The Sweetness of Water

by Nathan Harris

  “You write me,” she said. “More than one sentence at a time.”

  He laughed, and teared up a little.

  “Whole letters,” he promised. “Explaining everything. Telling all.”

  “Yes,” she said, and it was all she could manage.

  They broke their embrace and now his father was at his side, his back to him, hands joined behind his backside, staring out the window toward where Stage Road ran.

  “I suppose I will take Ridley if I must,” he said, as if a favor had been asked of him and this was the concession Caleb would have to accept.

  “What?” Caleb asked, perplexed.

  “There’s not a place on earth I would deign to go without him.”

  “What are you saying, George?” his mother asked.

  “I’ve traveled the woods of this county since I was a boy. I know them better than anyone. Your best chance at freedom is with me at your side.”

  “You despise travel,” Caleb said. “You treat a trip to town as though you’ve journeyed to the gates of hell. You can’t actually want to join us.”

  “Want is a strong word,” his father said. “I’m needed, is all.” He put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder and walked by him.

  Caleb thought to protest but knew it would be futile. His father was emboldened by his own stubbornness. There was a maddening insouciance to the way his eyebrows raised in moments like this, how the wrinkles of his face unwove themselves in total commitment to the finality of his conviction. There would be no changing his mind. Caleb wasn’t sure his father could change his own mind once he’d come to a decision.

  “I’ll go only as far as the county line. Once I know you’re off safely, I’ll return home.”

  “To charges of assisting criminals,” Caleb said.

  His father waved him off as he began to head upstairs.

  “Please. I’ll tell them I was on a jaunt in the woods. I’d love to see them prove otherwise.”

  Caleb looked at his mother for assistance, but she had little to offer.

  “I gave up some time ago with him,” she said, laughing as she wiped her cheeks.

  The sun had risen in full now, and the farm sparkled under its canopy of soft yellows, the barn no longer red but burnt orange, the fields brushed with gold. The effect would wear off as the day progressed, but it was a sight to behold when the morning light poured in. He would miss it dearly.

  Just then, Prentiss reappeared. He turned to Caleb’s mother—unsure, it seemed, whether it was polite to speak to her in such a condition. “Ma’am,” he said.

  She gave him another hug, then pulled away quickly. “Your socks,” she said, heading for the stairs.

  The muffled voices of his parents came from behind their bedroom door.

  “We’ll have a third on our journey,” Caleb told Prentiss.

  “George?” Prentiss nodded knowingly. “He looks out for his own. Best he can, at least.”

  His parents descended the stairs, his father dressed no different than he might be for any other day: ragged suspenders over a denim shirt, a sunhat for shade. His father instructed them to meet him out front after he’d fetched the donkey, then split off from his mother without a second look and went out the back door.

  His mother approached them. The socks were blue and fine, just as Landry’s had been. The white trim wavered a bit, but this only added to their charm.

  “They’re durable,” she said. “Keep them clean, though. Don’t go about in dirty socks, Prentiss.”

  “To commit an act so ugly against a pair of socks so nice—I would never, ma’am.” He put a hand to her shoulder in the way a man might to another man, and she responded by placing her own hand on his. Then he pulled away and put the socks in his back pocket. “You take care, ma’am.”

  “You as well, Prentiss.”

  Caleb tipped his head toward the door. It was time.

  Ridley slunk around the side of the house just as Caleb and Prentiss saddled the mare. His father appeared as calm as ever, yet Caleb couldn’t deny the pang of fright in his chest, imagining what was to come. His mother was on the porch, the hem of her gown puddled about her feet. He collected the image and stored it away for moments just like these: when the fear overwhelmed him, and only she would do for relief.

  CHAPTER 22

  Isabelle napped on George’s armchair, enveloped in his scent. When he’d left with Caleb and Prentiss only hours earlier, she was sure she would remain awake, that nothing could bring her back to sleep, yet the minute she curled her legs beneath her she was lost to a dream. She didn’t recall the particulars, but it was not set in the cabin, and so it seemed a pleasant retreat from her splintered life. She was disappointed to awaken.

