The Water Dancer

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  “My apologies, friend. I thought I had enough spirit to make it without one of those bouts,” she said. “The jump is done by the power of the story. It pulls from our particular histories, from all of our loves and all of our losses. All of that feeling is called up, and on the strength of our remembrances, we are moved. Sometimes it take more than other times, and on those former times, well, you seen what happened. I have made this jump so many times before, though. No idea why this one socked me so.”

  We walked and the woods opened into a clearing where men from the timber camps had been at work. Across the field I saw a cabin and, through a window, the flickering of a hearthfire.

  “That there’s our place,” she said. “But I suppose you must have some questions. There will not be much time after this, so I suggest you ask now.” We sat on a pair of stumps. The night was cool. A slight wind blew out from the forest and across the fields.

  On the Street we lived in a world of stories and tales, of hoodoo and professed conjuration, of prohibitions—no hogs slaughtered under moonlight, the floor never walked with one shoe. I did not believe in that world. Even as I knew what had happened to me, how I had come to Thena, how I had come out of the Goose, I thought the whole explicable, comprehendible through books. And maybe it is all explicable, and maybe this is that book. But nevertheless, when I was conducted, I underwent a drastic revision of the world around me, and what wonders and powers it held.

  “My grandmother was a pure-blood African. Went by the name of Santi Bess,” I said. “It was said that this Bess could unwind an African tale with such effect that sometimes a first frost would feel like a prairie heat.”

  Harriet, seated upon the stump, said nothing.

  “And Bess’s gift for stories was so prized that the Quality would bring her up during their socials and she would put her stories to songs and rhythms that they had never heard. They were amused by her and would toss coins. Bess would smile and scrape the coins into her apron. She never kept them. She gave them to the children in the quarters. She claimed to have no need and I think I now know why.

  “As the story goes, Bess came to my momma one night, and told her that she must walk to a place where Momma could not follow. They were born to two different worlds, she told her—Momma’s was here, but my grandmother’s was far gone. And now Bess must tell a story, the oldest story she knew, one that would turn back time itself, and journey her back to that place where her fathers were buried in honor, and her mothers gathered their own corn. That night Bess walked down to the river, in the middle of winter, and disappeared.

  “And Bess ain’t disappear alone. That same night forty-eight of the Tasked walked off from their plantations to never be seen again. And every one of ’em was pure-bloods, just like Santi Bess.

  “I have never known how to feel about this story, Harriet. My momma was left out of connection. Her father was sold off. Then she was sold off too. I thought I was done with all of that. I can barely see her face, for I have no memory of her now. But that story, and this Santi Bess…” I trailed off—shrinking back from the words forming in my throat. I turned to Harriet, stunned. “How have you done this?”

  “Sounds as if you already know, friend,” said Harriet. “Imagine the islands in a great river. And imagine that normal folks must swim from island to island—imagine that is their only method. But you, friend, you are different. Because you, unlike the others, can see a bridge across that river, many bridges even, connecting all the islands, many bridges, each one made of a different story. And you cannot just see the bridges, you can walk across, drive across, conduct across, with passengers in tow, sure as an engineer conduct a train. That is Conduction. The many bridges. The many stories. The way over the river.

  “It was a known practice among the older ones. And I have heard tell that even on the slave ship, folk leaped to the waves and were conducted, conducted back to their old African home.” Harriet sighed, shook her head, and said, “But we are here now. And we have forgotten the old songs and lost so many of our stories.”

  “There’s so much,” I said. “So much I can’t remember.”

  “Seems to me you remember quite a bit,” Harriet said.

  “I do. Everything. Every little small bit, but there is a gash in the thing, a gash in me, a gash where my mother should be. When I look back, I can see my childhood playing out like a stage show right here in front of me, but the main player is fog.”

  “Huh,” she said. Then she leaned on her stick and stood. “Ever consider you don’t really want to see?”

  “No,” I said. “Not really. I feel that it is the opposite, in fact. Like I am really straining to see.”

  Harriet nodded and then handed me the walking stick. I turned it in my hand, looking at the glyphs on each side.

  “Those markings won’t mean nothing to you. It is written in the language that only I hear. And what is important is not the markings, but the stick itself. Stripped from the sweet gum tree. Reminds me of them days when they put me out to the timbers. Worst days of my life. But they was the days that made me. I think about ’em sometimes, think about all that happened out there, and I like to break down and cry. It is a painful thing, what they have done to us. And there is a part of me that would like to forget. But when I grip that branch of sweet gum, I cannot help but remember.

  “I can’t say what done happened to you, Hiram. But if I were to venture a guess, I would say that there is some part of you that wants to forget, that is trying with all its might to forget. And what you need is something outside of yourself, something beyond you, a lever to unlock that thing you done shut away. Only you know what the thing might be. But I think if you can find that lever, then you can find your mother, and when you find your mother you will find that bridge.”

  “That how it worked for you? You put your hands on that sweet gum branch and everything was there?”

