They get Rufus back to the house and Rufus’s father, Tom, lets Dana stay with Rufus. Dana sends Nigel to get Rufus’s father, who comes back with a wagon and a large slave named Luke.
#Simile inkindred by octavia e butler how to#
Rufus is sprawled on the ground, having broken his leg falling from a tree as a young slave boy named Nigel watches, unsure how to help. Others in the office make comments about their interracial relationship, as Kevin is white, but Kevin and Dana pay little attention.īack in the present, Kevin helps Dana clean herself up after the beating the patroller gave her, but Dana then gets dizzy and returns to Rufus’s time with Kevin in tow. The two bond over their isolation from society and the fact that they have both lost their parents, and they soon begin dating. Kevin is also a writer, and has a book published. The couple put together an emergency bag so that Dana will be ready when this happens again.ĭana and Kevin first met while Dana was working another temp job to fund her lifestyle of writing through the night. Dana explains that she traveled back in time, and Kevin realizes that she must be traveling to the past whenever Rufus is afraid he will die, and then returning to the present when she herself is afraid of death. When Dana wakes, she is back in her home with Kevin.
Terrified that the man will kill her when he wakes, Dana tries to run away but gets too dizzy and blacks out. Fighting for her life, Dana struggles not to let the patroller rape her and eventually knocks the man unconscious. But another patroller waits outside and snatches Dana when she goes out to collect another blanket. After they leave, Dana creeps up to the house and secures a safe place to stay for the night. They whip Alice’s father for leaving the Weylin plantation without a pass and drag him off, then beat Alice’s mother. These patrollers are supposed to ensure order among the slaves, but really just enjoy torturing black people. As Dana approaches the cabin, white men ride by and begin to terrorize the black family living there. Rufus gives her directions, saying that Alice is a “free black” and a friend of his. To avoid meeting Rufus’s cruel father again, Dana sneaks out of Rufus’s house and heads for Alice’s family cabin in the woods. Dana realizes that she must travel through time and save Rufus each time his life is in danger in order to ensure the survival of her own family line. Dana vaguely remembers an old family Bible that listed the names Rufus Weylin and Alice Greenwood Weylin as the parents of Dana’s great-great-grandmother Hagar Weylin. Dana realizes that she must be traveling through space and time, but she doesn’t understand how this is happening. According to Rufus, the date is 1815 and they are in Maryland, close to the town of Easton on the Weylin plantation. When Rufus repeatedly calls Dana, a black woman, a “nigger,” Dana starts to believe that she is in the pre-Civil War South. The boy’s name is Rufus, and he remembers almost drowning and then being saved by Dana when he was five. Dana throws the curtains out the window, then tries to talk to the boy to find out what is happening. A boy-who looks like an older version of the boy that Dana saved from the river-is staring at his curtains burning in the corner of the room. Kevin isn’t sure if he believes Dana about where she went, but knows that something very strange is happening.ĭana tries to put the incident behind her, but a few hours later she again feels dizzy and finds herself transported to a bedroom in a wooden house.
Kevin crouches over Dana, explaining that she was only gone a few seconds, though Dana is sure she spent minutes saving the boy.
The boy’s father comes and points a rifle at Dana, but Dana is transported back to her home before the man can shoot. Dana saves the child and gives him CPR, despite the protests of the boy’s mother. Dana feels dizzy and blacks out, then finds herself at a river where a young boy is drowning. The trouble began on June 9th, 1976 as Dana and Kevin are moving to a new house in Los Angeles, California. Her husband, Kevin, comes in, and the couple hopes that the police won’t investigate the incident any further. Dana (Edana) wakes in the hospital with her left arm amputated.
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