I do not know what manner of reception I imagined on returning to my father’s house. Memory was my power, not imagination. But then there was my father himself, and when he guided me up to the front porch, and we were seated, I was able to take the measure of him. He seemed to have become the town of Starfall in miniature. I had been gone but a year, and in that time he seemed to have aged ten. He was weaker. His severe features had softened and his whole body seemed to sag into his chair. There were coin-sacks under his eyes and his face was discolored and pocked. I felt his heart working for every beat.
But there was something else—a kind of joy in him at my return, a joy that I had glimpsed in him all those years ago when I’d caught the rotating coin in my hand while never breaking my gaze.
“By God,” he said, looking me over. “We can dress you a sight better than that. Dignity, son. Remember Old Roscoe? Polished as a piano, God rest his sorrowful soul.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Glad to see you, son. Been too much time, much too much time.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How you find Miss Corrine’s place, boy?”
“Fine, sir.”
“Not too fine, I’m hoping?”
“Sir?”
“Hasn’t she told you, son? You are back here at Lockless. How’s that strike you?”
“Strikes me very well.”
“Good, good. Let’s see what you’ve got there.”
I helped him rummage through the gifts Corrine had sent—a collection of treats and candy, other odds and ends including a volume from Sir Walter Scott. The supper hour was now upon us and so I helped my father upstairs and then into his evening dining clothes.
“Very good. Very good,” he said. “You are a natural at it. But get yourself changed. I think Old Roscoe was smaller than you. I am thinking you could outfit yourself in some of Maynard’s old garments. That boy had more finery than he could put to use. Miss him though, I do. Damn, that boy was trouble.”
“A good man, sir.”
“Yes, he was. But no use in garments gone to seed. Make something distinguished of yourself up there, boy. You may take your brother’s old quarters, in the house, not down in those tunnels below.”
“Yes, sir.”
“One thing, boy. So much has changed round here since you have gone. The old place cannot be what it was. We lost so many. But I have done as I could, and what I did otherwise could not have been helped. Son, I am old. But all I can think of now, in this time, is ensuring some kindly heir for the place and for our people. I want you to know that is a particular concern to me, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It was not right of me to let you go, boy. I was in grief and that girl Corrine, well, she talked me right out of your name. But since you been gone, I have been at her to bring you back to where I know you want to be. And by God, I have done it. You are here, boy. I know you will fill quite well for Old Roscoe, as you did for my Little May. But I need you to be more. Once you was hands, son. I got plenty of those. What I now need is your eyes. All got to stay in order. Can I count on you for that, boy?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Good. Good. I am a conflicted man, I cannot help it. Two mistakes I made in my life. First was letting go of your momma. Second was letting go of you. And it was all done in a horrible fit. No more. I am an old man, but I am, too, a new one.”
* * *
—
So that evening, I found myself installed in my dead brother’s room, and in my dead brother’s clothes. And when it was time for supper, I went out to the kitchen, and did not recognize a one of them. There was a staff of two working there, down from five. And they were both elderly, which itself said something of the straits Lockless now navigated. Because they produced no children, nor many working years, elderly slaves were the cheapest to acquire. They had, by their own intelligence, heard of “that Ryland business,” but they seemed oddly pleased that my father seemed so pleased with me, and spoke at length of my father’s pride and regret, despite my having run. I think now they thought, perhaps prayed, that I would prove some manner of stabilizing force on the house.
I served supper—terrapin soup and chops—and cleaned up with the staff, then took my father to his study with an evening cordial. With that completed, it was now upon me to come face to face with my shame. I left my father sitting there, stripped down to his shirtsleeves and tartan vest, lost in dreams of Lockless yore, and slid behind the wall of the study, until I was in the secret staircase that descended into the Warrens below. So many were now gone, and where there once had been life, I found an emptiness, a haunt, in all the abandoned quarters, with their doors left open, and various odds and ends—washbasins, marbles, spectacles—left behind. Walking in the Warrens, peering by the lantern-light, running my hand across the cobwebbed doorframes of the people I’d known, of Cassius, of Ella, of Pete, I felt a great rage, not simply because I knew that they had been taken but because I knew how they had been taken, how they had been parted from each other, how I was born and made by this great parting. Better than before, I understood the whole dimensions of this crime, the entirety of the theft, the small moments, the tenderness, the quarrels and corrections, all stolen, so that men such as my father might live as gods.
My old room was just as I left it, washbasin, jars, and bed. But I was not much in the mood to inspect any of that. For I could hear, just next door, a woman humming, and knowing the voice, I slowly walked out of my room, and then to the adjacent room, and pushing the door, which was slightly ajar, I saw Thena there humming to herself, with two pins between her teeth, and a garment in her lap that she was presently darning. I stood waiting there for some moments for her to acknowledge me, and when she did not, I walked over, pulled out a chair, and sat across from where she was seated on the bed.
“Thena,” I said.
