The Water Dancer (Oprah's Book Club)

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  “Hiram,” she said. And her voice was now low and filled with worry. I think she knew that she could lose me right there. That if she did not prove to me that this was not all some trick, I would be gone, and any hope of Conduction would go with it.

  “Very well,” she said. “You want me to show you. I will show you.”

  “No games?” I asked. “This is for real?”

  “More real than you think,” she said.

  14

  BUT FOR CORRINE TO admit me into the deepest sanctums of the Underground, she had to ensure that I would never leave. For this reason, she demanded something of me to bind me for good to the cause. And what she demanded was the destruction of Georgie Parks.

  I had dreamt of such a deed, in jail, in the pit, and then here, had long contemplated all that I might vent upon Georgie. But now I saw that faced with the thing, the sword in my hand, all my wrath faded in the face of the full shape of what must necessarily follow.

  “You were not the first he betrayed,” said Corrine. “And you were not the last. He is back there at Starfall, right now, plying his devious trade.” It was late night. I was down in the library with Hawkins and Corrine. I had just finished my studies for the evening. And I knew, hearing them, that I had not yet come to terms with all that Georgie had done. Some part of me still saw him as he had been mythologized—Georgie the tasking man who’d seized his own liberty. To fully accept his betrayal was to accept the fullness of what had been done to us, how thoroughly they had taken us in, so that even our own heroes, our own myths, were but tools to further maintain the Task.

  The plan, they explained to me, was to use our gifts of mimicry and fraud to implicate Georgie in a betrayal. Not a betrayal of the Tasked, but of Georgie’s own Taskmasters.

  “You know what they’ll do to him,” I said.

  “If he lucky, they’ll hang him,” said Hawkins.

  “And if he ain’t,” I said, “they’ll clap him in chains. Break his family. Send him Natchez-way. And work him worse than anything he know. And God forbid the tasking folk find out why he down there.”

  “Likely they’ll tell ’em,” said Hawkins.

  “We crossing into something here,” I said. “Or y’all done already crossed, and asking me to follow.”

  “I say we just kill him outright,” said Hawkins, marching past my concern.

  “You know we can’t do that,” said Corrine.

  She was right—but not out of any moral principle. It was too obvious, and if reprisals did not find us, they would certainly find every tasking soul in the region. No, Georgie Parks must be dealt with and it must be his masters who did the deed. We would simply offer mild encouragement.

  “These people, I know them well,” Corrine said, shaking her head. “Whatever agreement they have with Georgie, I promise you that they trust a freeman less than the slave. And Georgie is a known liar, even in their service, a man who bends under power. Is it so hard to imagine him bending under another power, still?”

  “The Underground,” I said.

  “Or what they believe the Underground to be,” Corrine replied. “And what if some notice might be found in a distinguished home marking the breadth of his sins, his efforts to work both sides, his feckless enslavement to this Underground? And what if then a package of effects—forged passes, free papers, the literature of abolition, and missives indicating a northward journey—were to be located in Georgie’s home or on his person?”

  “We killing him,” I said.

  “We are,” said Hawkins.

  “By the rope or by the chain,” I said. “We are setting to kill that man.”

  “That man meant to kill you,” Corrine said, her gray eyes filling with a low anger. “He meant to kill you, Hiram. He’s killed many before you and if we do nothing he will keep killing. This is a man who takes the last hope of freedom and burns it for fuel. Little girls, old men, whole families, he burns them all. Have you ever been deep into the South? I have. It is hell, worse than the stories say. Endless toil. Endless degradation. No man deserves this, but if any did, it would be the masters themselves first, and men like Georgie Parks second.”

  The logic of it all was clear. But I felt myself now slipping into something darker, something far beyond the romance I imagined for myself when I set off that night with Sophia. The Task was a trap. Even Georgie was trapped. And so who was Corrine Quinn to judge such a man? Who was I, who’d run with no higher purpose save my own passions and my own skin? Now I understood the Underground war. It was not the ancient and honorable kind. No armies amassed at the edges of the field. For every one agent, there were a hundred Quality, and for every Quality, there were a thousand low whites sworn to them. The gazelle does not match claws with the lion—he runs. But we did more than run. We plotted. We instigated. We sabotaged. We poisoned. We destroyed.

  “It’s on us,” said Hawkins. “Do you get that it’s on us? He is out there breaking families, sending folk to the jails, to the auction, and he is doing it in our name.”

  “We did not ask for this, Hiram,” said Corrine. “You are right, it is not our normal work. But what would you have us do? What is the option we have not yet conceived?”

  There was none.

  Now Corrine produced another file, and put it before me on the table, and I knew what was within—the usual assortment of stolen documents that might help put me in the mind of the Quality. Then Corrine looked at me and the look was not of pity or sorrow, it was fire.

  * * *

  —

  A month later I walked out of my quarters in my flannels to begin the evening routine. It was full summer now. The nights had shortened and the days had begun their July sprawl. On the path from my quarters, I saw Hawkins approaching with Mr. Fields, both in their day clothes. Hawkins made small talk while Mr. Fields’s eyes darted to and fro. I felt that something was coming. Hawkins looked me up and down and said, “No work tonight. Tomorrow neither. Get some rest.”

