The Water Dancer (Oprah's Book Club)

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  “My strength honored him. My labors made him soft before me.”

  “Go head, Moses! Go ahead!”

  “And I love him because I know, a girl got to love who love you.”

  “Moses got a big bad ox!”

  “John Tubman love my strength. Loved my labor.”

  “Strong, Moses! Strong!”

  “So I know he love me.”

  “John Tubman!”

  “We planned for freedom on the slow steady grind of work.”

  “Hard, Moses! Hard!”

  “We had plans. Our land. Our kids. By my ox.”

  “Moses got a ox!”

  “But there was one who loved me more than John Tubman.”

  “That’s the word! That’s the word!”

  “The Lord give me vigilance. The Lord light the path.”

  “Conduction!”

  “The Lord called me to Philadelphia.”

  “Conduction!”

  “But my John would not come.”

  “Hard! Hard!”

  “I made my moves from the North. I saw new things.”

  “Moses got a ox!”

  “And when I come back I was not the same girl.”

  “Moses break the land!”

  “But I was fast to my word.”

  “Strong Moses.”

  “And I came back for my John.”

  “Yes, you did!”

  “And found him taken up with some other gal.”

  “Hard, Moses! Hard!”

  “I stewed on that. I thought to find them both and make a mess of the thing.”

  “Moses got a ox!”

  “Didn’t care how loud I was. Didn’t care if Broadus heard me in full fury.”

  “John Tubman!”

  “Didn’t care if I was put back under slavery’s chain.”

  “Hard! Hard!”

  “But one man stop me.”

  “Strong, Moses!”

  “My daddy, Big Ben Ross. He grab me up and say Harriet got to love who love Harriet.”

  “Go head, Pop Ross! Go head!”

  “And brothers, I shall tell you, like Pop Ross told me—got to love who love you.”

  “Go head!”

  “And it was my Lord who always loved me most.”

  “Go head!”

  “My John left me, brothers. But I knows it was I who left that man first.”

  “John Tubman!”

  “My soul was captive of the Lord, for it was Him who, over all again, loved me most.”

  “Moses got a ox.”

  “John Tubman.”

  “Strong, Moses.”

  “Wherever you are.”

  “Strong, Moses, strong.”

  “I know your heart and you now know mine.”

  “Strong Moses.”

  “May no vice come upon you. May your nights be easy.”

  “Strong.”

  “May you find your peace, even down in the coffin.”

  “By and by.”

  “May you find a love that love you, even in these shackled times.”

  “That’s the word.”

  26

  AND THERE WE WERE early that next morning, before sunrise, down at the Delaware Avenue docks, on the other end of Conduction. Fog rolled off the water, obscuring the city. I looked back at the party and found a weakened Harriet with an arm slung around the shoulders of Henry and Robert. I took command and guided the group to our appointed meeting, a storehouse but a two-minute walk from where we had appeared. There we found Otha and Kessiah waiting for us. Henry and Robert laid Harriet down on a row of crates. She said, “Now, don’t you start fussing over me, you hear? I told you I was fine long as I had my folk. Served me well, don’t you think?”

  “That was beautiful, Harriet,” I said. “I ain’t never seen nothing like it.”

  “You’ll see it again, friend,” she said, fixing her eyes to mine. “You’ll see it again.”

  Kessiah rubbed Harriet’s brow softly for a moment and then she turned to me. She smiled silently and nodded her head, and in that moment, I felt the import of all that I had just seen wash over me in a great wave of grieving and joy. Something I had long been searching for, a need that I felt but could not name, now clarified before me. It was Harriet, her brothers, her father, an entire family warring to exist as such. And I felt then that there could be no holier, no more righteous war than this. And now looking upon Kessiah, who was my bridge back to Virginia, my bridge to my mother, my bridge to Thena, I felt her to be family, so that it was natural to do as I did in that moment, to take her by the shoulders and pull her close and hold her tight, and inhale the floral smell of her hair and feel the softness of her cheek against mine. It was all so new. And I was so very new. A weight was falling away, and the weight wasn’t merely the fact of the Task, its labors and conditions, but the myths beneath—my father as my savior, my plot to leave behind the Street, my notion that Lockless could be redeemed by my special hand. My forgetting. I forgot my mother. And then went off into the house of Lockless like I had no mother. And then I was conducted, brought up out of the coffin, brought up out of slavery. And now I felt myself shedding the lie, like old skin, so that a truer, more lustrous Hiram emerged.

