Still, Landry knew they would never be separated. That Prentiss would always be there, no matter what, waiting in the barn, or keeping watch over his shoulder as they worked the field. And Landry, for his part, always returned to the barn to show he was not gone for good, always returned his brother’s glances to assure him that he, too, was keeping watch.
*
The next Sunday he woke early, eager to take to the woods, only to find Prentiss already sitting up. Leftovers from the night before were boiling in the kettle, cabbage stumps and turnip, cotton seeds and some ham George had given them. His brother looked uneasy, playing with a kink in his hair, sucking air through his teeth.
“Morning,” Prentiss said.
Landry wiped the sleep from his eyes. The stick of sweat from the previous day was upon him. He would take to the water when the sun rose, he thought. He would bathe beside the fish, hide himself beneath the surface and go unseen.
“I was wondering,” Prentiss said, as if reading his mind, “if maybe I could come along. I know you like your time alone, but you got me so curious when you’re out I sometimes can’t look at a damned thing but your cot, wondering where you is. I thought I might tag along. Maybe see what you see.”
Landry had never considered that his brother might have the slightest interest in joining him.
“You can tell me,” Prentiss said. “If you feel like tryin’， I’ll wait for the words to come.”
He wasn’t unwilling to stammer in front of Prentiss. He’d done so before, although only rarely, for even Prentiss grew impatient with the excruciating unfurling of each word, until he began guessing at the end of a sentence that Landry had worked so hard to unspool. But even if he wished to convey his feelings on it, there was something inexpressible about his time away. He shared a life with his brother, the barn they occupied, all the worldly goods between them, but these mornings were his. To put it into words would not make his brother impatient. But he feared they might hurt him.
Landry approached his brother, who watched him warily, as if Landry might spring upon him as he had when they were children, forcing him into a scrap. But he only put a hand upon Prentiss’s head, held him to his chest.
“What’s this?” Prentiss said.
Landry hoped this would be enough, this touch. Perhaps his brother might even come to relish it more than a Sunday walk. Then Landry turned and started for the door.
“That’s it?” Prentiss said. “Just gon’ up and leave? I’m up early getting this food ready and you ain’t even gonna eat? You ain’t right sometimes, you know that? Probably out there spying on folks from the trees and making a fool of yourself. I ain’t even wanna go, so how’s that?”
But by now Landry was beyond the barn door, and if Prentiss said anything further it didn’t reach him. Though the days had all been hot, this morning was cool. As he walked, his brother’s playful words, the bark in his voice, echoed in Landry’s mind, pleasing him. Of course Prentiss wasn’t really upset. He knew Landry too well—respected his idle Sunday mornings, had come to understand them in the same way he understood everything about his brother. They were always only a few paces apart. Prentiss had probably returned to his pallet to sleep away the morning, and Landry was even now keeping him company in his dreams.
*
That first hour, he did not go far. George had once shown him a spot of copper bunchgrass that claimed a slice of the forest; they had been seeking a certain plant that, according to George, was an exceptional addition to a particular stew. But sometime later Landry spotted the little outpost of seclusion on his own, and it had become a favorite of his haunts.
His things were hidden there, beneath the bed of greenery, and he sought them by running his hand upon the soil until it brushed against the cold of the knitting needles, the doughy embrace of the yarn. He’d bought them from an aged woman at the tent camps whose legs were entangled in a crush of children vying for her attention. She would feed them for a day or two with the money. In return, he rediscovered a lost pastime.
It was true that their mother had been moved into Majesty’s Palace, working the loom and going over designs with Mr. Morton’s wife, but she wasn’t selected by chance, as Prentiss thought. His brother, Landry figured, had forgotten how skilled she was with her hands. After the whippings, when Landry remained in the cabin, recovering, afraid to go back outside and risk the chance of further punishment, their mother would stay with him, and he would watch her as she worked, her fingers guiding the knitting needles as if playing a fine-tuned violin, knuckles pointed and taut, knots of yarn forming and collecting upon one another in careful bunches.