The Sweetness of Water

by Nathan Harris

  “There is something I need to bring up with you, too. And I want to apologize for not saying something yesterday, but I did not know how to say it then. I still don’t. Isabelle…” But he faltered.

  That tone. She wasn’t sure when she’d last heard it. Maybe in the almost tragic shyness with which he’d sought her father’s blessing for her hand in marriage, ignorant that she was sitting in the carriage right before them; or perhaps years later, when he peeked his head into their bedroom to ask the midwife whether Caleb had finally been born, as if his cries weren’t evidence enough. She realized it was not his distance she had sensed that morning, only his nervousness. And before he uttered another word, she knew she would not forgive him for whatever he’d kept from her. She felt the urge to run, but her legs were stuck in place. By the time he shut his mouth, the plate in her hand had dried itself in the morning air—she managed to put it down, as if her tears were better falling to the floor than sullying something she’d just made clean.

  CHAPTER 3

  Prentiss held his brother’s feet in his lap. He kneaded each of Landry’s toes, then the sole, then the heel, digging his thumbs so deep into his left foot that he could see it drained white before the blood brought back its color. Landry lay on the bed of the forest, his head upon a log. He stared up against the skyline.

  “You always tryin’ to sneak one by me, ain’t you,” Prentiss said.

  Landry groaned, although it sounded more born of joy than anything.

  “Ate up the last of that rabbit like it was ’bout to take off. Like I’m too stupid to notice.” He hit the groove of his brother’s foot, and Landry looked down, as if to take in his brother’s technique, before casting his gaze back toward the still-rising sun. “Well, we ain’t got no other food, and you might’ve stole a few scraps but we’re not making it past the afternoon without putting something down.”

  Landry stayed silent, an act for the man that had nothing to do with speaking, and more with his senses, the way he existed. He always took to foot rubs in such a way. Prentiss would sense his brother’s body slow to a state of near-sleep, his breathing stalled, his shoulders limp—and it was a model of how to take on pleasure, to lose yourself in feeling.

  It was a tradition derived from the cabins, when they were children, back when Landry was whole. They would sit on their pallets across from one another, and long after the tallow candle had been snuffed by their mother, one would still be working the other’s feet, preparing for the day ahead in the field. Prentiss could recall Mr. Morton once leading them on with the promise of a pair of gloves to the best producer, a gesture they knew to be empty, but still representative of how little he understood of them—the hands hardened quickly under the pain of picking, while feet, no matter how protected, would always find ways to ache from the hours spent holding up a broken body.

  They’d worked Mr. Morton’s land together; they’d left behind the only life they’d ever known; and they often thought in unison, as one. So when Prentiss stood up, it was of little surprise his brother was already standing too, even though neither had said a word in doing so.

  Landry reached for the rope they’d used to catch the rabbit, but Prentiss placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “No more of that. ’Bout time we head to the camps, see our people.”

  His brother’s eyes glanced slowly around their makeshift home.

  “It ain’t forever,” Prentiss reassured him. “We’ll get us some food and be back before sundown.”

  There were places and sounds that brought Landry comfort, and all that fell outside this sphere of the known was met with resistance. Until a week earlier, that had been true of these very woods. Standing before them, the cabins that had always been their home to their rear, the unknown to their front, the few possessions in their name tethered to their back, the brothers faced a quiet, brooding mystery. A single step forward for Landry became an impossibility. His feet were planted, his head shaking no, until finally, after what seemed an entire hour of pleading from Prentiss, he strode ahead on his own command, as though the act of pushing on had taken a precise amount of courage culled only in that very moment.

  Prentiss feared the walk to the camps would be no different. He made sure they were far beyond Majesty’s Palace before taking to the road, not wanting to see his old master and those who’d elected to stay with him.

  Was it really only a week ago? How strange that morning had been. They’d heard rumblings that Union soldiers were drawing near, whispered rumors not unlike so many that had traveled through the cabins for years, ever since the war began. The notion of true emancipation had always seemed so fantastical that, were it to occur, Prentiss had expected the heralds of a bugle, rows of men in lockstep who would descend upon Majesty’s Palace like angels brought down to serve the aims of God himself. In the actual event it was nothing but a few young men in blue uniforms as scraggy as the clothes that Prentiss and Landry had on themselves. They came down the lane and called them from their cabins with Master Morton following in unison, still in his pajamas, exposed in a way Prentiss had never seen him. Morton begged for the soldiers’ understanding, insisting his slaves wished to remain in his keep, all while the young men ignored him and announced that each man, woman, and child in bondage was free to go as they pleased.

  Master Morton said they were hopeless creatures, and beseeched the soldiers once more to recognize as much, though it was evident to all that he was the hopeless one, carrying on worse than a child who’d lost his mother. Still, none of them moved at first. It was Prentiss himself who stepped off the cabin stoop and toward one of the soldiers, a baby-faced white man perhaps even younger than he was, who clearly cared as little about this farm as he would about the next one, where Prentiss suspected he would soon repeat the same announcement in the same monotone.

