The Sweetness of Water

by Nathan Harris

  He could barely stomach the peaches.

  “What will we do?” he said to Ridley.

  Considering how little energy he had left, he didn’t know if he should continue the plan to mislead Hackstedde or if he should instead begin home. But soon he was robbed of the choice altogether. He first thought the noise was his mind playing tricks upon him once more, but when the horse’s ears flicked forward and Ridley turned toward the sound, he knew it was real.

  There was a happiness that swept over him on a carnal level, the prospect of survival, the company of other humans after such a trying evening. Yet the relief was dashed when he spotted Wade Webler riding behind Hackstedde and Gail Cooley, along with the deputy and two young men, one with a hound. The six of them drifted leisurely into his ambit, and his only comfort was that they had found him and not the boys.

  The sun bled a dark crimson at their backs. They halted before him and Wade came up to the front of the pack once he saw it was only one man alone.

  “George,” he said, “I must venture to ask how a man so old and so lazy as you managed to end up this far from Old Ox. With, I might add, one of my most prized horses.”

  George hobbled forward to meet them. It felt like he’d forgotten how to speak and he stood there in a trancelike silence.

  Wade appeared downright triumphant. He sat stout on his horse, basking in the moment.

  “Look at yourself,” said Wade. “Absolutely beaten. With only three days’ riding. The word pathetic comes to mind, but I’d hate to be so generous.”

  There was a time when the words would have rankled him, but he was no longer that same person, and whatever harm Wade wished to cause had already been self-imposed many times over by George himself. Besides, this man pontificating before his underlings like some cooing toddler was hardly the all-powerful potentate he imagined himself to be. It was probably the first time he’d ever looked upon Wade without even a hint of hatred, knowing how dire was his need for revenge compared with the insignificance of the trespass that had occasioned the man’s entire expedition. George tried to listen as he went on—composing a metaphor about how he’d taken leave of work to come to the woods and bag a young buck, not a fat sow like George, insisting that he tell them where Prentiss and Caleb had gone off to—but he could think only of how petulant Wade had become. A father, a landowner, supposedly the town’s most influential personage, capable of bringing even Union generals to heel, and yet at heart a scared little boy, too proud to shrug off a little spit to the face. George pitied him—thoroughly and totally—and he had no urge to argue, to play the role Wade needed him to fill.

  “Speak up.” It was Hackstedde now, who appeared as fed up with Wade’s speech as George was. “Just tell us where the colored boy is so we can end this.”

  George gestured toward the horse—his eyes still on Wade—and found his voice.

  “I have your property. What do we say you take back what’s yours, charge me for any crimes done, and let this go?”

  When his words met silence, he offered them once more, begging this time.

  “Let it go, Wade. You want more land? Why don’t I sign mine over to you. You want justice? Allow me to hang. You can even keep the bag off my head and watch me writhe, knowing it was you who brought about my agony. That’s what you seek, is it not? Retribution? Consider it yours. Just let it go.”

  Everyone looked toward Webler for some concession, yet he merely shook his head.

  “I’ve promised many good folks in the county a nigger to be hanged. I believe I’ll have him.”

  So there would be no satisfying Wade without Prentiss. The chieftain of Old Ox had dreamed up some threat to his empire, to his people, and had placed the burden on Prentiss and Prentiss alone; he was a man in crisis, and reason had no place in the conversation. Words would not deter him. George could only sigh. Without any fuss he pulled his son’s pistol from his waistband and held it out limply with both hands.

  The men protested with a roar before drawing their own guns, all but Gail, who whirled his horse and cowered at the back, and the deputy, who screamed out that everyone needed to calm down, lest things spiral further, then joined Gail at the back himself. That left the two young men George didn’t know, who had yet to speak a word, flanking Wade and the sheriff.

  “Put it down,” Wade said, holding forth his own pistol. “You don’t even know how to shoot that damn thing.”

  There was some truth to this. The last time George had pulled a trigger he was a boy, hunting with his father, and even then he hadn’t enjoyed the brutal tug of the hammer, or the way the cry of the scattergun obliterated the calm of the afternoon. But he would protect the boys’ passage at all costs, and if Wade proved as unrelenting as his posturing suggested, George would take a shot at him. He had never been so sure of anything in his life.

  “I want you to arrest me,” George said. “Reclaim your horse, turn from here, and take me to Selby to be charged with whatever crimes you see fit.”

  Hackstedde had his gun perched upon his saddle horn, so lackadaisical it was as if he didn’t have the energy to hold it steady himself.

  “Listen to Wade,” he said. “Consider this your only warning.”

  “Put it down,” Wade repeated. “I promised my son no harm would come to you or Caleb. I plan to honor that. Don’t be difficult, George. Just this once.”

  “What if it was August?” George said. “You’d do the same. You would, Wade.”

  He felt no fear. In his mind he was a world away, back home on his porch with a glass of lemonade, the barn before him, the brothers sleeping there, and Caleb inside at the dining-room table, lost in conversation with his mother. Things were right again. So right.

