham- burger, milk, a small wedge of apple pie.
“Eat,” he said. “I’m still not rich enough to waste money, so eat.”
To my own surprise, I ate. I hadn’t intended to. I was caffeine jittery and surly and perfectly capable of wasting his money. After all, I’d told him not to spend it. But I ate.
Buz sidled by. “Hey,” he sa
id, low-voiced. “Porn!” He moved on. “What?” said Kevin.
“Nothing,” I said. “He’s crazy.” Then, “Thanks for the lunch.” “Sure. Now tell me, what is it you write?”
“Short stories, so far. But I’m working on a novel.” “Naturally. Have any of your stories sold?”
“Some. To little magazines no one ever heard of. The kind that pay in copies of the magazine.”
He shook his head. “You’re going to starve.”
“No. After a while, I’ll convince myself that my aunt and uncle were right.”
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