The Water Dancer

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  And her voice trailed off and she was looking off to the side of the road again, and I think now that this is how the running so often begins, that it is settled upon in that moment you understand the great depth of your peril. For it is not simply by slavery that you are captured, but by a kind of fraud, which paints its executors as guardians at the gate, staving off African savagery, when it is they themselves who are savages, who are Mordred, who are the Dragon, in Camelot’s clothes. And at that moment of revelation, of understanding, running is not a thought, not even as a dream, but a need, no different than the need to flee a burning house.

  “Hiram,” she said, “I don’t know why I come to you with this. All I know is you have always been one who saw more, who knew more. And then you met the Goose. We thought you was dead. You were there at the gates, and I watched you turn away and I wondered how a man could come back looking upon the world the same.”

  “I know what you are speaking of,” I said.

  “I am speaking of facts,” she said.

  “You are speaking of goodbye,” I said. “And to where? How could we live, in any way, out there?”

  She placed a hand on my arm. “How can you come up out the Goose alive and, in any way, still live here? I am speaking of facts.”

  “You can’t even name it,” I said.

  “But I can name this and every kind of life that will come after,” she said. “We could go together, Hi. You are read and know of things far past Lockless and the Goose. You must have some need of it. You must have found yourself dreaming of it, waking up now and again gripped in it. You must have some wanting to know all that you, all that we, might become out from under here.”

  I did not answer. We could now see the great opening in the road that marked Nathaniel Walker’s place. I drove past this opening, and turned down a side path, which was our customary approach. I stopped the horse at the end of the path. Through the trees I could see Nathaniel Walker’s brick main house. I watched as a well-dressed tasking man came down the way. He nodded when he saw us, then motioned wordlessly for Sophia. She stepped out of the chaise and looked back at me. I noted, right then, that she had never done this before, instead she usually walked right on with her escort. But now she paused and looked back and what she said in that silence was something resolute, certain. And I knew then, looking at her, that we must run.

  * * *

  —

  As I pulled away from Nathaniel Walker’s place, my mind now focused again on Georgie Parks. I must find him. I had known Georgie all my life and I understood that he might fear for me as a father fears for the son about to go off to war. I understood. Georgie had seen so many hauled down to the block and sent Natchez-way. I even sympathized. But still I had to run. Everything seemed to point me to it—the library volume, scheming Corrine and bizarre Hawkins, the fate of Lockless itself, always chancy, but now heirless, dire. And Sophia, who seemed to share in my desperation, in my need to see whatever lay beyond those three hills, past Starfall, past the Goose and its many bridges, past Virginia itself. You must have some need of it. I did. But the only route I then knew must be walked by the light of Georgie Parks.

  The following Saturday afternoon, I worked on the drawers of a cherry secretary, and satisfied that they were again running easy, I washed, put on a change of clothes, and made my way to the home of Georgie Parks. I was not far into Starfall when I spotted Hawkins and Amy just outside the inn, both still in mourning black. They were distracted by their own conversation and did not see me, and so I kept my distance and watched Hawkins and Amy for a moment, before continuing on my way. I wanted no conversation, for their habit of picking at all the details of my life and my intentions had become intolerable to me. All of their questions gave way to other questions.

  I found Georgie standing in front of his home, a short walk from Ryland’s Jail. I smiled. Georgie did not. He motioned for me to walk with him. We kept to the road for a bit, then turned off onto a smaller path where the town began to give way to the wilderness, and then took a dirt path, which brought us through some tangled green that opened to a small pond. Georgie said nothing during our short walk and now gazed at the pond for a moment before speaking.

  “I like you, Hiram,” Georgie said. “I really do. If I was so lucky as to have a daughter about your season, you would be my only choice. You are smart. You keep your mouth where it should be, and you were more better to Maynard than such a man ever deserved.”

  He rubbed his red-brown beard, turned and looked up into the trees. His back was now to me. I heard him say, “Which is why I can’t for the fact of things understand how a man such as you would come to my door looking for trouble.”

  When he turned back to me, his deep brown eyes were simmering. “What would a respectable man like you want with this?” he asked. “And by what reasoning have you got it figured that I am the one who shall award it?”

  “Georgie, I know,” I said. “We all know. Perhaps you have hid it away from the Quality, but we have always been smarter than them.”

  “You don’t see the half of it, son. And I am telling as I have told you before—Go home. Get a wife. And get happy. Ain’t nothing over here.”

  “Georgie, I am going,” I told him. “And I ain’t going alone.”

  “What?”

  “Sophia going with me.”

  “Nathaniel Walker’s girl? Have you lost it? You take that girl and you might as well spit on that man. It is a high offense against any white man’s honor.”

  “We are going. And, Georgie,” I said with only a hint of the anger I now felt in me, “she ain’t his.”

  It was not only anger in me. I was nineteen, and a guarded nineteen who’d worked to feel nothing in this direction, so that when I did feel it, right there in that moment, when I did feel that I loved her, it was not with reason or ritual, nor the way that makes families and homes, but the way that wrecks them, I was undone.

