The Water Dancer (Oprah's Book Club)

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  “Hey now!” he said as he approached us, and I greeted him with a smile and a doff of my hat.

  “Heard you would be leaving us for a while,” he said. “Wanted to give you a touch of something.”

  And at that he handed me the bag. I opened it and saw a bottle of rum and gingerbread wrapped in paper.

  “Remember,” he said. “Family.”

  “I remember,” I said. “Goodbye, Mars.”

  When we arrived at the station, the train was there idling and the passengers were making last preparations to board. Scanning among the crowd, I saw my contact, a white agent who would second me should anything prove amiss. I turned to them all and said, “Well, this appears to be my train,” and then embraced each of them. I walked down to join the milling crowds below and presented my ticket, boarded, and found my place in the car, one distant enough that I could no longer see this new family of mine, for I feared what might happen should I be forced to watch them fade from me. And I thought of Sophia then, and I thought of how much I would like to bring her here, to meet these people and hear their wild adventures, to eat gingerbread by the promenade, and watch white men wave from unicycles. And then I heard the conductor shout and the big cat roar, and my descent into the Southern maw began.

  * * *

  —

  Long before we crossed the border, before Baltimore, before the sight of the conductor walking the aisle, inspecting every colored, before the mountains of western Maryland broke into Virginia, I felt the change. To task is to wear a mask, and what I now saw clearly was that I would miss Philadelphia because in that city of noxious fumes, I had been the truest version of myself, unbent by the desires and rituals of others, so that now the change I felt overtaking me—my chest tightening, my eyes lowering, my hands open and loose, my whole body slouching in its seat—was a kind of total self-denial, a complete lie. And when I stepped off the train, at that Clarksburg station, I could feel the shackles clamping down on my wrist, the vise tightening around my neck. Having lived as I had, having tasted my own freedom, having seen whole societies of colored but free, I felt it as a weight beyond anything I had ever known.

  By the following evening, a Tuesday, I was back at Bryceton, installed in my old cabin. Corrine offered me a day to myself. I spent most of it walking in the woods, imagining myself walking in Philadelphia, as I’d so often done. I thought again of how much I wanted to take Sophia there, and thinking further, how much I wanted to take Thena there, and it occurred to me on that day that I was happy to have returned, for I never wanted to again breathe free air with those two in chains.

  Bland had promised me he would convince Corrine to rescue Sophia. But Bland was dead. And so I must, on my own, somehow convince Corrine to liberate them both. There were obstacles to this beyond the death of Bland. Sophia was the property of Nathaniel Walker, personal property, so that any such rescue would raise his ire, and raise suspicions. Thena was of such an age that the Virginia Underground would likely oppose her rescue, for it was felt that a life of freedom should first be given to those able to make the most use of it. But I had told Kessiah we would have it, and I was determined to make it so.

  I met Corrine and Hawkins early the next morning in the parlor of the main house, and walking through that doorway, memories of times past, and my first visit to Bryceton, and the unveiling of its incredible secrets, struck me. And I saw my old tutor, my Mr. Fields, my Micajah Bland, laughing as Hawkins related some story, and I saw him turn to me with the gravest look imaginable, and in his eyes I saw all the terrible knowledge that would soon be put upon me.

  “Hiram,” Corrine said, as we settled down in our chairs. “When you tumbled into the river with Maynard, you achieved two effects. The first of these was relief—you saved me from a union with such a man and all the horror you might imagine that entails. And for that I thank you.”

  “I took no pleasure in it,” I said. “But at least it improved your lot.”

  “Two, boy,” said Hawkins. “She said two.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Corrine, “you also deprived this station of an entrée into the highest portions of Elm County society.”

  “There wasn’t anything high about Maynard,” I said.

  “Yes, but you understand my meaning,” she said. “Now I am condemned to spinsterhood and out of connection with the ladies of that country. Had the union with Maynard been achieved, that connection would have proven fruitful for the strength and intelligence of the Underground. I believe you can see how.”

  “I can.”

  “And so by Maynard’s death we lost an investment. Months of planning were gone and we were forced to make do with what remained.”

  “She means you,” said Hawkins ruefully. “Had to carry you off.”

  “And while you have not given to us in the way in which we believed Maynard would, you have given your share. We know what you did in Philadelphia and in Maryland. Have you made an acquaintance of the powers which, a year ago, you only dimly perceived?”

  I said nothing. I did indeed have an acquaintance, but there was still something missing, something that would unlock the deep memory at will, and allow me to conduct the train, as I wished, along the track. And even if I had understood it all, I still remembered Harriet’s warning, and I believed her when she said that the power was for me, not for them.

  “We are not without gratitude or admiration, Hiram. And yet this hardly brings you to a settling of the account.”

  “I am here,” I said. “As much as possible, of my own will. Tell me what you need. Ask me. I shall do.”

  “Good. Good,” said Corrine. “You recall your father’s servant, Roscoe?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Brought me up top.”

  “Well, Roscoe has passed. It was his time.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” I said.

