The Sweetness of Water

by Nathan Harris

  “He has boys helping him,” she said. “Let me make that clear. Or men, I should say. Freedmen. Yes.”

  It was silent enough to hear the help in the kitchen.

  Then Margaret straightened her dress and put her spoon down.

  “So it is true what they say. Cohabitating with them? Treating them like his own kin. My.”

  One of her eyebrows lurched upward. She gathered a spoonful of soup, but the spoon paused before her lips when Isabelle stood up.

  “I believe I must be excused,” Isabelle said. “My apologies, Sarah.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No. Nothing is wrong.”

  Sarah stood in turn, the legs of her chair bunching up the carpet behind her.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t have said a word. I just meant to involve you in conversation, Isabelle. But it did not come off as such. I see that now. Forgive me for misspeaking. Margaret as well.”

  “I forgive no one,” Isabelle said.

  A ripple charged through the room. There were so many eyes fixed to the table that it appeared every woman present was suspended in prayer.

  “I do not appreciate anyone,” Isabelle continued, “who pays mind to cruel rumors and outright lies. Or those who speak behind the backs of others. Now hear me say this. My husband is a kind man. A decent man. And he has done nothing, since the day he entered my life, but follow his passions, no matter how remote, no matter how odd, and often in the face of those who might think him different. But nothing he’s done has ever had ill intent. Such trifles of character are beneath him. Can any of you say the same of yourselves? I surely cannot. But I admire those, like him, who can. Now, if you would excuse me.”

  Of all the women present, Anne, her lip quivering, decided it was her place to speak up.

  “You cannot mean what you say, Mrs. Walker.”

  “Anne, you are a child. Nothing I’ve said involves you. But I swear to every word of it.”

  She smoothed her dress and pushed in her chair, readying to go, then stopped herself. She picked up the saucer beneath her soup and turned again to Sarah, wielding it as a preacher might wield a Bible.

  “And this my china. I would like it returned to me, the full set, at your earliest convenience.”

  She held the saucer to her chest like a form of protection and carried it with her to the front door, where she declined the help of a butler and retrieved her overcoat from the closet.

  “I can show myself out,” she said.

  Night was already falling on Old Ox and the shadows of the trees were long enough to creep over the path forebodingly. The rush she’d felt at her departure began to diminish in relation to how chilly it had grown and how alone she felt. She’d advanced only a few paces beyond Mayor’s Row when the steady clop of a horse, the creak of carriage wheels, fell in line behind her. She did not look, fearing some stranger shrouded in the dark, but the voice brought her gaze upward.

  “Climb in. We must get you home before you do more damage tonight.”

  Mildred Foster, reins in hand.

  “You left the party for me.”

  “I thought it best to come fetch you.”

  Isabelle thanked her, but there was little else she could muster. Although she still believed every word she’d unleashed on the party, she knew the occurrence at the house would fuel the flames of Old Ox gossip for years to come. For now, silence seemed the best option. To let things rest.

  They were about halfway back to the cabin when Mildred let out the slightest noise, the start of a laugh. Isabelle shook her head and carried the laugh along, giggling herself. Before long it was an uproar, both of them gasping for air, enough laughter that they seemed to spook the horse.

  “My God, the looks on their faces!” Mildred said.

  “What have I done?” Isabelle said, wiping the tears from her eyes.

  “Darling, you put on a wonderful show. Though I can’t imagine you’ll be receiving that invitation to the wedding now.”

  “It was worth it. Every second.”

  “On that we agree.”

  It took nearly the entire ride home for them to regain their composure. By then it was full dark. Smoke poured from the chimney, and the sight of the cabin, and all that came with it, was enough to bring Isabelle back to the edge of tears.

  “Thank you, Mildred. It goes without saying, but I did not have you in mind during my rant. I cherish our friendship. More than any I have.”

  “Of course you do. Now go. Get some rest, dear,” Mildred said.

  She gripped Isabelle’s hand and guided her down from the carriage.

  “A word of advice, from someone who knows,” she said. “Do not make them hate you all at once. Take it slow. By the time your prejudice is laid bare, they will be so acclimated to your distaste they’ll be loath to say anything.”

  “Perhaps it’s too late for me,” Isabelle said, “but as with all of your wisdom, I will keep it in my thoughts. Good night, Mildred.”

  She had never been happier to be home. She stepped into the cabin and the crisp scent of fresh logs in the firebox was soothing enough to put her to sleep. But any thoughts of slumber were stalled when she saw the eyes fixed upon her. George, wearing an apron, with skillet in hand, was placing food onto a plate held out by Caleb. Beside Caleb sat Prentiss and Landry, both already having been served.

  “Isabelle,” George said. “I thought you would be gone for some time.”

  “Yes, well, things ended early.”

  “Hello, Mother,” Caleb said, without taking his eyes off his food.

  “It was getting a bit chilly outside,” George said. “I thought I’d invite Prentiss and Landry in for supper.”

  “It’s no harm if you’d like us to leave,” Prentiss offered.