She kept humming but never looked up. I had by then learned the price of my silence, the cost of holding my words as a shield to my heart. I knew what it was to feel that someone you deeply loved was gone from you, and that you would never be able to tell them all that they had meant. But sitting with Thena, who I thought I’d lost, whose volume and character had only been amplified through my knowledge of Kessiah, I felt that I now had a second chance and I resolved not to waste it.
“I was wrong,” I blurted out. I had no pretense. I did not know how else to be. The feelings of the past year were all so new, and I was still, in so many ways, a boy with no understanding of how such feelings should be borne. But I knew that too much had gone unsaid. And our time together could no longer be presumed.
“I came here to confess how badly I had spoken to you when I last saw you, how poorly I have treated you, who are all the family I have, more family than anyone who has ever lived in this house.”
At this Thena looked up for a moment, then looked back down, still humming. And though there was no compassion in her eyes, indeed she was cold as ice, I took even her skeptical regard as a measure of progress.
“It is not easy for me to say. You have known me all my life. You know it is not easy. But I am sorry. And for so long I have feared that those words would be the last ones I had given to you. And to see you here, again…to see you…Listen to me. I was wrong. I am sorry.”
She had stopped humming. And she looked up again and placed the garment, which I now saw was a pair of trousers, down on the bed. Then she took my right hand in both of hers and she squeezed it tight, all the time looking away from me, and I heard her breathe in deep and then breathe out. Then she released my hand, picked up the garment, and said, “Hand me that patch of corduroy.”
I walked over to the chest of drawers, picked up the patch, and passed it to her. As I did this, I felt something set right in me. My mother was lost to me. This was true. But before me now was one who had lost as I had,
who had been joined to me out of that loss, out of that need, and had become my only unerring family at Lockless, just as she had told me. And where I feared she would hold my words against me, what I saw even in her most contrary gestures was a joy at my safe return. I did not need her to smile. I did not need her to laugh. I did not even need her to tell me how much she had loved me. I only needed her, as it happened, to take my hand.
“Well, I am upstairs now,” I said. “Maynard’s old room. Don’t love it but it is what Master Howell say it be. Holler if you need me.”
And her only answer to this new information was to pick up her humming again. But then as I walked out the doorway, I heard her say, “Missed supper.”
I turned back and said, “Missed more than that.”
* * *
—
I now returned to my old room and gathered a few of my effects—my water-jar, my books, my old clothes, and even my old trusty coin was there, undisturbed on the mantel. I stuffed these into my washbasin and walked up the secret backstairs into the study, where I saw my father quietly dozing. I carried my effects up to Maynard’s old room and returned to the study. Then I escorted my father up to his room, my arm under his, helped him out of his clothes and under the covers, and bid him good night.
The next morning, I dressed, tended to my father again, and then drove the chaise into Starfall to retrieve Corrine, Amy, and Hawkins. Corrine and my father lunched and walked the property alone. An hour later, they returned and we served tea. In the evening, after the visiting party had set off, I served my father supper, and then went down into the Warrens to see Thena.
In another time, the Warrens teemed with humanity, tasking hands moving amongst each other, singing their songs, trading their stories, and venting their complaints, so that they were almost a world unto themselves, and you could, if you tried, forget that you were held there. But now all the human warmth of the early years had drained from the place, and the Warrens were revealed for what they had always been—a dungeon beneath a castle, dank and gray, an effect augmented by the array of lanterns that had fallen into disrepair and now left long stretches of the Warrens in darkness.
When I arrived, Thena was not there. I decided to sit and wait. She arrived a few minutes later, looked at me, and said, “Evening.”
“Evening,” I said.
“You ate?”
“Naw.”
We had greens, fatback, and ash-cake. We ate silently, as we had always done when I was a child. Then, after cleaning up, I bid Thena good night and returned to my room. We continued this routine for a week. And then one unseasonably warm evening, at my suggestion, we took our plates out to the end of the Warrens tunnel, where I had, all those years ago, entered with her. We sat there eating, watching the sun set over the country.
Thena said, “So you done seen Sophia?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Figured she spent most of her time over at Nathaniel’s now.”
“Naw,” said Thena. “She right down there on the Street. Nathaniel almost always in Tennessee now. So ain’t too much reason for her to be over there. But he and Howell and Corrine got some sort of arrangement on her. Can’t say I understand it, except that she is left there to her business.”
“To her business?” I asked.
“Till they figure out what to do with her, I’m guessing. They don’t make a habit of sharing such things with me, as you know.”
“I should see her,” I said.
“Only if you ready,” Thena said. “Best not to rush such things. Lot done changed down this way.”
The next day was a Sunday, my day. I held myself back until the afternoon. Then, realizing I must see her sometime anyway, and feeling I would never be ready, I took my walk down to the Street, down to the place of my birth. And much as I had expected, the Street too had fallen into disrepair. There were no chickens roaming about, and all the old gardens were overgrown. These were the last days of the section of the vast Southern Empire that held Virginia as its ancestral seat. And it has been said, the fact of this falling is the fault of its masters, that had the Quality adhered to the hollow virtues of old, perhaps this empire would have stretched forth for a thousand years. But the fall was always ordained, because slavery made men wasteful and profligate in sloth. Maynard was crude and this was his greatest crime. In fact, he mirrored so much of the Quality. He simply lacked the guile to hide it.
