“I’m not sure I wish to know it,” George said, and sipped his whiskey.
“All the better. I didn’t ask you here to discuss such weightless things.”
“Did you not? I thought we were here to have a good time. To be merry.”
“Perhaps there are other topics worthy of our conversation.”
“Allow me to guess,” George said. “You wish to ask after more of my land, or have me repay my debts to you. I’d venture further to say both tasks are intertwined.”
“God, no. But can’t we keep each other company without the need to prattle forth on trivial nonsense? To accuse me of grabbing after your land at every opportunity, I find it offensive, really.”
Ezra put back half his beer.
“I was only joking,” George muttered.
“My only aim, if you must know, is battling a bout of loneliness.”
Now Ezra must be joking, George thought, but his friend continued in a soft, serious tone.
“My wife is so familiar she often fades into the makings of our home. A lamp might draw as much attention in a passing day. And the boys are gone.”
“But you’re well-regarded, Ezra. You field visitors all day, I see them in your office whenever I’m in town.”
“That is business. Before you came here, I was alone. And when you leave I will be alone again. Letting time pass before I retire for the night.”
George didn’t realize what had become of his father’s old friend, for he seemed no different than he had since his childhood. Yet part of Ezra, at least in drink, had softened into something infirm, something weak. It took George a moment to gather that the weakness might simply be age. He saw then what would become of the old man, his jowls loosening further until they were no different from the flaps of a dog, even as his excess weight peeled away. Soon he would find himself removed to a bed, in the far corner of his home on Mayor’s Row, and he would go the way of Benjamin, George’s own father, and not many years hence, George feared, he himself would take Ezra’s place across the table, eating with the gluttony of a man who knows it may be his last supper.
“You cannot run from it,” Ezra said, as if reading George’s mind. “It is just how things advance. We age. And we must be honest in the face of this truth.”
“If you’re suggesting death worries me more than the next man, I’d say you’re wrong.” George sank back into his chair.
“I’m not so sure I am.”
Neither of them spoke as Ezra ate. The ruckus near the bar had abated, and in the relative quiet, cards being shuffled at the tables below sounded like the ruffled flutter of birds taking flight.
Finally the sheep bone lay bare and Ezra relaxed.
“The Negroes,” he said. “Let them go.”
So, then. There had been a point to the invitation all along. George felt the need for another whiskey.
“Not you, too,” he said.
“The George I knew had not a care in the world for another man, let alone freed slaves. I can only gather that old age has led you to philanthropy. To make right whatever wrongs your heart holds in. But you are exposing yourself to the public in an ugly way.”
“I thought you did not wish to prattle forth on trivial nonsense.”
Ezra leaned forward.
“Do not mistake the presence of those soldiers for some beacon of safety. This town is not as quiet as it seems. These men have been humiliated at war, and now they’re restless. Only growing more so in the face of your indiscretions.”
“I’m restless sitting here with you.”
“George, there are men who could use those wages. Back from the war, with little more than a few wounds to their name. Men just like Caleb.”
“Do not bring my son into this. I have made no statement by my decisions. The brothers work hard, they cause no issue, they are good fellows and good labor.”
Ezra’s face hardened.
“You simply cannot have those two boys coming into town haggling for new clothes, their pockets lined with bills while they pass white men begging for a few coins. At least cut back their pay. The other landowners have created perfectly reasonable guidelines on how to deal with such circumstances.”
“Stop there. I will not run up a debt on honest folk and make them earn back their wages as if they are slaves again. I am not saying they deserve a hog over a spittle every night for supper, but a little decency, Ezra.”
Ezra paused, as if gathering himself.
“It’s plain that I will have to say this more directly, because you are as stubborn as your father. Do you not see that although some voices have been suppressed in Old Ox, they have not been vanquished altogether? There are certain individuals, those less inclined toward friendly conversation than you or I, who have made it clear—in the back of their stores, in the alleyways at night, even in this very bar—that they will not stand for what you’re doing. Frustrated men. Which makes for rash men. I cannot express how troublesome this could become not just for your farm, but for your well-being. Your family’s well-being.”