The Sweetness of Water

by Nathan Harris

  He was preparing a plate of eggs for himself one of those mornings when a rapping on the door would not quit. The eggs hadn’t fried through, and the pull of his attention between these two things—the cooking of the food and the aggressive knocking—became so bothersome that he picked the skillet up, went to the front door, and began telling off the visitor who had intruded upon his meal before he saw who it was. Then he looked upon Mildred Foster and knew that any peace the morning had brought him would soon vanish.

  “George,” Mildred said. She wore slick-shined leather riding boots, and her horse was tied to the front gate of the cabin, where it was now grazing freely.

  “Mrs. Foster, I really do not have time for this. We are in mourning.”

  “I know how much you both loved the boy,” she said. “And I’m forever sorry for your loss. I know how fortunate I am that my sons have already returned, and I could not bear the suffering had they not, so I sympathize with your position.”

  He might have tried to thank her if he didn’t know better. When it came to Mildred, a comment meant to prop you up was always followed by one that might very well put you on your back.

  “But if I’m supposed to believe that Isabelle is stowed away somewhere in this home of her own accord, I’m going to see for myself and not take the town’s word for it, be sure of that, Mr. Walker. Now please call for her, and if she wishes to have me go, I’ll hear her say as much.”

  Her eyes, as usual, were cutting and hostile. She was older than Isabelle, and upon the death of John Foster had assumed the role of father to their four boys, and in turn had become more of a man in widowhood than John himself—who was born sick—had ever managed. She took off her riding gloves, long shoots of black satin, and stood before George as though a boulder could not shake her from her purpose.

  “At least let me put the pan down,” he said.

  The eggs were already ruined. He set the pan on the stove, wiped his hands on his shirt, and called mildly up the stairs:

  “Isabelle, Mrs. Foster is here to see you.”

  Mildred, unimpressed by his effort, stepped forward into their home, and although another man might have protested, he did not have the energy to stop her.

  “Isabelle!” she yelled. “Isabelle, it’s me. I only want to make sure you’re well.”

  Then, in a businesslike tone, she asked George if Isabelle was eating.

  “Some.”

  “Bathing?”

  “That I cannot speak to.”

  “I see. Isabelle!”

  Mildred Foster was one of Isabelle’s oldest friends, and it had been clear from the beginning that she did not consider him suitable for Isabelle’s hand. Not that anyone was. He could hardly think of a time that Mildred had kind words for any man at all, even her own husband, whom she often described as either lacking in backbone or “limp in nature.” Which George found humorous. John, although shy, had been one of the few people he could tolerate over a dinner table, careful with his words, intelligent when he shared them. Mildred decried his condition and recognized the same faults in George, seeking always to display how much closer she was to Isabelle than he was. Little surprise that the silence from the stairwell brought him a tinge of glee now. He was almost happy she had arrived, just to be rebuffed.

  “It would appear,” he said, “that my wife would rather be left alone. Now if you would”—he nodded at the door—“I have my breakfast to eat.”

  Her eyes flitted from the stairwell to the front door. He let the moment sit, relishing her uncertainty.

  “Get her through this,” she said. “You owe her that much, George.”

  He went to close the door behind her.

  “I will let her know you came. Thank you for your call.”

  At the sound of pattering on the stairwell behind him, he turned around in disbelief. Isabelle was holding up her dress as she descended the stairs. She floated by George and out the door as if he were invisible.

  Mildred turned in the yard and embraced Isabelle in a prolonged hug, petting her hair like a horse’s mane, cooing into her ear.

  “It’s okay. Oh, Isabelle. Oh.”

  George retrieved his eggs and ate them cold from the skillet, surveying the reunion of the two women lost in each other’s arms. There were no words for the resentment that claimed him, a jealousy of such magnitude he had half an urge to throw the skillet into the yard and make a show of things. They spoke too softly to hear the words, and after a time he stopped trying to listen. His curiosity shifted to his wife’s appearance, which seemed to bear no relation to his earlier fears, the idea that she might have wilted into something awful. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, gray but with bits of brown glinting like cinnamon in the sunlight; her face was soft and full, as vibrant with life as the day he’d first met her.

  For a brief flash, like a glint of light caught in one’s eye, he saw before him that young woman he would one day come to marry. He was already in his thirties then, decrepit by the standards foisted upon a bachelor, and yet he hadn’t cared a whit that his household belonged to him and him alone. His days involved only what he cared them to, and no woman could help him find contentment, for he already had it in spades. Perhaps it would have remained that way had not a traveling wind band come to Old Ox, an event at the outdoor concert hall that Ezra insisted George attend, if only to be in the company of others for an afternoon. There were no theatrics upon that first sighting. She was with her father, both of them speaking to another young man, and when the boy had walked off, she’d scowled at his back, as though his words alone had been foul, forcing her father to giggle, and in that slight show of play, the willingness to shove modesty aside, George knew he’d found his match. Ezra was quick to inform him of who the young woman was, and, more important, that she had yet to marry. But before Ezra could ask if he’d liked to be introduced, George had already departed, so frightened was he by the prospect of even a conversation.

