I looked at him, startled.

"I said fair," he repeated. "Not likable."

I kept quiet. His father wasn't the monster he could have been with the power he held over his slaves. He wasn't a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper. But I had seen no particular fairness in him. He did as he pleased. If you told him he wasn't being fair, he would whip you for talking back. At least the Tom Weylin I had known would have. Maybe he had mellowed.

"Stay," said Rufus. "No matter what you think of him, I won't let him hurt you. And it's good to eat with someone I can talk to for a change."

That was nice. I began to eat again, wondering why he was in such a good mood this morning. He had come a long way from his anger the night before-from threatening not to tell me where Kevin was.

"You know," said Rufus thoughtfully, "you still look mighty young. You pulled me out of that river thirteen or fourteen years ago, but you look like you would have been just a kid back then."

Uh-oh. "Kevin didn't explain that part, I guess."

"Explain what?"

I shook my head. "Just ... let me tell you how it's been for me. I can't tell you why things are happening as they are, but I can tell you the order of their happening." I hesitated, gathering my thoughts. "When I came to you at the river, it was June ninth, nineteen seventy-six for me. When I got home, it was still the same day. Kevin told me I had only been gone a few seconds."

"Seconds ...?"

"Wait. Let me tell it all to you at once. Then you can have all the time you need to digest it and ask questions. Later, on that same day, I came to you again. You were three or four years older and busy trying to set the house afire. When I went home, Kevin told me only a few minutes had passed. The next morning, June tenth, I came to you because you'd fallen out of a tree.... Kevin and I came to you. I was here nearly two months. But when I went home, I found that I had lost only a few minutes or hours of June tenth."

"You mean after two months, you ..."

"I arrived home on the same day I had left. Don't ask me how. I don't know. After eight days at home, I came back here." I faced him silently for a moment. "And, Rufe, now that I'm here, now that you're safe, I want to find my husband."

He absorbed this slowly, frowning as though he was translating it from another language. Then he waved vaguely toward his desk-a new larger desk than he had had on my last visit. The old one had been nothing more than a little table. This one had a roll-top and plenty of drawer space both above and below the work surface.

"His letters are in the middle drawer there. You can have them if you want them. They have his addresses ... But Dana, you're saying while I've been growing up, somehow, time has been almost standing still for you."

I was at the desk hunting through the cluttered drawer for the letters. "It hasn't stood still," I said. "I'm sure my last two visits here have aged me quite a bit, no matter what my calendar at home says." I found the letters. Three of them-short notes on large pieces of paper that had been folded, sealed with sealing wax, and mailed without an envelope. "Here's my Philadelphia address," Kevin said in one. "If I can get a decent job, I'll be here for a while." That was all, except for the address. Kevin wrote books, but he'd never cared much for writing letters. At home he tried to catch me in a good mood and get me to take care of his correspondence for him.

"I'll be an old man," said Rufus, "and you'll still come to me looking just like you do now."

I shook my head. "Rufe, if you don't start being more careful, you'll never live to be an old man. Now that you're grown up, I might not be able to help you much. The kind of trouble you get into as a man might be as overwhelming to me as it is to you."

"Yes. But this time thing ..."

I shrugged.

"Damnit, there must be something mighty crazy about both of us, Dana. I never heard of anything like this happening to anybody else."

"Neither have I." I looked at the other two letters. One from New York, and one from Boston. In the Boston one, he was talking about going to Maine. I wondered what was driving him farther and farther north. He had been interested in the West, but Maine ...?

"I'll write to him," said Rufus. "I'll tell him you're here. He'll come running back."

"I'll write him, Rufe."

"I'll have to mail the letter."

"All right."

"I just hope he hasn't already taken off for Maine."

Weylin opened the door before I could answer. He brought in another man who turned out to be the doctor, and my leisure time was over. I put Kevin's letters back into Rufus's desk-that seemed the best place to keep them-took away the breakfast tray, brought the doctor the empty basin he asked for, stood by while the doctor asked Weylin whether I had any sense or not and whether I could be trusted to answer simple questions accurately.

