The Water Dancer

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  By then, I had been trained to package away misery. And so what I thought of in that moment was not Micajah Bland, but the simple task of getting those papers back to Raymond and Otha. I moved among the crowd. A few people, knowing my affiliation with the Philadelphia station, tried to stop me and ask what I might know. I ignored them, and scanned among the tents for a clue as to where they might have taken Otha. I saw some of the agents of the western Underground before a tent. One of them waved to me—“Here,” he said. Then another parted the entrance for me, and walking in I saw Otha seated there with Raymond. Otha was calmer now, though still smoldering. There were a few others whom I recognized as clearly senior within the loose leadership of the Underground. Harriet was there, and most shockingly, seated calmly—Corrine Quinn.

  There was not much time to weigh her presence. The conversation halted when I entered.

  “I am sorry,” I said, walking over to Raymond, “but I thought you might need these.”

  Raymond thanked me, and I took my leave, allowing the meeting to continue. I walked away from the camp, back toward the woods where I’d met Harriet a day before. I sat there, on that same boulder where Harriet had sat. Would that I could open a door right here in the woods, I thought, and pull the cotton fields of Alabama to the forests of New York. But I had nothing. A power was within me, but with no thought of how to access it or control it, I was lost.

  I returned and found the camp still in mourning. It was afternoon by then. I went to my tent and lay down. When I awoke, Otha was there seated in a chair next to me. Otha was a man of true feeling, but never wild in his passions, or flagrant in his rages. I had never seen him as he was two days before in joy, nor as he was that morning in agony.

  “Otha,” I said. “I’m sorry. I…I don’t even know what to say. I have never met Lydia or your children, but I have heard so much of them now that I feel them as family.”

  “He was my brother, Hiram,” Otha said. “Micajah Bland was not my blood, but he was so much my brother that he would die for me and mine. I am not young to any of this. I lived divided from my blood, and made brothers wherever I lived, and grieved every time we were divided—and we were always divided. But I have never, for an instant, shied away from connection, from love.

  “I am sorry about my anger this morning. Raymond did not deserve it, and I am sorry you saw me as such.”

  “There’s no need, Otha.”

  He was silent for a few minutes. I said nothing, thinking that this was Otha’s time.

  “I want to tell you a story about dreaming. I want to tell you, specifically, because I know you have struggled to see your place, struggled to touch that power they all say is in you. And if in this pain I can give something to you, that would well soothe me too.”

  I sat up in my pallet and listened.

  “I met my wife, Lydia, shortly after Lambert died. Lambert was older, stronger, and braver. He was my heart, and my faith, and whenever I fell to despair, it was his unflagging belief that set me straight. And then to see him go under as he did, feeling that we would never get home, that God had truly indeed blighted us. A torrent of ugly came over me. I spent many nights in the very state that you saw me this morning. Perhaps you know about this, a pain that reaches out and falls over your heart like night.

  “I found my only balm was in the work, Tasked though I was. My mind disappeared into my hands and I was soothed by the fields. The whites thought it was my great morality. They thought me gracious under the lash. But I hated them all, Hiram, for as sure as they had ripped me from the cradle, they had right well murdered my brother.

  “In this state I met Lydia. Perhaps, having been born into Alabama, she knew more about the weight, and was better fitted to carry the great burden of a bonded life. I would rage and she would laugh, and soon enough I found myself laughing along. And then I would be angry that she had diminished me to laughter. And I would laugh at the whole heap of the thing again. We were to be married, and I felt myself come back to the world. I was tied to something, you see.

  “A few days before we were married, I came to see Lydia and found her back-sore. She was well-liked and highly valued by all the Quality, and had never been condemned to a seven and nine. She told me it was the boss’s headman. He had been hot after her. She would not submit. And so he whipped her, claiming it done on account of her sassing him.

  “When I heard that, my blood got up. I stood to leave without saying a word. She asked what I planned to do. I said, ‘Kill him.’

  “ ‘Don’t you dare,’ Lydia said.

  “ ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  “ ‘Because they will shoot you and you knows it,’ she said.

  “ ‘I’ll see that as it comes,’ I said. ‘But on my manhood, I gotta make this right.’

  “ ‘Damn your manhood and every inch of you to hell if you touch one hair on that white man’s head.’

  “ ‘But you are mine, Lydia,’ I said. ‘And it’s my duty to make you protected.’

  “ ‘And you gonna protect me from under the ox, too?’ she asked. ‘I picked you for a reason. You done told me your story, and I know that you have some notion of a place beyond this. Otha, it’s got to be about more than this. It’s got to be about more than anger, more than manhood. We got plans, me and you. And this is not our end. This is not how you and me die.’

  “Those words have never left me, you understand that, Hiram. I dream about ’em—This is not our end, she say. This is not how you and me die. She had taken the whip. But I was the one who was claiming to be wounded. I was supposed to love her. But all I was truly loving was my own regard.