  “When might we go?” he asked the man, low enough that Morton wouldn’t hear, for what if there was more to this arrangement than met the eye, and a punishment lay in wait for even deigning to ask?

  He’d never heard such precious words as those that came next from the boy:

  “Whenever you feel the urge, I suppose.”

  Prentiss wheeled around to face Landry without a second thought, for their lives could now begin and it was time to craft them in whatever way they saw fit. The tremble of Landry’s jaw, the nod of his head, told him that his brother was in total agreement.

  To enter the forest had been an expedition all its own, and now, as they left it behind, its sounds shrank and folded into silence; the odd carriage began to appear before them, quickly passing at their side. They made their unhurried way, step by step, dirt filling the unpatched pits of their shoes. Each home they came across either less or more impressive than Majesty’s Palace, but all of them remarkable, all of them white.

  “You figure you’d take to that one?” Prentiss said, but Landry kept his eyes on the road. The veranda of the home before them was vast enough to host a large party. Small blue bushes were given comfortable space before each column at its front.

  “I don’t take to it neither, no more than the rest,” Prentiss said. “What, with all that space? How you s’posed to explain to someone that you got lost in your own house? Answer me that.”

  The question had dawned on him before, but as this was the first time he’d seen any homes beyond Majesty’s Palace and its neighbors, he’d not known that whatever plague of excess had befallen his former owner had clearly consumed the town as well.

  They carried nothing. They met the eyes of more oxen than men, yet each step felt like it was being watched, as so much of their movement had been in the past. The farther they got, the more real it felt—each step a confirmation of their freedom.

  “Look at us,” Prentiss said. “World travelers. Sightseers. Ain’t that something?”

  He gave his brother a prod in the ribs, but his sweet talk took him only so far as they came to the sign that bore the name Old Ox. Landry stopped as if he’d run into a w
all. Suddenly there was the whir of noise and sights—the moaning cattle hidden in unseen stables, the shrieks of bickering children, a man spitting his muck juice indiscriminately from his porch. Prentiss experienced it all at once, perceiving it as his brother might, and he knew then the struggle that lay ahead of them.

  “It’s just a step like any other,” he said.

  Landry looked at him, eyes stern, in the manner of a statement.

  “Okay,” Prentiss said. “Okay then.”

  He wouldn’t force his brother to go into town, any more than he had forced him to enter the forest. So much of their lives had been pressed upon them by other men, it felt only right that each decision be prized—their own to make.

  “I’d ask you this. Why go through town when you can go around it? Wouldn’t you ask the same?”

  Landry eyed him again. He swayed a bit, readying himself, the tips of his shoes rising from the ground in preparation for an acceptable compromise, and that was all Prentiss needed to start walking again, to know his brother was at his side.

  The town was hugged by the forest, making it easy to maneuver around its rear without drawing attention, not that anyone wished to pay it to them. They stuck to the backside of buildings. Behind one fence they glimpsed a stewing, bubbling basin of hog parts, so huge a man might take a dip if he wished to. The voices of what Prentiss figured to be hungry men trailed from inside the place. Within another yard stood a woman using a brush to clean the arms of a lounge chair, taking great care with each stroke, as if she were applying a coat of paint. Prentiss stopped looking after that. His clothes were damp with sweat, and he realized how quickly he was walking, like something chasing them might take to their trail. Never before had he seen such people without their permission, caught sight of regular folk about their business in private, and it immediately struck him as a dangerous circumstance.

  “Not too long now,” he said, although he had no idea if that was true, as the rumors of the camps being situated at the opposite end of Old Ox were just that to him. The words were less for Landry and more for himself, a fillip of self-belief, a routine in a life where his only companion had no words, no confidence, to spare.

  Prentiss didn’t fault his brother for his weaknesses—in his irregularities lay the groundwork of his strength. For if ever his brother was prone to stalling in place, he never wandered. Landry went where he was expected, and there was bravery to be found in someone willing to either go forward or face his fear head-on, unblinkingly, even if it sometimes stopped him right where he stood. It had been a principle mapped onto Landry at birth, no different from his love of food, which only made the day of reckoning that was to come more difficult.

  That was way back when, a time when they were not quite grown but not quite children, slight in the chest, long in the limbs; young enough to have their mother on their behinds as much as the overseer but old enough to be expected to pick their full share in a day. They lined up one particular morning before their cabins, which in itself was not odd, as they lined up for a head count every morning, the spots where their feet rested so ingrained upon the ground that the imprint remained overnight. Yet it took no more than a moment to recognize the absence in front of the cabin across from theirs. Where Little James and Esther were supposed to be sat nothing at all. There was a quiet agony in this disruption of routine that Prentiss had never known before. His heart felt enormous in his chest. He was supposed to stare straight ahead, but instinct led him to look everywhere else, hoping they might appear from behind a clothesline or hop down from a willow before Mr. Cooley appeared and assessed the loss.

  But just like that, Mr. Cooley had arrived. He came to a stop before their cabin but did not dismount. He simply took his hat off, assessing each person before him, and plainly asked where the two had gone off to. There was no response.

  “Y’all stay where you are,” he said, turned his horse, and broke off at a gallop back to Majesty’s Palace.