  It was already midday, and the sun had brought the house to a low boil. She fried enough eggs for three, although it was less out of appetite than the amount she was used to seeing on the dining-room table. She was famished, yet there was more than half left when she was done, and she collected the pan and tossed the scraps out back for whatever scavenger might want its fill.

  There was an almost catastrophic unease that followed breakfast. She felt the need to busy herself and thought she might clean Caleb’s room, then remembered that this was unnecessary, seeing as she might never see him again if all things went to plan. This thought then met with the greater loneliness of George’s absence, and the convergence of the similar yet distinct tracks of her loss was almost so great she had to sit on her hands just to keep them from trembling. She was there on George’s chair again, feeling with her thighs the buttons protruding from the leather, each of them junction points for memories of her husband. He would sit and read so long it began to feel like he was waiting for something to arrive that never came, and his melancholy when he took his glasses off and extinguished his lamp was matched only by the enthusiasm he showed in returning to that spot the very next night.

  And the chair was where she’d found him after her attempt to visit Prentiss in jail. George, his glasses pushed to the end of his nose, had put his book down as she walked inside and asked her eagerly if she’d gotten past Hackstedde.

  She hadn’t known until that moment that she would choose not to disclose her meeting with Clementine. But Clementine’s strenuous insistence on the innocence of George’s visits forced her to look inward, at her own jealousy, and question why it had to be there at all. What was there to gain, in the sweeping landscape of her marriage, in meddling with the curious (and often mysterious) manners of George’s charity? After all, wasn’t that why he paid Clementine? The opportunity to give? She’d shaken her head and told George that she wasn’t let in to see Prentiss, but that she had been to see Mildred and that the day, to her, still felt very productive.

  The trembling that had overtaken her hands continued—it seemed to be reverberating from somewhere outside her—and she looked up and laid eyes on a team of horses trotting toward the cabin. She wasn’t scared of whoever was approaching. If anything, she was relieved, knowing they were bound to come. She would rather get it over with.

  She went outside and met a wind so frantic she had to steady herself against the porch railing. She recognized almost all of them: Wade Webler, the sheriff and his deputy, Gail Cooley from Morton’s plantation. Two others: nondescript men of Caleb’s age, though thoroughly hardened, their eyes fastened on her with disdain. One of them was upon a horse and the other had dismounted and was bringing up the rear with a hound.

  “A posse?” she called out. “Really, Wade?”

  “Check the barn,” Wade said to the boy with the hound. “It’s where they had him staying.” He turned to Isabelle, his eyes sunken in exhaustion. “Where are they?” he asked bluntly.

  “Of whom do you speak?”

  “Of whom do I speak. Isabelle, trust me when I say this. You want no part of the stunt your son has pulled. It’s best we get him to safety before he puts other lives beyond his own in harm’s way.”

  “We both know the only person pu
tting lives in danger is you, Wade Webler.”

  The boy with the hound was entering the barn and she hollered for him to stop. To no avail.

  “This is my property,” she said to Sheriff Hackstedde. “I have not given anyone permission to search that barn.”

  Yet the sheriff was statue-like.

  “You’re an officer of the law,” she went on. “Do your duty.”

  Buried in his face was an anger that was missing the last time he’d visited her home. “I have suspicions you’re harboring a fugitive,” he said. “Fugitives. So don’t you tell me about my duty.”

  “Bring George out here,” Wade said. “I’d like to speak to him about his son.”

  “George is on a hike,” she said, “and I still have no idea what any of you are speaking of. I deserve some answers.”

  The hound was baying. She could hear the boy talking to it, and she realized the men on horseback were simply waiting, now—enduring her presence as they must. With a few bellowing howls the hound reappeared and led the boy toward the main road.

  “Sounds like we got a scent,” Hackstedde said, perking up.