  “I know you can picture what horror we saw through our union, what horror, at this very moment, my Lydia, my children, must still see. But what I want you to see is what I am trying to now save, what sent Bland down under, and that is all that my Lydia and me built together—the jests that belong to only us, our children who are an honor upon us, a feeling so deep that it calls across this whole continent. Lydia saved my life, Hiram, and I will give anything to save hers.

  “Micajah Bland knew all of this. And they killed him for it. I grieve more than you know.”

  Now he rose and held open the slit of the tent.

  “My Lydia will be free,” he said. “This is not how we die. My Lydia will be free.”

  22

  THAT NEXT MORNING, IT came the hour to decamp, and having gathered my affairs in my carpet-bag, I wandered through the field and watched as this wondrous city of new ideas, of visions and liberated futures, of men and women, which sprung up in the fields, fell back into nothing. I took a walk in the woods, so as to enjoy the country air one last time before my descent into the smoke and filth of the city. When I returned, Raymond, Otha, and Harriet were all finishing their preparations. I saw Kessiah nearby tightening the strap on a traveling piece. When she saw me, she put her hand to her mouth, walked over, pulled me close into a hug, and said, “I am so sorry, Hi. I am so deeply sorry.”

  “I appreciate it,” I said. “But no concern should be put upon me. Not with Otha’s family still lost.”

  “I know. But I also know Micajah Bland was something to you,” she said. And she gripped my arm tight, almost as a mother would a child.

  “Before you,” I said, “he was my closest connection back to the old place. Not that I would ever wish it, but it is truly something for him to leave me just as you came.”

  “It is,” she said. “Maybe someone is watching for you.”

  She smiled and I felt a warmth between us. I had met Kessiah only three days before, but already I had been drawn into her. She was the elder sister I had never thought to need, the plug in the hole that I had not even known was there.

  “Thank you, Kessiah,” I said. “I hope I shall see you soon. In fact, should you have some time, please put down a few lines for me.”


  “I’d surely like to,” she said. “I am of the field, though, so I cannot say I can match eloquence with one such as you. Anyway, I shall be traveling to Philadelphia with you—me and Harriet. Micajah Bland’s going as he did has changed some things. Likely we will have to change too.”

  We embraced again. I reached down for her bag and carried it over to the coach and stowed it away. When I looked back, I saw that Raymond and Otha and Harriet had been joined by Corrine and, to my surprise, Hawkins and Amy. They were all in deep conversation and exchanging embraces and affectionate words for Otha. I had never seen them so soft with each other, but too I had never seen the Underground in mourning for one of its own. Corrine looked different. She had traded in the mask of Virginia—her hair flowed down to her shoulders. Her ivory dress was plain. She wore neither powder nor rouge. When Hawkins spotted me, he nodded and gave, as much as was possible for him, a look of concern.

  We rode in a caravan of three coaches. Otha, Raymond, and I in the first coach, Corrine, Hawkins, and Amy in the second, and finally Harriet, Kessiah, and their driver, a young man conducted recently by Harriet, who swore himself to her. We bedded down that night at a small inn about an hour’s ride north of Manhattan island. But sleep brought me not one measure of peace, for no sooner had I closed my eyes than I found myself lost in baneful nightmares, so that I was out in the water, out in the river Goose, bursting through the waves, and when I came up I saw, all again, May drowning before me. And I thought myself back there, and seeing, already, the blue light gathering around, and knowing that the power was in me, I decided that this one would be different. But when I reached out, Little May turned and I saw it was not him but Micajah Bland.

  I awoke with a dreadful thought. I had created the passes, I had forged the letters of introduction. The fault for all this must lie with me. I thought of Simpson. I thought of McKiernan. I thought of Chalmers. I ran through all the events of that night. I thought of the days following and all the practiced forgeries. And I remembered that it was sometimes perfection that gave up the house agent, that sometimes the passes were too good, too practiced, and aroused suspicion. It had been me, I was certain of it.

  I had killed Micajah Bland. I had nearly killed Sophia. Perhaps I had doomed my mother, somehow, and maybe that is why I could not remember. I felt my chest tighten. I could not breathe. I rose from my bed, dressed, and then stumbled outside. I sat on the back porch and bent over and breathed and breathed and breathed. Sitting up, I saw a garden in the back. It was still late evening. I walked through the garden, and as I approached I heard familiar voices. Hawkins, Corrine, and Amy were there all seated on a circle of benches, each of them smoking a cigar. We exchanged brief greetings and I took my seat. By the moonlight, I saw Corrine inhale and then breathe out a long stream of smoke. And for a few long minutes there was only the night music of insects. Then Corrine took it upon herself to speak what was in all of our minds.

  “He was an uncommon man,” she said. “I knew him well—and liked him very much more. He was so uncommon. He found me all those years ago. He saved me. He showed me a world that I had not even glimpsed. I am not here without him.”

