I wrote his letters. I had to read several of the letters he'd received first to pick up the stilted formal style of the day. I didn't want Rufus having to face some creditor that I had angered with my twentieth-century brevity-which could come across as nineteenth-century abruptness, even discourtesy. Rufus gave me a general idea of what he wanted me to say and then approved or disapproved of the way I said it. Usually, he approved. Then we started to go over his father's books together. I never did get back to Margaret Weylin.

And I wasn't ever to get back to her full time. Rufus brought a young girl named Beth in from the fields to help with the housework. That eventually freed Carrie to spend more time with Margaret. I continued to sleep in Margaret's room because I agreed with Rufus that Carrie belonged with her family, at least at night. That meant I had to put up with Margaret waking me up when she couldn't sleep and complaining bitterly that Rufus had taken me away just when she and I were beginning to get on so well ...

"What does he have you doing?" she asked me several times - suspiciously.

I told her.

"Seems as though he could do that himself. Tom always did it himself."

Rufus could have done it himself too, I thought, though I never said it aloud. He just didn't like working alone. Actually, he didn't like working at all. But if he had to do it, he wanted company. I didn't realize how much he preferred my company in particular until he came in one night a little drunk and found Alice and I eating together in her cabin. He had been away eating with a family in town-"Some people with daughters they want to get rid of," Alice had told me. She had said it with no concern at all even though she knew her life could become much harder if Rufus married. Rufus had property and slaves and was apparently quite eligible.

He came home, and not finding either of us in the house, came out to Alice's cabin. He opened the door and saw us both looking up at him from the table, and he smiled happily.

"Behold the woman," he said. And he looked from one to the other of us. "You really are only one woman. Did you know that?"

He tottered away.

Alice and I looked at each other. I thought she would laugh because she took any opportunity she could find to laugh at him-though not to his face because he would beat her when he decided she needed it.

She didn't laugh. She shuddered, then got up, not too gracefully-her pregnancy was showing now-and looked out the door after him.

After a while, she asked, "Does he ever take you to bed, Dana?"

I jumped. Her bluntness could still startle me. "No. He doesn't want me and I don't want him."

She glanced back at me over one shoulder. "What you think your wants got to do with it?"

I said nothing because I liked her. And no answer I could give could help sounding like criticism of her.

"You know," she said, "you gentle him for me. He hardly hits me at all when you're here. And he never hits you."

"He arranges for other people to hit me."

"But still ... I know what he means. He likes me in bed, and you out of bed, and you and I look alike if you can believe what people say."

"We look alike if we can believe our own eyes!"

"I guess so. Anyway, all that means we're two halves of the same woman-at least in his crazy head."

11.

The time passed slowly, uneventfully, as I waited for the birth of the child I hoped would be Hagar. I went on helping Rufus and his mother. I kept a journal in shorthand. ("What the devil are these chicken marks?" Rufus asked me when he looked over my shoulder one day.) It was such a relief to be able to say what I felt, even in writing, without worrying that I might get myself or someone else into trouble. One of my secretarial classes had finally come in handy.

I tried husking corn and blistered my slow clumsy hands while experienced field hands sped through the work effortlessly, enjoying themselves. There was no reason for me to join them, but they seemed to be making a party of the husking-Rufus gave them a little whiskey to help them along-and I needed a party, needed anything that would relieve my boredom, take my mind off myself.

It was a party, all right. A wild rough kind of party that nobody modified because "the master's women"-Alice and I-were there. People working near me around the small mountain of corn laughed at my blisters and told me I was being initiated. A jug went around and I tasted it, choked, and drew more laughter. Surprisingly companionable laughter. A man with huge muscles told me it was too bad I was already spoken for, and that earned me hostile looks from three women. After the work, there were great quantities of food-chicken, pork, vegetables, corn bread, fruit-better food than the herring and corn meal field hands usually saw so much of. Rufus came out to play hero for providing such a good meal, and the people gave him the praise he wanted. Then they made gross jokes about him behind his back. Strangely, they seemed to like him, hold him in contempt, and fear him all at the same time. This confused me because I felt just about the same mixture of emotions for him myself. I had thought my feelings were complicated because he and I had such a strange relationship. But then, slavery of any kind fostered strange relationships. Only the overseer drew simple, unconflicting emotions of hatred and fear when he appeared briefly. But then, it was part of the overseer's job to be hated and feared while the master kept his hands clean.

Young people began disappearing in pairs after a while, and some of the older ones stopped their eating or drinking or singing or talking long enough to give them looks of disapproval-or more understanding wistful looks. I thought about Kevin and missed him and knew I wasn't going to sleep well that night.

At Christmas, there was another party-dancing, singing, three marriages.

"Daddy used to make them wait until corn shucking or Christmas to marry," Rufus told me. "They like parties when they marry, and he made a few parties do."

"Anything to pinch a few pennies," I said tactlessly.

He glanced at me. "You'd better be glad he didn't waste money. You're the one who gets upset when some quick money has to be raised."

My mind had caught up with my mouth by then, and I kept quiet. He hadn't sold anyone else. The harvest had been good and the creditors patient.

"Found anybody you want to jump the broom with?" he asked me.