  “Mrs. Walker,” Wade said, “your son committed a foolhardy act last night, holding an officer of the law at gunpoint and freeing a prisoner from his cell. I also have reason to suspect that he’s stolen a horse of mine. I’ll have more proof once I see him on it. Which, I might add, is the only result that will come of this. He will be found, along with the prisoner, and I will see to it myself, considering the sheriff here has had some trouble managing on his own.” Hackstedde looked away when Wade glanced in his direction. “I plan to keep that judge in Selby. And he is ready to act when those boys are brought before him.”

  The wind soughed again, and all the men were made to hold on to their hats. Isabelle let her hair fly free, whipping in the air about her face.

  “You whine as if you’re the victim of a crime when we both know quite well what August has done!” she yelled. “You disgust me. As for the rest of you, I can’t imagine how you sleep a wink at night knowing you’ve been stupid enough to go along with this madness. I can’t listen to another word of it.”

  This last part was enough to make Gail clear his throat and speak up.

  “It’s for the good of the town, Mrs. Walker. I think you might come around when you think about what your son has—”

  “Mr. Cooley,” Isabelle said, “you’ve worked those fields over there since I’ve lived in this cabin and not once have you said a single word I’ve paid any mind to. I don’t plan to start today.”

  Gail shuddered. Wade’s face looked as red as it had after he’d been spit on. The dog was barking maniacally as it headed farther toward the road and Isabelle hoped it would spook the horses enough to throw the men off their saddles.

  “Your son is a blight,” Wade said, “and the Negro is worse. It’s as simple as that. There will be consequences for what your family has wrought. Let that be known here and now.”

  In classical Wade fashion he had gifted her a declaration so absurdly biblical, so unabashedly histrionic, she could only roll her eyes in disgust.

  “If the world was just, Wade Webler, I would say the same about you and yours.”

  “I’m giving you one last chance to tell me where they’ve gone off to.”

  She crossed her arms resolutely and stared him down in stony silence.

  “So be it,” Wade said. He turned to the man with the dog. “Lead the way.”

  The men swung their horses round to leave.

  “I don’t ever want to see you here again,” Isabelle said. “I’ve got a rifle in the cellar and I might not know how to use it, but I can learn.”

  With his back to her, Wade pulled off his hat to bid farewell.

  George and the boys would have a half day’s head start. She prayed it was enough.

  * * *

  Two days and nights of peace followed. On the third night, sleeping again on George’s chair, as she had since he’d left, she woke with a start at some tenebrous hour—the wind hissing furiously, the house creaking and moaning so loudly that it seemed fit to collapse under its own anguish. She wished to call out, as she often had during the past few days, yet there was no one to call out to. The most immediate humans she knew of were Ted Morton and his family, and if she had it her way it would be a lifetime before she saw any of them again. She considered going upstairs, if only for the change of position, but with George and Caleb and Prentiss still out in the elements, as far as she knew, it felt wrong to give in to a more pleasant sleep. There was no question in her mind that the three of them were dozing somewhere on a rough forest floor and she felt the ongoing urge to commiserate, as though she might thereby somehow lessen their burden.

  She knew it was silly but misery felt appropriate under the circumstances. Perhaps she was simply lost to her fatigue—her wits slipping, leading her to odd conclusions and wild flights of fancy. Or maybe there was little practical difference between exhaustion and outright madness. In any case, to ponder it further only kept her motionless on the chair, captive to the darkness and the wind. Since the departure of her husband and son, her hearing had refined itself to an almost inconceivable perception. She could make out even the pecking of the chickens, so pronounced to her that it sounded like ice being chipped off a block. The grasshoppers were gathered in the forest, but their hum carried such that they seemed to be right outside the window, fighting to be let in.

  Yet it was an unfamiliar sound that troubled her most. At first she attempted to ignore it, but when that failed, she rose to locate its source. Like twigs snapping, but louder—loud enough to break through the intermittent thrashings of the wind. She went out the back door and listened. It took some time to discern it, but yes, there it was, steady, like the quiet crackle of frying oil. And then a disturbance in the dark sky—a flickering ember disappearing into a cumulous fog of smoke stretching over the forest—told her what it was.

