The Sweetness of Water

by Nathan Harris

  “There is one thing…” he said.

  After paying, George was out the door, the image of Ridley at the forefront of his mind. It took only an afternoon to miss the donkey—not really the animal, but the peace it might deliver him to. When he reached Bittle’s home, he found Ridley attempting to eat the stray fingers of grass on the ground. George stroked his mane, nodding to Ray, who appeared livelier than usual in his stoic, straight-backed pose of dead sleep as opposed to his usual slump.

  “We’re off, then,” he said to Ridley. A thunderous noise escaped from Bittle, and although there was no way to be sure, George couldn’t help reading into the way his hat had fluttered atop his head, tipping forward, as if to bid him farewell.

  Summer was yet distant, but already its first licks were upon Old Ox, and there was no greater shelter from the newfound afternoon heat than the evergreens that towered over Stage Road; it seemed like the sun, for all its determination, had never glanced upon the ground those trees protected. Ridley’s pace was that of a donkey half his age, and George would intermittently tell him to go easy, to save it for another day when time was more precious.

  The fact was, it would have been fine for George if the journey never ended, as his homecoming would mean a reckoning with Isabelle. Of course he wished to tend to her. Of course he wished to help her face the injustices wreaked upon them both. But what they shared had limits. It was a mutual passion for independence that had brought them together in the first place, the ability to go through vast segments of the day in silence, with only a glance, a touch on the back, to affirm their feelings. In doing so the bond between them had strengthened over time, and although it was not prone to bending, its single weak point lay in the quiet embarrassment that it existed in the first place—that two individuals who resolutely dismissed the idea of needing anyone else were now helpless without each other.

  “What is a man to do?” he said to the donkey.

  While possessed by these grim thoughts, George passed Ted Morton’s home. Unlike the other houses this far along in the country, Ted had built his almost directly upon the road, as if the bountiful stretch of acres he owned behind it wouldn’t do. This made things difficult when Morton’s wife, a woman so severe and translucent in her visage as to seem composed of pure crystal, had instructed him to build a fountain at its front. The resulting creation of cherubs and fairies hugged Stage Road so tightly that its water leaked past the property line and beneath the feet of whoever walked there. This struck George as an act of decadence, an intrusion on public land, and moments like this one—the trickle streaming beneath Ridley’s feet, caking dirt into his hooves—brought with them the hum of contempt he routinely felt toward the man.

  An emotional response he could have conveniently buried within himself had Morton not been standing before the fountain, staring at it from beneath his sun hat with rapt concentration. His wheat-colored locks fell to the nape of his neck, and he blinked when lost in confusion, bestowing on his usual countenance the look of a man with something regularly caught in his eye.

  He turned when Ridley drew near and gave George a half smile.

  “George, you old horse thief, how you doin’?”

  “Just fine,” he lied. “And yourself?”

  “We’re holding up.”

  Ted inspected the fountain more closely, and the way his eyes scanned it, George knew he was in for a conversation.

  “One of my boys, I paid to have him learnt with the stonemason in town. He kept this thing running, and now he picks up and runs off to God knows where. I put money into that boy and he acts like I ain’t never done a damned thing for his scrawny ass.”

  “A shame,” George said.

  Ted spit brown on the ground.

  “I’d say.”

  There were usually many hands running around the property, but now the place was ghostly. He’d titled the home—another offense, in George’s mind, giving a title to anything not breathing—Majesty’s Palace. It was large enough to demand constant upkeep, its gilded accents so fragile that they seemed made more for tending to than anything else. And behind the home, George knew, the compound of cabins had been kept padded with enough bodies to rebuild ancient Rome, plenty to keep the home and farm operating smoothly.

  “Could be worse, though,” Ted went on. “Still got a good fifteen hands that are happy to carry on working. I hear Al Hooks lost the whole lot of his, sixty healthy bodies he fed and bred himself. Can you imagine?”

  “I suppose I can’t,” George said.