  Isabelle. He could not rid himself of the name, the memory, no matter how many days passed, and soon he was so preoccupied that it became a matter of grave importance that some action be taken. So he carved a figurine, with the flow and shape of a beautiful woman (however much definition might be had in the medium of wood), and had it sent to her by mail. When a week went by, he sent a basket of flowers, all picked on the farm, this time hiring a courier so they would arrive without having wilted. When this, too, garnered no response, he finally found the nerve to take the trip to Chambersville himself. He asked after Isabelle’s house and was soon before a brick home, built in the Colonial style, a large lawn out front being tended to by a modest number of Negroes who were currently caught up in a conversation so lively he was afraid of interrupting. When they looked him up and down, he felt himself shrink before them, like he feared his flowers had only a few days earlier. They asked him who he wished to call on.

  “I believe her name is Isabelle,” he said.

  Right inside, they told him.

  When the butler informed her of his arrival, and when she came to the door, he was so stunned by being granted another sight of such a beautiful woman that he could hardly utter a word.

  “You are the one sending those gifts, aren’t you?” she said, the words coming before she had even stepped off the stairs.

  A stutter. Some babble. He could not recall the specifics, or if he had even managed to cobble one word to another.

  “Really, a simple note would’ve done. Easier to respond to than a carving. The flowers were nice, but much better presented in person. I figured I’d wait until you showed up yourself to offer my thanks.”

  The tongue, the wit (not to mention the intimidating presence of her father across the room, watching their every move). He would soon learn all the reasons why so many other suitors had been overwhelmed by Isabelle, not daring even to try to make her theirs. But he wasn’t like them. And she wasn’t like the other girls.

  So it began that afternoon. A life of happiness that transcende
d George’s former independence, one of unity. Two lives merged. Her beauty was secondary to the strength of her character, the fortitude in which she housed her beliefs, her way of life, that same stubbornness that he shared himself. It softened a bit as the years passed, as she attempted to assimilate with the women of Old Ox, who were suspicious of her husband, that curious landowner with not a close friend to his name. She grew cordial, then matronly when Caleb was born. But that fierce woman was always present regardless, so perhaps he shouldn’t have been so surprised she was holding up quite well in the face of the shock that had now transpired.

  His admiration only made him want to speak to her more than ever and share in the conversation that Mildred Foster was now robbing him of. After a few more minutes Isabelle came back inside, passing him with only a cursory glance.

  Mildred was putting on her gloves and twice called out, “Rest, honey,” yelling past George.

  He held the skillet before him on the front porch, inwardly begging for the slightest morsel of information, like a vagrant might appeal to a passerby, tin cup in hand.

  Mildred flexed her hands in her gloves. Her skin, like porcelain, shimmered in the morning sun.

  “Be patient with her,” she said calmly. “She doesn’t yet know how much you two will need each other.”

  Startled by the comment, he watched her for some hint of sarcasm, a hidden note meant to spear him, and by the time he registered her sincerity, it was too late. She was already halfway down the lane. He dropped his fork into the skillet, went back inside, and placed it on the stove. As had been the case the last few days, he felt trapped in the cabin, not by the quarters themselves, but by the memories they exposed, which lay in wait wherever he turned. A long walk, he felt, might put them from his mind.

  He plucked his jacket from the back of his kitchen chair, gave a last look up the stairwell, and ambled out the front door and into the morning air. He had no specific trail in mind, but he made sure to avoid the path he’d taken to meet Prentiss and Landry. Only after he’d walked away from them had he realized how crass his request had been. The talking one, Prentiss, had all the right in the world to tell him off. But if he was to keep his land, and to put in any crop at all, he would need help, and there wasn’t a hand in Old Ox he trusted enough to lift a finger on his behalf. Other than his privacy he had little left in the world, certainly now more than ever, and he wished to keep it at any cost.

  Leaves hissed around him as if they’d been trampled, yet with no wind the trees stood still and there was nothing else to see when he looked about. That was the beauty of nature—it was always a step ahead, privy to a joke he did not know, a riddle with no answer. He sat and leaned back against a wide oak and focused on a point before him that ran on endlessly in swirls of copper-colored bark and blankets of green foliage, the lot of it mixing as one the farther it went along.

  He’d stumbled upon part of the land that was familiar, a favorite getaway of his father’s. It was perhaps where he’d first instilled the idea of the animal in George’s imagination, the idea that something monstrous, even sinister, was roaming the property. His father would grip George’s hand with such intensity as they walked that he could feel his blood pulse in time with his heartbeat. Benjamin spoke in tones so low that the act of listening required an effort equal to keeping pace with his father’s steps, but George’s endurance was always lifted by the sacred importance of the story.

  The background of the beast was unclear, but his father had seen it once while walking alone, and could describe it with a startling vividness: a black coat of fur that clung to the shadows, moving fluidly as if it were part of the darkness itself; it appeared upright, but took to all fours upon being seen, disappearing as quickly as it had materialized; its eyes were the greatest giveaway, marbles of milky white, like those of a blind man, so haunting that even Benjamin had raced off in fear (a decision he would come to regret).