  A pistol spoke.

  The men looked about at one another in confusion until the smoke floated off the end of Hackstedde’s gun barrel.

  “I gave the man his warning,” he said casually. “That’s how that works.”

  George inspected himself, as there was no pain, his body having gone numb. Finally, after a span of a few long seconds, a slow-burning heat spread through his leg, rising to a temperature so great that he thought the whole limb might be on fire. He crumpled to the ground and blood trickled and then poured from the wound and by the time the men had dismounted he was already resigning himself to a slow death at the hands of this corpulent sheriff.

  “Goddamn it!” Wade said. He took off his hat and smacked Hackstedde with the brim repeatedly. “He wasn’t going to shoot!”

  “He was aiming like he was,” Hackstedde said. “You all saw as much.”

  The others were horror-struck.

  Only Wade had the nerve to approach George himself. He jogged over, still furious.

  “Goddamn you too, George!”

  He leaned down and repeated the same treatment he’d given Hackstedde, beating his hat against George’s shoulder, though more lightly, whether in anger or sorrow or frustration or perhaps some combination of all three.

  “Stop,” George managed to croak. “Please.”

  The man was right upon him, a fear in his eyes—fear in the eyes of them both, George was sure—and they looked at each other as if with the realization of a misunderstanding that had gone too far and yet was now beyond fixing.

  “I’m dying,” George said.

  “It’s only your thigh,” Wade said. “You’ll be up and jabbering nonsense in no time.” He turned to the others. “One of you cowards get off your ass and bring me something to tie off this leg. Now.”

  It felt to George as though the tendons in his leg had coiled like a wet rag twisted dry. He could sense nothing save the heat pouring off him in waves—the conviction, radiating through him, that this was the end. The sheer panic of his own death. And it was a true panic, like none he had ever met. He had no sense of comfort, no sense of closure. Only fear.

  Wade was ripping off a piece of his own shirt and George reached out and clung to his forearm in terror. “What will you tell Isabelle?
”

  “George.”

  “Will you capture the boys? Tell me you won’t. Tell me you’ll leave them be.”

  “George, I’m busy saving your goddamn life! Quit it!”

  Hackstedde loomed over them in shadow. He lit a cigarette.

  “That’s bleeding heavy.”

  “Wade,” George said, his voice fading. “Tell me.” His grip on Wade’s arm loosened.

  “Try to stay awake for me,” Wade said. “Can you do that? George? Answer me.”

  His head sank into the ground, the soil soft and cool, a sensation that couldn’t have been more welcome, for it brought him back home once more. Back to his own bed, swaddled under fresh sheets, with the night breaking over him as he descended toward sleep.

  CHAPTER 24

  It would be described to Isabelle many times over, those first few hours when the fire ravaged Old Ox—told so often, by so many people—that she could piece together the entire event without having been present herself. A stable was the first to fall, after which the blaze stampeded through the square as though driven by the Four Horsemen themselves. Dirt wagons sat before each home and families who had been told repeatedly by the fire warden to be prepared with their water buckets shrugged off the instruction in favor of saving their possessions. There were the terrified cries of children and women, cries of glass shattering as storefronts fell, and cries of penned-up livestock that whirled about in a frenzy and died without mercy. The old and the sick who could not find their way to safety met the same fate as the animals, their lifeless arms hanging limply from the windows of burning buildings until the smoke clouded them from view. Braver men, leather buckets in hand, along with soldiers armed as though for battle, stood before the approaching flames with admirable intentions yet trembled in fear and eventually fled with all the rest.

  Some said the whole town would have burned, with nary a soul left alive to see it fall, had it not been for a single person. Ray Bittle, on horseback, galloped through town with the alacrity of ten men, riding so fast he had to hold his hat down atop his head. He yelled at all who made to flee, making a great show of circling the men in particular.

  “Cowards!” he screamed. “Vile cowards. Defend your home. Defend your town!”

  Until the fire had made it to town, it was difficult to find a single individual who could remember seeing him awake, let alone speak, his spirit roused in the manner of a long-dormant geyser that had suddenly revived itself. He spewed forth vitriol with such animation that all who looked on could do nothing but stand in amazement, their flight arrested by the man’s hysterics. In short order he energized them through the same passion with which he’d shamed them, and all who heard his pleas were unwilling to abandon the very place that had been left to burn so many times before.

  Not that it worked. The bucket brigade was laughably futile, and the participants finally ran off, comforted by the attempt at bravery (at least they could tell the others they’d tried). The real hero, many claimed, was not Ray Bittle but the fire warden, who saved the latter portion of town with his decision to destroy Roth’s Lumber Mill and Mr. Rainey’s Meats and clear them out as a natural firebreak to arrest the spreading flames. With the fire stunted, the brigades from Selby and Campton arrived, making three hose carts in all. They fought the blaze for an hour and yet it still took the reinforcement of a dying wind to bring the chaos to a sudden halt. The town grew so silent as night turned to morning that the destruction felt absolute, but chatter resumed as citizens picked up the pieces and returned to their homes; oddly enough, a relief had already set in that, come what may, the sun would rise come dawn. The world would carry on and they would be there to see to it.

