The Water Dancer

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  * * *

  —

  I don’t know what work happened in the time before that meeting. I spent the whole of it thinking only of Sophia. Slavery is everyday longing, is being born into a world of forbidden victuals and tantalizing untouchables—the land around you, the clothes you hem, the biscuits you bake. You bury the longing, because you know where it must lead. But now this new longing held out a different future, one where my children, whatever their travails, would never know the auction block. And once I glimpsed that other future, my God, the world was born anew to me. I was freedom-bound, and freedom was as much in my heart as it was in the swamps, so that the hour I spent waiting on our meeting was the most careless I had ever spent. I was gone from Lockless before I had even run.

  “So how’s this suppose to go?” she asked. We were down by the gulch, looking past the wild grass to the other side of the woods.

  “I don’t quite know,” I said.

  Sophia turned to me with a doubtful look.

  “Don’t know?” she asked.

  “I put my faith in Georgie,” I said. “That’s all I got.”

  “Georgie, huh?”

  “Yeah, Georgie. I ain’t ask a whole lot of questions—you must understand why. This thing Georgie got himself into, well, I imagine part of the deal is you don’t talk too much. So my notion is simple. We bring ourselves, and nothing more, at the appointed time and place and then we go.”

  “Go into what?” she asked.

  I looked at her hard for a moment, then looked back over the gulch.

  “The swamps,” I said. “They got a world down there, a whole Underground, where a man can live as a man should.”

  “And what about a woman?”

  “I know. I thought on it some. Perhaps not the ideal place for a lady—”

  She cut me off and said, “Told you once today, Hi, I ain’t no lady.”

  I nodded.

  “I get along just fine,” she said. “Just get me out of here and I’ll get the rest figured myself.”

  That last word—myself—hung in the air.

  “All by yourself, huh?” I asked.

  She looked back at me unsmiling.

  “Look, Hiram, I need you to understand something. I like you, I really do.” Her eyes were hard on me, drilling their way in, and I felt that what she was saying now was from the deepest of possible places. “I like you and I do not like many men, and when I look at you I see something old and familiar, something like what I had with my Mercury. But I will like you a heap less if your plan is for us to get to this Underground and for you to make yourself up as another Nathaniel. That ain’t freedom to me, do you understand? Ain’t no freedom for a woman in trading a white man for a colored.”

  I noticed then that her hand was on my arm. And that she was squeezing it firmly.

  “If that is what you want, if that is what you are thinking, then you must tell me now. If it is your plan to shackle me there, to have me bring yearlings to you, then tell me now and allow me the decency of making my own choice here. You are not like them. You must do me the service of giving me that choice. So tell me. Tell me now your intending.”

  I remember her ferocity in that moment. It was such a peaceful day. Late in the afternoon now and the sun was setting in this season of long nights, the perfect season, I would soon learn, to run. I heard no birds, no insects, no branches in the wind, so that all my senses were focused on Sophia’s words, words that for the first time in my life I experienced without pictures, for reasons I could not fully then understand. What I did understand was that she was terribly afraid of something—something in me, and the thought that I would, in any way, exist to her in the way of Nathaniel, that she would fear me as she feared him, scared and shamed me all at once.

  “No,” I said. “Never, Sophia. I want you to be free and I want any relating between us, should there ever be relating, to always be one of your choosing.”

  She loosened her hand now, so that her grip became just a touch.

  “I cannot lie,” I said. “I hope that you will some day, at some time, choose me out there. I confess it. I have dreams. Wild dreams.”

  “And what do you dream of?” she asked. Her grip was again tight on my arm.

  “I dream of men and women who are fit to wash, feed, and dress themselves. I dream of rose gardens that reward the hands that tend to them,” I said. “And I dream of being able to turn to a woman for whom I got a feeling, and speak that feeling, holler that feeling, with no thought beyond me and her as to what that might mean.”

