The Sweetness of Water

by Nathan Harris

What few particulars he had given left her eager for more. Prentiss smelled like fish each day from his work at the dock loading cargo (what dock? what cargo?), and multiple evenings a week he was learning to read, to write, at a local church that aided many other freedmen who were eager to gobble up an education after a life where it had been withheld. Caleb, meanwhile, kept to himself and found a job that suited him perfectly well. He washed each night at startling length, for the ink stains from the shop were impossible to rid himself of. (What shop was this? Was he good at what he did?) Without any more information, she would begin to think of George, the stains on his hands from the walnut trees that would blot her dress when he arrived home from a jaunt. What she would do for a hug from her son, to hold him close, to have the chance to tell him of the bravery of his father and the fact that he was gone from them now. So many questions were left unanswered, and so much was left unsaid. But they were alive. Until he wrote again, she would keep worrying a mother’s worry, but at least it would be with the knowledge he was out there somewhere, safe and sound, making do.

  In the end, only distraction could save her, and even that was temporary. At the barn she ran her hand along its splintered side, then drifted back toward the cabin. This was where it could be erected, she thought. Before the barn. She could hire someone from town. A freedman. A proper mason who could build her fountain. It would be at once grander and less extravagant than Ted’s. No cherubs or goddesses. A commemorative note upon its front to honor the memory of a man who had deserved his own fountain in time. He would have it at last.

  “And where have you been off to?” said Mildred, standing in the doorway, her cheeks rosy from the fire.

  Isabelle didn’t wish to say, for she knew the story would unpack itself quickly and her excitement over the fountain would then spill out of her and lead to Mildred’s critiques, mostly detailed in the general idea that her mind was full of ideas but that she was scant on execution. Right now she simply wanted the peace that had gathered in her imagination—the thoughts of what might come to be.

  “Mildred,” she said, her voice unsure, “this is a life, isn’t it?”

  Mildred looked at her in confusion, her fingers gripping the door as though, with a proper squeeze, it might provide the answer Isabelle sought.

  “I suppose it is,” she finally said. “If that helps you.”

  “It does. It does.”

  “Might you come in?”

  “I’ll be in shortly,” Isabelle said. “Just let me be for now.”

  Mildred appeared ready to burst out and carry her friend inside herself. But she relented.

  “Don’t be too long,” she said, and closed the door.

  Isabelle returned to her thoughts. The fountain would go in the center of the roundabout, she decided, where all who came would see it first, before the cabin, before the barn. It would not quit. This was important. That it run without ceasing in all weather, in all seasons, and that it endure. The dream preoccupied her for so long that she was surprised to find the daylight slipping away from her, and the thoughts followed her into the night, once Mildred had gone home, washing over her as she sat in the dining room staring out the window into the darkness, toward the forest, her imagination venturing further than ever before.

  It crossed her mind to have some brandy, a treat she rarely afforded herself. She drank and thought of George, for hadn’t he long said the forest was full of magic, strange beasts, great mysteries? She thought of sights unseen, shadows skittering across the landscape—reifying into something more: George himself and Landry, enmeshed in the surroundings, part and parcel with the fluted leaves of the walnut trees, their whispered breath riding on the wind that shook the cabin on long nights.

  Or perhaps it would be Caleb and Prentiss who would appear from the hidden depths of the forest, two figures wandering out from the trees as though sprouting from nothing, returning from a journey that had, in time, led them back home. She relished the thought of them observing the farm anew, each plot of land teeming with life—and then, then, they would stop before the fountain, shocked that such beauty might take root in their absence, the water cresting heavenward, forever on, toward parts unknown.

  These were just inventions, of course, and she lived knowing, quite well, that such things were not promised to her. She might hope for more but had long ago learned to live with whatever came to pass. Yet sometimes—just sometimes—hope was enough.

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  Acknowledgments

  To those whom I am eternally grateful to have in my corner:

  Emily; Ben; Lena; Bret; Elizabeth; Jason; Mason; Jony; Stevie; Sara; Sarah B.C.; Jane; Billy & Holly; The Michener Center; Evan and Michael; everyone at Little, Brown; Susan; Aaron; Adam; and Jacob.

  Mom & Dad. For everything.

  About the Author

  NATHAN HARRIS holds an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas. He is a recipient of the University of Oregon's Kidd Prize and was a finalist for the Tennessee Williams Fiction Prize. He lives in Austin, Texas. This is his first novel.