  Ted gave him the typical look of disgust he employed whenever George’s Northerly roots were alluded to. Men like Ted often found him untrustworthy, as if the offense of running away from one’s home knew no barriers of color. Nantucket or the plantation, it was all the same.

  “They say that General they got in charge now…what’s his name…”

  George recalled the circular he’d found on his front porch, proclaiming the town of Old Ox an asset of the North, as ordered by President Lincoln and executed by a brigadier general named Arnold Glass. Apparently, Roth’s Lumber Mill was the prized possession, from what he’d heard of it. He gave the general’s name over to Ted.

  “Yeah, Glass,” Ted said. “They say he aims to be hands-off, let folks do as they please. But he ain’t said how we’re supposed to make do without no help. How we’re supposed to carry on with nothing. Can’t even get a damn fountain fixed.”

  Pitiful, George thought, as Ted stared at the leaky fountain, helpless to a fissure he had no capacity to fix.

  “I can only wish you luck with your repairs, Ted. As with all the rest.”

  “Yeah. You keep out the heat,” Ted said.

  George readied his leg to give Ridley a tap, but Ted shot a finger into the air.

  “Before you go. You wouldn’t mind if I ask a question.”

  He didn’t have time to answer before Ted carried on.

  “My boy William, well, he likes to shoot. Been taking his scatter-gun out into the woods recently. Now he’s young enough to still think he sees spirits and whatnot on occasion, but he swears up and down he’s seen you out there, near our border, walking on your own, out in the distance. I told him you’re speaking of a man who keeps to his front porch so much that he probably ain’t even left so much as the county in decades. Now tell me that boy ain’t seeing right.”

  George took a moment. He would have to lie again, and it gave him the slightest pang of guilt knowing it was at the cost of the little Morton boy, who had yet to attain his father’s nature.

  “It’s common for boys that age to see things,” he said, “whether that be spirits or shadows of nothing. William’s imagination has yet to be shot, is all.”

  Ted shook his head with some satisfaction, as if the steadiness of George’s habits was confirmation of the world being right again.

  “You take care now, George.”

  George gave him a tip of his hat and finally relaxed as he led Ridley off at a canter. The afternoon was coming to a close; the sun played upon the trees with the touch of a soft tune, the road narrowing as it broke off toward his cabin.

  He parked Ridley back in his stable next to the barn and took a minute to collect himself. The woods were behind him, the cabin to his front. The threadbare hangings Isabelle had woven covered the window of their bedroom. He thought for a moment he could see her figure there, watching him watching her, but the shadow never moved and so he let go of the idea.

  The door was waiting for him. Once inside, the familiar steps up the stairs, the creaking hallway to the bedroom, the foot of the bed itself, where he could kneel and put his head upon her thigh, asking forgiveness for wrongs he had not committed. But the words weren’t there for him, as much as wished them to be. And there was one more errand for the day that needed to be done.

  He put his saddlebags on the ground before the back door, unclasped it, and pulled out the one item he sought: a single pair of socks. He glanced up once more at the figure in t
he window, the shadow that was not his wife, and turned again, disappearing into the woods to repay a debt.

  CHAPTER 5

  Prentiss and Landry arrived back to their camp late enough that the shade of the trees brought goose bumps to their skin. Prentiss had no mind to eat, even with the potatoes in his knapsack that he’d got from the man in the tent. He was hungrier for sleep.

  “I’ll cook you up something,” he told his brother. “But I’m saving my half till morning, and that don’t mean you get any of it before then, you hear me? Just because it’s cooked don’t mean it’s free to all comers, I know that’s how you think of it but you wrong there…”

  He stopped when he saw, standing before the remains of one of their old fires, George Walker.

  “Hello again,” George said, waving at them.

  “Sir,” Prentiss said. “Mr. Walker.”

  “Just George. I have something for your brother. My wife tells me he took some interest in our clothesline a few days back, when he was doused from the rain.”

  He handed over to Landry a pair of socks.