  She began to run. She could not see the crops below the hill and she feared what she would find there, knowing already what had happened but still unwilling to believe it. Her breath came ragged and she coughed at the mere sight of the smoke. At the brow of the hill she halted, overtaken and overwhelmed, unable to process the sight before her. The entire peanut field was ablaze. The wind belted it with a fury and the long arms of fire that reached toward the sky waved back and forth in a frenzy and sent out giant plumes of smoke.

  Two men on skittering horses patrolled the inferno, torches in hand, galloping about belligerently, then circling back to meet at a safe distance. The damage was so complete that Isabelle could feel her own insides, her very soul, burning up right along with the plants before her. She was both dazzled and horrified by the fanglike shadows of the flames groping toward the trees, claiming all in their path. The men had their faces hidden. They appeared to be arguing, gesturing wildly, and when the fire crept near them, they turned and disappeared into the night.

  Her ankles were slick with sweat; her eyes watered from the smoke. What have you done? This was all she could say to herself, repeating the words like a refrain as she walked back toward the cabin, lost in a daze. What have you done? She was shaken but she wasn’t afraid. Of course she was pained by her husband’s work being ravaged, his land ruined, but no greater threat would befall her at the cabin. Those men would have needed to look no farther than her weather vane to determine that this was a punishing west wind. It would not bring the fire up the hill. No, it would march in the opposite direction unimpeded, feeding on everything it found. What have you done? It would barrel through the tree line along Stage Road itself, devouring first Ted Morton’s home, then Henry Pershing’s and all that came after. She hoped the riders had gone to warn the others, but judging by its size, and the wind, there would be no stopping their creation regardless. From the cabin it was a stampede of red streaked against the sky. The blaze would reach Old Ox by morning, and the town would have no means sufficient to prevent the coming
devastation.

  CHAPTER 23

  They traveled through the day, then through the start of the night, and when George grew weary he took care to hide his suffering. With daylight things had been easier. They had passed the county line long before sundown, and although the forest there was similar to his own property, with the same animal life, the same trees, it still felt unexplored—another world for him to learn and memorize, each step forward tracked on the map he was drawing in his mind. The creek grew wider the farther north they ventured and the flora turned an exceptional shade of green, with leaves so thick he thought they belonged in a jungle. He’d known the land would grow into something of a bog—he’d heard tell of this from many other travelers who’d left the county this way—but he’d never seen the transformation himself. Caleb informed him that the creek would meet the river in another day’s time, and that George had not seen anything so powerful as the water of the rapids. He believed his son, for already everywhere he looked there were unbelievable sights, nominations of splendor put forth by nature and presented with such grandeur he felt a tinge of regret that all he’d needed to do to find a new world of such beauty was to leave town, yet it had taken him a lifetime to make the journey.

  When at last they made to rest, deep into the night, he was still juggling the images of the day in his mind and only that distraction was enough to keep him lucid as he rolled out his bedding.

  “They’ll be looking for a fire,” Caleb said. “Best we stay in the dark.”

  George was already lying down as the boys began to eat.

  “George,” Prentiss said, and held out a jar of fruit.

  George waved it away. “Perhaps when we’re up,” he said. “It’s only a few hours.”

  For a time he thought of Isabelle—imagined her asleep beside him—but then his mind went blank and he dozed. He woke to a curtain of darkness and rose in a huff. Until his sight settled, the fresh smell of dirt and pine was the only sensation on offer. Then he made out Caleb in the roll next to his. The roll beside Caleb’s was empty, and he had to squint to distinguish the silhouette of Prentiss, standing ramrod straight, embedded in the night. He was guarding their campsite with the same scrupulous focus he’d applied to his work back at the farm, and he seemed both perfectly comfortable and perfectly alert, two qualities George could hardly claim for himself in the present circumstance.