The first bite of winter air had blanketed over Elm County, so that I grew wistful of summer Sundays and that other time when all of my young friends would have been out playing our little games of marbles and tag. Thena told me that Sophia had taken up in that same far cabin at the end of the Street where Thena and I had lived in the days following my mother’s departure. Looking down the bank of houses, I saw a woman emerge with a small child on her hip. The woman bounced the baby a few times, and then looked up and saw me. She gave me a look of puzzled interrogation, nodded an acknowledgment, and walked back inside. I stood there a second waiting, and then the woman stepped out of the cabin again, without the baby, and it was only then that it dawned on me that the woman was Sophia.
When Sophia stepped back out, she was different. She stood there, a few yards away, at the far end of the street, Sophia, my Sophia, unsmiling. I did not know what any of it meant. Was she angry with me for leading her to Ryland? Had I dreamt up that whole evening, of us out there, in union? Had it all been a childish flirtation between us? Did she now love another? And who was that baby?
“Gon stand down there all day?” she yelled down at me. Then she walked back inside. I followed until I was outside Thena’s old cabin, and memories of myself, appearing before her with only my victuals, overran me. But there was not much time for such things. And looking in, I saw Sophia had the baby on her hip again, bouncing her just as she had outside, singing a song.
“Hello,” I said.
“Well, hello, Hiram,” Sophia said. She had a smug look about her and I could not decide if this was her usual teasing or if it was something deeper. She sat on a chair by the window and then invited me to take a seat myself on the bed. The baby was brown, about my complexion, and cooed quietly in Sophia’s arms. It was only then that I began to do the math of it all. So much had changed. I must have given some sign of this awareness, perhaps an arched eyebrow, or a widening of the eyes, because Sophia sucked her teeth, rolled her eyes, and said, “Don’t worry. She ain’t yours.”
“I am not worried,” I said. “I am not worried about anything anymore.”
And when I said this, I saw her relax just a bit, though she was trying to maintain that same cool distance she had offered up when I first arrived. She stood and walked to the window, all the time cradling the child.
“What is her name?” I asked.
“Caroline,” she said, still looking out the window.
“It’s a beautiful name.”
“I call her Carrie.”
“And that is beautiful too,” I said.
Now she sat down across from me, but she did not meet my eyes. She focused on the child, but did so in such a way that I knew the child was a pretense for not looking my way.
“I did not think you would come back,” she said. “Don’t nobody ever come back here. I heard Corrine Quinn had gotten ahold of you. Somebody said you was up in the mountains somewhere. In the salt mines, they said.”
“And who is ‘they’?” I asked, laughing quietly.
“That ain’t funny,” she said. “I was worried for you, Hiram. I am telling you, I was terribly scared.”
“Well, I wasn’t nowhere near no mines. It’s true I was in the mountains,” I said. “Up at Bryceton. But wasn’t no mines. Wasn’t half-bad, in fact. Quite beautiful up there. You should go sometime.”
And now Sophia laughed herself and said, “And you come back a joker, huh?”
“Gotta laugh, Sophia,�
�� I said. “I have learned that you gotta laugh in this life.”
“Yeah, you do,” she said. “Though I find it harder every day. Need to think of good things and better times. Do you know I talk about you, Hi?”
“Talk about me to who?”
“To my Carrie. Tell her everything.”
“Huh,” I said. “Ain’t much else to talk about, it seem. Place so empty now.”
“Yeah,” said Sophia. “So many lost. So many gone. Natchez got ’em. Tuscaloosa. Cairo. Hauled ’em down into that big nothing. It get worse every day. Long Jerry from over at the MacEaster Place was by here only two weeks ago. I felt surely he was too old for them to take. He was here, right here, with a offering of yams, trout, and apples. Thena even came down. We fried it up and had a good supper together. Was just two weeks ago. And now he gone.
“It’s been so many, Hi. So many. I don’t know how they keeping this thing afloat. Was a girl named Milly come through here a few months back. Beautiful girl—which was her loss. She ain’t last but a week. Natchez. Fancy trade.”
“But you still here,” I said.
“Indeed, indeed,” she said. Now Caroline began to stir, wriggling in her mother’s arms, until she could turn her head and get a good solid look at me. And the child held me there with a stare of the deepest of intentions, regarding me in the way infants do when brought before someone unknown. I never knew what to do with that look. It discomfits me. But there was more because that look, and all its intense study, was the inheritance of her mother. Perhaps it was all the moments I had spent conjuring the face, recreating the particulars. And there was something else now, more math. Caroline had the same sun-drop eyes as her mother, but the color—an uncommon green-gray—came from somewhere else. I knew this because my own eyes were the same color, and the color was a Walker inheritance, given not only to me but to my uncle, Nathaniel.
Again, my looks must have betrayed me, because Sophia sucked her teeth, pulled Caroline close, stood, and turned away.
The Water Dancer (Oprah's Book Club) Page 32