Weylin said yes twice without looking at me, and the doctor asked his questions. Was I sure Rufus had had a fever? How did I know? Had he been delirious? Did I know what delirious meant? Smart nigger, wasn't I?

I hated the man. He was short and slight, black-haired and black-eyed, pompous, condescending, and almost as ignorant medically as I was. He guessed he wouldn't bleed Rufus since the fever seemed to be gone-bleed him! He guessed a couple of ribs were broken, yes. He rebandaged them sloppily. He guessed I could go now; he had no more use for me.

I escaped to the cookhouse.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Sarah when she saw me.

I shook my head. "Nothing important. Just a stupid little man who may be one step up from spells and good luck charms."

"What?"

"Don't pay any attention to me, Sarah. Do you have anything for me to do out here? I'd like to stay out of the house for a while."

"Always something to do out here. You have anything to eat?"

I nodded.

She lifted her head and gave me one of her down-the-nose looks. "Well, I put enough on his tray. Here. Knead this dough."

She gave me a bowl of bread dough that had risen and was ready to be kneaded down. "He all right?" she asked.

"He's healing."

"Was Isaac all right?"

I glanced at her. "Yes."

"Nigel said he didn't think Marse Rufe told what happened."

"He didn't. I managed to talk him out of it."

She laid a hand on my shoulder for a moment. "I hope you stay around for a while, girl. Even his daddy can't talk him out of much these days."

"Well, I'm glad I was able to. But look, you promised to tell me about his mother."

"Not much to tell. She had two more babies-twins. Sickly little things. They lingered awhile, then died one after the other. She almost died too. She went kind of crazy. The birth had left her pretty bad off anyhow-sick, hurt inside. She fought with Marse Tom, got so she'd scream at him every time she saw him-cussin' and goin' on. She was hurtin' most of the time, couldn't get out of bed. Finally, her sister came and got her, took her to Baltimore."

"And she's still there?"

"Still there, still sick. Still crazy, for all I know. I just hope she stays there. That overseer, Jake Edwards, he's a cousin of hers, and he's all the mean low white trash we need around here."

Jake Edwards was the overseer then. Weylin had begun hiring overseers. I wondered why. But before I could ask, two house servants came in and Sarah deliberately turned her back to me, ending the conversation. I began to understand what had happened later, though, when I asked Nigel where Luke was.

"Sold," said Nigel quietly. And he wouldn't say anything more. Rufus told me the rest.

"You shouldn't have asked Nigel about that," he told me when I mentioned the incident.

"I wouldn't have, if I'd known." Rufus was still in bed. The doctor had given him a purgative and left. Rufus had poured the purgative into his chamber pot and ordered me to tell his father he'd taken it. He had had his father send me back to him so that I could write my letter to Kevin. "Luke did his work," I said. "How could your father sell him?"

"He worked all right. And the hands would work hard for him-mostly without the cowhide. But sometimes he didn't show much sense." Rufus stopped, began a deep breath, caught himself and grimaced in pain. "You're like Luke in some ways," he continued. "So you'd better show some sense yourself, Dana. You're on your own this time."

"But what did he do wrong? What am I doing wrong?"

"Luke ... he would just go ahead and do what he wanted to no matter what Daddy said. Daddy always said he thought he was white. One day maybe two years after you left, Daddy got tired of it. New Orleans trader came through and Daddy said it would be better to sell Luke than to whip him until he ran away."

I closed my eyes remembering the big man, hearing again his advice to Nigel on how to defy the whites. It had caught up with him. "Do you think the trader took him all the way to New Orleans?" I asked.

"Yeah. He was getting a load together to ship them down there."

I shook my head. "Poor Luke. Are there cane fields in Louisiana now?"

"Cane, cotton, rice, they grow plenty down there."

"My father's parents worked in the cane fields there before they went to California. Luke could be a relative of mine."

"Just make sure you don't wind up like him."

"I haven't done anything."

"Don't go teaching nobody else to read."

"Oh."

"Yes, oh. I might not be able to stop Daddy if he decided to sell you."