  “Now, let’s get one thing straight here,” Georgie said. “She is his girl. They all his girl, you get it? Amber his girl. Thena his girl. Your mother was his girl—”

  “Careful, Georgie,” I said. “Real careful.”

  “Oh, it’s careful now, huh? That’s what it is? You telling me about careful, son. They own you, Hiram. You a slave, boy. I don’t care who your daddy is. You a slave, and don’t think that just because I’m out this way, out here in this Freetown, that I ain’t some kind of slave too. And as long as they own you, they own her. You got to see. We are captured. Been captured. And that’s the whole of it. What you are talking here done got men a whole week in Ryland’s and beat within a prayer of they life. You have got a feeling in your heart and I respect it. I done felt it myself, what young man ain’t? But you almost died, Hi. You do this, and you will wish you had.”

  “Georgie, I am telling you that this is not a choice. I cannot stay. And you have got to help.”

  “Even if I was what you have me figured to be, I would not.”

  “You ain’t understanding,” I said. “I am going. That is a fact. I am asking you to aid me, because I believe you an honorable man devoted to the honorable path. I am asking you, Georgie. But I am going.”

  Georgie paced for a moment, executing his own internal calculations, for he knew now that with his help or without, I was going and I was going with Sophia. What I could not know as he regarded me there, his eyes widening with realization, was that he must have been figuring on the consequence of such an action, and his conclusion made clear, and whatever his hatreds, whatever his loves, especially his loves, he now saw but one path forward.

  “One week,” he said. “You got one week. You meet me here, on this spot where we now stand, with your girl. You should know that I would not do any such thing if not for what you have told me here and determined yourself to do.”

  * * *

  —

  My po
wer was always memory, not judgment. I walked away from Georgie’s home fixed only on my own suspicions, never suspecting how much beyond those the fact of things truly ranged. And even when I, again, came upon Amy and Hawkins, this time seen straight by them right outside the general store, I could not see how the pieces fit.

  There had been no way to avoid them this time, for I had been so lost in thoughts of Georgie, of Sophia, that they had seen me before I saw them.

  “How you carrying it, small stepper?” Hawkins said.

  “Well and fine enough,” I said. It was now early evening and dusk had begun to fall over the town. The locals of Elm County who’d come into town for business now drifted out on their pleasure-wagons and chaises. I regarded Hawkins warily, trying to find the quickest road out of conversation.

  “What you got bringing you into town?” he asked, and to this he married his characteristic thin-lipped smile. I didn’t answer and I saw by the shift in his face that he now knew that he’d assumed a familiarity that was not there. But this did nothing to stop him.

  “Aw, I’m sorry,” he said. “Don’t mean to cause no injury or offense. Lady say we should be as family, though, right?”

  “Calling on a friend,” I said.

  “Friend like Georgie Parks?”

  There were all kinds of ways to task in Virginia, ways beyond the fields, the kitchens, or the shed. Some tasking was not so material. Offering entertainment, sharing wisdom. And then there were even darker tasks. To be their eyes and ears, their intelligence among the other tasking men, so that they, the masters, knew who smiled in their faces and scoffed behind their backs, who stole from them, who burned down the barn, who poisoned and who plotted. The effect of all this was a kind of watchfulness among the tasking folks, in particular toward those you did not know. This worked the other way too, so that if you were new to Lockless or any of these other houses of bondage, you took things slow, you did not question or inquire on people’s affairs, for if you did you might then be thought to be among those who were eyes and ears, who tasked beyond the Task, and this was a dangerous place because then you yourself might be poisoned or plotted against. But Hawkins took no care, which gave his question a sinister import.

  “Ain’t nothing,” he went on. “My sister, Amy, got people tasking this way. Say she see you over at Georgie’s from time to time.”

  Amy stood eyeing us both. And I saw now that she seemed nervous about something that was soon to happen or an event she would like to not miss.

  “Yeah,” I said, still uneasy. “Georgie is known to me.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “Georgie’s quite a fella.”

  I looked back to Amy, who was no longer shifting her eyes nervously, but casting them a block away. Following her gaze, I saw my old tutor, Mr. Fields, coming toward her. This was now twice in three months, twice after having not seen him in seven years. What was more, Mr. Fields was clearly walking toward Amy, as though he had some appointed rendezvous with her and Hawkins. He saw me before he reached her, and froze for a moment. I had the sense that some plan of his had gone awry and he would very much like to change direction. But instead he once again doffed his hat as he had those months ago at race-day. Hawkins followed my eyes to Mr. Fields, who by now was standing at Amy’s side. They were watching us and in some state of confusion. And Hawkins was no longer smiling, indeed he looked quite nervous himself, watching them watch us. But then he turned back to me and the smile was recalled.

  “Well,” he said. “I guess that’s my folks calling on me.”

