“Hello, Ted,” she said.
“I see you found your way onto my property,” Ted said.
“I don’t wish to be a bother.”
“Once you let me know why you’re standing here, I’ll make a judgment on that myself.”
There was a crease upon the thigh of Ted’s pants, a small fold, where his child had clutched at him. She watched the boy running off, looked back toward Ted.
“I bear no ill intent,” she said. “Just a proposal. I wonder if you would indulge me in a short walk? It will not take long.”
“I don’t know how my wife would feel about me going on a walk with another woman.”
“Is she here?” Isabelle looked about. “Or do you fear her oversight from afar?”
The mouth of Ted’s pipe was a fine goose quill, and smoke funneled through it and entered his mouth as he considered her words. He exhaled once more, and said, “Way I feel about you Walkers, I doubt she’d have much concern.”
“All the better.”
Isabelle began to walk back down the trail toward Stage Road and Ted stalked a few feet behind her.
“She is well, I trust?”
“Staying with my sister over in Savannah while we get this house redone.”
“That must be difficult.”
“She ain’t the sort to complain. Besides, quite a few folks headed that way after the fire. They got themselves a little society, keep each other company. You know, Webler’s boy got some properties over there. Hear he’s been loaning them out to the others for a fair price.”
Isabelle decided that silence was the best response.
“Sound of it,” Ted continued, “he’s something of a recluse these days. Just keeps his head down, collects those checks, and stays to himself. Hardly utters a peep. I estimate he was one of the most popular young fellows in town. Wasn’t a bad word said against his name. To have his wife meet an end like that. And after all your boy put him through. Well, I hope God grants him some peace.”
Such comments had once harmed her grievously, yet she’d developed a resistance to such attacks; from the stares in town and the words uttered behind her back. A hollow pit, somewhere within her, where she stored such viciousness away, let it die, then released it to the air to float off forever. She sensed it, somewhere beside her heart, a compartment at her core—her hand felt the spot, let it rest for a moment, before her anger settled and she closed the door to the cruelty of his words.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a gossip, Ted. That’s best saved for the social butterflies nattering on in their parlors, don’t you think? Let’s stick to matters of importance.”
Ted raised an eyebrow and let her admonition go unremarked.
“And what important matter have you brought me?”
They had reached the fountain and she stopped and placed a hand on the basin.
“Your fountain,” she said. “I’d like to purchase it from you.”
He did not take it as an odd request, but demurred.
“I got that made for my wife.”
“I’m sure the money might be of use in hard times such as these.”
“It quit some time ago.”
“Well, when it is mine it will be none of your concern.”
“Why would you want the damn thing in the first place?” He threw his hands up in exasperation, the straps of his overalls jangling as he gesticulated. “Folks tell me you’ve gone crazier than George since that fire, and my God, this fits in line with that. Coming all this way about a busted fountain. It ain’t for sale. If it was, you ain’t who I’d turn to.”
She looked at Ted, then beyond him. She wondered how Landry had spotted the fountain from the fields. She knew where the house lay—knew where the cotton rows he’d picked were stationed. Yet she could not determine how one could catch sight of the fountain from such a distance, for even those rows that hugged the sides of Majesty’s Palace were some distance away, the ones at its rear even farther. And even if he had, perhaps the fountain he imagined, the fountain that preoccupied him, was one he drew himself on those long days at work, stored in his mind, a possession all his own. Yes, perhaps Ted’s was only a surrogate. A gaudy, cheap one at that.
“Might I ask who constructed it?” Isabelle said.
Ted’s anger lifted.
“Oh!” he said. “Now that’s a yarn. Had a nigger I sent to town to learn how to work stones, and what’d he do but pick up and leave when he got the first chance. And now I hired myself a mason back in town who ain’t worth half as much as that boy but wants double a normal man’s wage while doing a quarter the work. Ain’t that somethin’？ I know I shouldn’t be talking business with no woman but I can’t believe the way that boy—”