The Water Dancer: A Novel (26 page)

“I did not wake in Dorchester but in some other time. I saw Abe racing across the land and his foot-tracks set the trees to fire. The forests burned to cinder. The ash fell to the ground. And then the ash rose with the wind, until it formed itself into a whole company of black men in blue, black men with rifles upon their shoulders. And I was there with them, Hiram. And we were a multitude. In the eyes of this army assembled before me, I beheld the humiliations of slavery burning like fire. And each of these men had the face of young Abe.

“I stood upon a high bluff, soldiers arrayed around me. Below we saw the great range of our shackled country, its crops, rooted in flesh and watered with blood. And a song rose up among these men—this legion of Abes—as they stood in ranks, and the song was that old feeling put to hymn, and on my sign we fell down upon this sinful country, and our battle-cry was as mighty as a great river conducted through a high and narrow valley.

“I awoke. I saw my momma crying. I had been down under for months. All thought me lost. None knew that I had been found. All that year my body recovered. Whole weeks would pass, and I would not speak. But there were words aplenty in my head. And I knew, at that young age, that someday the season of running would pass, we would take our victories as we wanted, not as they were given, and we would fall upon this country in the spirit of all those taken over the nameless. And we would scourge this Natchez. And we would burn this Baton Rouge.”

The light of Harriet began to dim now, gradually as it had arisen. And I felt my body slowly coming back to me—my thumping heart, my heaving lungs, my hands, my legs, my feet, all now landing, not on water, but solid ground.

“Young Abe. I have not forgotten you. Before Undergrounds and Conductions, before agents and orphans, before Micajah Bland, when I was but a girl you gave me the first feeling of what it might mean to be free. I heard they captured you by Hampton’s Mark, not so far from Elias Creek. They say you were at last worn down, but still and all, it took a town to tackle you. I do not believe them. All who have seen you know the truth. You might be lamed, but you shall never be parted.”

Now the light had fallen back to palest green. My eyes were restored. I looked out. The docks, the river, the piers, were all gone, and looking up I saw, where there had once been clouds, a clear sky and the North Star blinking out. I was on an outcropping with a small bank of woods behind us and a large empty field in front and below. I looked back along the path to see from where we had come, but there was nothing but the woods. I heard Harriet moan and I saw she was leaning on her walking stick. With a trembling voice she said, “Horse…Saddle.”

She took a step back and tumbled backward to the ground. I ran to her and held up her head. Her eyes rolled back and she moaned softly. That was when I heard the horn. I laid Harriet softly upon the ground and turned and looked out across the field and I saw them there, if only as shadows—tasking folk making their way out. And I knew we were not in Philadelphia anymore. A door had opened. The land had folded like fabric. Conduction. Conduction. Conduction.

I
WAS IN NEW COUNTRY—THE
trees, the smells, the birds—and just then I saw the sun breaking, and all of it coming alive. I could not take to the roads. Ryland would be watching. And too there were tasking folks of uncertain loyalties who might want to claim the grand bounty that forever hung over the head of Moses. I stood there for a moment, looking down from the outcropping. The sun was just beginning to blow yellow over the horizon. I gathered up Harriet and slung her, gently as I could, over one shoulder. Then I squatted down and took her walking stick in hand. I pushed back into the woods, slowly but deliberately, clearing the branches and brambles with the stick, then walking into the space I’d opened. After an hour of this, with some intermittent rest, I spotted a dry gully beneath some shrubbery. I saw that there was just enough space here to lay Harriet, but not enough for me. Her safety was uppermost. I could be left to chance. I pushed deeper into the woods, thinking that should I be taken, I would like to be taken alone. At nightfall, I would return for Harriet, who I hoped would have roused herself by then.

In the early afternoon, I heard woodsmen from a nearby timber camp come out for scouting. I was perfectly still, which was nothing when measured next to the time I’d spent confined in that Virginia burial pit. Later, I saw two low whites and their hounds out for hunting. But I had sprinkled graveyard dust all around, which I knew would conceal my trail. I saw a group of children—some Quality, some Tasked—out at play and wondered if they might take my hiding place for their own. But they scooted on. And then, after the longest day I had ever lived, I rejoiced as the shade of night drew over the earth. The moon flew up high, and its rise was carried as much in the firmament as in my nervous heart.

I walked back to the gully, and pulling away the brush, I saw Harriet still lying there, as I left her, walking stick across her chest, like a pharaoh entombed. I reached to touch her face, as she had so often touched mine. It was cold to the touch. I looked down and saw her lungs heaving strong, and when I found her face again, I saw that her eyes were open. She smiled and said, “Evening, friend.”

She was up in minutes. It was as if the whole thing was but a nap. We walked for some time, following a dirt road, but keeping ourselves to the woods, so we would see any patrol long before it was upon us.

“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 along—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.
”