Kindred Read Free Page B

bedroom. If he had been as timid a child as I was, he would probably have gotten me killed.
    “What’s your name?” I asked him.
    “Rufus.”
    For a moment, I just stared at him. “Rufus?”
    “Yeah. What’s the matter?”
    I wished I knew what was the matter—what was going on! “I’m all right,” I said. “Look … Rufus, look at me. Have you ever seen me before?”
    “No.”
    That was the right answer, the reasonable answer. I tried to make myself accept it in spite of his name, his too-familiar face. But the child I had pulled from the river could so easily have grown into this child—in three or four years.
    “Can you remember a time when you nearly drowned?” I asked, feeling foolish.
    He frowned, looked at me more carefully.
    “You were younger,” I said. “About five years old, maybe. Do you remember?”
    “The river?” The words came out low and tentative as though he didn’t quite believe them himself.
    “You do remember then. It was you.”
    “Drowning … I remember that. And you …?”
    “I’m not sure you ever got a look at me. And I guess it must have been a long time ago … for you.”
    “No, I remember you now. I saw you.”
    I said nothing. I didn’t quite believe him. I wondered whether he was just telling me what he thought I wanted to hear—though there was no reason for him to lie. He was clearly not afraid of me.
    “That’s why it seemed like I knew you,” he said. “I couldn’t remember — maybe because of the way I saw you. I told Mama, and she said I couldn’t have really seen you that way.”
    “What way?”
    “Well … with my eyes closed.”
    “With your—” I stopped. The boy wasn’t lying; he was dreaming.
    “It’s true!” he insisted loudly. Then he caught himself, whispered, “That’s the way I saw you just as I stepped in the hole.”
    “Hole?”
    “In the river. I was walking in the water and there was a hole. I fell, and then I couldn’t find the bottom any more. I saw you inside a room. I could see part of the room, and there were books all around—more than in Daddy’s library. You were wearing pants like a man—the way you are now. I thought you were a man.”
    “Thanks a lot.”
    “But this time you just look like a woman wearing pants.”
    I sighed. “All right, never mind that. As long as you recognize me as the one who pulled you out of the river …”
    “Did you? I thought you must have been the one.”
    I stopped, confused. “I thought you remembered.”
    “I remember seeing you. It was like I stopped drowning for a while and saw you, and then started to drown again. After that Mama was there, and Daddy.”
    “And Daddy’s gun,” I said bitterly. “Your father almost shot me.”
    “He thought you were a man too—and that you were trying to hurt Mama and me. Mama says she was telling him not to shoot you, and then you were gone.”
    “Yes.” I had probably vanished before the woman’s eyes. What had she thought of that?
    “I asked her where you went,” said Rufus, “and she got mad and said she didn’t know. I asked her again later, and she hit me. And she never hits me.”
    I waited, expecting him to ask me the same question, but he said no more. Only his eyes questioned. I hunted through my own thoughts for a way to answer him.
    “Where do you think I went, Rufe?”
    He sighed, said disappointedly, “You’re not going to tell me either.”
    “Yes I am—as best I can. But answer me first. Tell me where you think I went.”
    He seemed to have to decide whether to do that or not. “Back to the room,” he said finally. “The room with the books.”
    “Is that a guess, or did you see me again?”
    “I didn’t see you. Am I right? Did you go back there?”
    “Yes. Back home to scare my husband almost as much as I must have scared your parents.”
    “But how did you get there? How did you get here?”
    “Like that.” I snapped my fingers.
    “That’s no answer.”
    “It’s the only answer I’ve