"Sell me! He doesn't own me. Not even by the law here. He doesn't have any papers saying he owns me."

"Dana, don't talk stupid!"

"But ..."

"In town, once, I heard a man brag how he and his friends had caught a free black, tore up his papers, and sold him to a trader."

I said nothing. He was right, of course. I had no rights-not even any papers to be torn up.

"Just be careful," he said quietly.

I nodded. I thought I could escape from Maryland if I had to. I didn't think it would be easy, but I thought I could do it. On the other hand, I didn't see how even someone much wiser than I was in the ways of the time could escape from Louisiana, surrounded as they would be by water and slave states. I would have to be careful, all right, and be ready to run if I seemed to be in any danger of being sold.

"I'm surprised Nigel is still here," I said. Then I realized that might not be a very bright thing to say even to Rufus. I would have to learn to keep more of my thoughts to myself.

"Oh, Nigel ran away," said Rufus. "Patrollers brought him back, though, hungry and sick. They had whipped him, and Daddy whipped him some more. Then Aunt Sarah doctored him and I talked Daddy into letting me keep him. I think my job was harder. I don't think Daddy relaxed until Nigel married Carrie. Man marries, has children, he's more likely to stay where he is."

"You sound like a slaveholder already."

He shrugged.

"Would you have sold Luke?"

"No! I liked him."

"Would you sell anyone?"

He hesitated. "I don't know. I don't think so."

"I hope not," I said watching him. "You don't have to do that kind of thing. Not all slaveholders do it."

I took my denim bag from where I had hidden it under his bed, and sat down at his desk to write the letter, using one of his large sheets of paper with my pen. I didn't want to bother dipping the quill and steel pen on his desk into ink.

"Dear Kevin, I'm back. And I want to go North too ..."

"Let me see your pen when you're finished," said Rufus.

"All right."

I went on writing, feeling myself strangely near tears. It was as though I was really talking to Kevin. I began to believe I would see him again.

"Let me see the other things you brought with you," said Rufus.

I swung the bag onto his bed. "You can look," I said, and continued writing. Not until I was finished with the letter did I look up to see what he was doing.

He was reading my book.

"Here's the pen," I said casually, and I waited to grab the book the moment he put it down. But instead of putting it down, he ignored the pen and looked up at me.

"This is the biggest lot of abolitionist trash I ever saw."

"No it isn't," I said. "That book wasn't even written until a century after slavery was abolished."

"Then why the hell are they still complaining about it?"

I pulled the book down so that I could see the page he had been reading. A photograph of Sojourner Truth stared back at me solemn-eyed. Beneath the picture was part of the text of one of her speeches.

"You're reading history, Rufe. Turn a few pages and you'll find a white man named J. D. B. DeBow claiming that slavery is good because, among other things, it gives poor whites someone to look down on. That's history. It happened whether it offends you or not. Quite a bit of it offends me, but there's nothing I can do about it." And there was other history that he must not read. Too much of it hadn't happened yet. Sojourner Truth, for instance, was still a slave. If someone bought her from her New York owners and brought her South before the Northern laws could free her, she might spend the rest of her life picking cotton. And there were two important slave children right here in Maryland. The older one, living here in Talbot County, would be called Frederick Douglass after a name change or two. The second, growing up a few miles south in Dorchester County was Harriet Ross, eventually to be Harriet Tubman. Someday, she was going to cost Eastern Shore plantation owners a huge amount of money by guiding three hundred of their runaway slaves to freedom. And farther down in Southampton, Virginia, a man named Nat Turner was biding his time. There were more. I had said I couldn't do anything to change history. Yet, if history could be changed, this book in the hands of a white man-even a sympathetic white man-might be the thing to change it.

"History like this could send you down to join Luke," said Rufus. "Didn't I tell you to be careful!"

"I wouldn't have let anyone else see it." I took it from his hand, spoke more softly. "Or are you telling me I shouldn't trust you either?"

He looked startled. "Hell, Dana, we have to trust each other. You said that yourself. But what if my daddy went through that bag of yours. He could if he wanted to. You couldn't stop him."

I said nothing.