“You damned black bitch!” He shook his cane at me like an extended forefinger. “If you think you can get away with making threats … giving orders …” He ran out of breath and began gasping again. I watched without sympathy, wondering whether he was already sick. “Get out!” he gasped. “Go to Rufus. Take care of him. If anything happens to him, I’ll flay you alive!”
My aunt used to say things like that to me when I was little and did something to annoy her—“Girl, I’m going to skin you alive!” And she’d get my uncle’s belt and use it on me. But it had never occurred to me that anyone could make such a threat and mean it literally as Weylin meant it now. I turned and left him before he could see that my courage had vanished. He could get help from his neighbors, from the patrollers, probably even from whatever police officials the area had. He could do anything he wanted to to me, and I had no enforceable rights. None at all.
3
Rufus was sick again. When I reached his room I found him lying in bed shaking violently while Nigel tried to keep him wrapped in blankets.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.
“Nothing,” said Nigel. “Got the ague again, I guess.”
“Ague?”
“Yeah, he’s had it before. He’ll be all right.”
He didn’t look all right to me. “Has anyone gone for the doctor?”
“Marse Tom don’t hardly get Doc West for ague. He says all the doc knows is bleeding and blistering and purging and puking and making folks sicker than they was to start.”
I swallowed, remembered the pompous little man I had disliked so. “Is the doctor really that bad, Nigel?”
“He gave me some stuff once, nearly killed me. From then on, I just let Sarah doctor me when I’m sick. ’Least she don’t dose niggers like they was horses or mules.”
I shook my head and went close to Rufus’s bed. He looked miserable, seemed to be in pain. I tried to think what the ague might be; the word was familiar, but I couldn’t remember what I’d heard or read about it.
Rufus looked up at me, red-eyed, and tried to smile, though the grimace he managed was far from pleasant. To my surprise, his attempt touched me. I hadn’t expected to still care about him except for my own and my family’s sake. I didn’t want to care.
“Idiot,” I muttered down at him.
He managed to look hurt.
I looked at Nigel, wondered whether the disease could be as unimportant as he thought. Would he think it was important if he had been the one on his back shaking?
Nigel was busy plucking his wet shirt away from his skin. No one had given him a chance to change his clothes, I realized.
“Nigel, I’ll stay here if you want to go dry off,” I said.
He looked up, smiled at me. “You go away for six years,” he said, “then come back and fit right in. It’s like you never left.”
“Every time I go I keep hoping I’ll never come back.”
He nodded. “But at least you get some time of freedom.”
I looked away, feeling strangely guilty that, yes, I did get some time of freedom. Not enough, but probably more than Nigel would ever know. I didn’t like feeling guilty about it. Then something bit me on my ear and I forgot my guilt. As I slapped at my ear, I remembered, finally, what the ague was.
Malaria.
I wondered dully whether the mosquito that had just bitten me was carrying the disease. In my reading I’d come across a lot of information on malaria and none of it led me to believe the disease was as harmless as Nigel seemed to think. It might not kill, but it weakened and it recurred and it could lower one’s resistance to other diseases. Also, with Rufus lying exposed as he was to new mosquito attacks, the disease could be spread over the plantation and beyond.
“Nigel, is there anything we can hang up to keep the mosquitoes off him?”
“Mosquitoes! He wouldn’t feel it if twenty mosquitoes bit him now.”
“No, but the rest of us would be feeling it eventually.”
“What do you mean?”
“Does anyone else have it now?”
“Don’t think so. Some of the children are sick, but I think they have something wrong with their faces—one side all swollen up.”
Mumps? Never mind. “Well, let’s see if we can keep this from spreading. Is there any kind of mosquito netting—or whatever people use here?”
“Sure, for white folks. But …”
“Would you get some? With the help of the canopy, we should be able to enclose him completely.”
“Dana, listen!”
I looked at him.
“What do mosquitoes have to do with the ague?”
I blinked, stared at him in surprise. He didn’t know. Of course he didn’t. Doctors of the day didn’t know. Which probably meant that Nigel wouldn’t believe me when I told him. After all, how could a thing as tiny as a mosquito make anybody sick? “Nigel, you know where I’m from, don’t you?”
