The Water Dancer

Like all enslaved people, Hiram has dreamed of escaping the plantation his whole life. However, he is unusual in that he “possesse[s] the means” to do so. He was a “strange,” highly observant child, with an extraordinary gift of memory. Any information he learned, he remembered, no matter how complex, detailed, or trivial. However, the one thing he is not able to remember is Rose. She was taken when he was nine years old, but all his memories of her are “secondhand,” as if he never knew her personally but only learned about her from other people’s stories. 

When Hiram thinks back to the day that Rose was sold, he remembers “screams” and “pleading,” as well as a “long trough of water.” After Rose is taken, Hiram is seized by a new determination to escape. One Sunday in December, he awakes early. The Street is deserted, as everyone is inside, trying to keep warm. Hiram walks past the cabin belonging to Boss Harlan, a “low white” who works as the overseer on the plantation. He searches for signs that might lead him to Rose. He thinks again and again of the trough of water, and suddenly starts running as fast as he can go. He is overwhelmed by visions, and sees the blue light that will, many years later, appear by the bridge.

However, the blue light disappears, and Hiram finds himself back in the cabin where he woke up. When he tries to think of Rose, the memory of her dissolves into wisps. He falls asleep and wakes again realizing that he is now completely alone. He goes to collect the allocation of pork and corn he is given for the week, then gathers his clothes and marbles—his only possessions—and walks over to Thena’s cabin. Although most people on the Street are sociable, Thena “ke[eps] to herself.” Nowadays she is bitter and unfriendly, but Hiram has heard that in the past, she was a mother “not just to five children of her own but to all the children of the Street.” 

Now those children are gone. Hiram is unsure if showing up at Thena’s house is a good idea, as there are others who are more likely to want to take him in. Yet he isn’t put off by Thena’s bitterness and aggression, because he sees that it comes from a place of pain. He reasons that “she [is] not the meanest woman at Lockless, but the most honest.” After he knocks and gets no answer, Hiram enters the cabin and curls up in the loft. He wakes up to the smell of food and Thena telling him to come down to eat.

It takes a year and a half of living with Thena for Hiram to understand the source of her pain. One night he hears her talking to someone named John in her sleep. Ever since Hiram moved in with her, Thena’s “rages” have begun to subside. However, when she wakes and notices that Hiram was watching her dream, she furiously runs him out of the house. He runs to the cabin he used to share with Rose and waits on the steps until the Task begins for the day. He is now 11 and rather small, but still has to “work like a man.” On a hot day like this, he and the other children are charged with bringing water to those who are tasking in the fields. 

At the end of the workday, Hiram does not at first go back to Thena’s cabin. Then, when he does go, realizes that she has been waiting for him to come home to eat dinner. After they eat, Thena whispers to Hiram that her husband was known as Big John. He died of a fever, which should be a natural death, but in fact it was “murder.” She explains that Big John was the driver assigned to watch over the tobacco fields. He didn’t get the job for being cruel, but rather for being intelligent and skilled. She reflects that the white enslavers’ “whole lives depended on him.” 

Thena reminds Hiram that all the wealth of Lockless comes from the tobacco fields. John was favored by the white bosses, but he insisted that whatever extra provisions he was given were allocated to those who were struggling. She emphasizes that she loved John, and that after he died everything went “bad.” Many others died of fever too, and Thena believes the issue was caused by the land rebelling against the perverse horrors of slavery. She says she remembers Rose and Emma, how they used to dance, and urges Hiram not to forget them, no matter how much it hurts.

Thena then says that five of her own children were sold at the racetrack, too. She says she knows the other enslaved people in their community talk about how she is “broken,” but that she thinks Hiram sought her out to take care of him for a reason. She says she can’t take Rose’s place as Hiram’s mother, but that she appreciates that he chose her. 

Hiram’s father, Howell Walker, is the master of Lockless. When Hiram occasionally sees him riding through the plantation on his horse, Howell tips his hat at him. Hiram knows that Howell sold Rose, yet Hiram cannot help but see him as an aspirational figure. Still young, he is only just beginning to understand the distinction between the Quality and the Tasked, and dreams about the life of “splendor and regale” that the Quality lead.

One Sunday, Hiram is in the Street, performing a song where he sings both the call and response, taking turns to mimic the voices of the elders who have gathered around him. The elders are delighted by the performance, but Hiram is distracted by the arrival of Howell, who takes something from his hat and throws it toward his son. Hiram catches it one-handed. Howell, who is smiling, nods at Hiram and walks away. Back in Thena’s cabin, Hiram permits himself to look at the object, and sees that it is a copper coin. He convinces himself that this is his “ticket out of the fields and off the Street.”  

The next day, after dinner, Hiram peeks down from the loft to see Boss Harlan speaking with Thena. After he leaves, Thena tells Hiram that his life is about to “get more brutal,” because he is being called to work in the house. She urges that Hiram must not forget her, and warns him that in the house, he will be under the constant surveillance of the white people. She tells him to remember that the white people aren’t his family, and that she is more his mother than Howell will ever be his father.

However, the next day when Hiram walks up to the house, he shudders with awe, feeling that the house belongs to him, that it is “[his] by blood.” Howell’s butler, Roscoe, leads Hiram and Thena down to the space in the basement where Hiram will sleep. When Roscoe takes him upstairs, Hiram is dazzled by the elegant furnishings and especially the books, although he is careful not to look at them too closely. Roscoe brings him into a room where Howell and a white boy around Hiram’s age are waiting. Hiram knows instinctively that this is his brother. He touches the coin in his pocket.