  “Don’t want to hear a word from either of you,” their mother had whispered, placing a hand on both of their shoulders, standing between them like a shield.

  Nobody dared move when Mr. Cooley returned, Mr. Morton paired at his side. They stood tall in front of the group, and Mr. Morton brushed the hair from his eyes, breathing through his mouth.

  “It won’t be long,” he said, “till that heat is on me. And Mr. Cooley will tell you the heat ain’t never took a liking to me.”

  “It ain’t,” Mr. Cooley said.

  “Why do any of you think I ain’t down here in the fields? Y’all think I wouldn’t appreciate the company? No, see, I’m just naturally a hot-blooded man, sure as hell ain’t looking to get hotter than I already is. When the sun hits, I get a little dizzy. My stomach don’t sit right.”

  “It sure don’t.”

  “Mr. Cooley.” Mr. Morton extended his hand to silence him. “So you tell me before I feel that heat on my back where these two went off to, or else I might get a bit moody, and if my day’s ruined this early, y’all being such sympathetic creatures, I imagine you might share in my plight.”

  When there was no response, Mr. Morton continued his speechifying. Without Little James and Esther, he said, he would have loss in value in production which would only build upon the loss accrued by losing two slaves. And why should he, a man who did no wrong, a pious, righteous man, be punished for the heedless insubordination of these two individuals he fed and clothed so dutifully? Thus, if no one was willing to tell him where Little James and Esther could be found, he would pick one slave—and that slave, at the end of each month, would bear the whippings for the entire lot of them. Any wrongs done would be tallied, and they would fall solely on his back, and if there was someone willing to be a martyr, to take on that responsibility, he was open to volunteers.

  “Come on, now,” he said, casting his sight from one to the other. “Any of you will do.”

  Landry did not step forward. He merely reached for an itch upon his arm. Prentiss was never sure after the fact if Landry knew what he’d done. He could only recall his brother’s eyes locked on the cloud of flies before their cabin, his mind wandering, as it was prone to.

  “Here stands my man!” Mr. Morton said, to the surprise of even Mr. Cooley, a taskmaster of equal stupidity but only half the cruelty.

  Prentiss did not dare turn to his pleading mother, or even to Landry, and he would forever bear the guilt of not stepping forward himself to save the only person he was ever made to protect.

  Each month Mr. Morton would watch over the lashings as if they were a special occasion—doled out for Mrs. Etty waking too late, or for Lawson working his row too slowly. After the beating when he broke Landry’s jaw, it took only a season for the boy to stop using what few words he had. Their mother would say that Landry had once been full, and then halved, until he was inevitably left in so many bits she could not piece together the boy she’d once called her own.

  The only quarter Mr. Morton offered Landry was to avoid taking offense when he failed to utter anything in response to being called forth. “I don’t take it as a show of disrespect,” Mr. Morton would say, loud enough for the others to hear. “I sometimes wish the others might develop your fondness for silence, Landry. I do. I really do.”

  The sole pleasure left to the rest of them lay in the abandoned cabin that mocked Mr. Morton whenever he paid them a visit, the indignities of his loss on display for all to see. With each whipping he seemed to believe Little James and Esther might reappear, and it brought Prentiss quiet satisfaction imagining they were so far away, so gone, that they would never hear Landry’s cries; never return to give Mr. Morton the peace of mind he so doggedly sought.

  * * *

  Once they were beyond Old Ox, the camps were easy to find, as one needed only to follow the bodies. They accumulated as the road went on, a few covered by the broad leaves of the crab apple trees scattered about, others by discarded rubbish found in town—a collection of men and women sleeping off a lifetime
of toil. At some point a makeshift road forked off, a marshy patch of mud etched by the footsteps of those who had come to pass. For a few feet there were dense horsetail reeds all around them. But then, along the creek that ran through town, the road cleared into an expanse of tents with people appearing from nowhere. A town with no buildings, no markings, and no name.

  “Looks right,” Prentiss said.

  They were paid little mind at first. Rows of tents, most made with nothing more than blankets clasped together, sat beside one another. Shoeless children played in the trees while their parents slept or visited with the others.

  When the brothers started forward, careworn eyes sought them out but looked them off quickly. There was no hostility to be found, rather a collective meekness that Prentiss recognized, having experienced it himself. This was their new life. Work replaced with aimless sitting or scrounging for food like an animal. The faces were unknown to him. Prentiss thought of calling out some names, but he didn’t wish to draw attention.

  “What you got?” said a voice from a tent at their side.

  Prentiss turned to a group of men and women huddled around a skillet. Charred remains lay crisped and burnt in the pan. Each of them cradled a sheet of newspaper holding bits of potato skins, and Prentiss quickly realized how hungry he was. His eyes were fastened on the ink running off the newspaper wet with lard. He found Landry inching toward the tent himself, just as eager for a taste. The leader inside called out to them once more to gain their attention.

  “Either you tryin’ to trade something or you pickin’ around for some trouble. Which is it?”

  Prentiss told the man he was looking for his own from Majesty’s Palace.

  The man licked his fingers. “Boy,” he said. “We from Campton.”