The Sweetness of Water

by Nathan Harris

  Glass had seated himself as George was talking, and was now jotting a note, his aide a resolute statue at his side. Only at the sight of the boy empty-handed did George realize he himself was still holding his half of the stack of papers. He put them down on the desk. Having concluded his monologue, he stood quietly, feeling incredibly small in the whirlwind of movement around him—a whole universe of activity he hadn’t even known existed before this afternoon.

  “I’ve spoken with Mr. Webler already,” Glass said. “The issue will be delegated solely to Sheriff Hackstedde. He is more than capable of investigating this incident with impartiality.”

  George was stunned. “But did you not hear a word I said? Hackstedde is a fool, and to seek the counsel of Webler, the father of the accused, is as foolish as anything the sheriff might manage himself. This is dereliction of duty through and through.”

  This, more than any previous statement, captured Glass’s attention. He folded his hands upon the table and delivered George a look so stern that he wanted to hide himself behind the stack of papers he’d just laid down.

  “My duty?” Glass said, incredulous. “I doubt you have the faintest clue what my duty is. The very definition of the word is beyond you, as it is for so many men who come from so much and need so little from those around them. Allow me to explain it clearly so as to remove any confusion. My duty is to my country. In this case, my superiors have seen fit to assign that duty to a single task of little esteem but great importance, which is operating a lumberyard in a sorry country town filled with individuals who despise me. This duty also requires me to keep the peace amongst the very people who wish to see me, and all these soldiers surrounding me, gone from their home. That is my lot. And I have done it, and will continue to do it, until I am relieved of doing so.”

  “I did not wish to offend you—”

  “Which is the problem. Your selfishness knows no bounds. You don’t see past your own person. God forbid you consider that those folks waiting in line all morning outside that old schoolhouse might take priority over your own needs.”

  “I have presented my case poorly,” George said, backtracking however far he could. “I am not perfect—that I will grant you with zero reservation. But that does not change the fact that there is a dead man, a man who was good to all he met, who deserves better than to have his murder treated as a matter of no consequence. Quite frankly I’m flabbergasted you’ve fallen under Webler’s spell. For someone so attuned to the wiles of men seeking favors, you have aligned yourself with the worst of them.”

  “Wade Webler is exactly as selfish, and as callous, as you, or I, or any man or woman who desires this or that from me. Yet he was the first to greet me when I entered this town. The first to tell me who might help me with our common aims. I might add that in a moment of great personal need, when I needed money for a relative in dire straits, he assisted me without question. His generosity has been unmatched, Mr. Walker.”

  “You’re in his pocket,” George muttered, but Glass went on as if he hadn’t said a word.

  “Not until today, in these past few months, has Mr. Webler ever asked of me anything in return. And the one thing he has now requested is that I recuse myself from this business with one dead freed Negro, lest there be grave trouble riled up. If that is the lone requirement to maintain peace amongst the citizenry of this godforsaken town, to keep my superiors happy, and to aid a man who has helped me dearly, well, I will happily turn a blind eye.”

  At this, Glass returned his attention to the papers on his desk and did not deign to acknowledge George.

  “I’ve strived for this town to be a model for others in the state,” he continued, “and when the Freedmen’s Bureau arrives, I believe they will see it as such. This sorry fellow will help make that possible. If you ask me, his is a sacrifice with more resonance than many who died on the battlefield. Be content knowing that. However sad it is.”

  George had failed to notice the soldiers standing at attention, waiting for their superior’s ear—for George’s own departure. There was something in their eyes, neutral and dispassionate, that translated as belittlement. This pitiful stranger flailing wildly before them, denied all he sought. He’d embarrassed himself.

  “I suppose it’s as you said at the saloon, then,” George said. “We have no further business between us.”

  Glass looked up, confused, it seemed, that George was still in his presence.

  “General Glass,” George said, already turning to take his leave.

  * * *

  He thought of visiting Ezra but couldn’t muster the energy to weather any kind of reprimand; instead he took himself to the furniture warehouse, still in a sour mood. He had to slip past a toilet—a rusty tin can beneath a splintered wooden stool—and a baby carriage just to reach the front door, and inside it was mostly just a collection of more unwanted goods. The path to the register was defined less by any clear direction than by the absence of obstacles barricading the walkway. At one point, George turned and ran straight into a globe the size of his waist and followed this by nearly tripping onto a feather bed, which at the time felt like an acceptable end to his afternoon.

  By then the proprietor, a man in a white shirt and black vest who reeked of tobacco, had found him. When George stated his purpose, he led him to the back of the store where the coffins were housed.

  “They don’t tend to put customers in a spending mood if we keep them out front,” the man explained.

  Having spoken with Prentiss and gained his approval, George requested a birch coffin.

  “I got walnut trees out behind my house,” the man said. “So I sell walnut coffins.”

  There would be no gain in protesting.

  “Lined, trimmed, and raised,” the man said. “All for the price you’d pay for a decent cask of sherry. It might not be birch, but it’s a steal.”