  “Guessing it is,” I said. And then it was my turn to smile, and I am not sure why, except to say that it was my feeling that Hawkins had been lying to me, lying about where he’d found me, lying about the motive of his questions. And I felt I had at last caught him unawares, and managed to drag some portion of his secret machinations into the light. And his discomfort at this made me smile. I stood there and watched him walk over to Amy and Mr. Fields, and then tipped my hat, once again, to the whole party as they walked off.

  I should have thought more on those events. I should have wondered at the familiarity between two tasking folks and a learned man of the North. I should have seen the connections with Georgie Parks. But my mind was swimming in the ocean of possibilities opened up by Georgie’s assent. And more my great concern was not with uncovering the plotting of others, but with how I might best conceal my own.

  * * *

  —

  The next day I rode back to Nathaniel’s estate to retrieve Sophia. Fifteen minutes into my ride, not far from home, I was stopped by the patrol of low whites—Ryland’s Hounds—who haunted the woods in search of runaways. I produced my papers for them, and seeing Howell’s name upon them, they quickly allowed me on my way. But the event shook me, for I had by then completed a shift inside of myself. I’d already gone from Tasked to fugitive. I so greatly feared that they would see it in me, in some misbegotten smile or unlikely ease. But Ryland’s Hounds were white—low whites, but white all the same—so that their power blinded them.

  Sophia and I rode back in silence, saying nothing. But just before reaching Lockless, I stopped the chaise. It was late morning and cold. No one was on the road and the only sound was the wind whipping through the bare branches, that and my pounding heart. I wondered if Sophia had been taken in on some design. Phantoms flittered before me like moths and for a moment I saw them all in concert together—Howell, Nathaniel, Corrine, Sophia, even Maynard, who did not die, who presided over my dreams where he rose up out of the icy teeth of the Goose detailing the roster of my sins. But when I looked over and saw her, brown eyes looking out into the forest, as she often did, not even noting our pause, when I saw her there, seeming so cool and far above the cares of the world, the feelings in me welled up and overwhelmed.

  And then she spoke.

  “I got to get out, Hi,” she said. “I will not be an old woman down in the coffin. I will bring no child to this. Ain’t no society here. No rules. No prohibitions. They took it all with them to Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee. Ain’t nothing left. It’s all gone Natchez-way.”

  She paused for a moment and then said again, slower this time, “I got to get out.”

  “Right,” I said. “Then let’s get out.”

  8

  I AM SO MUCH OLDER now, old enough to understand how a tangle of events can be unraveled to reveal a singular thread. So as to my freedom, the events stood thus: I knew that I would never advance beyond my blood-bound place at Lockless. And I knew that even if I did, Lockless, whatever its past glories, was falling, as all the great houses of slavery were falling, and when they fell I would not be freed, but would instead be sold or passed off. And I knew by then that my genius would not save me, indeed my genius would only make me a more valuable commodity. I was convinced that this was what had attracted Corrine, that she, aided by the mendacity of her people, was making an early if still mysterious claim. And my own view of this claim, of everything really, was altered from the moment I walked out of the Goose. And all of that—my knowledge, my destiny, my escape from death—taken together was like a bomb in my chest, and Sophia, and her intentions, were the fuse. That was how I saw her back then, as the necessary end-point of my calculations. It all made sense to me, but would have made more had I considered that Sophia was a woman of her own mind, with intentions, calculations, and considerations all her own.

  She came upon me later that week, while I was outside working a set of corner chairs, and when I saw her, the fuse burning in me, I felt a kind of daring.

  She stopped and smiled, looked at the corner chair, and then began walking into the shed.

  “Don’t think you wanna do that,” I said. “Ain’t really no place for a lady.”

  “Ain’t no lady,” she said, walking inside.

  I followed her in and watched as she wiped away the cobwebs and ran her fingers against the
furniture to judge how much she could accumulate in one swipe. She walked among the pieces, passing the maple drunkard’s chair, then the Hepplewhite table and the Queen Anne clock, the light from the small window cutting against the dark.

  “Huh,” she said, turning to face me. “This all yours to work?”

  “I guess.”

  “Howell’s word?”

  “Yep. By way of Roscoe. But really I just got sick of laying up there waiting for them to tell me something. ’Sides, this is how it was when I was a boy. Used to get in where I could. Work where I was needed.”

  “Could still go out to the fields,” she said. “They always looking for hands.”

  “Did my share of that, thank you kindly,” I said. “How bout you? Ever been in them fields?”

  “Can’t say that I have,” Sophia said.

  She was now closer and I noted this because I noted everything about her now, in particular the precise distance she maintained from me. There was a part of me that knew this to be all wrong, but it was the discredited part, the part that had believed a coin could reverse Virginia against itself.

  “Not the worst,” I said. “Don’t have these folks watching every little thing you do.”

  She was closer still.

  “What kind of things you might like to hide?” she said, moving closer so that I now felt my balance slipping away. I put my hand down on a piece of furniture, I can’t remember which.

  She just looked at me and laughed, then walked back out of the shed.

  “Can we talk some more?” she said, almost whispering. “About all that.”

  “Yeah, we can,” I said.

  “In an hour,” she said. “Down by the gulch?”

  “Sound good to me,” I said.