Free Kindred by Octavia Butler Page A

nowhere. That might be why he looked so frightened now.
    I stood up and went over to Rufus. He didn’t see me at first. His face was twisted with pain and streaked with tears and dirt, but he wasn’t crying aloud. Like the black boy, he looked about twelve years old.
    “Rufus.”
    He looked up, startled. “Dana?”
    “Yes.” I was surprised that he recognized me after the years that had passed for him.
    “I saw you again,” he said. “You were on a bed. Just as I started to fall, I saw you.”
    “You did more than just see me,” I said.
    “I fell. My leg …”
    “Who are you?” demanded the other boy.
    “She’s all right, Nigel,” said Rufus. “She’s the one I told you about. The one who put out the fire that time.”
    Nigel looked at me, then back at Rufus. “Can she fix your leg?”
    Rufus looked at me questioningly.
    “I doubt it,” I said, “but let me see anyway.” I moved his hands away and as gently as I could, pulled his pants leg up. His leg was discolored and swollen. “Can you move your toes?” I asked.
    He tried, managed to move two toes feebly.
    “It’s broken,” commented Kevin. He had come closer to look.
    “Yes.” I looked at the other boy, Nigel. “Where’d he fall from?”
    “There.” The boy pointed upward. There was a tree limb hanging high above us. A broken tree limb.
    “You know where he lives?” I asked.
    “Sure. I live there too.”
    The boy was probably a slave, I realized, the property of Rufus’s family.
    “You sure do talk funny,” said Nigel.
    “Matter of opinion,” I said. “Look, if you care what happens to Rufus, you’d better go tell his father to send a … a wagon for him. He won’t be walking anywhere.”
    “He could lean on me.”
    “No. The best way for him to go home is flat on his back—the least painful way, anyhow. You go tell Rufus’s father that Rufus broke his leg. Tell him to send for the doctor. We’ll stay with Rufus until you get back with the wagon.”
    “You?” He looked from me to Kevin, making no secret of the fact that he didn’t find us all that trustworthy. “How come you’re dressed like a man?” he asked me.
    “Nigel,” said Kevin quietly, “don’t worry about how she’s dressed. Just go get some help for your friend.”
    Friend?
    Nigel gave Kevin a frightened glance, then looked at Rufus.
    “Go, Nigel,” whispered Rufus. “It hurts something awful. Say I said for you to go.”
    Nigel went, finally. Unhappily.
    “What’s he afraid of?” I asked Rufus. “Will he get into trouble for leaving you?”
    “Maybe.” Rufus closed his eyes for a moment in pain. “Or for letting me get hurt. I hope not. It depends on whether anybody’s made Daddy mad lately.”
    Well, Daddy hadn’t changed. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting him at all. At least I wouldn’t have to do it alone. I glanced at Kevin. He knelt down beside me to take a closer look at Rufus’s leg.
    “Good thing he was barefoot,” he said. “A shoe would have to be cut off that foot now.”
    “Who’re you?” asked Rufus.
    “My name’s Kevin—Kevin Franklin.”
    “Does Dana belong to you now?”
    “In a way,” said Kevin. “She’s my wife.”
    “Wife?” Rufus squealed.
    I sighed. “Kevin, I think we’d better demote me. In this time …”
    “Niggers can’t marry white people!” said Rufus.
    I laid a hand on Kevin’s arm just in time to stop him from saying whatever he would have said. The look on his face was enough to tell me he should keep quiet.
    “The boy learned to talk that way from his mother,” I said softly. “And from his father, and probably from the slaves themselves.”
    “Learned to talk what way?” asked Rufus.
    “About niggers,” I said. “I don’t like that word, remember? Try calling me black or Negro or even colored.”
    “What’s the use of saying all that? And how can you be married to him?”
    “Rufe, how’d you like people to call you white trash when they talk to