  Kessiah said, “It’s all right, Hi. It’s all gonna be all right.” And I felt her patting and rubbing my back, in the way that one soothes a child. I tasted salt on my lips, and became aware that I was crying, and now I was sobbing in her arms, and realizing this, I was ashamed. But then I looked up and saw that everyone else around me, the entire party Harriet had brought, Otha and Kessiah, everyone, was hugging and sobbing too.

  We went in shifts, by horse and buggy, to the Ninth Street office, so as not to arouse undue attention. We were all there assembled by sunrise. Everything was timed perfectly. Raymond poured coffee and served rye muffins, brown bread, and apple tarts from Mars’s bakery. We were, all of us, famished, and while doing our best to maintain manners, we fed ourselves to our hearts’ content.

  “So this is what it is, huh?” Robert said. He was standing off in the corner of the parlor, by the window, watching the others as they ate.

  “This and more,” I said. “Some good. Some bad.”

  “But on the whole, better than being held, huh?”

  “On the whole, yeah,” I said. “Still. There are parts of life that can’t be gotten out of, and I have had to learn, here, that we are all, at the end, held somehow. Just that up here you get to choose by who and by what.”

  “Thinking I could work that,” Robert said. “And I must say that I am even thinking that I must be held again by my Mary.”

  “Gotta love who love you,” I said.

  “So it seems.”

  “You talk to Harriet?”

  “I have not. Don’t know how to ask…”

  “I’ll ask. Was I who made the promise.”

  * * *

  —

  Raymond took in each of the passengers for interview. I took notes. It lasted the whole day. At night everyone was dispatched to a different home in the city or out in Camden. They were advised to stick to indoors, for by now their escape would be known, and Harriet would be the prime suspect. By the end of the week, Philadelphia would be prowling with Ryland, but too, by then, they would themselves be headed farther north. That evening I sat down in the parlor. Harriet was upstairs in my room, fast asleep, as she had been since our arrival at the Ninth Street office.

  Raymond was about to walk out with Jane and Henry to secure them in their lodging. But just before he left, he said, “I thought this might wait until your return.” Then he handed me a letter and said, “Hiram, I want you to understand that you don’t owe anyone anything anymore. Not me. Not Corrine.”

  I sat in the parlor h
olding the letter. I saw that it bore the mark of the Virginia station and thus knew what it said before even opening it. I was being recalled to the muck. I appreciated Raymond’s words, but there was no way I was not going back. By then, I felt myself to truly be on the Underground. It was who I was and I had no idea what I would make of my life without it. And there was a promise I had made only a year ago, though it felt like ten years, a promise to bring Sophia out. And even with Bland gone, I was starting to see a way to do it.

  An hour or so after Raymond left, Harriet ambled down the stairs holding her walking stick. She sat on the sofa and inhaled deeply.

  “So that’s about the whole of it?” I asked.

  “Yep,” she said. “That’s about it.”

  “Well, not all of it.”

  “What you mean?”

  “I ain’t tell you, but to get your brother Robert out, I had to make a promise. It’s Mary. She wasn’t letting him go. I told her everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “I know. It was not smart.”

  “Nope. Not really,” Harriet said. Then she cut her eyes away from me and let out a deep breath. We sat there in silence for a moment.

  “But, I will say that I was not there. I told you what was to be done. How you got it done was how you got it done. And I thank you for it. This what Robert want?”

  “Yes.”

