“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?”
“No,” she said. “But one day I will and when I do, I will know it with you.”
I felt in that moment something low and beautiful. Something born down here on the Street, and all the Streets of America. Something nurtured and birthed out of the Warrens. It was the warmth of the muck. It was the relief of the low-born. The facing of the facts, the flight from Quality, the gravity and excrement of the true world where we all live.