“I’d ask you this. Why go through town when you can go around it? Wouldn’t you ask the same?”
Landry eyed him again. He swayed a bit, readying himself, the tips of his shoes rising from the ground in preparation for an acceptable compromise, and that was all Prentiss needed to start walking again, to know his brother was at his side.
The town was hugged by the forest, making it easy to maneuver around its rear without drawing attention, not that anyone wished to pay it to them. They stuck to the backside of buildings. Behind one fence they glimpsed a stewing, bubbling basin of hog parts, so huge a man might take a dip if he wished to. The voices of what Prentiss figured to be hungry men trailed from inside the place. Within another yard stood a woman using a brush to clean the arms of a lounge chair, taking great care with each stroke, as if she were applying a coat of paint. Prentiss stopped looking after that. His clothes were damp with sweat, and he realized how quickly he was walking, like something chasing them might take to their trail. Never before had he seen such people without their permission, caught sight of regular folk about their business in private, and it immediately struck him as a dangerous circumstance.
“Not too long now,” he said, although he had no idea if that was true, as the rumors of the camps being situated at the opposite end of Old Ox were just that to him. The words were less for Landry and more for himself, a fillip of self-belief, a routine in a life where his only companion had no words, no confidence, to spare.
Prentiss didn’t fault his brother for his weaknesses—in his irregularities lay the groundwork of his strength. For if ever his brother was prone to stalling in place, he never wandered. Landry went where he was expected, and there was bravery to be found in someone willing to either go forward or face his fear head-on, unblinkingly, even if it sometimes stopped him right where he stood. It had been a principle mapped onto Landry at birth, no different from his love of food, which only made the day of reckoning that was to come more difficult.
That was way back when, a time when they were not quite grown but not quite children, slight in the chest, long in the limbs; young enough to have their mother on their behinds as much as the overseer but old enough to be expected to pick their full share in a day. They lined up one particular morning before their cabins, which in itself was not odd, as they lined up for a head count every morning, the spots where their feet rested so ingrained upon the ground that the imprint remained overnight. Yet it took no more than a moment to recognize the absence in front of the cabin across from theirs. Where Little James and Esther were supposed to be sat nothing at all. There was a quiet agony in this disruption of routine that Prentiss had never known before. His heart felt enormous in his chest. He was supposed to stare straight ahead, but instinct led him to look everywhere else, hoping they might appear from behind a clothesline or hop down from a willow before Mr. Cooley appeared and assessed the loss.
But just like that, Mr. Cooley had arrived. He came to a stop before their cabin but did not dismount. He simply took his hat off, assessing each person before him, and plainly asked where the two had gone off to. There was no response.
“Y’all stay where you are,” he said, turned his horse, and broke off at a gallop back to Majesty’s Palace.
“Don’t want to hear a word from either of you,” their mother had whispered, placing a hand on both of their shoulders, standing between them like a shield.
Nobody dared move when Mr. Cooley returned, Mr. Morton paired at his side. They stood tall in front of the group, and Mr. Morton brushed the hair from his eyes, breathing through his mouth.
“It won’t be long,” he said, “till that heat is on me. And Mr. Cooley will tell you the heat ain’t never took a liking to me.”
“It ain’t,” Mr. Cooley said.
“Why do any of you think I ain’t down here in the fields? Y’all think I wouldn’t appreciate the company? No, see, I’m just naturally a hot-blooded man, sure as hell ain’t looking to get hotter than I already is. When the sun hits, I get a little dizzy. My stomach don’t sit right.”
“It sure don’t.”
“Mr. Cooley.” Mr. Morton extended his hand to silence him. “So you tell me before I feel that heat on my back where these two went off to, or else I might get a bit moody, and if my day’s ruined this early, y’all being such sympathetic creatures, I imagine you might share in my plight.”
When there was no response, Mr. Morton continued his speechifying. Without Little James and Esther, he said, he would have loss in value in production which would only build upon the loss accrued by losing two slaves. And why should he, a man who did no wrong, a pious, righteous man, be punished for the heedless insubordination of these two individuals he fed and clothed so dutifully? Thus, if no one was willing to tell him where Little James and Esther could be found, he would pick one slave—and that slave, at the end of each month, would bear the whippings for the entire lot of them. Any wrongs done would be tallied, and they would fall solely on his back, and if there was someone willing to be a martyr, to take on that responsibility, he was open to volunteers.