“Men think as they wish,” she said. “The next up the stairs might believe he’s my only customer, just as you believe you’re the only one hearing these cries at night, like other people don’t suffer. I can’t say who is more right.”
He thanked her and took his leave. It was worth far more than three dollars to have the blessing of her compassion bestowed on him—so real in his heart, in every light step he took down the stairs of the whorehouse, that he cared little if such feelings were born naturally, from Clementine’s bosom, or merely from the sight of the money placed upon her desk.
It was not just that Clementine had revived his spirit, but that she had illuminated the path he must take, the decisions that must follow. He knew, now, what Ezra had meant in the tavern, but the cry of the town was not his burden to bear. No, it was he, George, who was the burden: a burden on his family, a burden on Prentiss and Landry.
Once more Taffy came to mind, the manner in which she had disappeared from his life, as though she had done him a service, only to be disposed of by his mother when that was accomplished. It did not matter that he had cared for her like a sister and treated her with a goodness he’d reserved for so few people in his life. What did his gratitude mean if his mother had sent her off with only a signature, a fluttering motion of her hand, as if to say, Be gone? He recalled that moment now, too, however much it pained him. He’d been beside his mother at her desk, Taffy at the door, the man’s hand—for it was a man, of course, heavy, tall, stone-faced—on the girl’s shoulder, as if she was already his. George had said nothing. No hug, no goodbye. He was stunned by what was happening, but he was only fourteen, still mournful and adrift after the death of his father. In his shock he had no way to recognize this other child’s feelings. The grip of a stranger’s hand on her shoulder. Her wracking fear of whatever might come next. George could look away—and did. But she would live with that fear forever, the knowledge that she would have to obey whatever order came out of that man’s mouth. Just as she had done with his own parents…
But while it was too late to save Taffy, the plight of the brothers, at least, could be settled. If he had any courage at all, he could help those two. One way or another, he would secure their safe passage out of Old Ox for good.
CHAPTER 11
Landry roamed the countryside as he pleased. The desire to do so, the fascination with it, had once been a fear: whenever he’d stood before the forest with Prentiss in the flitting sunlight, the darkness in its farthest reaches had always felt like a monster lying in wait, one who had taken down his name long ago, eager to stake its claim on him. That was the dread Prentiss was blind to and that Landry could not describe: that these were two different worlds. That this new one might consume them as it had consumed their mother, and Little James and Esther, and then what?
But it turned out that each step did not bring danger. The unknown led only to more clearings, more sunlight on the other end, and so it dawned on him that there was less to fear than he’d once imagined, which was maybe a truth he’d long wished to believe—that all danger carried the faint trace of comfort, all wrongs the hint of what may be right. How else to explain a world of cruelty that had also carried in it the great joy of watching his mother at the mercy of Little James’s fiddle on a Sunday afternoon, the miracle of a fresh tick mattress, the sweetness of water after a day spent picking in the fields?
He always sought out pleasure in silence, usually on his own. Given a free Sunday, the one day of the week he and Prentiss did not work with George, Landry would wake there in the barn before the rest of the world had stirred and boil a kettle of cornmeal. He’d eat alone and leave half the pot behind. His brother, still in bed, would turn away. Prentiss was awake, Landry knew, but they didn’t speak to each other on these Sunday mornings. He’d head off with nothing and start for the woods, seeking life, any life, as long as it was different from his own.
There were days where he encountered nothing more than a doe with her fawn, or an owl hooting from a tree branch, and if this was all he was given by the proceedings, he still walked home content. But there was also the time he came to the creek and found women. They were with children, infants, washing them in the water and soothing their cries with a chorus of humming, soft songs of reassurance. Landry was fixed there for hours, watching the women towel down the children, the mothers themselves patted dry by the sun.
He went far enough one day to run across a plantation, one he’d never known about. There, a field of women: heads wrapped in cloth to hide from the sun, wearing men’s trousers cut into pantalets and oversize shirts, turning the soil endlessly. He counted the rows, saw how few of them had been picked clean, and knew the output would not satisfy the bosses. Sure enough, when he returned the next week the place had received a string of hardened, bitter men, convicts who worked alongside the women while still in their chains. He did not return to the place.