  Isabelle walked to the table but said nothing. Caleb had already begun to eat. There was a time when they would all pray together. There was a time when ceremony mattered. It dawned on her that those days were behind the Walkers. The dinner table was now an assortment of damaged bodies collected together to gain sustenance. This no longer bothered her, an awareness that in itself would once have troubled her but now did not.

  “Is there another chair?” she asked.

  Prentiss stood up and motioned toward his own.

  “Sit,” Isabelle said. “I thank you, really, but I’m in no mood for good manners. Not at this moment. If you could just treat me as you treat George and Caleb. As if I was no different. Now, Caleb, why don’t you go get the chair from your father’s study.”

  Caleb put his fork down and did as requested while Prentiss reclaimed his seat.

  “I had Caleb stop by the butcher on his way home,” George said. “I’ve roasted veal, made a nice side of fried onions. They aren’t your favorite, I know. I would have changed the courses had I known you’d be back.”

  “It looks excellent,” she said. “Beyond anything I might ask for.”

  After serving himself and Isabelle, George sat down. Everyone ate ravenously, with few words exchanged.

  Her husband appeared to be as worried about his standing with her as Caleb had suggested; Caleb himself was stifled by the silence of his parents; and the brothers, well, she had heard them speak so rarely that she did not expect a word. Which made for a surprise when it was Prentiss who initiated conversation.

  “George told us about that party,” he said. “I hope you had yourself a good time.”

  She looked up. She had sat so quickly she’d forgotten to take off her overcoat. She untied it, let it fall upon the rail of her chair. With a moment to breathe, she realized she was full. Satisfyingly so.

  “It’s not worth recounting,” she said. “I’ll only say that the company here is more enjoyable. Much more enjoyable.”

  CHAPTER 10

  A spider’s web of lightning and the sudden crush of thunder set off a heavy rain that lasted on and off for days. Then the sun returned, mopping up the moisture of the fields. Soon the empty roads were repopulated with
men donning overcoats, steering horses around puddles and stopping intermittently to free their wagons from the viselike mud. George thought little of the weather. He embarked for Old Ox prepared to brave whatever might come his way with nothing more than his soft felt hat and overalls, cuffs tucked into his boots to keep them clean.

  He intended to meet Ezra, whose invitation he would most likely have declined had he not been cooped up inside for so many days, bored with the familiarity of his home, without even the chance to walk the forest. He’d tried to spend time with his son, yet Caleb no longer felt bound to him, and if they were not in the field the boy spent his time with his mother or stowed away in his room; during the rain he could stay up there for hours, locked up doing God knew what, great monastic acts of solitude that could carry on for hours.

  When the downpour turned ugly, George had gone to the barn to check on Prentiss and Landry, but the roof was patched and as sturdy as the day his father had built it. They had their own food now, too, purchased in town or bagged in the woods. When he came back a second time, and a third, they eyed him as they would an intruder, their voices stilling as they glanced up from the pallets where they played cards, or from the lantern where they shared their secrets. The barn was no longer his, but theirs, and he sensed himself unwanted.

  He often had this same feeling in his own home, facing Isabelle: that the space, although shared, had been cordoned off, with invisible lines demarcating who belonged where. They spoke more than they had before, since the night she’d joined him at the table with Caleb and the brothers, but the cold front holding them apart was taking its time in dissipating, and meanwhile he walked around her like a child tiptoeing at night so as not to wake his mother.

  These were the thoughts weighing on him as he begrudgingly set out to meet Ezra in Old Ox late one night. The roads were still a slough, and he trod the soft mud as if it were quicksand pulling him under—yet the foliage was bold enough to pass for art, and the woods exuded the pleasant smell of wet leaves, such that the entire walk felt so refreshing he would’ve considered his arrival in town enough activity to turn around and go home if he’d had no obligations to attend to.

  The few visible homeless folks were miserable, as wet as if the rain had never ended, and given that he didn’t spot any of the tents that had been so prominent on recent visits, George could only figure the others had found refuge somewhere dry, or else returned to the farms they’d come from, resigned to what little work they could find. The tannery across from the Palace Tavern had put up a sign weeks ago that read, NO SQUATTERS, LOITERERS, OR BEGGARS IN FRONT OF THE STORE, which had, since George’s last trip to town, been given an addendum, a slip of paper under the original:…OR BEHIND THE STORE, OR TO ITS SIDES. Yet under its eaves, along the far side of the building, the shadows of bodies shifted and sounded off, forlorn noises that might as well have been the final utterances of the dying.

  He was not oblivious to the squalor that lay a few steps from the public square, half hidden behind buildings that townsfolk frequented every day, yet he wished to face this reality as much as the rest of his fellow citizens did, which was not at all, and so it was that shame pummeled him as he walked through the doors of the Palace Tavern—at which point there was some relief in being overwhelmed by the sight of so many rowdy young men, the acrid smell of drink and the stench of sweat, the clanging of the piano.

  That so many of the boys were home (many still in their grays and clearly ready to celebrate their freedom, notwithstanding their defeat) surprised him, but the true shock was the collection of Union soldiers clustered near the door, not a single drink in hand, ignored entirely by all the others. George had hardly processed the image when a hand was on his shoulder. He turned to face a squat man who was quick to introduce himself with a hand so slack it nearly slipped from George’s grip.