  George eyed him, but the man only returned the look, and so he simply paid and asked for assistance in carrying it to where Ridley was tied up.

  “It can be arranged,” the man said. “But I’m afraid the labor is extra.”

  “It’s only a hundred yards through town.”

  A long silence hung between them, and in the small bends of light that reached the back room the ancient dust of the place milled in the air. The man lit a cigar and stood there idly.

  “Oh, good Lord,” George said. He pulled out all the bills he had left and put them on the table. “Just grab an end and help me already.”

  “Jessup!” the man yelled.

  From the back door appeared a boy dressed identically to the man—white shirt, black vest upon it, a ghoulish look transposed upon him by his surroundings.

  “Yes?” the boy said.

  The man pointed his cigar toward George. “Help this man carry his coffin.”

  It was heavy for one but tolerable for two. They walked outside with it and down the steps, but George told the boy he needed a moment and they set the coffin down. Hackstedde’s horse was gone now, along with Tim’s—Webler’s as well. No life stirred behind the curtained windows of the brick building.

  The boy grew restless. “I ain’t got all day, mister.”

  When the coffin was at last on the cart hitched to Ridley, the boy lingered.

  George wagged his finger. “You will not receive a penny from me. Skedaddle.”

  The boy rolled his eyes as though George had ended his world and spasms were coursing through him, then turned and was gone in a blink.

  George collected himself and climbed upon Ridley. How was it, he wondered, that he might accomplish one single errand yet already be so done with the day? He could make it a task to sit in bed for ten hours straight, without moving a single toe, yet he would still somehow exhaust himself by the work. It was unbelievable, yet it was so.

  “Git,” he said to Ridley with a nudge of his boot.

  The donkey made no move.

  “Go on,” he said.

  Still nothing. Ridley flicked his ears
about as if bouncing the commands away. George gave him a kick for good measure. This, too, produced no effect.

  “Move your fat ass!” George cried. “Go, go, go! Goddamn it.”

  Ridley did not stir in the slightest. He was looking off—at the long road, at the great stretch of forest in the distance, perhaps at an oblivion only he could see.

  George leaned down to the donkey’s ear, his voice furious.

  “There is nothing there,” he hissed. “That road goes to another town just like this one, and then to another, and there is nothing in any of them but the same thing repeated, different yet identical, the same stores with different fronts, the same simpletons with different faces, and absolutely none of it should interest you at all because you are a goddamned brainless donkey who has ruined my day.”

  George slid off Ridley in a fit of rage, ready to come to blows with the creature, but the moment his feet touched the ground Ridley began trotting forward.

  “I see,” George said, huffing. “Very well.” They walked beside each other then. He concealed himself in Ridley’s shadow and his mood was one of conciliation. “If the load was too much you only needed to say so,” he whispered. “You can’t just sit there in silence.”

  As if the donkey might speak. Still—it was the only apology George could manage. He put his hand upon the base of Ridley’s mane and it gave him comfort just to feel the beast, to be in the presence of another warm-blooded animal with no greater wants than to take the step that followed the last one toward home.

  * * *

  There had been little time to prepare for the burial, but Isabelle had collected roses from the garden, the few of any quality, and tied them together in a bouquet. Prentiss, George, and Caleb carried the coffin, Prentiss at the front and George and Caleb side by side together at the rear. George told them of a clearing in the woods, one he’d shown Landry some time ago, and where he’d seen him on numerous occasions since. He guessed it to be his favorite place in the woods, untouched by human life except for him—and what better place for a burial.

  “Do you want any words said?” George asked Prentiss. “I know a few verses by heart.”

  Prentiss was focused on the coffin so intently that George thought he’d gone unheard, but then Prentiss looked up at him and said, “Let him go as he lived.”

  So they dug in silence, the three of them taking turns, Isabelle standing alongside. It took nearly an hour to make the hole large enough.

  When the coffin was interred, Caleb turned to Prentiss and spoke for the first time. “If you don’t want me here for this…”

  Prentiss once again kept his eyes on the coffin.

  “You ain’t killed my brother,” he said. “I won’t stop you from saying your goodbyes.”

  All four of them stood silent beneath the canopy of sunlight that had begun to close like a lid, encircled by the limbs of the trees reaching toward one another in the slanting wind.

  “Isabelle,” George said.

  She stepped forward and from the bag at her side retrieved a wooden stake, no taller than the leg of a child, and stuck it into the ground at the head of the coffin. She then pulled forth another item from the bag, a sock, the same blue as the one Landry had knitted her, yet large enough for a grown man—for Landry himself.

  “I knew if you two went north,” she said to Prentiss, “eventually the weather would be chilly, and seeing as your brother was so kind as to knit some socks for me, I thought I might return the favor. At the very least it might commemorate his kindness, to mark where he found some peace after all.”

  She hooded the top of the stake with the sock and fastened it with a length of twine. When the sunlight touched it, the blue was intensely bright amid the expanse of green grass, such that it could be glimpsed from any angle at the edge of the entire forest.

  “I’d like you to have the other,” Isabelle said.

