The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris

Author:Nathan Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2021-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

How long had George been gone—almost to town and back, and then out to see Prentiss—and Caleb was still staring listlessly out the window when he came into the cabin. His mother was surveying him closely, taking stock of his every movement. The boy wouldn’t say a word, wouldn’t make eye contact with Isabelle or himself. As a child, George remembered, Caleb had often hid his head inside the folds of her dress when he was distraught, and Isabelle would walk around the house as if she’d sprouted these pale little legs overnight. Now, like George, Caleb had learned to hide within the folds of his own mind.

His wife and son looked up at him, and he went to Caleb and pulled him up by the shoulder.

“My study,” George said.

“Give him some time,” Isabelle said.

“We don’t have time.”

Isabelle stood and watched as George took Caleb by the hand and led him upstairs, through the hallway, and into the study.

“Sit,” George said.

Caleb obeyed.

George went to the other side of his desk and sat as well, feeling like the doughy mound of flesh and bones that he was, seemingly on the cusp of coming apart, a culmination of so many years sagging and creaking. The fatigue had come on the second he stepped inside the study. His body was so eager to give up on the day that he had to squint to keep himself alert. He considered calling down to Isabelle for some coffee but thought better of it, assessing that he had just enough energy left for this single conversation before he collapsed.

“Why were you in the woods, son?”

Caleb, who had been hanging his head, raised his eyes.

“I’m okay,” he said. “If you’re wondering. If the thought of my well-being entered your mind.”

“I see that. I see that you’re healthy, that you’re safe inside your own home, that your mother is waiting on you, hand and foot. Why were you in the woods?”

“God forbid you might ask how I am. No, that would not do. Because nothing escapes the almighty George. Because you see I am well and it is impossible, simply impossible, that I might feel differently. That it might stand to ask me, instead of telling me, how I feel.”

“Why were you in the woods?”

“I was only ever another project of yours. Like your cabinets. Like your moonshine. Like your garden. Like Prentiss and Landry.”

“Caleb, I will ask you once more.”

“I know I was a lost cause. Just like the others. And I have come to terms with that. But how bitter must you be? To know you’re the one standing behind every single failure that has come through your life, and in the face of so little success.”

The ground was shaking, as if some tremor were claiming the cabin, and it took George a moment of panic, of thinking to rush outside, before he realized the feeling had been born within his chest, some fissure in his heart. He pulled himself out of his chair. The blinds were drawn against the ebbing sun and there was no candlelight.

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