Та-Нехаси Коутс - The Water Dancer

And then I guided her down toward the banks, and as we walked I spoke of that night, that last Holiday when we were all there together, and more than spoke it, I felt it, made it real to me—Conway and Kat, Philipa and Brick, Thena all wrathy in front of the fire—“Land, niggers,” she said. “Land.” And I remembered, then, Georgie Parks, Amber, and their little boy. And I remembered the free ones—Edgar and Patience, Pap and Grease. And no sooner did I think of them than I felt Sophia jump with a start, and squeeze my hand, and I knew then that it had begun.

There was a bank of fog covering the river, and over top of it we saw them—phantoms flittering before us, in that ghostly blue, the entire range of them who had been there on that Holiday night. Georgie Parks was on his jaw-harp, Edgar at the banjo, Pap and Grease were hollering, and all the rest circled and danced around the fire. We could hear them, not in our ears, but somewhere deep beneath the skin. It seemed that the bank of fog was alive, for its wispy fingers seemed to move in time with the music, seemed to stretch toward us and, on beat, gently induce us to join.

It was a simple thing to accept the invitation—all that it required was a squeeze of that wooden horse. When I did this, those same fingers shot out, took hold of us, jerked us forward and released us. I felt Sophia stumbling, and grabbed ahold of her hand. When she’d recovered, she looked back at me stunned. And then when we looked out forward, we saw that the forest was in front of us, and the river, the bank of fog, and the phantoms were behind. Looking back across, we could see what happened—we’d been conducted across the river to the other side.

Looking down, we saw the blue tendrils of mist retreating off of us, and we heard the music picking up again, louder and louder—Georgie still on the jaw-harp, Edgar with his banjo, while the rest of them hollered and danced, and again we saw the fingers of fog reach for us, beckoning us with the beat. Now I pulled the wooden horse from my pocket and held it aloft—and it glowed blue in my hand. And I looked to Sophia and then I squeezed again, and the mists shot out, snatched us up, and pulled us to the other side of the river. When we were released, Sophia stumbled and fell. I helped her up and we turned again and heard the music rising and saw, again, the fingers of fog beckon.

“It’s like dancing,” I said.

And I squeezed again, but this time, Sophia leaned into the fog with all her weight, giving in to it, riding it, so that she landed firm on her feet. I squeezed again and we were again conducted. Squeezed again and were conducted. Squeezed again and were conducted. Then, thinking of my old home with Thena and all my days there, and what it had been to me through all those years, I squeezed again and the blue tendrils snatched us up, and this time, when they released us, we found ourselves right back there on the Street, and as the fog retreated, the last image we had was of a woman water dancing, a jar on her head, dancing away from us until, with the most incredible grace, she angled her head so that the jar slid down, and reaching up she caught the jar by the neck, laughed, drank from it, and offered it up to someone unseen as she faded away.

When we returned to the cabin, Sophia climbed up to the loft. I tried to follow but collapsed back in a heap and crash so loud that I woke Thena.

“Hell are y’all doing?” she yelled.

“Just out for some air,” Sophia said.

“Air, huh?” Thena said skeptically.

Sophia reached down and helped me up the ladder, and when I got to the top I collapsed into a dreamless sleep. I awoke early the next morning and dragged myself through my tasks.

The night following, we were there laid out in the loft as usual, in our late-night conversations.

“Where’d you first see the water dance?” I asked.

“Don’t even remember,” Sophia said. “Where I’m from, everybody do it. Some better than others. But they start us on it young down there. It’s tied to the place, you know?”

“I don’t,” I said. “Never knew where it came from.”

“It’s a story,” she said. “Was a big king who come over from Africa on the slave ship with his people. But when they got close to shore, him and his folk took over, killed all the white folks, threw ’em overboard, and tried to sail back home. But the ship run aground, and when the king look out, he see that the white folks’ army is coming for him with they guns and all. So the chief told his people to walk out into the water, to sing and dance as they walked, that the water-goddess brought ’em here, and the water-goddess would take ’em back home.

“And when we dance as we do, with the water balanced on our head, we are giving praise to them who danced on the waves. We have flipped it, you see? As we must do all things, make a way out of what is given. Ain’t that what you done last night? Ain’t that what you say you do? Flipped it. It’s what Santi Bess done, ain’t it? She all I could think about when we came back up out of it last night. That king. The water dance. Santi Bess. You.

“ ‘It’s like dancing.’ Ain’t that what you said? It’s what Santi Bess done. She ain’t walk into no water. She danced, and she passed that dance on to you.

“And that’s why they came for you, the Underground,” she said.

“Yep,” I said. “I had done it before, but not of my own deciding. And they had caught wind of me, and had been watching me. And then after Maynard, well…”

“That’s how it happened, huh? That’s how you come up out the Goose. That’s how you taking us up out of Lockless.”

“It is,” I said. “But there is a problem, one I do not yet quite have figured. The thing works on memory, and the deeper the memory, the farther away it can carry you. My memory of that Holiday night is tied to Georgie, and it’s tied to this horse that was my gift to him and his baby. But to conduct y’all that far, I need a deeper memory, and need another object tied to that memory to be my guide.”

“How bout that coin you used to always carry?”

“Yeah, I done tried that. It can’t carry me far enough. One thing to cross a river. Whole nother to cross a country. Gotta be deeper.”

Sophia was quiet for a moment and then she said, “That’s quite the power. Gotta be that you are a man of some importance to this Underground.”

“That’s what Corrine say.”

“And this is why she won’t let you loose.”

“It’s more than that,” I said. “But that is the larger part of it.”

“So then, Hiram,” she said. “What is your intention toward me, toward my Caroline? What is our life to be?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I figured I’d get you set up somewhere. And I could see y’all from time to time.”

“No,” she said.

“What?” I said.

“We not going,” she said.

“Sophia, it’s what we wanted. It’s why we was running.”

“ ‘We,’ Hiram,” she said. “ ‘We,’ you understand?”

“I would like nothing more than to go with you, to leave it all back here. But you must see why I cannot. After all I have told you, after what I have shared of this war that we find upon us, you must see why I can’t leave.”

“I am not telling you to leave. I am saying that we, my Carrie and me, we are not leaving without you. I have lived here so long watching these families go to pieces. And here I have formed one, with you, with a man who is, as you have said yourself, blood of my Caroline. She is your kin, and I know it is a horrible thing to say, but I am telling you, you are her daddy, more of a daddy than that girl would ever have.”

“You know what you saying?” I said. “Do you know what you are walking away from?”