The Water Dancer: A Novel (27 page)

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, so 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.

As I approached I heard a woman yelling, and through the open door I saw the woman pacing about and Robert on the bed with his head hung between his hands. I watched from outside for a moment as the woman inveighed against Robert with a mixture of rage and pain.

“I know you are leaving me here for some social with that Jennings girl,” she said. “I know you, Robert Ross. I know you are leaving me, and you had better be an honorable man and say it as such.”

“Mary, it’s just like I done said—I am going to see my brother and my ma and pa,” said Robert. “Ain’t nothing but a Sunday. You know this. Look, there’s Jacob”—and at this Robert motioned out the door toward me—“I told you bout him. From the Harrison place. He got people that way too, ain’t that right, Jacob?”

Mary turned to me, standing outside, looked me over, and rolled her eyes.

“I ain’t never seen no Jacob,” she said.

“He right there,” Robert said.

“You ain’t never need any kind of partner for the walk before,” she said. “What done changed? I never seen this man before. I know he ain’t from around here. How bout I walk with you stead of him. I know what you doing, Robert Ross. I know all about that Jennings girl.”

I was in the doorframe of the quarters. I now stepped inside. And saw Mary fully—a small woman with a righteous rage all over her. She really did know Robert, even if she did not directly know which way he was now heading. She looked me over again and said, “Jacob, huh? How bout I march over to the Jennings place and ask about you.”

“We ain’t doing that,” I said.

“Ain’t no ‘we.’ I do it by my lonesome, right now.”

“No. I can’t let you.”

“Really. So you saying you gonna stop me?”

“My ambition, ma’am,” I said, “is that you will stop yourself.”

Mary shot me an incredulous look. I had to move fast.

“You right,” I said. “Ain’t no Jacob around here. But should you act as you now claiming to would bring pain upon you and everyone you love in a kind of way that go far beyond finding Robert sneaking around with a girl.”

Behind me I heard Robert moan and say, “Baby…”

“Mrs. Mary,” I said. “It is apparent to me that you have not been given the full shape of things. You are right. Robert is stealing away. Robert got to steal away, and there ain’t a thing you should want to do about it.”

“Damn if I shouldn’t,” she said.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “I really don’t think you should. I know he ain’t been straight with you, but I will tell you directly. Broadus bout to put this man on the block. And when he do, you will have a better chance of walking on water than seeing your husband in this life again.”

“He been running that business for a year now,” she said, “and Broadus ain’t done nothing. Robert work too hard for them to move.”

“Robert working hard is the first reason to move him. Strapping man like that fetch a good price. And what nigger ever been saved on account of working hard? You got that much faith in these people? I been giving this place a good survey. It is teetering. I done seen many a farm like it before. They selling folks off ’cause they got to. I seen it before. And I am telling you now, telling you straight, that your Robert got two choices—the auction block with Broadus, or to run with me.”

If there was an official rulebook for the Underground, I was in violation of its most primary articles. Agents worked hard to be seen only by those they were conducting. And they never identified their true business, preferring any number of other stories. But I had given it all up, in hopes, with time against us, of swaying Mary to let us go.

“The Underground offers the chance at reunion,” I said. “I hate to divide you. I know what it is, I tell you, I do. I am divided myself—got a gal down in Virginia who I think of every minute of every hour of every day. I was forced from her. But better to be forced north by the Underground than be forced deeper into the coffin. This is the only way, I am telling you.

“I have heard the two of you are new with child, and I know what must weigh on you. I was an orphan, Mrs. Mary. My momma was sold away and my daddy wasn’t worth spit. I know you must be fearing that child coming up without a daddy, and I have a feeling for that stronger than you can know.

“But you have got to get this, ma’am. Your Robert will be taken—either by us or by them, but he will be taken. You know who we are. You know what we do. And you know our sign. We are people of honor, ma’am. And I tell you, upon my word, we will not rest until you and your Robert are brought into reunion.”

She stood there dazed and fell back a step. She moaned, “No, no,” and shook her head. And I remembered, in that moment, Sophia moaning when the hounds closed in. But just as swiftly I remembered something else—back in Virginia, at Bryceton, before we were to leave to rescue Parnel Johns. I remembered how much I distrusted it all, and how Isaiah Fields became Micajah Bland, and how his trust in me gave me trust in all the everything that followed. That was the spirit I summoned up just then.

“My name,” I said. “My name is Hiram, ma’am. Your Robert Ross is my passenger and I am his conductor. On my life, ma’am, he shall not be lost. And nor shall you.”

A soft tear rolled down Mary’s cheek. She gathered herself a moment and then brushed past me. “I swear, Robert, if this is a girl, I will find you, and I am telling you that this man, this Hiram and his high words, they will not save you.”

I felt I should look away. They deserved the moment, for there would not be another in some time. But thinking back on all that I said, thinking back on Virginia, thinking back on Sophia, I could not move.

Robert pulled her close. He kissed her warm and soft. “Not running to no girl, Mary,” he said. “I’m running for a girl, and that girl is you.”

That fight with Robert and Mary set us back some. Without it we could have done the trip across the backwoods, and been to Harriet’s parents’ place well in time for our departure. But now we must take the roads, which was not ideal. Harriet, prophet that she was, had foreseen this—I had the passes. So it was to the roads then. I was trusting to Robert, who now directed us to the home of their mother and father, Ma Rit and Pop Ross. Harriet had kept every portion of the plan in its own box so that should any of us be taken, none—no matter how beaten and whipped—would be able to sketch the full picture.

Robert was quiet for the first portion of the trip, reserving his words solely for directions. I let him be. Whatever my curiosities, the parting had been hard enough and I had no intentions whatever of asking him to relive it. But then it happened as it always does with me. At a certain point, Robert just started talking.

“You know the plan was to leave her, don’t you?” he said.

“Yep. And that’s precisely how it played,” I responded.

“Ain’t what I mean,” Robert said. “Plan was to leave her for good. For me to get on by my lonesome, and find a new life up in the North.”

“And your child?”

“Ain’t no child—not of mine at least. I know that. And she know that.”

We were quiet for a minute.

“Broadus,” I said.

“Broadus son,” Robert said. “Him and Mary bout the same age. Played together as kids. Then was parted, as we all are. I guess he had a thing for her even back then. And now a man, he thought he would make good on those feelings, no matter how fixed and honest Mary was. Maybe she felt the same. She surely ain’t stop him.”

“And how was she to do that?” I asked.

“Man, I don’t know,” Robert said in frustration. “How anybody do anything down here? But I am telling you, I’d be damned if I was gon be raising some white man’s child.”

“So you run then.”

“So I run then.”

“Broadus wasn’t bout to sell you, was he?”

“No, he was. I ain’t know when but he was. For a while I thought that might well be a relief from my position. I did not have any desire to see Natchez, but if it helped me forget Mary, and my humiliation, perhaps it was for the best.”