  I looked at him a little longer to see if I correctly caught his meaning.

  “We got one,” he said.

  But I did not rest—neither that evening, that night, nor the next morning. I had only the vaguest notions of the Underground’s methods in the field, and my mind ran circuits trying to imagine. They met me outside the following evening. I wore a pair of comfortable trousers, a shirt, hat, and the same pair of brogans I had thought to run in. I tried my best to conceal my excitement, but then I met eyes with Hawkins and he laughed.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” said Hawkins. “It’s just you can’t go back. You can’t get out. You know that, right?”

  “Long past the getting-out point,” I said.

  “Indeed,” said Hawkins. “But it is a load we putting on you. And I’m feeling all that you about to feel, right now, looking at you. And I’m remembering myself when they first brought me into all this. You about to see.”

  “He can’t know,” Mr. Fields said. “And besides, what else is there now?”

  We walked up from the quarters toward the main house of Bryceton and convened in one of the side-buildings.

  There was a table with three cups and a jar, and from the jar Hawkins poured three servings of hard cider. He took a sip, sucked in a stream of air, then said, “In a sense it’s an easy one. About a day’s journey south of here. And then a day’s journey back. Just one man.”

  “And in another sense?” I asked.

  “It’s one man, a real man,” he said. “This ain’t hopping or running or some spell down in the library. This is real patrol, real hounds out there who’d like nothing better than to carry you off.”

  Hawkins ran his hands through his hair and shook his head. I had the sense that he was more scared for me than I was for myself.

  “All right, listen,” he said. “Man’s name is Parnel Johns. He d
one did something to get him in bad with the local tasking folks. Had a grift he was running. Stealing from his master and selling it to some of the low whites. His master knew something was off but could not figure on what.”

  “So he took it out on all of ’em,” I said.

  “Surely did,” said Mr. Fields. “And he did so with interest, working the whole plantation double-time to get it back, beatings if they come up short.”

  “Johns kept stealing?” I asked.

  “No, he stopped,” said Mr. Fields. “But it didn’t matter. His master just went ahead and now this is the new theory of the home-place.”

  “Master take it out on the tasking folks…,” said Hawkins.

  “…And the tasking folks take it out on Johns,” I said.

  “With time and a half. He got no people now. His country ain’t his country,” said Hawkins. “And he want out.”

  “Sound like a piece of work to me,” I said, shaking my head. “Surely there are tasking folks more deserving of justice.”

  “Course they are,” said Hawkins. “But we ain’t bringing justice to Johns. We bringing it to his master.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You see, Johns, whatever his cowardly ways, is a hell of a field-hand,” said Hawkins. “And he’s more than that. He’s something of a genius—plays the violin. Even works the wood like you.”

  “What’s that got to do with freedom?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” said Hawkins. “It ain’t about freedom. It’s about war.”

  I paused and looked them both over.

  “No, don’t start that,” said Hawkins. “Don’t start thinking again. Remember where that got you last time. There’s a bigger thing here. A higher plan.”

  “And what’s that?” I asked.

  “Hiram,” Mr. Fields said, “it’s for your own good. For all of our good. You don’t want to know it all. Just trust us on that.”

  He paused for a moment to see if I could catch on and then he said, “It is hard to trust, I understand. Believe me, I do. All you have been met with since our first meeting are deceptions. I am sorry for that. It is not always an honorable life. And so perhaps it would help if you were given some bit of truth, even if it does not pertain to our journey this night. I want you to know my real name, Hiram. It is not Isaiah Fields. It is Micajah Bland. ‘Mr. Fields’ is a name I’ve assumed for my work here in Virginia. I would appreciate you using it for as long as we are down here, but it is not the name to which I was born.

  “So I have trusted you now, with something most precious, something that could get me killed. Will you now trust us?”

  And so our journey began—Hawkins, myself, and Micajah Bland. We did not run. For all the training, we merely walked. But we took a brisk pace, avoiding main roads, and going through the pathless backwoods and over hills, until the woodlands flattened and I knew from this, and our respective orientation to the stars, that we must be headed east. The land was dry, the night warm. I knew by then that this was the worst season to conduct, simply because of the brevity of the sunless hours when we could travel. Winter was the field agent’s high season. In summer, with fewer hours, precision of arrival and departure was everything. We walked for six hours or so roughly to the south-east.

  Johns was just where he was supposed to be—at the crossing of two paths in the forest, distinguished by a wood-pile on the right end. Standing in the woods, we saw him pacing in his nervousness. It was my first mission and I was entrusted with making the contact. We worked in teams. But only one man made contact at first. By this method, should we be betrayed, only one of us would fall.

  I stepped out from beyond the trees and approached. Johns stopped pacing. He had come just as he’d been told to. No bundles. No extra effects. Only the forged papers in his hand, in case of Ryland. Surveying him, I confess myself mixed. There had always been men like him, those who, for their own amusement, menaced an entire tasking team. In the days of my grandmother, Santi Bess, they had ways of dealing with such men. An accidental fall in the woods. A spooked horse. A pinch of pokeweed. And now I must work to free such a scoundrel, while good men, women, and children lay buried under.