  “That boy is a caution.”

  “And there’s something else too.”

  “What you want now? Whole state conducted?”

  I laughed. And then I said, “No. I want you to know that I am leaving. Harriet, I’m going home.”

  “Huh. Yes, I figured as much. Especially now that you done seen the power.”

  “It ain’t that. And I still don’t have it all.”

  “You have enough. Enough for me to tell you this. I want you to remember that I revealed this to you and only you. And I did this because you are the bearer, no one else. Don’t forget that. Once you get that train on the track, and you will, there will be folks with all sorts of notions of how it should run. You know what I am saying. I love the Virginia station, for their hearts are truly pointed toward the Lord. But do not let them pull you into their schemings, Hiram. They will try and pull you into all type of capers, but remember there is a price, always a price. You seen it on me when we went down. You seen it even today. There is a reason we forget. And those of us who remember, well, it is hard on us. It exhausts us. Even today, I could only do this with the aid of my brothers.

  “If you need to speak on it, if you ever not sure, write Kessiah a few lines. I am never far from her. If you need anything, if you find yourself under it, you talk to me before you try to handle it all on your lonesome. A man might be lost out there and no telling where the story might take you. Call on me, Hiram, understand?”

  I nodded and sat back. We had some more small talk until she tired. Then Harriet went back upstairs. I fell asleep on the couch. The next day I awoke to a gleeful exchange. Rising, I walked into the dining room and found Otha, Raymond, and Kessiah at the table.

  “Just brought these up,” Otha said with glee. It was the most hopeful I’d seen him since Lydia’s capture and Bland’s death.

  “What is it?” I asked

  “It’s Lydia and the kids, Hiram,” Otha explained. “We think we got a way.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “McKiernan,” Raymond said. “He wants to sell. We have been in touch with him through an intermediary.”

  Kessiah then reached into a suitcase and pulled out a small book.

  “It is not our way,” she said. “But we must tell our stories.”

  She handed me the book and I read on the cover, The Kidnapped and the Ransomed. I flipped through the book and discovered it was the story of Otha White’s escape to freedom.

  “Ain’t this something,” I said, handing the book back to her. “So then, what’s the plan?”

  “Otha and a few others will make a tour of the North,” Raymond said. “They will sell the book to abolitionist audiences and use the profits to purchase Lydia and the family.”

  “And McKiernan, he gon wait?” I asked. “After what we tried to pull on him?”

  “You mean after what he pulled on us,” Otha said. “Bland is dead. Truly in the coffin. We ain’t giving up on Lydia and that man know it. Why, I hate paying a ransom for my own people, but this ain’t the time for high standing, I guess.”

  “No,” Kessiah said. “It’s not. If you got a way to get them out, Otha, do it. Keep your end of the yard clean and leave the justice to the Lord.”

  “Indeed,” I said. “On that count I have something that must be said…”

  “Time to get back, huh?” Otha said.

  “It is,” I said. “I…I am not who I was.”

  I don’t even know if they understood. Perhaps Kessiah did. But even if they did not understand, I wanted it said, I wanted them to know that I had been changed by Philadelphia, by Mars, by Otha, by Mary Bronson, by all of them. I wanted them to know that I understood. But all those years of holding my words, of listening and not talking, still bore on me so that all I could muster from this feeling was, “I am not him. I am not him.”

  “We know,” Otha said, rising to embrace me.

  27

  BEFORE I RETURNED TO the coffin, I had promises to keep. On a crisp November Sunday, I found myself walking with Kessiah toward the promenade along the Schuylkill. The wind rustled its way up Bainbridge, this lovely thoroughfare—lovely, yes, I had come to believe this, for where I once perceived chaos, I now saw a symphony in the city, in the low things in the alleys, in the abominable odor, in the great variance among the peoples, spilling out of their brick hovels, piling into the omnibus, heaving in the pewter shops, bickering in haberdasheries, haggling over groceries.

