The Sweetness of Water

by Nathan Harris

  Ezra picked up the mutton leg, inspecting it like a diamond in need of a grade.

  “There is not a soul in this town, General Glass included, who hasn’t petitioned me for this or that. Just look at these sorry sorts. Home from the front and already pleading for a loan, begging on street corners, only to squander what little they have here each night by poisoning themselves with swill. Telling their vapid war stories to anyone who might listen and complaining of the Negro who has somehow stolen their jobs. As if they would work for a Negro’s wage. As if they would work at all. A whole town wallowing in its own sadness. Pathetic.”

  His fleshy jowls rippled as he swallowed, his lips shimmering with lamb fat.

  “You know,” George said, “when I look in the mirror in the morning I see a miserable old bastard looking back at me. Yet when I see you, I take great comfort, knowing how much progress I have left to make on that same path.”

  Ezra laughed up a bit of food, then caught himself, his smile disappearing.

  “You think I delight in sharing my bleak thoughts on humanity.” He licked his fingers to the knuckle and dried them with his napkin. “But for someone acclimated to loss, someone who accepts its inevitability, the only recourse is to seek out joy in the darkest corridors of life, even when the calamity is befalling others. There’s a word for that. The joy of sorrow. Another man’s sorrow.”

  “I’m not sure I wish to know it,” George said, and sipped his whiskey.

  “All the better. I didn’t ask you here to discuss such weightless things.”

  “Did you not? I thought we were here to have a good time. To be merry.”

  “Perhaps there are other topics worthy of our conversation.”

  “Allow me to guess,” George said. “You wish to ask after more of my land, or have me repay my debts to you. I’d venture further to say both tasks are intertwined.”

  “God, no. But can’t we keep each other company without the need to prattle forth on trivial nonsense? To accuse me of grabbing after your land at every opportunity, I find it offensive, really.”

  Ezra put back half his beer.

  “I was only joking,” George muttered.

  “My only aim, if you must know, is battling a bout of loneliness.”

  Now Ezra must be joking, George thought, but his friend continued in a soft, serious tone.

  “My wife is so familiar she often fades into the makings of our home. A lamp might draw as much attention in a passing day. And the boys are gone.”

  “But you’re well-regarded, Ezra. You field visitors all day, I see them in your office whenever I’m in town.”

  “That is business. Before you came here, I was alone. And when you leave I will be alone again. Letting time pass before I retire for the night.”

  George didn’t realize what had become of his father’s old friend, for he seemed no different than he had since his childhood. Yet part of Ezra, at least in drink, had softened into something infirm, something weak. It took George a moment to gather that the weakness might simply be age. He saw then what would become of the old man, his jowls loosening further until they were no different from the flaps of a dog, even as his excess weight peeled away. Soon he would find himself removed to a bed, in the far corner of his home on Mayor’s Row, and he would go the way of Benjamin, George’s own father, and not many years hence, George feared, he himself would take Ezra’s place across the table, eating with the gluttony of a man who knows it may be his last supper.

  “You cannot run from it,” Ezra said, as if reading George’s mind. “It is just how things advance. We age. And we must be honest in the face of this truth.”

  “If you’re suggesting death worries me more than the next man, I’d say you’re wrong.” George sank back into his chair.

  “I’m not so sure I am.”

  Neither of them spoke as Ezra ate. The ruckus near the bar had abated, and in the relative quiet, cards being shuffled at the tables below sounded like the ruffled flutter of birds taking flight.

  Finally the sheep bone lay bare and Ezra relaxed.

  “The Negroes,” he said. “Let them go.”

  So, then. There had been a point to the invitation all along. George felt the need for another whiskey.

  “Not you, too,” he said.

  “The George I knew had not a care in the world for another man, let alone freed slaves. I can only gather that old age has led you to philanthropy. To make right whatever wrongs your heart holds in. But you are exposing yourself to the public in an ugly way.”

  “I thought you did not wish to prattle forth on trivial nonsense.”

  Ezra leaned forward.

  “Do not mistake the presence of those soldiers for some beacon of safety. This town is not as quiet as it seems. These men have been humiliated at war, and now they’re restless. Only growing more so in the face of your indiscretions.”

  “I’m restless sitting here with you.”

  “George, there are men who could use those wages. Back from the war, with little more than a few wounds to their name. Men just like Caleb.”

  “Do not bring my son into this. I have made no statement by my decisions. The brothers work hard, they cause no issue, they are good fellows and good labor.”

  Ezra’s face hardened.

  “You simply cannot have those two boys coming into town haggling for new clothes, their pockets lined with bills while they pass white men begging for a few coins. At least cut back their pay. The other landowners have created perfectly reasonable guidelines on how to deal with such circumstances.”

  “Stop there. I will not run up a debt on honest folk and make them earn back their wages as if they are slaves again. I am not saying they deserve a hog over a spittle every night for supper, but a little decency, Ezra.”

  Ezra paused, as if gathering himself.