  “As soon as Roscoe started going down,” said Hawkins, “your old man Howell sent a letter to Corrine, here. He wants you back—in Roscoe’s place.”

  “Recall now the intelligence we were to garner from the union between myself and Maynard,” said Corrine. “Perhaps you would like to be the source of this intelligence. We desire a knowledge of your father’s situation and the future of Lockless. Would you help us?”

  “I would,” I said. My suddenness shocked them, for I was pledging myself to return to the man who was my master, even if he was also my father. “But I need something from you.”

  “I would say you’ve gotten plenty,” said Corrine.

  “No more than I deserved,” I said.

  Corrine now smiled at me and nodded. “Indeed,” she said. “What do you wish?”

  “There are two still there—a woman and a girl,” I said. “I want them out.”

  “The girl is, I assume, the one you ran with. Sophia,” said Corrine. “And the woman would be your caretaker from your earliest days at the house, Thena.”

  “Yes, them,” I said. “I want them conducted to Philadelphia through the Ninth Street station and Raymond White.”

  “Forget it,” said Hawkins. “All you’ll do is bring down Ryland, likely right on us. The girl who ran with you, gone again as soon as you get back? And then the woman who is like a mother to you? No, that don’t work.”

  “And this Thena woman,” said Corrine. “She is past the age when we can justify such a journey.”

  “I know the dangers and I know the problems,” I said. “And it don’t have to be now. But I want it on the books. I want you to promise me that when the time is right, that we will get them out. Listen, I am not the same man. I know what this war means, and I am with you in it. But I cannot rescue on a symbol. They are my family, all the family I have ever had. And I want them out. I cannot sleep until they are out.”

  Corrine appraised me for moment. She said, “I understand. We will do it. At the right time. But we
will do it. For now, prepare yourself. You leave tomorrow. I’ve already informed your father to expect you.”

  * * *

  —

  And so early the next day, I awoke, washed, and donned my old clothes, clothes of the tasking man, and when their coarse threading chafed my skin I saw a black gate clanging shut before my eyes. So this was it. I truly was now back under. I felt an odd relief in this, for the chafing of my clothes put me in connection with all those who chafed under the Task. I knew that Corrine had set the slave deed, the deed to my soul, afire, but this had no meaning in a place where the whole society thought me a slave. And I recalled then Georgie Parks, whose specious freedom was pinned to the arrest of any other colored who should aspire to rise as he did. I was not Georgie. I could not truly torch the deed that held me until the Task itself was torched.

  I met Hawkins at the stables and we brought the horses around to the main house. We waited there in silence for Corrine, and when she walked out with Amy, I truly understood the majesty of the Virginia station’s endeavor. I had now seen two different versions of Corrine, so far from each other as to not even seem to be the same person. There was Corrine of the Virginia Underground and the New York Convention, with her hair tumbling down to her shoulders, with a wild and free laughter. And then there was this Corrine, prim, walking before us as though royalty, her face impeccably painted, with that rose-like glow about her that all women of Quality sought. But she was still in her mourning clothes and now the ensemble had grown more elaborate, a black bustle trailing behind her, a black veil so long that when it was lifted and thrown back, it fell down to her waist. She must have caught my surprise, and Corrine could not help but giggle. Then, with an assist from Amy, she pulled the mourning veil over her head and the game was afoot.

  It was a funny thing, seeing the country again from this angle. To see the woods I had sometimes raced through, and all the geography I had navigated during the rigors of training. I could see all the birches, ironwoods, and red oaks alive in their beautiful fans of russet and gold. The mountains just beyond us, with their overhangs and clearings where the world opened up and you could see the bounty of this deathly season clear for miles. But in my heart I felt the fear of having returned to slave country and that this world now had eyes on me.

  By late afternoon, we had arrived at Starfall, and I knew, almost instantly, that the decline that had been in motion when I left had now accelerated. Everything was too quiet. It was a Thursday, a day of business, but as we rode into town, our only greeting was the wind whipping leaves up Main Street. We passed the town square, which had been in another time a place of bountiful activity, and I saw that the wooden platform, where the highest men of Quality would address the town, had splintered and rotted and been left in disrepair. Buildings that once advertised fur-traders, wheelwrights, and emporiums now stood empty. We drove past the racetrack, and I saw that the pine fencing from where I once watched the races had collapsed and the green field had begun to invade the turf.

  I looked over to Hawkins, who was driving and seated beside me, and said, “Race-day?”

  “Not this year,” he said. “Maybe not ever again.”

  We stowed the horses at the stable, and then walked across the street to the inn. When we walked inside, this is what I saw: a large room filled with ten whites, Low by their appearance, seated throughout. None of them were in conversation with each other, preferring instead to be off to themselves nursing their lagers or their private thoughts. To the far right, cosseted in a small anteroom, there was a clerk, attending to his ledger. No one took note of our arrival. There was something odd at work, though I could not place what. I stayed behind Corrine and followed her over to the clerk, who never lifted his head.

  Then she said, “How goes the Kentucky comet?”

