Prentiss stood away by himself, his shirt tied off at his waist, rubbing a leaf against his forehead, staring into the woods.
“Where are you today?” Caleb asked, joining him.
“Nowhere but here,” Prentiss told him.
No one flogged himself with work quite like Prentiss: no one consumed less water, complained so little, sweat so much. Punishment, Caleb knew. For wrongs he had not done. For losses that would never be recouped. And despite his profession early on that Convent wasn’t far enough away from Old Ox for him ever to call it home, it was Prentiss who wished to stay. Although they’d spent some money, they had enough to be gone, but the work was good, and Prentiss was content in a place where he wasn’t known and wasn’t asked questions. A place where he could distract himself with his ceaseless stirring of the kettle, his eyes full of some torment that doubled as pleasure, the heat expunging the demons that plagued him.
“Mrs. Benson said we can have some of those rabbit leftovers for supper,” Caleb said.
“Think she’s got more of that milk?” Prentiss asked.
“That goat’s milk?”
“It’s like sipping on butter. Cows don’t compare.”
“If she doesn’t, we can go back there and milk one ourselves, I imagine.”
“I ain’t touching a goat’s teat. That’s where I draw the line.”
“I, for one, am not above milking a goat’s teat,” Caleb said. “It’d be an honor, really. I’m sure there are some men in the world who don’t consider a day complete until they’ve milked a goat’s teat.”
He picked up a leaf himself, dabbed his forehead, and let it fall to the ground. He didn’t look over, for if he caught Prentiss in a smile, he would only try to hide it, and so they simply waited there together for the rest of the break, chilled by their drying sweat.
There would be no rabbit that night. No milk. When the boiling was done, Whitney set them to fashioning staves for the hogsheads that would be filled the following day, and by the time they made it home, Mrs. Benson had retired, the house so dark they had to feel their way upstairs. They had an apple each, and Caleb feared that the sound of their eating might wake the old woman. A little ham they’d bought the previous day was dessert. Some evenings, with a free hour, Prentiss would swipe at a piece of wood with a razor, making something, or nothing, for Caleb couldn’t tell and didn’t wish to interrupt him. But this night Prentiss turned in quickly, and Caleb was left to his own restlessness, which found him every night: thoughts of his mother, his father, his old bedroom. That donkey, Ridley. Images that cycled through his mind, feeding on the guilt he kept stored up, the filial duties he had failed to uphold, until the thoughts and scenes became a story, a dream, such that his sleeping world was populated by the very people and circumstances he had tried so hard to flee.
Some hours later, then, awaking from just such a nightmare, he felt as though he’d hallucinated into being the discernible figure from his past looming outside the window, as though that man had been waiting for him to take note of his presence all along. The man lingered ominously beside a hitched horse, inspecting the home, and removed his gloves with a quick stroke.
Caleb lunged out of bed. It was not yet morning, and perhaps owing to the creaking, so odd at the hour, Prentiss poked his head up from his pillow to seek out the noise.
“What you doin’？” he muttered.
“It’s him,” Caleb said. His head throbbed, as though the nightmare had manifested a physical affliction. He reached under the bed—the wooden floorboards cold against his hand—his razor blade revealing itself against one of the legs.
“What you mean him?” Prentiss said, propped up on his elbows now.
“You know who. And I’m going to kill him.” Caleb flicked the blade open and clattered down the stairs two at a time.
“Caleb!” Prentiss called out.
By the time he was out the door there was nothing between Caleb and August but the cold of the night, the leaden silence of the sleeping town. If August spoke even a word, if that familiar voice reached him, Caleb knew he would falter—that his old friend’s hold upon him was simply too strong to resist. So he wouldn’t give him the chance. He stalked forward with the blade ready, and for a moment, a slip of time that fell away as he drew near, it seemed that his nightmares had intertwined with reality—that to end his friend’s life might abolish the pain of the past and afford his mind the freedom to wander the landscape of his dreams in peace. Such was the temptation of his revenge that it felt like a single night of true rest would make every day spent languishing in a prison cell—or even a walk to the gallows—more than worth the crime.