The Sweetness of Water

by Nathan Harris

  As to Mrs. Clay’s freedom, Hackstedde explained that the former sheriff demanded that no charges be pressed against his wife.

  “He made it quite clear that his crime of philandering, and the extraordinary number of counts committed, was enough to warrant his punishment. His wife dabbed his forehead as he expired, and he seemed to depart this world on the best of terms with her.”

  George stirred his coffee.

  “And you have replaced him.”

  Hackstedde pointed at the star upon his shirt.

  “You see the bronze,” he said. “Rightly anointed by Osborne the day before he passed. He wasn’t willing to pass the job on to Tim, him being thickheaded and what have you.”

  Tim, his deputy, either oblivious or indifferent, was guarding the door as they spoke, watching the desolate lane as if a horde of barbarians might stampede toward them at any moment.

  “Now you sent word you have a dead body on your hands.”

  George could only nod.

  “Then we have some work to do. What I’m about to say is in strict confidence, and ma’am”—he eyed Isabelle, who stood behind George—“this does stay at the table, don’t go running off and gossiping with your lady friends.” He cut his eyes back at George. “I got a telegram from a colleague upstate to the effect that government officials will be arriving in a week’s time. Now Arnold Glass been on good behavior, keeping his nose out of folks’ business, mine included, but these boys coming, well, they aim to lay down the law. I hear they put a nigger in command of the police force out in Cooksville when they seen the officers in charge weren’t up to their standard. I can’t even imagine. Look at that! Hairs standing up on my arm just at the thought. So I made myself a vow that this county won’t be reaching that same end. We’ll show them we keep things peaceful around these parts. So we get this matter settled quickly.”

  Hackstedde was perhaps a decade George’s junior, a robust man with a cluster of hairy moles adorning his chin like a pile of raccoon droppings in miniature. He had a manner of clenching and unclenching his jaw, and filled the room with a general air of anxiety.

  Everything was already quite against the plan George had envisioned: Osborne would arrive. They would go meet Prentiss and then examine the body. Caleb—currently locked in his room upstairs—would give his testimony (or George would offer it in his absence, if he refused to appear). Osborne would take this information and make the appropriate decisions.

  But Hackstedde was no Osborne Clay. As known to everyone in Old Ox, the man had made his name as a slave patroller—a rather inept one—and to conceive of him as anything but an inept sheriff, in turn, was an impossibility. An even greater impossibility was that he might care whatsoever about a dead freedman. Hackstedde would not leave now that a murder was reported, but there would be no justice for Landry if it was up to this man. Not if Caleb’s story were true. The town was already hostile toward George. Without the aid of the sheriff, and with an accusation so galling directed at the likes of August Webler, he was sure he hadn’t seen even an inkling of the backlash that would strike their farm if the case was pursued.

  “How about we see this body,” said Hackstedde, who had begun to roll a cigarette upon the kitchen table. “I’ll have you show the way.”

  * * *

  Prentiss was waiting in the barn. He sat on his pallet beside Landry’s body, which they’d wrapped in cloth so tightly, so many times around, that its shape was barely discernible. George had offered to put the body in the stable, perhaps on ice, but Prentiss had refused him—he wished to wake up to his brother at his side. Who was George to tell him no?

  Hackstedde put a handkerchief to his nose against the noticeable odor and pointed at Prentiss. “This would be?”

  “He is in my employ,” George said.

  “Right,” Hackstedde said. “Suppose I’ve heard talk of this arrangement.”

  “He’s my brother,” Prentiss said. “He’s been killed. Ain’t no two ways about it.”

  “We don’t know that, exactly,” George said, his eyes so wide he might as well have been waving his arms at Prentiss.

  “How are you so sure?” Hackstedde asked Prentiss.

  “Ask me that after you’ve seen his face,” Prentiss said.

  “Tim,” Hackstedde said. He made a twirling motion with his finger, and his deputy came forward and crouched down by the body.

  “I wouldn’t wish for Prentiss to relive the sight,” George said to Hackstedde. “The two of them being brothers and all.”

  Hackstedde did not demur as George put a hand on Prentiss’s shoulder and led him outside the barn. His words were hurried, and he whispered to Prentiss under the thrum of the squawking chickens and the weather vane on the roof creaking like a rusty door hinge.

  “That man was once a patroller,” George said. “I swear we will give Landry the burial he deserves. He will rest at peace. But we cannot say another word to this man. It will only cause trouble. I’m sure of it.”

  Prentiss showed no expression at all. There was a shadow cast over him, and George saw the darkness as such resignation, as such total defeat, that no further words were needed. He did not have to tell Prentiss to surrender to these men. He already had.

  “When they’re gone,” George said, “we must speak again about your leaving here. I think we can both see by now it’s what’s best.”

  Their time together appeared to expire in that moment outside the barn. The silence between them was something vast, and both seemed to be wading through it for an answer, a means to explain this sudden rift that now felt permanent. George knew the feeling well. How often in his youth he had tried to forge a friendship, only to see it rupture when he voiced an unwanted opinion or behaved in some manner the other party found strange but seemed perfectly normal to George. There would be no contempt in this instance, no anger. Too much had transpired between him and Prentiss in the months since their meeting. There was no fault on either side, but all of it was irrevocable.