  Now the clerk looked up, paused a moment, and said, “Derailed this morning.”

  At that Corrine looked over at Hawkins and nodded. He moved quickly to the door and locked it. Two of the men sitting at the tables now looked up from their lagers, stood, and went to the windows, where they drew the Venetian blinds. And that was the second time, in one day, that I understood the genius of Corrine Quinn. I tell you, I was at a point in my life, and had seen so much, that I was prepared to believe that she herself had laid waste to the tobacco fields of Virginia, for what I now saw, looking around, was that the faces of these men, these low whites, were not unfamiliar at all, were in fact men I’d seen in training back at Bryceton, and in this manner I comprehended exactly what had happened—right there in the heart of once-storied Elm County, Corrine Quinn had opened a Starfall station.

  Within the hour everyone was in meetings. I was excused from these, having my assignment, which would begin on the morrow. I walked out of the back of the inn and then circled around until I was on the street where we had entered. I turned up the collar of my coat to my cheeks, then pulled my hat low. A manic curiosity had taken hold of me only minutes earlier—What of Freetown? What of Edgar and Patience? What of Pap and Grease? Of Amber and the baby? I could have very easily asked Hawkins or Amy, but I think I knew what they would say, because deep in my heart, I was neither mystified nor confused as to what had come, for I well knew the price for what we put upon Georgie Parks.

  What I found then was what I expected, there in the shadow of Ryland’s Jail—which itself seemed to contain half the life left in Starfall. Freetown was in ruins, but not the kind that now afflicted the rest of Starfall. The shanties were nearly destroyed, and what remained were wooden planks black from burning, ashes, and among those structures still standing, doors torn off hinges, as though crashed in by some tremendous force. Such was the home of Georgie Parks. I walked in and saw that everything was smashed—the bed broken in two, a chest of drawers axed down the middle, the shards of pottery, a pair of spectacles. I stood there for a few moments taking in the fruit of my ways, the harvest of the Underground’s terrible revenge, which had not merely vented itself on Georgie Parks but on the entirety of Freetown. And I felt a deep and pervading shame. That was when I saw it—in the corner, a small toy horse, which I had given to Georgie on the birth of his child. I bent down to pick up the horse, and then walked back outside. It was now early evening. Ryland’s Jail stood a block away in a stony silence. The sun was falling over the trees in the distance. I felt a gray menace blowing up the abandoned street. I put the toy horse in my coat pocket and walked on.

  III.

  The negroes, in the meantime, who had gotten off, continued dancing among the waves, yelling with all their might, what seemed to me a song of triumph….

  ALEXANDER FALCONBRIDGE

  28

  THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, I took the horse and chaise from the stables and out of Starfall, steering away from the stone bridge, Dumb Silk Road, and the Falling Creek turnpike, for the proper way back to Lockless. I was drowning in a bleed of feelings, and what bled most was not the proposed meeting with my father, was not shame at my last words for Thena, was not even the sight of Sophia. All of that was there, but reigning high above it all was a deep-seated and boyish hope that the decay that I could now see had overrun Elm County had somehow spared my Lockless.

  Who knows why we love what we do? Why we are what we are? I tell you I was, by then, mortgaged to the Underground. All that I knew of true humanity, of allegiance and honor, I had learned in that last year. I believed in the world of Kessiah and Harriet and Raymond and Otha and Mars. Still, the boy in me had not died. I was what I was and could no more choose my family, even a family denied me, than I could choose a country that denies us all the same.

  But when I turned off the West Road, into Lockless, I understood, almost immediately, that my wish would not be granted. Like the race-way, the main road had begun to submit to the growth of the forest. And then I rode farther, past the fields, and saw that the regular team had shrunk in number, and looking out at them, I recognized no one.


  A hint of hope came from the apple orchards, closer to the main house, which seemed perfectly maintained, and did not smell of fruit left to rot on the ground. And better than even the apple orchards was the garden of late asters just before the main house. I pulled the chaise up at the stables, tied the horse, and noticed that there was now but one horse, save the one I’d just driven, in the stable. My horse was thirsty and panting. I carried the trough over to the spring, filled it with water, and set it down in the stable, and when I looked into the water it shimmered a bit, shimmered for me. Soon come, I thought. Then I began my walk to the white palace of Lockless.

  I saw him before he saw me. I was standing at the end of the road, just before the main house. He was seated on the porch, behind the bug-blind, in his hunting clothes, with his rifle at one side, and his afternoon cordial in the other. I had in my hand a crate of gifts sent along by Corrine. It was almost evening. The autumn sun was just beginning to fall. I stood there and watched for a moment and then I called out, “Good afternoon, sir.” I saw him awake, blink, and when he understood, his eyes were as wide as full moons. He did not so much run as he swam out into the road with bizarre abandon, his arms flailing the air like water. He pulled me close, right into an embrace, right there in the full open, and the old savage smell of him was all over me.

  “My boy,” he said. And then he stepped back to get a look at me, holding both shoulders, soft tears streaming down his face. “My boy,” he said again, shaking his head.