  We stood there a little longer and then walked up from the gulch together and then out of the woods. By then the sun was setting over Lockless. We paused at the edge of the woods. Sophia said, “I had best go ahead alone.” I nodded and watched her walk out and disappear. And then I came out, up from the forest toward the house, until I could see the tunnel beneath into the Warrens. And standing there in that tunnel, with her arms crossed, was Thena.

  Thena was also transformed by my new vantage. I was running off, a young man with a young girl, toward a new life, the first true life we’d ever have, one that these old coloreds were afraid to pursue. I had tried to save them, save the whole of Lockless, but that was over now. They were lambs waiting for the slaughter. The elders all knew what was coming. They knew what the land whispered, because none lived closer to the land than those who worked it. They lay awake at night, listening to the groaning ghosts of tasking folk past, those who’d been carried off. They knew what was coming and still they waited for it. And all of this sudden shame and anger, rage and resenting for they who let this happen, who stoically watched their children carried off, all of this I now heaped upon Thena, so that when she saw me there coming up from the woods, and I saw her, with her arms crossed, waiting for me as I approached, and I saw the disapproving look on her face, I felt an incredible anger.

  “Evening,” I said. She rolled her eyes in response. I walked into the tunnel and toward my quarters. She followed me. When we were inside, she turned up the lamp on the mantel and then shut the door. She sat in a chair in the corner and I saw the flame of the lamp casting shadows on her face.

  “What is with you, son?” she asked.

  “Don’t know what you mean.”

  “You still fevered or something?”

  “Thena…”

  “Been mighty strange these past few weeks, mighty strange. So what is it? What’s got you?”

  “Don’t know what you mean.”

  “Alrighty, lemme ask it like this. What in all of creation done possessed you to run round Lockless with Nathaniel Walker’s girl?”

  “I ain’t running round with nobody. Girl choose her company, sure as I chose mine.”

  “That’s what you think, huh?”

  “Yep, that’s what I think.”

  “Then you as dumb as you seem.”

  What I now did was cut my eyes at Thena, in a gesture I had learned from children rebellious against their parents. And I was a child, I know that now, a boy overrun with emotion, undone by a great and momentous loss. And I felt it, just then, though I could not name it, I felt all that I had lost when my mother fell into that black hole of memory, because standing before me was someone whom I stood to lose again. And I could not bear to lose her, to look her in the eye and confess my plan, to leave the only mother I had ever known. So when I spoke, it was not with sadness or honesty but with anger and righteousness.

  “What I done to you?” I asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Whatever, in all of creation, have I done to you to speak to me so?”

  “Speak to you so?” she said, and the look became almost bemused. “Hell you care bout how I speak to you? You fell to me out of nothing, I never asked for any of it, but what I do every evening, after breaking my back for these folks? Who fry up your b
acon and corn-cakes? That girl ever done that for you? Who guard you against what these folks try to make of you with all their schemings? And what have I asked from you, Hiram? Whatever have I asked?”

  “And why start now?” I said. Then I fixed Thena with a long hard stare. It was not a look fit for anyone, nor any woman who had loved me, and certainly not the woman who had so cared for me.

  Thena looked back at me as though I had shot her. But the pain quickly passed. It was as if her last hope that this wicked world would admit some justice, some light, had vanished before her and what was left was the crooked end she had expected all along.

  “You gonna regret all this one day,” she said. “You gonna regret it more than any evil that come along with that girl, and evil will come to you, I assure you. But this moment here when you speak as such to those who loved you when you was most frail, you gonna regret.” Then she opened the door, looking back only to say, “Boy like you should be more careful with his words. Never know when they the last ones he might put upon a person.”

  I didn’t have to wait long for the promised regret to bloom inside me, but in that moment it was overwhelmed by another portion of me, the one that thought only of my impending flight from this old world, with its dying land, its fearful slaves, and its low and vulgar whites. I would leave it all behind for the freedom of the Underground, and made no exception for Thena.