  On we walked, counting the numbered streets until we were at the river, which we followed to the promenade, barely peopled that morning. Kessiah pulled her shawl tight around her shoulders and said, “We are not built for this, you know. We are a tropical people, that is what they say.”

  “My favorite season,” I said. “World is so beautiful this time of year. There’s a kinda peace that just falls on everything, even up here. It’s like summer wear the world out, and by October everyone is just ready for a nap.”

  “I don’t know,” Kessiah said, shaking her head. She laughed lightly and pulled the shawl tighter. “This wind coming up off the river as it does? Give me spring. Give me green fields. Give me blossoms.”

  “Season of life, huh?” I said. “Naw, I prefer this season of loss, this season of dying, for I think it is the world at its most true.”

  We sat there quiet for a moment. Kessiah took my hand and held it, slid over until she was close, and then kissed me on the cheek.

  “How are you, Hi?” she said.

  “Lotta feelings,” I said.

  “Yes, indeed,” she said. “Those comings and goings, my Lord, I feel it every time I leave my Elias back at the home-place, feel my heart ripped right out of me.”

  “And how bout him?”

  “Elias? Well, I like to think my leaving don’t please him too much. But I do not ask. And you must remember I was always a kind of woman who would be hard to tie. Very few men could cope with this. But my Elias was different. And I think it was mostly ’cause of Harriet. We are of the same understanding, so that when Elias fell to me, my manner was not so strange to him. Might well be the whole reason he fell to me as he did. I was what he knew. I was as a woman should be.

  “We do need help on the home-place, though. Lot of work. And I am not really a part of it. He keep talking about getting a girl. I tell him he can do that if he wants, but he will lose one too.”

  We laughed at this for a moment, and then I said, “Maybe not, though.”

&
nbsp; “I assure you he will,” she said. “Do not let that ‘free love’ Convention talk get to you.”

  “I am not speaking of free love. I am speaking of your mother.”

  Kessiah looked out to the river and said nothing.

  “Ain’t right,” I said. “Ain’t right what been done here.”

  “Ain’t right for no one, Hi,” Kessiah said. “You also aiming to go to war with Virginia?” she said.

  “There were promises made,” I said. “Promises before Bland died.”

  “Not for Thena.”

  “No. Not for Thena. I don’t have it all figured. But I do believe I am owed something here. I am happy to be Underground, happy that it all happened. But I was not asked into this. I was drafted. I do not believe it too much to ask that Virginia let loose the woman who made it possible for me to survive all those years before.”

  “No, it is not. And up here, with just Raymond and Otha, or even with Harriet and Maryland, it’d be done. But Virginia…they are different.”

  “I know,” I said. “I have been tangling with them in some manner for almost half my life. But I am telling you, I am determined to get Thena out. I can’t tell you how. I can’t tell you when. But I will get her out.”

  Kessiah sat back and looked out toward the river. A knot of sparrows then flew up from the trees. I watched as a harrier dipped and dived among them.

  “Well, I can’t say I would not love to have her,” Kessiah said. “But you will forgive me if I do not get my blood up over such a thing. I said goodbye a long time ago, Hi, and it is a hard thing to say goodbye to your mother, do you know?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “If you find your way to her and see her back up here, well…We have a place for her. Lovely farm west of here. Lancaster-way. It is truly a sight, I will say that. And it is waiting for her.”

  * * *

  —

  The very next morning I dressed myself in the style of tasking men I had observed up here, those who dressed well above their station—fine trousers, damask waistcoat, and a high stove-pipe hat. It was still early, just about sunrise, but when I came down, Raymond, Otha, and Kessiah were there. We sat together in pleasing conversation for a few minutes. Raymond had hired a private hack to take us all to Gray’s Ferry Station, as this entire party insisted on seeing me off. The carriage arrived presently and we boarded and prepared for the trip down Bainbridge, but just as we did, I saw Mars running toward us, hollering, holding a bag in one hand and waving wildly with the other.