Isabelle. He could not rid himself of the name, the memory, no matter how many days passed, and soon he was so preoccupied that it became a matter of grave importance that some action be taken. So he carved a figurine, with the flow and shape of a beautiful woman （however much definition might be had in the medium of wood）， and had it sent to her by mail. When a week went by, he sent a basket of flowers, all picked on the farm, this time hiring a courier so they would arrive without having wilted. When this, too, garnered no response, he finally found the nerve to take the trip to Chambersville himself. He asked after Isabelle’s house and was soon before a brick home, built in the Colonial style, a large lawn out front being tended to by a modest number of Negroes who were currently caught up in a conversation so lively he was afraid of interrupting. When they looked him up and down, he felt himself shrink before them, like he feared his flowers had only a few days earlier. They asked him who he wished to call on.
“I believe her name is Isabelle,” he said.
Right inside, they told him.
When the butler informed her of his arrival, and when she came to the door, he was so stunned by being granted another sight of such a beautiful woman that he could hardly utter a word.
“You are the one sending those gifts, aren’t you?” she said, the words coming before she had even stepped off the stairs.
A stutter. Some babble. He could not recall the specifics, or if he had even managed to cobble one word to another.
“Really, a simple note would’ve done. Easier to respond to than a carving. The flowers were nice, but much better presented in person. I figured I’d wait until you showed up yourself to offer my thanks.”
The tongue, the wit （not to mention the intimidating presence of her father across the room, watching their every move）。 He would soon learn all the reasons why so many other suitors had been overwhelmed by Isabelle, not daring even to try to make her theirs. But he wasn’t like them. And she wasn’t like the other girls.
So it began that afternoon. A life of happiness that transcended George’s former independence, one of unity. Two lives merged. Her beauty was secondary to the strength of her character, the fortitude in which she housed her beliefs, her way of life, that same stubbornness that he shared himself. It softened a bit as the years passed, as she attempted to assimilate with the women of Old Ox, who were suspicious of her husband, that curious landowner with not a close friend to his name. She grew cordial, then matronly when Caleb was born. But that fierce woman was always present regardless, so perhaps he shouldn’t have been so surprised she was holding up quite well in the face of the shock that had now transpired.
His admiration only made him want to speak to her more than ever and share in the conversation that Mildred Foster was now robbing him of. After a few more minutes Isabelle came back inside, passing him with only a cursory glance.
Mildred was putting on her gloves and twice called out, “Rest, honey,” yelling past George.
He held the skillet before him on the front porch, inwardly begging for the slightest morsel of information, like a vagrant might appeal to a passerby, tin cup in hand.
Mildred flexed her hands in her gloves. Her skin, like porcelain, shimmered in the morning sun.
“Be patient with her,” she said calmly. “She doesn’t yet know how much you two will need each other.”
Startled by the comment, he watched her for some hint of sarcasm, a hidden note meant to spear him, and by the time he registered her sincerity, it was too late. She was already halfway down the lane. He dropped his fork into the skillet, went back inside, and placed it on the stove. As had been the case the last few days, he felt trapped in the cabin, not by the quarters themselves, but by the memories they exposed, which lay in wait wherever he turned. A long walk, he felt, might put them from his mind.
He plucked his jacket from the back of his kitchen chair, gave a last look up the stairwell, and ambled out the front door and into the morning air. He had no specific trail in mind, but he made sure to avoid the path he’d taken to meet Prentiss and Landry. Only after he’d walked away from them had he realized how crass his request had been. The talking one, Prentiss, had all the right in the world to tell him off. But if he was to keep his land, and to put in any crop at all, he would need help, and there wasn’t a hand in Old Ox he trusted enough to lift a finger on his behalf. Other than his privacy he had little left in the world, certainly now more than ever, and he wished to keep it at any cost.
Leaves hissed around him as if they’d been trampled, yet with no wind the trees stood still and there was nothing else to see when he looked about. That was the beauty of nature—it was always a step ahead, privy to a joke he did not know, a riddle with no answer. He sat and leaned back against a wide oak and focused on a point before him that ran on endlessly in swirls of copper-colored bark and blankets of green foliage, the lot of it mixing as one the farther it went along.