“Come, child,” she said once, and when he pulled up alongside her, there was a set of needles for him to work as well. He hadn’t known that his hands were allowed to be delicate like hers—hadn’t known they were capable of such creation.
The knitting ended when the picking snatched away the magic of her fingers, and by the time she was brought to Majesty’s Palace, she could not live up to her reputation. That was the last they saw of her. Her vanishing happened that fast. Their cabin was quiet then, and they spent many sleepless nights staring at her empty bed until the dawn edged in, hoping she might appear.
He never stitched in all the years of her absence, not until he found freedom. The first item he made was a shawl, which was of no quality, and he hid it in the barn so as to not let it be found. The second, a pair of gloves that appeared to be made for someone with three fingers, achieved the same result. Yet there in the bunchgrass he was regaining his loss at the third attempt, a pair of socks, working at them tirelessly, ignoring the saliva that escaped his mouth, the numbness that colonized his legs—crossed upon the grass—as he toiled. Not until this very day had he felt satisfied with the final product. Now he put his tools beneath a cloudy bed of chickweed blossoms and, for only a moment, returned home.
He avoided the barn. Prentiss was either still at rest or off with George, lending his ear. The cabin appeared unoccupied, but he watched for a time to make sure of it. When there was no movement in the kitchen, no shadows on the second floor, he stole to the backyard. On that first encounter with Isabelle, he had come only to see the socks on the clothesline—to ascertain a job well done, a model that might guide him—and he had found, in addition, a woman begging to be heard, a woman who herself had gone unseen. He knew this pain. He was not one to let it go unacknowledged. A gesture—the socks—might do. There were no clothes on the line. It hung limp in the summer heat. The socks were a bit bigger than the size of a child’s foot, which he hoped would be proper for a woman. He looked at them in appreciation of his own craft. Took a clothespin and hung them proudly.
*
Another sweat was coming on. He slipped off into the woods and followed alongside the road to town, veering off toward the meadowland when it suited him. There was a lightness to his step, and he made quick time. The pond was just as he’d left it—the lilies upon the water unified like a carefully drawn illustration; the water reflecting his image, made beautiful if only by the beauty that surrounded him. He loved the silence, so totally encompassing that his thoughts arrived as if he were speaking, the sentences full and alive, the sort a preacher might thunder to an audience who would respond with whoops and wild amens. Here, things were different. For the sliver of time he was allowed, the pond was his.
He removed his clothes and waded into the water slowly. Each step was a clap of cold and he let it spread until he felt himself dissolving, his whole body going numb. When his senses returned it was like he’d pieced himself back together part by part, everything broken and then mended. The pond always filled him with whimsical thoughts. He wasn’t sure who owned it, but perhaps, he imagined, a home could be perched beside it. Why not? Perhaps George would enjoy a new project. Perhaps Prentiss would let go of his determination to leave Old Ox if only he dipped a toe into the water that Landry now floated in, if only he could accept the comfort, the belief that this was where they belonged. That finally a place might be theirs. Landry had even brought it up to him. Would do so again in due time.
But he knew the prospect of staying beyond the peanut harvest was unlikely. Prentiss spoke of leaving once they had sufficient savings. Landry himself was content here, with a pallet all his own and so much open land outside the door that it seemed like all the freedom a man might need in one life. But Prentiss would keep them up at night with talks of far-off locales. Maybe they’d hop from town to town, city to city, until they found the one that fit them just right, a place with more work than you could ever hope for, a place where men spent dollars like pennies and thought nothing of it. Or they’d ride on the railcar, not even asking where it might lead to, and disembark wherever the scenery called out to them, find a little bit of land where the weather was cool and no one knew their names, where they could sip lemonade on their own front porch and never be bothered again.
But though these fantasies involved just the two of them, their mother was always present in the back of their minds. Prentiss would ask him what means he thought they might employ to find her when the time came. Landry would get that sinking feeling in his gut, try to think himself away from the barn like he used to think himself away from the plantation, like he used to think himself away from his own body when the whip was meeting his back. His brother talked of going door to door, through the whole state of Georgia, inquiring of their mother’s whereabouts. Went so far as to consider asking Mr. Morton, knowing full well he would never tell them, for they’d tried that before, only to be mocked by his laughter, to be told that she wasn’t even worth recording in his ledger of transactions. A lie, yes, but as hurtful as anything anyone had ever uttered to them. Best for Landry, then, to take leave of such thoughts, to disappear from those conversations altogether and leave them for his brother to spin around in his own mind.