  * * *

  —

  The remaining days passed until finally it came, the morning of Georgie’s fateful promise, came like life itself, long and quick. I woke to that day filled with unease. I lay awake in my bed, hoping that the day might remain there with me, but then I heard the shuffling of the Warrens and the hum of the house above, and this awful music announced that the day was a fact, and my promise was a fact, and it could not be backed away from. So I rose to the darkness and walked with my earthen jar toward the well and saw Pete on my way there, already dressed and on his way to the garden, and I remember this because it was the last time I ever saw him. Outside in the distance, I saw Thena at the well, all alone, drawing water for laundry. It was such hard work—hauling up the water, firing up the wood, beating the garments, preparing the soap—and she did all of it. I remember standing there, knowing how I had wronged her, scorned her, heaped on disrespect, feeling the sharp shame of it, and beating it back with my anger, with my “Who does she think she is?” I waited for her to finish and watched from the tunnel as this old colored woman hauled the water all alone, knowing even then that I would regret this, that for the rest of my life, those last words to Thena, when I stood apart from her, would haunt me.

  When all was clear, I walked to the well and filled my own gourd, then walked back and cleaned myself and dressed. I came to the mouth of the tunnel and watched the sun come up over Lockless, and for one final, weighty moment pondered the step now standing before me. I thought of oceans and all the explorers of whom I had read during those long summer Sundays in the library, and I wondered what they had felt stepping up off the land and onto the deck, looking out over the sea, the waves, which they must cross into some unknown realm. I wondered if fear took them, if they ever were compelled to run back into the arms of their women, to kiss their young daughters, and remain there among them in the world they knew. Or were they like me, aware that the world they loved was uncertain, that it too must fade before time, that change was the rule of everything, that if they did not cross the water, the water must soon cross over them? So I must go, for my world was disappearing, had always been disappearing—Maynard called out from the Goose, Corrine from the mountains, and above all, Natchez.

  I jogged myself out of the reverie. I walked up the stairs and spoke with my father, who had now found a task for me—work in the kitchen with the remains of the wait staff, beginning tomorrow. “One last day of freedom,” he said. But I was, by then, past any care for such things. I simply nodded and then assessed him for any sign that he had caught on. But he was cheerful, more cheerful than I’d seen him in weeks. He spoke of Corrine Quinn, and her promise to visit later that week, and I felt an incredible relief at the fact that I would by then be gone.

  I walked to the library. I thumbed through the old volumes of Ramsay and Morton. Then I walked back down toward my quarters. For the rest of the day I kept out of sight. I could not bear to eat. I could not bear to see anyone else. I was by then done with all the reminiscences and fantasy. What I most wanted was for the appointed moment to come. And it did, I tell you, it did. The sun set, bringing on the long winter night, and then the house quieted and the hum of the day faded until all that was left was the occasional creaking. I brought nothing with me save ambition, not clothes, not victuals, not books, not even my coin, which I now pulled from the pocket of my overalls, rubbed one last time, and deposited on the mantel. I met Sophia at the edge of the peach grove. We used the road to mark our path, but stayed in the woods, out of sight, in case we were spotted by any of the patrols. We talked and laughed in our normal easy way but with lowered voices, until the road bent and then in the distance we saw the bridge across the Goose. And feeling that this was the moment, the place from which none would dare turn back, we were quiet, struck dumb by fear and awe. We stood there looking out at the bridge, which was but a long dark span against the greater dark of the night. I heard the creeping things of the earth calling out to each other. The night was starless and overcast.

  “So it’s freedom then,” I said.

  “Freedom,” she said. “Mend it or rip it. No more treating. No more in-between. Die young, or not all.”

  And so we walked out from the woods and onto the path, and in open view of the night, I took her hand and I was aware that her hand was steady and mine trembled. We had put our lives on the honor of Georgie Parks. We believed in the rumor, in the Underground. We crossed and did not look back, and made for the woods, steering clear of Starfall. I had, in the days prior, taken time to wander among the back-paths, and had found a way to bring us to Georgie’s meeting place with both speed and discretion. When we reached the small pond where Georgie and I had stood one week earlier, we relaxed a bit.

