“You ain’t thinking, you ain’t ever thought, I should slap you on the backside like the papa you ain’t ever had and watch you crawl back to them woods.”
The two men had reached the house now, and George rose charily and opened the front door with caution, as to make no noise. The air was cool outside and the hair on his skin rose and his body stiffened as he met the brothers in the lane.
“What is this about?” he said.
“Mr. Walker,” Prentiss said. “George.”
“Keep your voices down, Isabelle is resting. I thought you two had gone.”
“I’ve been trying to be gone,” Prentiss hissed, looking at his brother.
Landry stared back at him with severe concentration. They were both sweating, Prentiss more so, his hair glistening even in the darkness as if it were sprinkled with frost.
“Start from the beginning,” George said.
“Ain’t no beginning. This fool”—he pointed at his brother—“he won’t go. You got this idea of this stew in his head all those days back and he ain’t quit talking about it.”
“Talking about it?” George said.
“Yes, that stew of yours.”
“Right, the stew I understand,” George said impatiently. “It’s the speaking I don’t get.”
Prentiss returned his impatience. “I mean I saw his face when you said you got that stew made up. Since then he’s been sneaking this way every night, and he ain’t moving out of them woods, not for me or no one else. Only reason I can imagine—other than him being stubborner than a gimp’s foot—is that you got that idea in his head and he can’t shake it.”
“Well, I can assure you,” George said to Landry, “that I ate the stew some time ago. And if I had any left, I would not give it you, not because I’d go against my word, but because it’d be fouled by now.”
“Which I tried to tell him,” Prentiss said. “His hunger just got him acting crazy.”
The party calmed and George grew aware of the sound of bullfrogs, louder now than the brothers’ labored breathing. The two men did not look well. Landry, his frame lankier than when George had last seen him, was clearly underfed, which meant that Prentiss, too proud to say as much, likely was as well.
“I have a store of eggs,” he said. “It’s not a stew, but there are more than I or Isabelle could manage on our own.”
Whether he had only his brother’s interest in mind, Prentiss did not object.
“If you’d wait here,” George said, “I could prepare them for you.”
“What about the missus?” Prentiss said.
“She’s retired for the night. For the foreseeable future.”
Landry moved past his brother and took root on the porch steps, his back to the house.
“I guess if them eggs are going to go to waste anyway,” Prentiss said.
George returned inside. He cooked eagerly, as he always did for guests. He’d always been of the opinion that what he lacked in personality, or charm, was embodied in his dishes, even one as simple as this: in the perfect accent of salt and pepper, the bit of cheese melted upon the scramble in a blanket so threadbare one wondered how it stayed intact. It was his favorite act of goodwill. The brothers seemed surprised when he returned with their plates, followed by the slices of bread, and finally cups of water.
“Mighty grateful,” Prentiss said, and his brother nodded. “If I had a dollar to my name.”
George ignored him. They ate slowly, even Landry, both of them savoring each bite. When Landry finished, Prentiss gave him what remained of his eggs, handing over his plate without a second thought. George stood behind them on the porch all the while and said nothing.
It was Prentiss who spoke first. “The land you wish to clear. Am I looking at it?”
George stepped forward and pointed at the woods beyond the barn, off to the right of the cabin. He was thinking of clearing that area, he said, farther from the house and down the hill, still in sight but beyond the first line of trees.
Prentiss took a sip of water.
“You’ll need all the sunlight you can get, and them trees ain’t going to help your cause.”
“I don’t know the first thing,” George admitted.
“We still aim to head north,” Prentiss said. “But we need some funds if we’re going to make it. We can’t be helping you for free, is what I’m saying.”
A jolt traveled through George at the thought of this prospect renewed. His money was tied up in the land, he said, but he would speak to someone about that. It wouldn’t be a problem to pay them.