  “You will keep those peanuts alive, won’t you?” Prentiss said.

  “What? We don’t need to worry about that.”

  “George, you listen. I’ll leave from here. I promise I will. S’pose…s’pose I’ll go look for my mama somewhere. Lord knows that’s just my dream, to find her somewhere safe and see her again. And if it ain’t come true, I could at least do with the hope that you gonna tend to these here plants. Doing right by them is doing right by me and Landry. I ain’t wanna see ’em die, George.”

  Voices rose from the barn and soon Hackstedde and Tim reappeared.

  Hackstedde spoke as he removed his gloves. “You know,” he said, “my daughter had a beau who fought out in Long Point. He got a spray of grapeshot to the face from a cannon and died faster than you could trip over a word. We never saw him again. Just got a telegram saying as much. But when I see that dead Negro in there I can’t help but think of that boy. Probably got his face blasted open just like that big fella. A sorry business. A real sorry business.”

  “What’s that sorry business?” Prentiss said, his voice so low it was barely audible. “Her beau or my brother?”

  Hackstedde put his gloves in his back pocket.

  “A real sorry business,” he repeated to George, shaking his head. “But I see no reason to think there was any foul play here. Boy that big, going through them woods…well, a bad fall is not out of the question.”

  A fall. The sheer lunacy of the conclusion—or the lie—was enough to make George laugh in the man’s face. Could he not at least be more creative? Was his imagination so stunted?

  “With all that’s going on in this town,” Hackstedde continued, “the worries of a fallen Negro, alone out here, I just can’t see putting our resources toward what looks to be an accident.”

  He glanced at George with a steady gaze and George merely nodded in response. This could end here, he thought, with Prentiss safe and the farm spared. It was as Hackstedde said: no one cared about a dead Negro.
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br />   “I suppose that makes the most sense,” George said. “We might consider the issue closed.”

  Hackstedde’s eyes, two little black bullets, lit up, and he patted George on the back.

  “Good, then,” he said. “So, I’ll be on my way. Tim.”

  His deputy went to the fetch the horses and Hackstedde spoke with the vigor, the enthusiasm, of a job well done. “Those woods ain’t safe. Some boys just aren’t bred with any sense of caution. Maybe a bear got to him. You got bears out here, don’t you?”

  Sensing that Prentiss was at his breaking point, George placed a hand on his shoulder to steady him, to signal that they had nearly made it through. It was best to ignore the sheriff’s incompetence, the rank idiocy, with a patience that would pay off once Hackstedde had finally ridden away. But when he heard the voice behind him, he knew the day would take a different turn altogether.

  “Wait! Wait right there!”

  Caleb had barreled out the front door in his one-piece pajamas. He was pallid, eyes sunken, as if he hadn’t seen the light for days. He hardly resembled his son at all.

  “Who’s this?” Hackstedde said. “What’s the boy saying?”

  George introduced Caleb, then shook his head vehemently, urging his son to quit. But Caleb was so stirred to action, so resolute in his demeanor, that there was no deterring him.

  “I’d like to make a confession,” he declared.

  “Caleb, no—” George said.

  But the boy waved him off, tears welling and spilling down his cheeks.

  “No more lies,” he said. “I’ll let the truth be known.”

  George lowered his head. Just as his son had told him about August’s crime, it was now all, in one stream, given over to Hackstedde.

  * * *

  A day had passed since Landry’s murder. The stench of the body had intensified, though not a word was spoken about it, and Prentiss continued to walk around the barn as if there was no smell at all. He was packing a small duffel that George had given him, and George himself was standing at the entrance to the barn, watching on while keeping his distance. If Prentiss bore him any resentment over his son’s inaction, he kept it concealed.

  “I should be back with the coffin shortly,” he said. “There’s a furniture maker in town who has a roomful of coffins in the back. Had a racket going all through the war. He should have exactly what we’re looking for. We can hold the ceremony later today if that sounds right to you.”

  “It does.”

  “Good. Good.”

  “You want help?” Prentiss asked.

  George shook his head. “I can manage with Ridley. You keep packing.”

  The donkey was lethargic in the heat, but George harnessed him with his cart and took him to the main road at a slow clop. The day was not friendly. The screech of a mockingbird struck him like the clapper of an alarm. Exhaustion plagued him. He had slept fitfully last night, a problem so common recently that he’d begun to wonder if a good dream, or the fine mood that follows a true slumber, might ever find him again.

  The morning had been weighed down by the chaos of Caleb’s confession, which soon led to the emotional unraveling of the entire home. Isabelle was quick to take responsibility for Caleb’s actions, having gone upstairs and pleaded with him to come clean with the sheriff, not knowing how dubious Hackstedde’s title of sheriff might be. After it was over, Caleb paced endlessly about the parlor, walking to the bookshelf, back toward the kitchen, telling them repeatedly of how he only wished to do right. That was all there was for him now. A lifetime of wrong that must be made right.

  “You are barely grown,” George told him. “If you only knew the many wrongs awaiting you.”