  “What will you do when you get there?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” she said. “Don’t know what a gal do in a swamp. Would like to work—work for my own. That is my highest ambition. How bout you?”

  “Get as far as I might from you, I figure.”

  We both laughed.

  “You know you crazy,” I said. “Got me out here, running. I say if we make it through—when we make it through—I will have had all I need of Sophia’s schemings.”

  “Uh-huh. Might be nice to lighten my own load,” Sophia said. “Men ain’t brought me and mine nothing but a heap of trouble.”

  We laughed a little more. I looked up at the starless sky, then looked over to Sophia, who was backing away, backing toward the pond. And then I heard footsteps, and conversation, and I could tell that whoever was approaching was not alone. I thought to hide then, but I distinctly heard Georgie’s voice among the men, and this stayed me. Then the voices went quiet and all we heard were the footsteps crunching against the ground. I took Sophia’s hand and looked through the opening in the wood. I saw the darkness framing the figure of Georgie Parks.

  I smiled, I remember that. And I tell you, as I have always, that I remember everything, but here perhaps, I am playing tricks upon myself because it was a starless night, and I could not see Sophia as little more than a silhouette before me, but I swear that I remember seeing the face of Georgie Parks, and his face was pained and was sad and I did not know why. And then I heard the footsteps again and I saw five white men emerge, one by one from the darkness, and I saw that one of them carried a rope between his hands. And when they were out, they stood before us for what seemed like forever and I heard Sophia moan, “No, no, no…”

  And then I watched one of the men touch Georgie’s shoulder and say,
“All right, Georgie, you done good.” And at that Georgie turned his back on us and walked back into the forest, and these men, with their rope, turned to us.

  “No, no, no,” moaned Sophia.

  I swear they were like phantoms, glowing against the night like specters, and I knew by their outline and bearing exactly what they were.

  9

  RYLAND’S HOUNDS BROUGHT US up by pistol-point, brought us through that moonless and starless night, through a darkness thick enough to touch, thick as the ropes knotted around our hands. And I was suddenly aware of the cold, of the wind swinging like a sword, so that I then began to shiver and this became a fact of great amusement for our captors, and though I could not see them, I could hear them laughing at me, mocking me—“Time for shivering past, boy”—for they took me to be in fear of what they might do. It was true that Ryland’s Hounds were fearsome and the fact that I was not in total terror can only be attributed to the flight of emotions—shame, anger, shock—that now raced ahead of fear. They could have done anything to us out there, done anything to her, for this was the normal path of things. It was the necessary right of the Low, who held no property in man, to hold momentary property in those who ran, and to vent all their awful passions upon them. And from the moment I saw Georgie disappear, and Ryland float out of the woods like wraiths, I felt that this venting must come. But it did not. They just led us out of the woods, into Starfall, until we were at the jail, and there they replaced rope with chains, and left us in the yard, like the animals they took us to be, dressed in cold irons, for what must be our last moments together, our last moments upon this earth as we knew it.

  I remember the heaving weight of the chains, a center-line extending from the collar around my neck, down to a smaller chain and cuffs around my wrists, through another chain and cuffs clapped around my ankles. And this lattice of cold iron was looped around the bottom rail of the fence that bracketed the jail, so that I could neither straighten my back nor take a seat for relief, and was thus permanently stooped. All my life I had been a captive. But whereas the particulars of my birth had allowed me to feel this bondage as a mark or symbol, there was nothing symbolic in this hulking web. I could angle my neck in one direction, and there I found pain of a different sort, for I caught sight of Sophia, fastened just as I was, perhaps a few yards away. I wanted so bad to say something as radical as I felt the moment then demanded. I wanted to tell her of my great sorrow at having led her into this deeper, truer slavery. I wanted to hold myself to her account for this great betrayal. But when I spoke, I had nothing but the most impoverished of words.