  “Brigadier General Arnold Glass,” the man said. “And you are George Walker. A pleasure.”

  The man had sparse, oily hair parted down the center and that particular style of wiry, unkempt mustache that reached so far from his face it seemed liable to attack passersby. He appeared to be George’s age, and equally weathered by time, although more graceful in his movement.

  “Our dear leader,” George said. “An honor to make your acquaintance.”

  “You do have that dry humor I was promised,” Glass said with a smile.

  “I’d say you must have your own peculiar brand of it, coming to this bar knowing you’re amongst men who must be…less than fond of you.”

  Glass’s smile failed to dissipate, and George recognized it as that of a statesman, unnerving in its perpetuation, guarding something calculated.

  “I can’t say I share your concerns,” the general said. “I have given their mothers rations, clothed their younger siblings, and tonight I wish only to show them my goodwill by buying them a round of drinks.”

  He raised an eyebrow, like a young rascal withholding a secret.

  “Of course, it doesn’t hurt that in doing so I am allowed the opportunity to record who might be the rowdier individuals being reabsorbed by the community. Should trouble arise at a later date.”

  “How wily,” George said. “I can only hope you have your rifles on hand once those drinks take effect.”

  “I was actually on my way out,” Glass said, with apparent appreciation for George’s retort. “But since we’ve come upon one another, I’d love to ask you a favor in person. One that will save me a telegram.”

  “I do have plans, but if you make it quick.”

  Glass straightened, and George couldn’t help looking down to see if the man had tried to claim more height by standing on the tips of his toes (he had not). The general informed George that he was hoping to start a city council of sorts and had spoken of the matter to Wade Webler on numerous occasions.

  “Allow me to stop you there,” George said. “I want nothing to do with that man. Gussying up with his cronies for a ball as others can’t afford so much as a sack of flour? What a hideous display.”

  “I believe it was a gala, to be fair.”

  “What would be the difference?”

  “I—well—he assured me there was one. Although it does not make any difference. By all accounts the man has done right by Old Ox, raising money for this town. More importantly, he believes deeply in the rebuilding efforts.”

  “I’m confused, General. Do you not know what side he stands for?”

  Glass’s assignment, he said, was to maintain the peace. If necessary, politics had to be put aside for that cause. In his view, a council comprising the most esteemed individuals of Old Ox, united as one, would facilitate a clear charter that could help the town preserve its unanimity and renew its grandeur.

  As the general spoke, a stream of ale snaked under George’s foot like a creek might take to the woods.

  “Grandeur?” he said. “There are freedmen littered about the countryside having to beg, borrow, and steal, while you dole out rations to those who would spit on each and every one of them if given the chance.”

  No, there was no grandeur in this town, he said, no unanimity of purpose. At least not with the Union. It was all just the same divisiveness that had brought the place, along with the rest of the South, to ruin.

  “Mr. Walker, those men you speak of were freed by my hand. And the cost is restitution to those in this community who have lost their entire way of life. That is not unfair. Actually, on reflection, it’s quite just.”

  “Given the same information, General, you and I have reached opposite conclusions.”

  Glass, in a show of mild exasperation, whispered to George in an inflection altogether different from his previous tone—as though to speak in confidence might exert a charming effect.

  “I was under the impression that half this town was once under your father’s ownership. Surely you would wish to do well by his legacy, no? Let’s work together. Let’s help those less fortunate than we are.”

  George would’ve stepped
back had he not already been up against the bar.

  “Whatever my father accomplished does not require that I work with the likes of Wade Webler,” he said. “He has taken you for a fool if you think he has any other wish than to capitalize on this town’s decline.”

  “I see. Well, if you might reconsider—”

  “Let me make this clear. I would rather lay down in a pigpen and let the beasts have at me than participate in your council. Besides, I have enough on my hands on my farm. Now I must be going.”

  But it was Glass who made to leave. The smile, somehow, had not left his face, and he simply extended his hand once more.

  “We have no further business, then,” he said, with unfailing warmth. “A very good night to you, Mr. Walker.”

  “And to you,” George said.

  The Union soldiers followed their leader out the door, and George, rather than departing, ordered a glass of whiskey to calm his senses. Only when he had downed that one and was holding a second did he turn to find Ezra, seated on the second floor at his usual table, the only one with any charm, a substantial oak plank dulled to a slippery glaze by years of wear and spilt drink. No one bothered him unless invited to do so, and he appeared lost in his own world until George approached. He was dressed in his business wear, his derby still donned. Before him lay a feast: a leg of mutton sweating out its juices, a single stewed peach, and puny asparagus points with the look, taken together, of a bony child’s fingers.

  George asked if he was enjoying himself.

  “There is excellent entertainment to be found here for any passionate spectator of humanity.”

  “Your favorite pastime,” George said, taking a seat.

  “If not my only pastime. I saw you had an introduction to Arnold Glass.”

  “Sadly. He wants me to join some ludicrous committee.”

  “I heard as much.”

  “Well, I declined, with some prejudice, no less.”

  “As did I, though perhaps for different reasons. If I’m to be honest, I’ve grown numb to those looking for favors.”