  “No. That’s not how it worked. But I am not like you. Kessiah told me some of it. We both mighta tasked, but we ain’t tasked the same. See, when I came up from that deep sleep, I ain’t just remember, I heard colors, I saw songs, I felt all the various odors of the world. Voices assaulted me from all over, and remembrances old as ancestors did not dim but burned bright as torches. I would watch them play out before me, and everywhere I walked, was just like you said, a whole stage of memories was with me.

  “They used to say I was touched. So I learned to regulate the power, to summon some voices and then make others diminish. Sometimes they were too strong and they would tumble me down, just as they did last night. But when I rose after, I rose upon different earth. It was the bridge, Hiram,” she said.

  “Conjured up?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “The story is always real. It is not made by me. It is made by the people. And the story is fit to certain points, like the base of a bridge, which cannot be altered by me, nor Santi, nor you.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Feels chancy to me. Like this thing can take me at any point—in the stables, on an actual bridge, in a field. Anywhere.”

  “Was it a trough in that stable?” she asked.

  “Sure was,” I said. “Filled with water. Felt like it sucked me right in.”

  “Bet it did,” she said. “Nothing chancy about any of that.”

  “I ain’t understanding.”

  “Don’t you see it, friend? You was standing at the ramp of the bridge. In every one of these stories—Santi into the river, you out of the Goose, us over the pier…”

  I sat there dumb.

  I still wasn’t getting it. And at that Harriet laughed.

  “Water, Hiram. Water. Conduction got to have water.”

  My mouth must have dropped, because Harriet started laughing even harder. And she had a right to laugh. It seemed so obvious now. Every time I’d felt the pull of the thing, felt the river of Conduction rushing al
ong—from the water trough in the stables, to the Goose that pulled Maynard and me off the bridge, to the Schuylkill near Bland’s home—there had always been water within reach. And now I thought of all of Corrine’s absurd efforts to access the power, and never once had we noted that element that now seemed most obvious.

  “Why didn’t you use it for Lydia?” I asked. We were now walking toward the cabin.

  “Because, to tell a man a story, you gotta know how it end,” said Harriet. “I never been to Alabama. Can’t jump to an end I ain’t never seen. And even knowing beginning and end, I have to know something of who I’m conducting in order to bring ’em along. Don’t usually have that luxury. Which is why my normal means are as any other agent. This time, though, it’s folks I know.”

  * * *

  —

  We walked over to the cottage and found those people. The door opened as we approached, and warmth breathed out. It was now deep into the night, but inside the cabin, everything teemed. We were greeted by a motley group of four men, all of them in tasking clothes. Two of these men had an aspect similar enough to Harriet that I knew they were kin. A third tended the fire that I’d seen burning through the window. My eyes lingered on the fourth, sensing something amiss, and then I realized that this one was a woman with her head nearly totally shorn. I thought of the two white women at the Convention who preached equality in every sphere, but I knew that this was a scheme of a different sort.

  “Hiram, this is Chase Piers,” Harriet said, gesturing toward the man tending the fire. “He is our host and we are thankful for his part in this.”

  Then, smiling at the other two men, whom I took to be kin, she said, “No such kind words for these two rascals.” Then she hugged them both and they all laughed.

  Harriet said, “These are my brothers Ben and Henry. Finally got some steel in these boys, took ’em long enough. But I guess if Henry had not stayed down this way he never woulda met his wife.”

  And now Harriet went over to the woman whose hair was shorn, rubbed the round egg of her head, and laughed.

  “Every whit of this is your making,” the woman said, smiling but annoyed. “Why, I knows the Lord must be carrying us up out the coffin, for he would not have a girl give away a blossom of hair such as mine for still another chain.”

  “Worked, didn’t it?” said Harriet.

  The girl nodded and smiled, less annoyed.

  “This is Jane,” Harriet said. “She’s Henry’s wife.”

  Jane now smiled at me. The absence of hair put the focus on her striking face, the sharp angles of her cheeks, her small eyes and large ears. And there was a boisterous faith in her, a feeling shared among all who gathered before the hearth. By then I had been party to enough rescues to know that this was not normal. Fear was normal. Whispers were normal. But this group laughed like they was already North. It was nothing like I’d seen in Virginia or even among those who’d come through the Philadelphia station. The difference was Harriet, who by way of Conduction, by weaving of legend, was now her own one-woman war against the Task, and in particular against the county that had her so. And seeing this, even after having seen Conduction, I decided that the stories really must be true. Harriet really had pulled the pistol on the coward. She really had conducted across a river in winter. The whip really had melted in the overseer’s hand. She was the only agent never to fail at a single rescue, never to lose a passenger on the rail. And though that is the story, it was known, even then, among those huddling in the warmth of that cabin. For when they spoke of their departure, they spoke of it as divine right. Here they were on the cusp of a realized prophecy, and before them was their prophet, Moses, filling them up with certainty.

  Harriet now unspooled the plan. “It is the tradition that a rescue be kept simple and small, and not just the tradition, but wisdom,” she said. “But you are all known to me, every one, and I have agreed to your terms and you have agreed to mine, which are simple—none shall turn back.”

