Та-Нехаси Коутс - The Water Dancer

She trailed off as though working her way through a thought, and then said, “Hiram, is that man grooming me for something? Is it his intention to get out of custom, and finally install me as his Tennessee wife?”

“Is that what you want? Tennessee?” I asked.

“Is that what the hell you think I want?” she asked. “Don’t you know by now? What I want is the same thing I have always wanted, what I have always told you I wanted. I want my hands, my legs, my arms, my smile, all my precious parts to be mine and mine alone.”

She turned toward me now, and though I was still looking at the ceiling I could feel her looking directly at me.

“And should I feel a need, should I desire to give all that to some other, then it must be my own need, my own desire to do as such. Do you understand, Hiram?”

“I do.”

“You do not. You can’t.”

“Then why do you keep telling me?”

“I am not telling you, I am telling myself. I am remembering my promises to myself and to my Caroline.”

We lay there in silence until we fell asleep. But I forgot none of the conversation. The time was so clearly now. I had performed my duties well, keeping Hawkins informed. And more, I had opened the secret of Conduction for myself. I felt it now time for Corrine Quinn to make good on her portion of the bargain.

Holiday came upon us. It was to be a lonely time. The Walker clan would not be returning that year, and with Maynard gone my father now faced the prospect of the blessed season all alone. But Corrine Quinn, having grown closer and closer to him, relieved his lonesome situation by coming to Lockless with her own retinue—this time much larger than merely Hawkins and Amy. They were trusted cooks, maids, and other caretakers. And too Corrine brought a collection of cousins and friends to entertain my father, who was now up in age. And this ensemble pleased him greatly, for there was a rapt audience before him eager to hear the tales of old Virginia.

It was a charade, of course. Every one of these cooks, caretakers, and cousins was an agent—some whom I’d known from my time training at Bryceton and others who’d worked out of the Starfall station. The plan was now clear to me. As Elm County declined and fell into obsolescence, and the Quality quit the country, in the crawl-space left behind, the Underground would ply its trade, expanding its war. Looking back now from the prospect of years, I confess myself filled with admiration. Corrine was daring, ruthless, ingenious, and while Virginia lived in fear of another Prophet Gabriel or Nat Turner, what they should have feared was right in their own home, in the garb of ladyhood, the model of fine breeding, porcelain elegance, and undying grace.

I could not see the genius of it, not at the time, for we were, even if united in our goal, too much committed to opposing routes. The tasking men were people to me, not weapons, nor cargo, but people with lives and stories and lineage, all of which I remembered, and the longer I served on the Underground, this sense did not diminish but increased. So it was that day, at the closing of the year, when I insisted on what must be done, that we stood at opposite ends.

We were down by the Street. Our story was simple—Corrine had desired a tour of the old quarters and I was her guide. So I had escorted her down from the main house and we made small, insignificant talk, until we cleared the gardens and the orchards and found ourselves on the winding path to the Street.

“When I came back to Howell’s, it was on the promise that a family would be conducted north,” I said. “The time for that conduction is now.”

“And why now?” she asked.

“Something happened here a couple of weeks ago,” I said. “Somebody got after Thena. Took an axe-handle to her head and then busted up her quarters. Took all the money she had been saving from the washing.”

“My Lord,” she said, and a look of real concern broke through the mask of ladyhood. “Did you find the villain?”

“No,” I said. “She don’t remember who it was. Besides, the way people are moved in and out of here these days…tough to tell. I know more of this crew you have brought with you than of the people who work here every day.”

“Should we investigate?”

“No,” I said. “We should get her out.”

“But not just her, right? There is another—your Sophia.”

“Not mine,” I said. “Just Sophia.”

“Well, I’ll be,” Corrine said with a faint smile. “How much have you grown in one year? It truly is a marvel. You really are one of us. Forgive me, it is a thing to behold.”

She was regarding me in amazement, though I now think she was not so much regarding me in that moment as regarding the fruit of her own endeavor, so that it was not I who amazed Corrine so much as her own powers.

“Do you yet remember?” she asked.

“Remember?”

“Your mother,” she said. “Have your remembrances of her returned yet?”

“No,” I said. “But I have had other concerns.”

“Of course, forgive me. Sophia.”

“I am worried that Nathaniel Walker will call her title, call her down to Tennessee.”

“Oh, you needn’t worry about that,” Sophia said.

“Why?”

“Because I made arrangements with him a year ago. In one week, her title will revert to me.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Corrine gave me a look of bemused concern.

“Don’t you?” she said. “She’s had his child, hasn’t she?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then you understand,” she said. “You are, after all, a man yourself, a simple creature of severe but brief interests, subject to seasons of lust that wax and wane. As is your uncle, your man of Quality, Nathaniel Walker. And now that he is in Tennessee, he has an entire field for his passions. What would he need of Sophia?”

“But he called on her,” I said. “It was not but two weeks ago that he called on her.”

“I am sure he did,” she said. “A souvenir, perhaps?”

Corrine Quinn was among the most fanatical agents I ever encountered on the Underground. All of these fanatics were white. They took slavery as a personal insult or affront, a stain upon their name. They had seen women carried off to fancy, or watched as a father was stripped and beaten in front of his child, or seen whole families pinned like hogs into rail-cars, steam-boats, and jails. Slavery humiliated them, because it offended a basic sense of goodness that they believed themselves to possess. And when their cousins perpetrated the base practice, it served to remind them how easily they might do the same. They scorned their barbaric brethren, but they were brethren all the same. So their opposition was a kind of vanity, a hatred of slavery that far outranked any love of the slave. Corrine was no different, and it was why, relentless as she was against slavery, she could so casually condemn me to the hole, condemn Georgie Parks to death, and mock an outrage put upon Sophia.

I had not put it together like this in that moment. What I had was not logic but anger, and not anger at the slandering of something I owned, but of someone who held me upright in the darkest night of my life. But I did not vent this anger. I had been practicing the mask long before I met Corrine. Instead, I simply said, “I want them out. Both of them.”

“There’s no need,” said Corrine. “I have title to the girl, and so she is saved.”

“And Thena?”

“It’s not time, Hiram,” she said. “There are a great many things in the works, and we must take care to not endanger them. The powers of Elm County are diminished and every day we grow stronger, but we must take care. And I have done much already that might arouse suspicion. There is the fact of what we have done at Starfall. There is the fact that both of you ran, that the girl ran. Did she tell you I looked after her?”