  “It’s plain that I will have to say this more directly, because you are as stubborn as your father. Do you not see that although some voices have been suppressed in Old Ox, they have not been vanquished altogether? There are certain individuals, those less inclined toward friendly conversation than you or I, who have made it clear—in the back of their stores, in the alleyways at night, even in this very bar—that they will not stand for what you’re doing. Frustrated men. Which makes for rash men. I cannot express how troublesome this could become not just for your farm, but for your well-being. Your family’s well-being.”

  He put a hand on the table before George and laid out his palm, as if to gesture at the scene beneath them. And now George wasn’t sure how he could’ve missed an undercurrent so obvious. The cursory glances. The scowls of men he did not know, flitting up before returning to their empty glasses.

  “You did not bring me here for company,” George said. “You had me here to warn me.”

  It was only a few minutes ago that Ezra had appeared burdened by age, ground down by time. But he had not grown weak at all, George saw. In fact it was the opposite: George was the one wilting in the very manner he had inwardly attributed to Ezra.

  “I had you here from a place of kindness,” Ezra said. “To let you know yours has run amok.”

  “Enough,” George said. “I’m leaving now.”

  He pushed his chair back and stood, then put his fingertips on the table in a moment of dizziness, feeling the punch of the drink after a sober spell.

  “Was that true about your loneliness? Or was that part of your ploy?”

  Ezra held his tongue for a moment, sitting before his empty plate.

  “I don’t know a happy man who comes here alone,” he said.

  That was it. All he needed to hear.

  “Please take care of yourself, Ezra. Trust that I will do the same for me and mine. I’ll come by and see you at the office in a few days. Not out of pity, or to see that you’re well, but simply because I like you. Until then.”

  George wheeled away from his friend with the sense that he had managed to avoid a trap. The floor of the bar was still so cr
owded he had to move sideways to slide past the bodies. He pushed his way through without a word, minding each step, hiding beneath the boom of the chatter, lost in the heat of flesh packed together. He could not tell if eyes were upon him, yet he was sweating now and he longed to reach the tavern door, to escape this place and not return.

  It was not to be.

  “You’re George Walker, ain’t you?”

  He would have kept going had the voice not come from so nearby, close enough for it to seem as though the words themselves had reached out and grabbed him. He turned to face a young man surrounded by other compatriots his age.

  “I am.”

  “Ain’t that the sweetest thing. You Caleb’s daddy.”

  He was caught off guard at a name he had not expected to hear.

  “Do you know him?”

  “I sure do. Pass a message to the feller, ha?”

  The boy looked among his friends and then thrust a loaded fist at George.

  “Tell him this is what traitors git around here. And you can go ahead and spread a li’l around for them niggers of yours, too. ’Cause you such kind, sharing folks up at that farm of yours, ain’t you?”

  The boy raised his fist and George shrank back, retreating with his hands held over his face in surrender.

  “Don’t!” he shrieked.

  “Look at the fear on him!” the boy said. “I guess it runs in the family, ha?”

  They were laughing. He was nothing more than a scared child. His impulse was to peer back at Ezra, though his humiliation could hardly be worse even if the old man was bearing witness to his belittlement.

  The boy grabbed him by the collar and pulled him forward.

  “Now take your whippings like a man,” he said, and brought his fist down.

  Yet it was caught in the air by another—belonging to a man twice the width of the boy—who spun the would-be assailant around and gripped his wrist as if it were no more than a stalk of celery, something to snap in half. It was Mildred Foster’s son, though George had no idea which one, for they all looked the same.

  “My mama gets on with Mrs. Walker,” he said. “I don’t think she’d be pleased to hear you’d put a hand on her friend’s husband.”

  He dropped the boy’s wrist and the boy fell backward, cursing under his breath.

  “I ain’t mean nothing, Charlie,” he said.

  Charlie nodded at George without a hint of a smile and moved out of the way.

  “Charlie,” George said. “The rest of you gentlemen. Enjoy your evening.” And he escaped out the door and into the night.

  * * *

  Even his Nantucket father had help. A child, Taffy, whom he bought for a price that George had long wished to know but had failed to locate in the pile of ledgers gathering dust in the cellar. She was a year older than the eleven-year-old George, and arrived ashen, unwilling to make eye contact.

  When she came inside, his mother sniffed her across the scalp and said, in an even tone, that she didn’t warrant a bath.

  “A bath is a luxury,” she said. “A wet towel should do. The friction of the air will dry you. It is no different than washing dishes, which I may have you prove out once we have you clean.”

  This was Taffy’s first lesson. Many more would come. Bedmaking was an involved process—with the creasing of pillows, the proper turning of a mattress—and it would take long stretches of the afternoon for Taffy to finish the steps correctly. Yet not all was physical, and Taffy excelled even in the domestic mental exercises, memorizing containers (the necessities of a kitchen: tinware; basket ware; a box for darning needle, thread, and twine; etc.) with the same thoroughness in which she de-lumped the soil for the flower seeds in season. George never asked why Taffy had come, when his mother seemed perfectly happy to clean and tend to the house herself. And not until Taffy was gone, a few months after his father’s death, did it occur to him that, more than anything, his mother had simply wished for someone else to pass her duties onto, knowing so well the eccentricities of her son: his steadfast wish for privacy, his lack of interest in others, the little care he showed in keeping even his own room in order. Perhaps she thought he might never have a woman of his own, and Taffy was being made to fulfill the role.