  I looked at him hard and said, “Ain’t no moon over the lake tonight.”

  He said, “That’s ’cause the lake had its fill with the sun.”

  “Come on,” I said. He paused for a second, looked to the woods and motioned. And then out came a girl, perhaps about seventeen, in field overalls with her hair tied under a cloth. And this is why such men as Parnel Johns were fed to the pokeweed. Every act of normal sympathy was, to them, an invitation to leverage. Give them a calf and they demand the herd. I thought for a moment of leaving them right there. But this was a matter for those more senior than I. So I said nothing and led them back into the forest to the small area where Hawkins and Bland were waiting.

  “Who the hell is she?” said Hawkins.

  “She with me,” said Johns.

  “Hell are you saying?” said Hawkins. “We had arrangements for one cargo, now you trying to dump more?”

  “It’s my daughter, Lucy,” he said.

  “Don’t care if it’s your momma,” said Hawkins. “You know the plan. What the hell are you doing?”

  “I ain’t leaving without her,” said Johns.

  “It’s all right,” said Bland. “It’s all right.” Hawkins and Bland were friends. I knew this because Hawkins could make Bland laugh, not just giggle but uproariously laugh, and Micajah Bland did not much laugh.

  Hawkins shook his head, frustrated. Then he looked at Johns and said, “If we get even a sniff of Ryland, I am dropping you both. You got it? We know the way North. You don’t. If I get a hint of anything strange, we will drop you here and leave you for the hounds.”

  But there wasn’t anything strange—or at least not in the way Hawkins suspected. We kept a good pace for the rest of the night and had made some good distance by daybreak. Hawkins and Bland had scouted the land well. They found a cave for a mid-point rest and we arrived there just as the sun came up over the hills. We took turns sleeping and keeping guard over our cargo. Contrary to what Hawkins said, we could not leave them. We could not risk any word getting out about our methods. If they became too much of a load, I feared what might be done.

  We took three-hour shifts. I took the last one—late in the afternoon until nightfall. Everybody was asleep except for me and Lucy, who was having trouble adjusting to the time of things. I watched Lucy step out of the cave and into the open air. I did not stop her but followed just behind. She was not Johns’s daughter, that I could tell. They shared not a single feature. He was high yellow and she was dark as Africa itself. But more than that, it was in the way they walked, held hands, and whispered to each other.

  “I don’t know why he lied,” she said.

  “Nervous,” I said. We were just outside the cave. I was seated on a stump behind her. She was watching the sun as it began to bed down in the west.

  “He didn’t want to do it,” Lucy said. “Don’t blame him. It was all me. You know he got a family, right? A real family—woman at the other place, two daughters.”

  I don’t know what it is about me that made people want to unburden themselves. But I knew from her mention of Parnel Johns’s family where we were going. And so we went.

  “Master Heath, who own us, used to have this young wife,” she said. “She was cruel as all hell. I know, I was her serving girl. She was the type to take the whip to you ’cause it rained too hard or the milk was too warm. She was as pretty as she was mean, and all the men in town knew. Master Heath held her tight for fear of losing her. He was the jealous kind. Well, one day that young wife took to religion. Wasn’t sincere for what I could tell, but it was a way to see some of the world.

  “She got friendly with this old pastor, who’d come around every day and minister
the good word. And it got real clear to me—though not to Master Heath—that he was ministering more than that.”

  Here Lucy laughed at her own insinuation and then turned to me to see if I had caught on, and though I had, there was no real register in me and this somehow made her laugh even more. And then she said, “You know they left one day? Just up and ran out. Picked up and, I’m guessing, started all anew. I hated that girl, and in some just other life, I do declare, I will be holding the whip and she’ll be underneath. But I could still see the beauty in it, you know?

  “We talked about it,” she said. “Dreamt about it—dreamt about it all the time. It was powerful, I tell you. But we knew it could never be us. We was tasking folk.”

  Now she turned back away, and I heard her crying a bit.

  “And then it happened,” she said. “Listen, I look young, but I ain’t so young. I been left by a man before. I know what it look like. I know that face. And he came to me with that face, and before he said a word he broke down and cried, because he knew that I knew he was gone. Don’t blame him. He wouldn’t say where. He wouldn’t even say how. Just that come the next morning he’d be gone and he’d being going without me.

  “They say Parnel’s a scoundrel, well, so am I. And he is my scoundrel. His crime is he don’t want to live just—and how can a man, when the whole house is wrong? They blame him for what Master Heath do to them. But I blame Master Heath.

  “I followed him last night. Caught him out in the trail, some time fore he got to you. And I told him, he either take me or I was gonna go back and tell em he was running. I never would have done it. Ain’t built that way but…I tell you this to say, it was me. He was too weak to leave me.”

  “Don’t make it right,” I said.

  “The hell I care about right?” she said. “Hell I care about you or your men? You know what they did to us back there. You done forgot? You don’t remember what they do to the girls down here? And once they do it, they got you. They catch you with the babies, tie you to the place by your own blood and all, until you got too much to let go of to go. Well, I got as much right to run as Parnel. Much right as you or anyone.”