The Sweetness of Water

by Nathan Harris

  “You are a godsend to him. And let us not forget his own heroics in the woods. Both of you make for quite the couple.”

  “He got himself shot, Ezra.”

  “Well, yes. But the boys are free, are they not? Hackstedde and the rest can say what they wish, but your son got that man out of jail and lived to speak of it. And George risked his life to see it through.”

  She did not dispute his claim, nor did she agree to it. Whether the man holed up in the hospital was a martyr was immaterial to her; he was her husband: frail, withered, beautiful in his way. Let him be a hero to others, but it was not their relation.

  “He wants to go home,” she said. “I don’t believe he’s taken his condition into account. But it’s his only wish. I plan to honor it.”

  Ezra sat up, and, taking a hint—one she did not exactly mean to inspire—informed her that George had made all the necessary arrangements with him regarding his affairs going forward. Everything was set in stone. Everything that was his would be hers when the time came.

  “I don’t wish to speak of this,” she said.

  “And yet it is my duty to do so.”

  “Well, it ends there. My reason for coming here is simple, and yet I haven’t been able to address it. I need some manner of conveyance for George. So I might get him home.”

  Her request seemed to energize Ezra, and she imagined him working through the contacts in his head, favors owed, deciding which to avail himself of. A carriage or coach would be easy enough, she went on, but George needed to be laid out and she feared the hospital wouldn’t loan her an ambulance, considering his condition.

  “Yes, yes,” Ezra mumbled as if to himself before speaking up. “I’ll tell you this. I am in the process of buying an entire catalog of goods, and a wagon or two will certainly be in the lot. I’m sure I can get use of one before the deal is finalized, as the owner is quite intent on selling as quickly as possible.”

  Ezra dabbed his forehead once more before finishing his proposition.

  “There is one potential conflict,” he said, “which I hope will not concern you, but the owner is Wade Webler himself.”

  She raised an eyebrow but did not say a word.

  “As you can imagine, he is under quite a bit of…financial duress. Most of the blaze touched land and property under his ownership. I fear he had not considered such a sweeping loss as a possibility. And then there is August. Do you know his new bride of less than a week was a victim of the fire? Natasha Beddenfeld. So young. August made it out of the house first and did not even deign to go back in to retrieve her. Others saw him standing idly, calling her name but failing to run in after her. Shameful for a man of his supposed courage. I hear he is moving to Savannah, in want of a change of scenery. A new start.”

  He was waiting for her, now: waiting for an answer, an attack on the names he’d produced, on the family that had ruined her own, and yet she had nothing to give. No screed. No anger. She had seen the look on Wade’s face. His pain was no better than her own, and it was his that would suppurate over time, eating away at his soul while she strove to let hers go.

  “The wagon,” she said. “You can have it to me today?”

  “I’ll have my assistant get word to Webler immediately.”

  Ezra called out to him with a severity that made her flinch. Once the boy was off, Ezra instructed Isabelle to fetch Ridley and return to the hospital, as though the deal was already done.

  “The wagon will be there,” he said. “That one or another. Take my word.”

  * * *

  When she returned to the hospital, they had drained George’s wound at the site of the amputation and he would not stop howling until he was loaded into the wagon, safe from the doctor’s prodding. Mildred’s sons had come at their mother’s orders, and they hauled George into the wagon bed and sat beside him as Isabelle drove through town. Folks came to the side of the road, sensing a hidden curiosity, and even Ray Bittle gave her a nod as she came past the rubble of his home, knowing, perhaps, who lay in the wagon behind her.

  Once George was home and in bed, she bade Mildred’s sons farewell, and, after a slight break to get George comfortable, set to following the doctor’s orders. She discovered immediately why they had shielded her from the wound, for the sight was ghastly. It took her entire being not to react at the foot of the bed. The sore upon his stump wept fluid the consistency of mucus, and the putrid scent punctured even the sharpness of the alcohol. Still she said nothing, offered George—still dazed, staring at the ceiling—a weak smile before she took off the gauze, applied a fresh wrap, and stood up beside him. She asked if there was anything she could do but he said nothing. Just stared off in endless silence, the last threads of his hair making wild patterns on his pillow.

  She slept in Caleb’s room and in the morning George was lucid again, his eyes welcoming when she came in and helped him sit up.

  “You’ve been fevered,” she said.

  He looked at her quietly, as though he had no memory of the trials that had spanned the last few days.

  “Well, I only needed to return home. I feel much better.”

  Still, she worried. He hardly needed his bedpan, ate nothing, drank only water, and passed the hours listening to her read the classics from his library downstairs (Shakespeare and Plutarch, the letters of Voltaire). She watched him from the corner of her eye, wondering what passed through his mind, if he was all there, or if this was still the version of her husband she’d been met with in the hospital, a man she hardly knew.

  More than once he would clench the sides of the bed, his knuckles white, and she would calmly put the book down upon her lap. These moments were of great exasperation. He refused any medication, and she assumed full responsibility due to some action of her own—a tone of judgment that she could not control, or perhaps the suggestion of weakness shown before one’s wife when offered relief—and she wished only to ask him to have some morphine in a manner so neutral, so discreet, that he might say yes. Yet he never did.