  The next day, children ran the town. Families were so immersed in taking stock of their losses at home (with the council of the town penned up in the church discussing how to rebuild) that they had not the capacity to attend to their stores. Owners sent their children to watch for looters, and so the sight to any newcomer was that of young boys and girls, soot-colored and eager with energy, milling inside the shops and calling out to one another around the square, informing the others of what had been lost as though caught up in a competition.

  Brigadier General Glass organized a cleanup crew of soldiers and yet no one would allow his men into the charred remains of their shops. The state of things was so dismal that he feared the sort of chaos that greets an apocalypse. There were whispers of revolt. He and his men braced against the possibility of looters overrunning the schoolhouse and stripping the soldiers of their weapons. He was holed up there, cowed by the total destruction of the town placed in his charge, and couldn’t be roused from the stupor induced by his failure.

  These were the conditions that met the federal agents sent by the military governor. They arrived with no fanfare and no warning, a cavalry of black and white men riding as one, in fresh blues and heavy boots, with a confident bounce to their gallop that verged on the arrogant. Behind them on a smaller pony rode a petite man wearing round glasses and a suit that was neither cheap nor fine. He dismounted first and asked a small girl what had become of the town and where he might find Glass. He walked the rest of the way to the schoolhouse, leading his cavalrymen, nodding to each child in his path, pleasant in every interaction. He was in the schoolhouse only a short while before he left it alone, composed as ever, and made his way to the church. There he and the cavalrymen were received with silence and dubiety, as all those seated craned their necks to watch him make his way to the altar, where he introduced himself to the councilmen as the Secretary of the Freedmen’s Bureau, sent to assess the town in its conformity to the rule of law as enacted by the United States of America. There were gasps and groans—had they not endured enough?—but the cavalrymen, their rifles at their hips, ensured a climate of civility.

  The councilmen demanded emergency assistance in such dire times, lamenting that Glass had let them down by never having enough stock to feed more than the poorest, the neediest, among whose ranks they would all find themselves in the wake of the fire. This demand then turned into passionate fulmination against the Union, which, according to everyone present, had forgotten a stitch in its fabric, a town that deserved more and had been left to smolder under the watch of an incompetent general. The Secretary smiled as these men went on, and when they were finished, he stepped up to speak. All citizens could claim rations that were only a day away, he said. They would receive the assistance they sought as well, as much as their country might give, much more in fact than Glass had been able to offer. All that was required of them was the reading out of an oath. Each citizen would have the opportunity to make the pledge. They would form a line and recite it in full:

  I do solemnly swear, in presence of Almighty God, that I will faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States thereunder, and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all Laws and Proclamations which have been made during the existing Rebellion with reference to the Emancipation of Slaves—So help me God.

  One man threw a crumpled piece of paper at the Secretary (although it landed short). Another stood up screaming of traitors and scallywags before departing. Yet by then people were queuing, the women first, many of them holding their children, followed by their husbands. They went one by one, speaking clearly as the Secretary recorded their names and handed them a slip of paper to document their vow. Afterward they lingered outside. The sky was gray and dim and the fire was still fresh in their minds; the words they’d uttered moments before felt empty, part of the odd daze of everything. What did it matter if they said them? Were they not already under Union rule? It was just some words. Scribbles on parchment. Nothing. Nothing at all. And when they departed, even the memory itself began to fade away.

  * * *

  The first to see her, to share the story, was Mildred, who visited her that same afternoon, having attended the meeting at the church with her sons. Isabelle had never seen her so flust
ered—so red in the face she looked like she’d fought the fire herself. Thankfully, Mildred’s home, which lay beyond the lumberyard, had never been in the line of danger. She’d done nothing more than sit on her veranda, anxious for it all to end.

  Isabelle assured her anxious friend that she was perfectly fine.

  “But your land is not,” Mildred said. “And it could’ve been far worse. To have you out here all alone.”

  They were sitting at the dining-room table. The windows were closed to keep out the ash-strewn air and shuttered to conceal the destruction outside. She estimated the fire had consumed a good twenty acres. It had taken a straight line from George’s crops and had scorched down the road, just as she’d imagined. All the trees along Stage Road (including her own) had been burnt naked, many of them having fallen altogether, nor had the conflagration spared the grand homes that flanked the road.

  Neither of the women drank the tea in front of them. They seemed to have lost even the wherewithal to comfort each other, an ability that had never before eluded them.

  “I’m healthy, Mildred. My house is intact. And you did the right thing by staying home. God forbid you rode out here and got caught in that wretched fire.”

  Mildred’s eyes did not leave the saucer before her when she spoke.

  “George will be back,” she said. “I have no doubt of that.”

  Isabelle nodded vacantly. “Yes.”