  There was now more silence and I watched as the faces around me alighted in the glow of the cigars. Guilt took hold of me, and I said, “He saved me too. Saved me from Ryland. Saved me from all those dumb notions of the swamps. Was he that first introduced me to books. I owe him more than could ever be known.”

  Amy nodded and then reached into her pouch. She offered a cigar. I took it and nodded a thank-you, then played with it between my fingers. Then I leaned into Hawkins, who struck up a light. I inhaled deep and said, “But I have learned. I tell you I have learned some things.”

  “We all know, Hiram,” said Hawkins. “Somebody say you headed down Maryland-way, goin down with Moses, as they say.”

  “If she still would have me.”

  “Oh, she will,” Hawkins said. “Moses would not stop for Bland, no more than Bland would have stopped for her. Might wait a few, but she is going. It is truly a terrible thing. But it also just as he would want—an uncommon man, as you say—but he went just as every one of us would want.”

  I felt sick at that moment. I remembered my dream. I said, “And how was that?”

  “Sure you want to know?” Amy asked. She said this softly and somehow this caused the whole blow to land with even greater effect. But I did want to know. As much as possible, I did, and my guilt stripped me of all my guile, so that as I inhaled this time, I began to cough and choke, and this gave Hawkins a great laugh, and then the whole party of them laughed together. And I watched them laughing until they all settled back into their silence. And when they had, I calmly said, “The papers. I did the papers. I believe it was me who got that man killed.”

  This was the cause for more laughter, but this time only from Hawkins and Amy.

  “I did the papers,” I said again. “No other way a man like Bland would have gotten caught, except by my hand.”

  “What you mean ain’t no other way?” asked Hawkins. “All kinds of ways.”

  “Especially in Alabama,” said Amy.

  “The papers,” I said. “That got him caught.”

  “No. That is not what happened at all,” Corrine said. “It had nothing to do with his papers.”

  “What then?” I asked.

  “He was so close,” Corrine said. “So close. He spent all those weeks scouting the shore along the Ohio River, until he found the perfect landing. We don’t precisely know how he did it, but he found Lydia with her boys and rowed down the Tennessee posing as their owner until he was in the free country of Indiana. But then, as I understand it, one of the children got sick, and it became hard on them to continue their travels by night.”

  “That’s how they got picked up,” said Hawkins. “White man stopped ’em for questioning. Thought Bland’s story was funny and took ’em to a local jail, waiting to see if it was any word on runaways.”

  “There was,” said Amy.

  “Bland could have left right there,” Hawkins said. “They had nothing on him. But as we’ve got it from the papers and dispatches of agents in the area, he kept trying to get to Lydia and the kids, until they jailed him too.”

  “We do not know how he was ultimately killed,” Corrine said. “But knowing Bland, he would have continued looking for an escape. And I suspect that his captors realized that the delivery of their Negroes, and the claiming of a likely reward, would be easier without an agent fixed on getting those Negroes away.”

  “My Lord, my Lord,” I moaned.

  “And damn y’all for sending him,” Hawkins said. “Alabama? All kinds of ways to get caught. Into the coffin for some babies?”

  I could have told Hawkins all that I had learned. I could have told him about Otha White. I could have told him about gingerbread. I could have told him about Thena and Kessiah. I could have told him how much more there was to the Underground, more than math and any angle, more than movement.

  But Hawkins was grieving in his own way, I knew. I was feeling it more even now, for the levels of grief and loss now began to unspool. Sophia, Micajah Bland, Georgie, my mother. I was not even angry about it. By then I knew that this was part of the work, to accept the losses. But I would not accept them all.

  23

  BACK IN PHILADELPHIA, I returned to my routine, alternating between my woodworking and the Underground. There was not much time for mourning. It was now September and the high season of conduction would soon be upon us. There was some concern that Bland had somehow been betrayed. We reviewed our entire system. Codes were changed. Methods of movement revised. Certain agents came under scrutiny. Relations with the western Underground were never the same again, for it was thought that they might have, witting or not, played some role in Bland’s destruction.

  I saw Kessiah quite a bit that month. This was the only go
od thing to come out of the moment, for it truly was like the discovery of some relative long lost. At the start of October, Harriet called on me. She suggested a walk through the city. So we headed toward the Schuylkill docks, then across the South Street bridge toward the western boundaries of the city.

  It was a cool, crisp afternoon. The leaves had begun to change and the people to bind themselves up in their long black coats and woolen scarves. Harriet wore a long brown dress, a cotton wrapper around her waist, and a bag across her body. For the first twenty minutes or so, we spoke only of bland things. Then as we moved farther out and the people began to fall away, our conversation veered toward its true destination.

  “How you holding up, friend?” Harriet asked.

  “Not so good,” I said. “I don’t know how anyone holds up against this. Bland was not the first, was he? Not the first agent you lost, I mean. Not for you.”

  “No, friend, he was not,” said Harriet. “And he won’t be the last. You had better get that.”