  “Landry?” Prentiss said. “I believe she might have the wrong man.”

  “She was quite particular in her description. He’s very…unique in his appearance.”

  The old man yawned and itched his backside. He had a lassitude greater than anyone Prentiss had never known, white or black. He seemed the sort who might walk the streets without his britches and not pause to consider it odd, let alone a reason to turn back home before his errands were complete. But given that his brother had wandered off a few hours earlier to a pond neither had ever laid eyes on before, Prentiss did not feel in a position to protest the claim further. Perhaps Landry really had strayed to the Walkers’ clothesline.

  “It’s for helping me last night,” George said. “Consider us even.”

  “I’m sure he’s very grateful,” Prentiss said.

  Landry gave George a glance and sat before the fire pit, inspecting the socks.

  “You’ll be happy to know we’re fixin’ to leave,” Prentiss said. “I think we’ll take to the camps up the road. You’ve been mighty gracious.”

  “So quick?” George said. “There’s no rush, really. Besides, you mentioned hunting that beast with me. If I may remind you.”

  Prentiss put down the potatoes. Up until that moment he’d forgotten what he’d told George the previous night. He’d been so lost in the old man’s suffering he would have told him they were born of the same mother if he thought it would bring him some kernel of peace.

  “I ain’t forget,” he said.

  George clasped his hands together behind his back.

  “How would you feel about a short expedition now? As I return home.”

  Prentiss’s feet ached from the walk. The coolness of the forest had nearly lulled him to sleep just standing there. Landry meanwhile was scrutinizing the knit of the socks, happy to tend to himself, and his brother’s fascination with the gift led Prentiss to consider George in a new light. If the man wanted a stroll in the woods, a stroll he would give him.

  “I don’t see no reason why not,” he said.

  George smiled encouragingly.

  Prentiss looked back to Landry, content before the fire, then started off with George. He thought he might ask about the animal in question—which, at least according to the description George had given, he had neither heard of nor seen in his life.

  But George cut him off before he could begin. The man’s eyes grew slant, looking around as if someone might hear what was to follow.

  “Are you familiar with peanuts, Prentiss?”

  “Peanuts?”

  “Cultivating peanuts. Surely you’re aware of the plant.”

  “What you gettin’ at?”

  The edge of George’s mouth flickered in discouragement, but he was not dissuaded.

  “I mean to use this land. I have to, if I’m to make enough money to keep it. But I would need some help. I’ve given it more thought than you might imagine.”

  Prentiss knew white men liked to hear answers of their choosing, but the problem with George was that his questions were never quite clear enough to hint at the suggested response. Under the spell of hunger and the exhaustion of the day, he found it near impossible to discern how to appease him.

  “You, Landry, and I,” George said. “We could learn the business together. Would that be amenable to you? If you were to stay?”

  What was wrong with this man? The only ailment Prentiss could assign to him was a bout of loneliness, the same affliction that had shadowed him the night before.

  “Forgive me, Mr. Walker. George. But I just got rid of one owner. I ain’t looking for another. Now, it’s been a long day, and we best get on. I do wish you the best,” he said, and turned to go.

  “Don’t be silly. We can get you some lodging. And I’ll pay you like any other man. You can get yourself some food, proper clothes.”

  “I can’t be of help,” Prentiss said. “But you take care.” He started off again, faster this time.

  “I’ll bring some food by tonight anyhow, we got a stew cooking, I believe—”

  “Why can’t you take no for an answer, mister?” Prentiss said. He whirled back to face George. “We ain’t your help. Now you know I don’t mean nothin’ by it, but I must be gettin’ back to my brother.”

  The pain in George’s face, so immense it might split him two, was momentary, and he managed to disguise it with a grin.

  “Of course,” he said. “You take care as well, Prentiss.”

  Prentiss would have apologized, for he’d glimpsed how fragile George was, but the old man had spun too quickly and set off.

  “Can you find your way?” Prentiss called out.