  “I want to be awake,” was all he would say to her. “Please. Continue.”

  The reading went on endlessly. When he fell asleep she would sit alone, staring blankly, waiting for him to wake again. When he failed to, she would head downstairs and tend to the home—or feed the chickens or Ridley or herself—then return to the bedroom, sick with boredom but unwilling to spend more time away from George than necessary. The second night home she made a beef stock, which the doctor had suggested, but George would have none of it. He simply took the bowl from her and set it down on the bedside table.

  “You need to eat,” she said.

  “I believe that is the beauty of my predicament,” he said. “I don’t need to do a damn thing any longer that I don’t wish to.”

  “George, I can’t have you speak like that. I just can’t.”

  The sun was dropping toward the horizon and he was still sitting up in the bed, looking ahead at the wall. She wasn’t sure he’d even heard her. She’d already lost track of the times he’d spoken when she thought he was gone away in a dream, or ignored her when he’d appeared to be hanging on her every word.

  “I saw them go,” he said. “I watched them turn and run and I have no doubt, no doubt at all, that they passed through safely.”

  She knew the only way to urge him on was to maintain her silence and so she sat motionless, blending into the darkness now falling over the room.

  “He held my hand. I was never so sure that he was my son as I was in that moment. Even in the hospital, when you held my hand yourself, I was certain it was his. Even now…yes. Even now I feel it. I can still hear him whispering in my ear. He said, ‘Tell her I will write. Long letters this time.’ And in the span it took for me to gather the words to say goodbye, they’d already gone into the night. He did not mention any sense of his love but I felt it.”

  And here he put his hand into her own.

  “Don’t you?”

  She was caught up in the moment, in his
account, so much so that she didn’t realize that during its telling, without a word to note as much, George had wet himself. She could smell the sourness of the urine; only needed to place her fingertips upon the sheets to confirm the warmth spreading out from under him.

  “Why don’t we get you cleaned up,” she said. “After that perhaps we can both get some rest.”

  * * *

  In the failing light she saw the spray of yellow hair out the window, the build of his frame atop the horse, and recognized her brother. She was in the kitchen eating the broth that George would not and dropped her bowl off in the sink to greet Silas outside. A dusty film still cloaked the darkening sky, a bitter vestige from the fire that she could taste at the back of her throat.

  “Isabelle,” he said.

  “You’ve come,” she said.

  He looked pained to be there, at least that’s what she gathered from his expression, until she realized he was dismayed by her own appearance.

  “You don’t look well,” he said.

  She hadn’t faced her reflection in days.

  “When you hear of what’s happened, I’m sure you won’t blame me.”

  She invited Silas in, and he went to the kitchen to fetch himself some water, then joined her on the couch in the big room.

  “How did you—?” she started.

  “Your friend sent a message for me.”

  “Mildred,” Isabelle said. “But she told me the post office was gone. That no telegrams would send.”

  “She sent a messenger instead. I’m sure she paid dearly, too. The man must’ve traveled without interruption. He nearly fell off his horse in exhaustion. I wish I could’ve come faster, but work and whatnot…”

  She eased his guilt, then told him the story, leaving nothing out. And when she came to George’s wound, Silas immediately stood to go upstairs to see him. At this she protested.

  “Don’t even consider it. He won’t have you there. Besides, he’s asleep now. Rest will help more than anything.”

  Silas fell back onto the couch.

  “At least let me stay for a time. I can help while you tend to him.”

  “What would you possibly do?”

  “Whatever is needed. I’ve already told Lillian not to expect me back, and she assured me she’d keep the kids in line and the house in order. Do not even think of it as a favor. It’s my wish to stay.”

  She tried to refuse the favor but he would not budge, and she couldn’t deny how helpful it would be to have her brother at hand. Nonetheless, the nature of his presence continued to rankle her as the days passed, since seeing him around the house only reminded her of the last time he’d come, upon learning of Caleb’s supposed death. But perhaps this was the role of a sibling: an overseer of tragedy, doling out gestures of sympathy when all else was lost. Though she was grateful, it seemed ghastly, an offense, and she began to mistreat him—sending him to clean Ridley’s stable, or to wash George’s sheets, but he never once showed the temper she’d known since their childhood. He was happy to absorb her anger, or pretended to be, and to accept whatever degrading task she assigned him. In idle moments he even sought out his own responsibilities, taking it upon himself to assess the land that had been scorched, coming back to dinner with figures in his head, work to be done, and the distraction was a great pleasure to Isabelle, although she did not show it.

  All the while, George faded. Red spots tacked up his thigh like a spire lurching up from the wound to his waist and the fevers returned no matter how often she sponged him down. He would utter words in his delirium that she had no way to know the meaning of.

  “I saw it,” he would say with a hoarse whisper, a wry smile upon his face, so childlike she almost laughed at his own satisfaction. “It was real. Real. Real…”

  “It was,” she replied, encouraging him as she dabbed his forehead. “It was indeed.”