I looked at him startled and saw that he wasn't serious. He was smiling and watching the slaves do a bowing, partner-changing dance to the music of a banjo.

"What would you do if I had found someone?" I asked.

"Sell him," he said. His smile was still in place, but there was no longer any humor in it. I noticed, now, that he was watching the big muscular man who had tried to get me to dance-the same man who had spoken to me at the corn husking. I would have to ask Sarah to tell him not to speak to me again. He didn't mean anything, but that wouldn't save him if Rufus got angry.

"One husband is enough for me," I said.

"Kevin?"

"Of course, Kevin."

"He's a long way off."

There was something in his tone that shouldn't have been there. I turned to face him. "Don't talk stupid."

He jumped and looked around quickly to see whether anyone had heard.

"You watch your mouth," he said.

"Watch yours."

He stalked away angrily. We'd been working together too much lately, especially now that Alice was so advanced in her pregnancy. I was grateful when Alice herself created another job for me-a job that got me away from him regularly. Sometime during the week-long Christmas holiday, Alice persuaded him to let me teach their son Joe to read and write.

"It was my Christmas present," she told me. "He asked me what I wanted, and I told him I wanted my son not to be ignorant. You know, I had to fight with him all week to get him to say yes!"

But he had said it, finally, and the boy came to me every day to learn to draw big clumsy letters on the slate Rufus bought him and read simple words and rhymes from the books Rufus himself had used. But unlike Rufus, Joe wasn't bored with what he was learning. He fastened onto the lessons as though they were puzzles arranged for his entertainment-puzzles he loved solving. He could get so intense-throw screaming kicking tantrums when something seemed to be eluding him. But not all that much eluded him.

"You've got a damn bright little kid there," I told Rufus. "You ought to be proud."

Rufus looked surprised-as though it had never occurred to him that there might be anything special about the undersized runny-nosed child. He had spent his life watching his father ignore, even sell the children he had had with black women. Apparently, it had never occurred to Rufus to break that tradition. Until now.

Now, he began to take an interest in his son. Perhaps he was only curious at first, but the boy captured him. I caught them together once in the library, the boy sitting on one of Rufus's knees and studying a map that Rufus had just brought home. The map was spread on Rufus's desk.

"Is this our river?" the boy was asking.

"No, that's the Miles River, northeast of here. This map doesn't show our river."

"Why not?"

"It's too small."

"What is?" The boy peered up at him. "Our river or this map?"

"Both, I suspect."

"Let's draw it in, then. Where does it go?"

Rufus hesitated. "Just about here. But we don't have to draw it in."

"Why? Don't you want the map to be right?"

I made a noise and Rufus looked up at me. I thought he looked almost ashamed for a moment. He put the boy down quickly and shooed him away.

"Nothing but questions," Rufus complained to me.

"Enjoy it, Rufe. At least he's not out setting fire to the stable or trying to drown himself."

He couldn't quite keep from laughing. "Alice said something like that." He frowned a little. "She wants me to free him."

I nodded. Alice had already told me she meant to ask for the boy's freedom.

"You put her up to it, I guess."

I stared at him. "Rufe, if there's a woman on the place who makes up her own mind, it's Alice. I didn't put her up to a thing."

"Well ... now she's got something else to make up her mind about."

"What?"

"Nothing. Nothing to you. I just mean to make her earn what she wants for a change," he said.

I couldn't get any more out of him than that. Eventually, though, Alice told me what he wanted.

"He wants me to like him," she said with heavy contempt. "Or maybe even love him. I think he wants me to be more like you!"

"I guarantee you he doesn't."

She closed her eyes. "I don't care what he wants. If I thought it would make him free my children, I'd try to do it. But he lies! And he won't put it down on no paper."

"He likes Joe," I said. "He ought to. Joe looks like a slightly darker version of him at that age. Anyway, he might decide on his own to free the boy."

"And this one?" She patted her stomach. "And the others? He'll make sure there're others."

"I don't know. I'll push him whenever I can."

"I should have took Joe and tried to run before I got pregnant again."

"You're still thinking about running?"

"Wouldn't you be if you didn't have another way to get free?"

I nodded.

"I don't mean to spend my life here watching my children grow up as slaves and maybe get sold."

"He wouldn't ..."

"You don't know what he would do! He don't treat you the way he treats me. When I'm strong again after I have this baby, I'm going."

"With the baby?"

"You don't think I'm going to leave it here, do you?"

"But ... I don't see how you can make it."

"I know more now than I did when Isaac and me left. I can make it."

I drew a deep breath. "When the time comes, if I can help you, I will."

"Get me a bottle of laudanum," she said.

"Laudanum!"

"I'll have the baby to keep quiet. Old Mama won't let me near her, but she likes you. Get it."

"All right." I didn't like it. Didn't like the idea of her trying to run with a baby and a small child, didn't like the idea of her trying to run at all. But she was right. In her place, I would have tried. I would have tried sooner and gotten killed sooner, but I would have done it alone.

"You think about this awhile longer," I said. "You'll get the laudanum and anything else I can supply, but you think."

"I've already thought."

"Not enough. I shouldn't say this, but think what's going to happen if the dogs catch Joe, or if they pull you down and get the baby."

12.