He gave me something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Not New York.”
“No.”
“I know where Marse Rufe said you was from.”
“It shouldn’t be that hard for you to believe him. You’ve seen me go home at least once.”
“Twice.”
“Well?”
He shrugged. “I can’t say. If I hadn’t seen … the way you go home, I’d just figure you were one crazy nigger. But I haven’t ever seen anybody do what you did. I don’t want to believe you, but I guess I do.”
“Good.” I took a deep breath. “Where I’m from, people have learned that mosquitoes carry ague. They bite someone who’s sick with it, then later they bite healthy people and give them the disease.”
“How?”
“They suck blood from the sick and … pass on some of that blood when they bite a healthy person. Like a mad dog that bites a man and drives the man mad.” No talk about micro-organisms. Nigel not only wouldn’t believe me, he might decide I really was crazy.
“Doc says it’s something in the air that spreads ague—something off bad water and garbage. A miasma, he called it.”
“He’s wrong. He’s wrong about the bleeding and purging and the rest, he was wrong when he dosed you, and he’s wrong now. It’s a wonder any of his patients survive.”
“I heard he was good and quick when it comes to cutting off legs or arms.”
I had to look at Nigel to see whether he was making a grisly joke. He wasn’t. “Get the mosquito net,” I said wearily. “Let’s do what we can to keep that butcher away from here.”
He nodded and went away. I wondered whether or not he believed me, but it didn’t really matter. It wouldn’t cost anyone anything to take this small precaution.
I looked down at Rufus to see that he had stopped trembling and closed his eyes. His breathing was regular and I thought he was asleep.
“Why do you keep trying to kill yourself?” I said softly.
I hadn’t expected an answer so I was surprised when he spoke quietly. “Most of the time, living just isn’t worth the trouble.”
I sat down next to his bed. “It never occurred to me that you might really want to die.”
“I don’t.” He opened his eyes, looked at me, then shut them again and covered them with his hands. “But if your eyes and your head and your leg hurt the way mine do, dying might start to look good.”
“Your eyes hurt?”
“When I look around.”
“Did they hurt before when you had ague?”
“No. This isn’t ague. Ague is bad enough. My leg feels like it’s coming off, and my head …!”
He scared me. His pain seemed to increase and he twisted his body as though to move away from it, then untwisted quickly and lay panting.
“Rufe, I’m going to get your father. If he sees how sick you are, he’ll send for the doctor.”
He seemed to be too involved with his own pain to answer. I didn’t want to leave him until Nigel came back, though I had no idea what I could do for him. My problem was solved when Weylin came in with Nigel.
“What is all this about mosquitoes giving people ague?” he demanded.
“We may be able to forget about that,” I said. “This doesn’t look like malaria. Ague. He’s in a lot of pain. I think someone should go for the doctor.”
“You’re doctor enough for him.”
“But …” I stopped, took a deep breath, made myself calm down. Rufus was groaning behind me. “Mr. Weylin, I’m no doctor. I don’t have any idea what’s wrong with him. Whatever professional help is available, you should get it for him.”
“Should I now?”
“His life may be at stake.”
Weylin’s mouth was set in a straight hard line. “If he dies, you die, and you won’t die easy.”
“You already said that. But no matter what you do to me, your son will still be dead. Is that what you want?”
“You do your job,” he said stubbornly, “and he’ll live. You’re something different. I don’t know what—witch, devil, I don’t care. Whatever you are, you just about brought a girl back to life when you came here last, and she wasn’t even the one you came to help. You come out of nowhere and go back into nowhere. Years ago, I would have sworn there couldn’t even be anybody like you. You’re not natural! But you can feel pain—and you can die. Remember that and do your job. Take care of your master.”
“But, I tell you …”
He walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.
4
We got the mosquito netting and used it, just in case. Nigel said Weylin didn’t really mind letting us have it. He just didn’t want to hear any more damned nonsense about mosquitoes. He didn’t like to be taken for a fool.
“He’s as close to being scared of you as he’s ever been of anything,” said Nigel. “I think he’d rather try to kill you than admit it though.”
“I don’t see any sign of fear in him.”