  She pulled the sock’s twin from the bag and handed it to Prentiss. He rubbed the fabric with his fingers, placed the sock against his chest, and thanked her.

  She opened her arms for a hug and when they embraced she made one last point clear, her voice hardly louder than a whisper:

  “Don’t think for a moment I forgot you. Your pair is back at the house. I’ll finish soon.”

  He could not hold back a bit of laughter.

  “Looking out for me like your own,” he said. “I won’t be forgetting your kindness, Mrs. Walker.”

  They stood for a while longer, none of them wishing to hurry the proceedings, until Prentiss faced them all as one.

  “If y’all don’t mind,” he said, “like to be alone with my brother for a while.”

  “I’d like to help you fill in that grave. I imagine it will take you some time—”

  “George,” Isabelle said.

  “I can manage,” Prentiss said. “Can manage that all on my own.”

  They returned to the cabin. Supper was short, and when it was over, George cleaned up alongside Isabelle and Caleb, putting dishes away in silence as they wiped off the dining-room table. When Caleb went upstairs, George found himself drifting toward the window, staring at the starless night, the miles of nothingness, the last breath of the lantern dying within the barn to which Prentiss had returned.

  “What is on that mind of yours?” said Isabelle, who had crept up behind him.

  “Oh,” he said. “Nothing worth mentioning.”

  “Everything is worth mentioning to you, George.”

  She was now standing beside him. Her hair, though elegant, seemed to have picked up some added gray, and there were wrinkles he hadn’t noticed before, constellations as beautiful as those in the sky on a late-night walk.

  “Do you remember my father’s help? Taffy?”

  “You’ve spoken of her.”

  “We were so close,” he said. “Yet I can recall so little of her. A shadow of her stayed with me after she was sold. I cannot describe it other than to say I would still feel her running beside me as I played alone. Or hear her washing clothes outside when I woke up.”

  “I had the same when my father died,” she said. “Silas and me. We’d hear him yelling up to us. A memory speaking out.”

  “Isn’t it eerie?”

  “You were the one who told me I’d imagined the smell of my uncle’s coffin. I suppose what you’re talking about is no different. Children bear things however they can manage.”

  George sat down at the kitchen table once more. Isabelle stayed by the window, looking out toward the barn.

  “Well, it felt real to me,” George said, “and it upset me more than I can speak to. I railed at my mother for days. She was not well, but I couldn’t help myself. She would only tell me that such relationships must be severed quickly. That it was best to focus on the memories of our play, and our time together, rather than her departure. But Taffy’s absence was far more acute than any memories of fonder times.” George was tapping the table now as the thoughts racked against one another in his mind. “Isabelle, Prentiss must go. And go now. For his good and for ours.”

  She put a hand upon George’s shoulder. “Let him finish packing,” she said. “Let him mourn tonight. And at first light…”

  “First light,” George said.

  It could not come soon enough.

  CHAPTER 18

  It was his last night on the farm and Prentiss could hardly shut his eyes, let alone fall asleep. His pallet felt like a solid slab of rock and he tossed and turned endlessly. On his side, he faced the place where Landry had once lain. The fact was one he would confess to no one, but it had given him great comfort to be there with the body. Left with either nothing or the body, he would happily take the body—gaze upon it, speak to it, and love it like Landry himself. He’d thought of broaching the idea with George, refusing the funeral. So much had been taken from him—must the ground claim the body, too? Still, the funeral had been right. He wondered if it was the same field his brother had spoken of, the one with the dandelions, but he
hadn’t seen any and didn’t dare ask George, since he’d rather have the hope that it was than learn otherwise.

  His thoughts swam, and he flipped onto his stomach just to steady himself. He had money for lodging and food that would last a month at least. George had told him to go north until the sights suited him; to find a job, a wife, a home. Easy to imagine, he told George, but difficult to accomplish. Especially if he was to be alone.

  “You are not alone,” George had said. “You’re never alone.”

  Which was a lie. His isolation was numbing. He was no longer a brother; no longer one of the many who populated Morton’s land; and more likely than not, he was no longer a son, at least not in any way that mattered. For all he knew, his mother no longer walked the earth. And what did it matter if she did? His odds of ever finding her seemed about as good as the odds of bringing Landry back to life. The idea he’d long cherished—that of his mother living elsewhere, perhaps even in the North—rang true only to the side of him that still entertained fanciful notions. He would see her walking up ahead on a dusty trail, a woman with black hair like a nest upon her head, her primrose dress alight in the eye of the sun; or imagine her in the woman getting water from the pump on a dusty road, her delicate fingers cupping water to her child’s mouth. Yet he always knew it was the work of his mind. He figured Landry had known as well, that it was a secret they withheld from each other so as to keep the truth untrue, to keep their story, and her being, forever alive.

  Now he faced reality. That it was him. Alone. The thought was a bolt of fear, but he knew that he would come to know this new life as he’d learned to know all those that had come before—for every step in life had been an obstacle, yet here he was, still standing day after day, ready for whatever might happen next. The shred of hope felt like salvation, and it drew him toward a deep slumber.