  He gained from Taffy in many ways. When he was outside alone—his usual place in the world—she would meet him after completing her own work, a piece of fruit in hand, delivered at the request of his mother, and ask if he might wish to have her along. He always said yes. They would carve spears together with his hatchet, then fling them into the woods and pretend they’d felled the dark beast his father spoke of so often. She could throw farther and climb higher than he could, but never put her amusement above his own. He knew this was the task assigned her, but he did not let this knowledge affect his inviolable belief that she cared deeply for him, and understood him in ways others did not. He told her once that he loved her, although he did not know the meaning of it beyond the fondness he felt for his parents. When his mother lost sense after his father’s death and sold Taffy, George took refuge in the idea that it had not been love, but something more distant, which allowed him to forget the makings of her face; the thudding joy in his heart when her shadow crept over him on the front porch; the soft wind upon his shoulder when she overtook him in a sprint and the sight of her back as she disappeared before him, all of it stamped out until now, in his middle age, he remembered her as nothing more than something forgotten.

  George carried on past the tavern. Puddles in the mud reflected the glare of the moon, and with those shards of light he knew where not to step. He’d meant to go home, but now another stop felt necessary, one he had told himself he would not make when setting off that night. He took the side road before him toward the old section of town. It was silent, and the pathway narrowed as he went, so much so that even the moonlight was blocked from view. He’d peered over his shoulder more than once but he was not followed.

  He came upon the whorehouse. The windows were the only ones alight on the row, and the sounds from inside were rowdy, although he hadn’t ventured through the front door in ages and had little interest in what he might find there. Rather, he went around the back and up the winding steps to the second floor. He did not know if she would answer, but the door swung open on the second rap. He shared only a glance with Clementine, in whose face he’d always detected Taffy’s, before following her inside and sitting at the end of her bed. Was it a bad time? he asked. He’d figured he might catch her before her night began.

  “You always have my ear, George. Tell me how you’ve been.”

  This was all he asked of Clementine: to listen. Which wasn’t to say he’d gleaned nothing of her from his time in her company. He knew she had a child—had seen her walking with the girl one morning, before their first encounter, which was when he’d tasked himself with tracking her down, unable to shake Clementine’s resemblance to Taffy. Her family, he discovered, were mulattoes from Louisiana. Against her will her husband had swept her off to Georgia to live as his property. She had escaped his bondage with the child to fend for herself, and had earned enough to make do on her own. If few men were fooled by the white wax and paint she applied to her face, they were more than willing to indulge themselves on a lonely night—regardless of her tawny complexion, the rumors of her past, her heritage—eager to experience the revelation that was her presence. Given how few spoke ill of her, they apparently did not regret their time. Society made exceptions in matters of great beauty.

  It had been the winter, in the midst of Caleb’s deployment, since he’d last seen Clementine, and he told her everything now, as he was apt to do: spoke first of Caleb’s supposed death and then his shocking return, of Isabelle, and of the brothers, whom she was well aware of, for she knew of most happenings in Old Ox. She did not look at George while he regaled her with the details of his life. Instead she spent the time cleaning the space of her vanity desk, prepping her gown for the evening, dressing her hair. Yet each time they were di
sturbed by a knock on the door, which was often, she made it clear to the house attendant that she was busy, and encouraged him to carry on.

  “You say you’re struggling.”

  He could hear the sounds of other men in other rooms—a rocking against the wall—along with the goading moans of women that went unstifled. The smell of the liquor whose stains here and there had rotted the wood of the floor outstripped even the aroma of perfume.

  “In a manner of speaking,” he said.

  “You have more words in your head than I’ve heard in my whole life, George. Say more about it so I know what you mean.”

  She said he should relax and take his time, although he knew she had none to spare. He could see, in his mind’s eye, the regulars in the parlor, their steady glances at the stairwell, waiting impatiently for her to appear. They would have to wait, for it was his turn to have the room, to occupy her bed.

  He used her. This did not escape him. How he laid her bare, opened her up bit by bit, filling her with his old memories, or the great worries that plagued him (his wife’s chilliness, his son’s shame); how he asked her—as if she could possibly know, as if she were more than a scarred vessel forced to sit there beside him and brave the winds of his words—to whom the cries he heard at night belonged, for they were not his, but perhaps they came from the barn, from the brothers, or from his wife, yes, was it Isabelle, who had lost him and whom he had lost, or maybe that beast in the forest, waiting for him to find it, just as his father had, or perhaps the cries carried all the way from town, the men and women and children alongside the creek in their mud-spattered tents, searching for new land at home and finding there was none, that this was it, that for so many life went no farther than Old Ox.

  Clementine was standing beside him, the room dark, a tallow candle flickering beside them like the wings of a bird. She lifted her soft hand, which had been resting on his shoulder, and felt his cheek, filling it with her warmth. This was the only touch he asked of her—that of a caregiver, as if she were a mother tending to a sick child.