  No words came back to him, and the woods sat silent in the old man’s absence. He turned then to find his brother at his backside, looking on, studiously.

  “I ain’t mean for it to come out as it did,” Prentiss said, walking to meet him. “I made a go at being polite, but they try you. They always tryin’ you.”

  CHAPTER 6

  His love had never been gracious, and he had no means to recognize what Isabelle might require of him—the necessities of her grief. There were few times as a grown man he could recall being intimidated, but the door to Caleb’s room, where she had locked herself up, was so overwhelming that he had to lean against the hallway wall just to settle his bones. He moved forward, reassured by the sliver of lamplight that reached under the doorframe and lazed over his feet—the only signal that she was within.

  “Isabelle.” Somehow his voice cracked even on the single word. He stepped back and put his hands on his hips, then stepped forward to try again. “Isabelle,” he said, “I’ve made a stew.”

  The entire process was undermined, at its root, by the fact that he was not truly capable of consoling Isabelle, as they both knew. This was the man who had spent her father’s funeral not at her side, in the chapel, but feeding downed apples to the horses that had carried the coffin; a man who had caused her great anger early in their marriage when, in the dead of a winter’s night, after embracing her with the heat of his body, had decided it was too cold after all, made a fire, and happily dozed off sitting before it by himself. His words, however he might form them, would be sincere, but they were bound to be rejected as so misaligned with the man his wife knew that they did not bear serious consideration.

  “Won’t you eat?” he asked. “May I bring you a bowl?”

  He let some time pass, and only when he could no longer withstand the silence did he walk downstairs to eat alone. He wondered how long she would last in there. An apology might do. But it was unclear if his delay in telling her was even the cause of her seclusion. Perhaps she simply needed time, a night to herself, but the desire to do something for her that might assuage his guilt was so crushing that he could barely sit still. He added kindling to the fire. He paced incessantly, the floorboard creaking where the wood was polished with wear, and no matte
r how unbearable he found it to wallow in his wife’s misery, he knew that it was the better option than making contact with his own grief, that place of darkness he’d ignored ever since August had delivered the unwelcome news. The quiet of the evening pushed up against him. Against the far wall the shadows of tree branches dipped like fingers playing keys on an organ. He withdrew from the evening to his armchair before the fire.

  It was not until the following morning that his ponderings reached any sort of conclusion, and by then he was resigned to what lay ahead for him and felt only ridicule for his actions the day before. His footsteps on the stairwell, his knock on Caleb’s door, his invitation to eat: it had all reached her as a disappointment; the boy she wanted to see, the one who might mend her heart, would never appear there again. And if that was so, why had he ever thought she’d open the door at all?

  * * *

  It was three days before the flowers started appearing on the front porch. Some visitors came by foot, others by carriage, and the sound of horses clopping was enough to send him to the back of the house. He would wait out these visits as he’d waited out the temper of his quarreling parents when he was a boy, hidden in the cool shadows of the chicken coop, ignoring whatever noise did not suit him. These were all Isabelle’s friends, garrulous women wearing hats as tall as flowerpots.

  Isabelle, for her part, refused to answer their calls as well, and he thought perhaps that they had a shared desire to ignore them and their gifts. Yet it took only a trip out to the barn to water Ridley for him to realize things were not entirely as they seemed, when he returned to find a pot of carnations that had been left on the front porch suddenly placed upon the dining table. The next day an arrangement of lilies found their way to the fireplace mantel. The small shelf above the stove was the next to be decorated, bearing enough pots that the room smelled more like a garden—soil and perfume—than a kitchen.

  It felt, meanwhile, as if he were living with a ghost. Isabelle had appeared downstairs on occasion, but only as a spirit might, in the hours he was asleep, when her presence might have been no more than a part of his dreams. The couple of times he did awake in his armchair, his attempts to speak to her were scorned, and he was almost afraid to look her in the eye, as if her days of pain and isolation might have brought on some actual ghoulish transformation.