  This one was different, Caleb said. His reticence, his fear, had led to Landry’s death. It was entirely his responsibility.

  With that, Prentiss stood up from the dining room table and addressed them all. “My brother’s laying out there!” he exclaimed, and the room fell silent. “Like a bled-out pig. If y’all don’t plan on helping me get him in the ground I’ll do that bit myself.”

  The words rang in George’s mind now as he reached the edge of town. There was some relief in the activity of Old Ox. The bodies, the voices, the noises all drowned out the emotions of the last twenty-four hours, and George appreciated the distraction. He left Ridley at his usual post and went on alone. No one bothered him, although a moment of disorientation left him dizzy. It appeared that the town was no longer laid out as he’d once known it to be. Each building was at once familiar and foreign, and he stopped a moment under the awning of an empty merchant’s shop to steady himself. What he needed was rest. With the protection of his father’s wealth, his whole life had maintained the air of an extended tour, and yet now he felt the need for a real one. Time away from it all. But there was so much to do. He needed to focus; he needed to get that coffin.

  He neared the square but pulled up at the sight of two stallions tied off in front of Webler’s little brick workhouse. The same horses that had just been at his home. Hackstedde and his deputy. It was not a shock. After all, Hackstedde had stood there, stone-faced, with a perfunctory promise to investigate the veracity of Caleb’s claims. But George found it difficult to imagine a Webler exiting the front door in handcuffs.

  He had the urge to go in. He did not know what he would say, or do, but he perceived what little power he had left in town slipping from him. Hands were being dealt in this very building, but he was absent from the table. It would not do. The furniture depot was immediately up ahead, but he turned and walked straight through the roundabout, avoiding the gardening society’s colorful arrangements, and made his way directly toward the very schoolhouse where he had once learned letters and which now acted as the headquarters for the Union Army’s outpost.

  “General Glass,” he called out as he neared the door. It did not cross his mind to acknowledge the line of men and women standing beside the building, papers or hats in hand, all of them waiting their turn—something George was not wont to do.

  A drab-faced soldier blocked the door before George could proceed. “Visitors are met with in the order they arrive,” he said.

  “This is a matter of some urgency,” he said. “Glass! It’s George Walker. I need a word.”

  Pointing with a finger, the soldier told him to step back.

  In response George put his own finger against the door itself. “You must let me in. What I have to deliver warrants urgent attention.”

  To George’s relief (and perhaps to the soldier’s as well), General Glass emerged from the door, trailed by a young man struggling to balance a tall stack of papers in both hands. A minor uproar traveled down the line of people as Glass slipped away. George was on the general’s trail from the moment he started down the main thoroughfare.

  “Mr. Walker,” Glass said, making no effort to mask his irritation, “did you not see the line? I’ll return shortly to speak with those in need of my attention, yourself included.”

  “This is no trivial matter, General.”

  “No? You mean it extends beyond food rations for starving children and updates on the status of wounded relatives?”

  Suddenly George was swallowed in a stream of oncoming traffic and stumbled against a woman carrying luggage. He almost lost track of Glass before hustling back to his side like a lost child returning to his mother.

  “How does this squire keep up with you whilst holding those papers?” George said. “He might well double as a circus acrobat.”

  “This man is hardly a squire,” Glass said. “He is my aide.”

  “What’s that, now?”

  They’d just arrived at the lumberyard as Glass stopped, wheeling around so quickly as to shock George into a standstill.

  “Brigadier generals have aides, not squires. Address my men with respect, please.”

  A soldier approached with a paper, which Glass signed without a second glance.

  George apologized and nodded to the aide, then turned b
ack to Glass.

  “I’d like you to know I’ve decided to join that council of yours,” he said. “I would be more than happy to, actually. I will arrive early, and smile, and do your bidding. In return, might you allow me five minutes of your time—”

  “The council has carried on in perfect concord without your presence.”

  “So be it. Might I still have a moment? What I have to say will be of no imposition on your day. I could have been kinder to you perhaps, but I have not been cruel, either. Grant me this one favor. Just a few minutes. I am begging.”

  Glass’s face seemed to condense itself to a single point, his eyes collecting themselves in deep contemplation and his nose scrunching up to meet them. He exhaled deeply and scooped half the papers from the arms of his aide and handed them to George, who nearly toppled over from the sudden weight.

  “Make yourself useful and lighten my aide’s load,” Glass said, “and I’ll give you two minutes.”

  “As fine a deal as any,” George said, gritting his teeth.

  They entered the lumber depot and George was struck by the presiding aroma of the place. He knew the smell of walnut trees, of freshly dug dirt, black and bitter, but in the close quarters of the tentlike depot the elements were noxious enough to bring tears to his eyes. Beyond the depot, soldiers were occupied in loading onto wagons the rows and rows of planks cut to size.

  “I’m listening,” Glass said.

  George followed him into his makeshift office, a desk shadowed by several soldiers and littered with blueprints and telegrams, and began to explain what had happened to Landry; that not only the town but also his own neighbors had abandoned him. How, with nowhere else to turn, he needed to know there was at least one honorable man he could count on as an ally. One individual who would help him seek the justice that Landry deserved.