“You don’t know him the way I do.” Nigel paused. “Could he kill you, Dana?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”
“We better get Marse Rufe well then. Sarah has a kind of tea she makes that kind of helps the ague. Maybe it will help whatever Marse Rufe has now.”
“Would you ask her to brew up a pot?”
He nodded and went out.
Sarah came upstairs with Nigel to bring Rufus the tea and to see me. She looked old now. Her hair was streaked with gray and her face lined. She walked with a limp.
“Dropped a kettle on my foot,” she said. “Couldn’t walk at all for a while.” She gave me the feeling that everyone was getting older, passing me by. She brought me roast beef and bread to eat.
Rufus had a fever now. He didn’t want the tea, but I coaxed and bullied until he swallowed it. Then we all waited, but all that happened was that Rufus’s other leg began to hurt. His eyes bothered him most because moving them hurt him, and he couldn’t help following my movements or Nigel’s around the room. Finally, I put a cool damp cloth over them. That seemed to help. He still had a lot of pain in his joints—his arms, his legs, everywhere. I thought I could ease that, so I took his candle and went up to the attic for my bag. I was just in time to catch a little girl trying to get the top off my Excedrin bottle. It scared me. She could just as easily have chosen the sleeping pills. The attic wasn’t as safe a place as I had thought.
“No, honey, give those to me.”
“They yours?”
“Yes.”
“They candy?”
Good Lord. “No, they’re medicine. Nasty medicine.”
“Ugh!” she said, and handed them back to me. She went back to her pallet next to another child. They were new children. I wondered whether the two little boys who had preceded them had been sold or sent to the fields.
I took the Excedrin, what was left of the aspirin, and the sleeping pills back down with me. I would have to keep them somewhere in Rufus’s room or eventually one of the kids would figure out how to get the safety caps off.
Rufus had thrown off the damp cloth and was knotted on his side in pain when I got back to him. Nigel had lain down on the floor before the fireplace and gone to sleep. He could have gone back to his cabin, but he had asked me if I wanted him to stay since this was my first night back, and I’d said yes.
I dissolved three aspirins in water and tried to get Rufus to drink it. He wouldn’t even open his mouth. So I woke Nigel, and Nigel held him down while I held his nose and poured the bad-tasting solution into his mouth as he gasped for air. He cursed us both, but after a while he began to feel a little better. Temporarily.
It was a bad night. I didn’t get much sleep. Nor was I to get much for six days and nights following. Whatever Rufus had, it was terrible. He was in constant pain, he had fever—once I had to call Nigel to hold him while I tied him down to keep him from hurting himself. I gave him aspirins—too many, but not as many as he wanted. I made him take broth and soup and fruit and vegetable juices. He didn’t want them. He never wanted to eat, but he didn’t want Nigel holding him down either. He ate.
Alice came in now and then to relieve me. Like Sarah, she looked older. She also looked harder. She was a cool, bitter older sister to the girl I had known.
“Folks treat her bad because of Marse Rufe,” Nigel told me. “They figure if she’s been with him this long, she must like it.”
And Alice said contemptuously, “Who cares what a bunch of niggers think!”
“She lost two babies,” Nigel told me. “And the one she’s got left is sickly.”
“White babies,” Alice said. “Look more like him than me. Joe is even red-headed.” Joe was the single survivor. I almost cried when I heard that. No Hagar yet. I was so tired of this going back and forth; I wanted so much for it to be over. I couldn’t even feel sorry for the friend who had fought for me and taken care of me when I was hurt. I was too busy feeling sorry for myself.
On the third day of his illness, Rufus’s fever left him. He was weak and several pounds lighter, but so relieved to be rid of the fever and the pain that nothing else mattered. He thought he was getting well. He wasn’t.
The fever and the pain returned for three more days and he got a rash that itched and eventually peeled …
At last, he got well and stayed well. I prayed that whatever his disease had been, I wouldn’t get it, wouldn’t ever have to care for anyone else who had it. A few days after the worst of his symptoms had disappeared, I was allowed to sleep in the attic. I collapsed gratefully onto the pallet Sarah had made me there, and it felt like the world’s softest bed. I didn’t awaken until late the next morning after long hours of deep, unbroken sleep. I was still a little groggy when Alice came running up the steps and into the attic to get me.