  Their afternoon hikes were a call to arms to track the animal, however real it was or wasn’t, and even a young George figured this time together, more than anything, was simply a chance to be with his father and learn the land that would one day belong to him. That is, until he saw the beast himself one night from his bedroom window, and then many nights thereafter…

  His memory was interrupted by a yell. He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like Isabelle calling his name. He bolted up and returned the way he’d come. Nothing had led him to believe this was anything but his mind playing tricks on him, yet when he arrived in the clearing, there she was on the front porch, her hand cupped to her mouth, staring off. He had walked fast enough that his hip was bristling, with pinpricks thrumming the length of his side.

  “I’m here,” he said when he reached the porch. “I’m right here.” He stood at attention and swept the dirt from his pants. “Was just on a stroll.” He peeked past her, wondering if she’d received another visitor, but the house appeared empty.

  “I’m sure you were,” she said. “I was hoping you might go to town and send a telegram for me. To Silas. He should know the news of his nephew.”

  “If that’s what you want. I’d only remind you his last message made it clear he was only starting back home a week ago. In which case he wouldn’t receive it for some time.”

  “Send it to the house. Lillian will receive it. She should know as well.”

  “First thing tomorrow.”

  “Thank you. I don’t wish to hold a…hold any ceremony until Silas returns. He’d wish to be here for it.”

  George had no quibble and said that it should be up to her in any case. They stood there. Now was the moment. It seemed to George that a great decision hung in the balance. Isabelle would either stay down in the parlor or else retreat again upstairs away from him. He felt an overwhelming urge to act, to keep her near, to rectify all that had gone wrong between them.

  “Perhaps we could read something together,” he said.

  She didn’t seem disturbed, exactly, or even moved to respond. When she spoke, the words were cold, as if to extinguish his own. “I believe you can read without my assistance, George. I will be upstairs if you need anything.”

  He went into the kitchen and found that in his absence she had cleaned the egg-caked pan and hung it back above the stove. There was little else to do but tidy up the kitchen further, and so he did this, pondering her actions once again, whether they were due to her suffering or her defiance—the latter directed at him or the former at what they had lost—and he wept standing against the sink, the same place she had when he’d delivered the news, lengthy moans and embarrassing sobs. When the time came he prepared a dinner of eggs, as the chickens had been active in recent weeks and he was the only one who might eat the eggs now and he wished to correct the injury paid to his breakfast.

  The only accompaniment for dinner, as darkness descended, was a Dickens novel, one he had read on and off again for some weeks, putting it down when distracted. This time he meant to make significant progress, but at a rustle off in the woods he set it aside. A voice stemming from some distance pleaded in an ever-rising tone. Nothing appeared out the window, not even the moon. Finally, there was a crackling and a pair of rambling shadows broke through the trees and drifted toward the cabin, one in front of the other. The large shadow—Landry, George saw now—advanced beside Prentiss, who walked with his back to the cabin, speaking harshly and attempting to wave Landry off.

  “You ain’t thinking, you ain’t ever thought, I should slap you on the backside like the papa you ain’t ever had and watch you crawl back to them woods.”

  The two men had reached the house now, and George rose charily and opened the front door with caution, as to make no noise. The air was cool outside and the hair on his skin rose and his body stiffened as he met the brothers in the lane.

  “What is this about?” he said.

  “Mr. Walker,” Prentiss said. “George.”

  “Keep your voices down, Isabelle is resting. I thought you two had gone.”


  “I’ve been trying to be gone,” Prentiss hissed, looking at his brother.

  Landry stared back at him with severe concentration. They were both sweating, Prentiss more so, his hair glistening even in the darkness as if it were sprinkled with frost.

  “Start from the beginning,” George said.

  “Ain’t no beginning. This fool”—he pointed at his brother—“he won’t go. You got this idea of this stew in his head all those days back and he ain’t quit talking about it.”

  “Talking about it?” George said.

  “Yes, that stew of yours.”

  “Right, the stew I understand,” George said impatiently. “It’s the speaking I don’t get.”

  Prentiss returned his impatience. “I mean I saw his face when you said you got that stew made up. Since then he’s been sneaking this way every night, and he ain’t moving out of them woods, not for me or no one else. Only reason I can imagine—other than him being stubborner than a gimp’s foot—is that you got that idea in his head and he can’t shake it.”

  “Well, I can assure you,” George said to Landry, “that I ate the stew some time ago. And if I had any left, I would not give it you, not because I’d go against my word, but because it’d be fouled by now.”

  “Which I tried to tell him,” Prentiss said. “His hunger just got him acting crazy.”

  The party calmed and George grew aware of the sound of bullfrogs, louder now than the brothers’ labored breathing. The two men did not look well. Landry, his frame lankier than when George had last seen him, was clearly underfed, which meant that Prentiss, too proud to say as much, likely was as well.

  “I have a store of eggs,” he said. “It’s not a stew, but there are more than I or Isabelle could manage on our own.”