  Like this they conversed, neither one knowing the other’s thoughts, empty words passing between them, and soon she fell asleep to his ramblings. When she woke she heard not just his voice but a full conversation in midstream, causing her to jump.

  Silas stood with his hands in his pockets, his denim shirt half-buttoned, glancing blithely at George.

  “It’s just me,” he told her. “You were still asleep when I peeked in; George invited me to stay.”

  “Not too long,” George said. “I can only manage the man in fits.”

  George was so alert it nearly unnerved her. He had sweat through his fever, but there was no way she could delude herself into thinking the turn in his health might last.

  “Thank you for helping with me,” George said to Silas. “I can only imagine the strain.”

  “It’s my pleasure. I must say with you locked up in here, that it’s the best we’ve gotten along in ages.”

  “You two,” Isabelle said. “Like old friends…”

  “Hardly. I’ve asked Silas to go fetch Ezra. I know he wanted a word.”

  She was bewildered by his ability to recollect Ezra’s attempted visit at the hospital, given his febrile ravings at the time.

  “How nice,” she stammered.

  “I’ll get on it,” Silas said, and he put a hand on George’s shoulder before turning to leave.

  The smoke had finally cleared from the sky and the day was unseasonably mild; a shallow gust at the open window rippled the curtains.

  George asked if there might be a way to bring the bed closer to the window.

  “I’d like to see outside,” he said. “It would mean the world.”

  She didn’t know what to answer. For the first time since their reunion in the hospital, he was with her now, totally and fully, and knowing how short their time together might be, she felt it was paramount that they discuss the most prominent matters. But his needs overcame her own, and she swallowed her words.

  “If I put pillows under the legs,” she said, “it should move over without much issue.”

  “Oh, you must,” he said.

  She knew what he would find when he looked out, what had come to his land, and yet she would abide by his wishes. He had a right to see for himself what had happened, and besides, there was beauty amidst the destruction—in the forest beyond their own that remained intact, in the sky he’d observed from the porch for so many years.

  “Wait here,” she said.

  “Isabelle,” he said, “I don’t think I’ll be going far.”

  Once she’d wrestled the bed next to the window, George looked on without a word. His mind, she knew, was somewhere in the past. Even she could cobble together the memories in her own head—based around stories she’d heard endlessly—and imagine what George sensed taking place around them: his mother was in the guest room, tucking a sheet around the bed; his father outside, calling his name to join him on a tramp through the woods, the same woods where George would take his own son—the same woods where he’d find Prentiss and Landry.

  She couldn’t bear to sit idle, holding her peace, with the forest before them burned to cinders. Though the field wasn’t visible from here, she was sure he was imagining what had happened to his crops over the hill.

  “It was terrible, George,” she burst out. “I’m so sorry for your land. For the crop. I thought of lying to you, but I could never do such a thing. It can be salvaged, though. I promise you that much. I’ll do everything in my power to make it so.”

  He blinked once and studied her with a distant serenity.

  “It’s very persistent land. A few seasons, with your assistance.” He shook his head knowingly. “It will be better than I might ever have made it myself.”

  Could the land he’d nursed and doted on be reduced to something as trivial as the calm of his demeanor suggested? The weight that was released from her—the bit of pain that was set free—made her want to believe it.

  He offered her the faintest curl of a grin.

  “Could you give me a moment alone with the view?”

  “Of course.”

  “N
o need to keep anyone out. When Ezra arrives, send him in. And I was thinking of having some dinner. A chicken stew, perhaps? You know how I take to a stew.”

  “Can your stomach manage?”

  “I believe it can.”

  “Then you will have it.”

  * * *

  The afternoon had nearly passed by the time Ezra made it to the farm. The chicken was already boiling, the vegetables lined up on the cutting board, and she asked her brother to deliver him to George so she didn’t have to wash up. There could be no distractions. The recipe was a classic of George’s, and its execution, although not the most difficult, would nevertheless take her total devotion.

  When Ezra reemerged from the bedroom and came back down the stairs after only a short time, the mood of the house grew dire. Isabelle was convinced there was a darkness that followed the man, and when he appeared before her, checking his timepiece, she felt his presence loom over the cabin like a hex enchanted. The hallway was hardly lit and his shadow seemed quite larger than his being.

  “He’s…not well,” Ezra said. “I believe I will delay my trip until his injuries are resolved. I can be called upon at any hour. Remember that.”

  “You’re never far, are you, Ezra?”

  “Not when I am needed.”

  She helped him to the front door, for he could hardly manage himself, and when he got there Silas rose from the couch and prepared to bring him home.

  “Enjoy your dinner,” Ezra said. “It smells delectable.”

  “Have a good evening yourself. Silas, get him home safe.”

  She thought when they were gone the home would be hers and George’s alone, but before she could even get his stew ladled, hooves sounded on the lane once more, and she had to wash her hands and return to the door. The man was patient walking toward the cabin, and smaller than she’d estimated him atop his horse. She wouldn’t have recognized him at all if not for the blue uniform and his shaggy mustache, which George had fixated on whenever he became so frustrated that only a violent monologue could bring him any peace.