  I felt, in this moment, perhaps more than in the Conduction itself, that all the sobriquets that attended Harriet were earned. Her manner, calm and steely, would have been enough. But it was the effect she had on the others. None spoke. It seemed as though the night itself froze and there was only Harriet holding our attention. And when she offered her edict—none shall turn back—it didn’t fill us with fear, for it did not seem a threat but prophecy.

  “Jane and Henry, you shall remain here at Chase’s place. Keep indoors until tomorrow night. On account of it being Sunday, should be some time before they figure you two done picked up and left. Ben, I know you won’t be tasking, but do me a favor and make yourself seen—just in case. We don’t want old Broadus and his people seeing the threads until the web is all around them. About this time tomorrow night, we shall meet at Daddy’s place, rest a taste, and then we are gone.”

  She paused, drew herself back, and then stood with the aid of her walking stick.

  “Now, here we arrive upon the complication. Hiram, there is one who ain’t among us. My brother Robert has a baby coming, and would not like to go at all but for the fact that Broadus is ready to put him on the auction block. Robert got to run, but he insisted that he remain with his wife until the last second he could. It was not my wish to leave the thing as so, but family gets ahold of your heart and starts to twisting, and, well, what comes of that often is not wise.

  “But I have agreed, only on the notion that he be kept in the dark as to the whole of our plans. I’ll tell him like I’m telling the rest of you, when I get him under my eyes. So Robert must be gotten and you, Hiram, must do the getting, friend.”

  The charge was new, though not wholly without expectation. Harriet had pointedly been round-ways in her description of what we faced. Perhaps it was to prevent me from thinking too much and carrying any apprehension. This was not Virginia and I would be going it alone.

  “I’d like to go myself,” she said. “But Robert is upon the home plantation and my workings there are very much suspected. They’ll be looking for me. You will be less likely to be suspected, and if you are, you have your passes that shall give you and Robert the right to the road.”

  I nodded. “So when shall I leave?”

  “Right now, friend. Right now,” she said. “You must make it to Robert’s place before the daylight. Then wait, keep yourself out of range, and then soon as night fall, you and Robert head to my daddy’s—Robert will know the way.”

  “I got him,” I said.

  “One more thing, Hiram,” said Harriet. She turned to Chase Piers and said, “Chase, get him that thing.”

  Chase went into a small cupboard and pulled out something wrapped in fabric. He handed it to Harriet, who then unwrapped the fabric, and I now saw that she held a pistol that glinted in the fire-light. “Take this,” she said, handing the thing to me. “It’s for them. But more it’s for you. If you have to use it, then it will likely be too late and you will want it for both.”

  * * *

  —

  So I walked back out into the woods, moving as instructed. There were secret signs guiding my path. And though it was night, the signs were visible by moonlight, more so because I knew what to search for—a star carved into the bark of black oak; five felled branches all fastened to the ground, two of them pointing east; a large stone with a crescent moon drawn on top and a spade underneath. I missed a few of these, found myself turned around, but nonetheless, I was at Robert’s place before sunrise and thus with time to spare. The Broadus plantation was not as lush as my Lockless, and the quarters were little more than hovels arranged haphazard in the forest. Broadus had not even bothered to have the trees cleared from around. And I thought that if this chaotic arrangement gave any tell as to what it was like to task down here, I well understood why Harriet would like to forget.

  It was now Sunday morning, which meant no Task, and no Task meant no count, s
o the headman would not notice Robert’s parting until the next day. We’d be in Philadelphia by then, with Raymond and Otha, plotting on the next step to Canada or New York. The plan, as much as I knew of it, called for Robert to step out of his quarters just before sunrise, whistle once, and then walk to the woods where we would meet. Once Robert approached, I was to speak a phrase to let him know my intentions, and he would respond with his own. Failing any of that, I would know that something had gone wrong and would immediately then head off myself back to Chase Piers’s cabin. And so I waited, at some distance, until I saw a dark figure step outside and look around. I heard a whistle and then watched the figure begin making its way out from the cabin into the woods. I walked toward the figure and said, “The Zion train is upon you.”

  “And I should like to be aboard,” Robert said. He was a normal-sized man, with a sad countenance holding none of the joy or confidence that Harriet’s other family had offered. There was weight to him, and rarely had I seen a man woeful at the prospect of rescue from the Task.

  “We leave at nightfall,” I said. “Make all your arrangements, and then meet me here.”

  Robert nodded again and headed back to his cabin.

  I retreated deeper into the woods. Though there would be no tasking this day, I did not wish to attract any attention. So I walked until the woods rose upwards and, climbing up a hill, found a cave where I kept peace until dark. Then as the appointed hour approached I made my way back. But Robert did not appear. I waited longer, and when he did not show, I wondered if Robert had staked out the wrong time, because I knew I had not. I thought to leave without him, for Harriet would make no exceptions, and I think, were I back in Virginia, I might well have done it. But the months had changed me, and I thought often during those days since the New York Convention of how Micajah Bland had died, of how he could have left Lydia and made his way back. And I thought of how he would have rather faced Otha in the next life than in this one having done such a thing. And I still had my passes should I need them. So there alone I made a decision to return with Harriet’s brother Robert or not return at all. I left the wood to check on his cabin.