The Water Dancer: Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis

In the dark pit, Hiram loses all sense of time, unable to distinguish between night and day or detect how much time has passed. He starts hallucinating and has one vision that he eventually comes to realize is not an illusion, but his own memory. He is young; it is the first year he is assigned to work for Maynard. Maynard asked Hiram to gather together a large group of Tasked; he then told them that they were due to race each other for Maynard’s entertainment. The “humiliation” of this got even worse when, to Hiram’s surprise, Maynard informed him that he was supposed to race too. Hiram ran faster than all the others but tripped over a rock, leaving him unable to walk properly for three weeks.

Back in the pit, a long, formless amount of time passes, before Hiram sees a light suddenly appear. A ladder is thrown down to him, and a voice tells him to come out. Hiram climbs out and stands in front of an “ordinary” man, the person who bought him. They stand in a clearing in the woods and, strangely, the man has placed two wooden chairs and table there. The man throws Hiram a package containing some bread, which Hiram eats. After doing so Hiram suddenly feels the intensity of his own hunger, and without asking devours more packages of bread and drinks from a jar of water.

There is a light in the distance, and as it comes nearer Hiram realizes it is a wagon. As it approaches them, the ordinary man tells Hiram to get inside. The other black men in the wagon are not wearing chains, but look “broken.” They drive for an hour, and Hiram thinks about the fact that the black men in the wagon outnumber the ordinary man, who is the only white person there. However, Hiram reasons that “white men in Virginia are never really alone.” Eventually, the wagon pulls up alongside three other carriages.

A group of low white men get out of the carriages, and Hiram feels a sense of horror as he thinks of the familiar brutality of this class of men. The ordinary man gets up and begins listing the “crimes” of the black men in the wagon, which include trying to kill their enslavers, trying to run away, and beating someone who stole from them. He says that they are now in the care of “these Virginia gentlemen” (the low whites), but that they will be given a head start to run. If the black men can outrun the low whites, they will be granted their freedom. However, if they are caught, they will be at the mercy of the low whites.

The ordinary man drives off in his wagon. The black men are left frozen with shock and fear. One of the low whites walks over to the black men and whacks one of them over the head with a cudgel, telling the others to start running. They do so, going alone in different directions. Hiram wonders what he is running toward; he feels that the North is no more than a “word,” whereas the Underground was clearly a myth invented by Georgie. Yet despite everything he has gone through, his desire for freedom remains powerful, and propels him forward. As he runs, he hears a shot in the distance, which is perhaps the sound of one of the other men being killed.

Hiram falls into mud and feels a kind of relief that he doesn’t have to keep running. Voices around him tell him to get up, but he then feels a club come down hard on his back. While he is beaten, Hiram leaves his body, disappearing into his own memories. He is brought back to the ordinary man, bound and blindfolded, and put in the wagon again. He is placed in the pit again and forced to participate in the “hunt” over and over. He wonders if he has died and is in hell. At the same time, being forced to run every night is making him stronger. In a strange way, it also gives him a taste of freedom.

Hiram also grows more skilled at making it difficult for the hunters to find him, particularly by using his extraordinary memory. Yet ultimately, this is not enough. He is running, but what he really needs to do is “fly.” He thinks about the times when he has been able to move through space after seeing the blue light. He knows that each of these times has been connected to memory, and in particular to the memory of Rose. He wonders if the power is “in some way related to the block in [his] memory,” and thus focuses as hard as he can on his memories of Rose as he runs. 

Hiram can hear the voices of the men pursuing him, and as he runs his foot catches on something, sending him flying to the ground. He calls out the lyrics of a song he remembers from his days at Lockless, singing not to the men around him but to someone else. As he sings, the woods “fold[…] back on themselves,” and Hiram experiences a sudden vision his childhood. He sees himself as a child and wants to comfort that little boy. He tries to stand, but the pain in his ankle is unbearable. Men surround him, but not the men he thought. Hawkins is standing above him, telling him to stop shouting so loud.