The boy left then, and Prentiss, marooned on the porch, had been stricken with the same numbness that Landry’s death now occasioned in him. Back then, evading the pain wrought by the image of a man he’d thought of as invincible alone in the fields, hand on his chest, cotton flittering into his mouth before the wind shooed it off, Prentiss’s mind had focused only on the positive: that his father had really been there, working the same rows his son would come to work himself. If he blocked the hurt, there was a thrill to that single fact. In the days to come, he would wonder what other similarities might exist between his father and him and Landry. He knew it irked his mother, knew she had no interest in revisiting the past, but Prentiss couldn’t help peppering her with questions. Was their father ungainly and careful, like Landry? Or did he run with the speed that made all the other children envious of Prentiss? Which of them had their father’s smile? His eyes?
He no longer remembered her answers to those questions. Not a one. Rather he recalled her row with the mother of the boy who’d shared the truth of his father’s death. She reprimanded the woman for putting into her son’s head awful things he didn’t need to know, much less tell her boys about. Prentiss watched her from the side of the cabin, her voice booming with fury. It was her secret to tell when she saw fit, his mother shrieked. Her husband’s death, her hurt to share with the man’s boys.
At the time Prentiss couldn’t imagine what she found so terrible that she’d made the entire plantation swear an oath to keep the information guarded for so many years. But turning back to face what was left of his brother, he perceived what must have come to her mind anytime he mentioned his father at all: that body in the field, the torture of the loss. And he realized what image would come to his own mind, from that point on, whenever his brother was brought up. The horror was so unimaginable that he wanted to collapse, but when Caleb moved again to try to leave the site for home, Prentiss once more stood tall, stood strong.
“I can make this right,” Caleb said. “I just need—”
Prentiss put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder. Did not grip it. Just a touch. And then whispered into his ear, “There ain’t gonna be no going back, Caleb. You can’t make none of this right. We gonna wait right here. Just like I said.”
Out of the corner of his eye he recognized, wrongly, the shadow that he had come to intuit as his brother, forever one step to the side, out of sight but always present. Rather it was George, holding his hip and hobbling toward them, covered in mud. George would speak now and take control and that was all right. For however long Prentiss had sought to steer his own way in the world, this was one occasion where he wished to relinquish that drive and to live without feeling, without thinking, to sit in the dark and consider nothing but the blackness of the inside of his eyelids, or the darkness of the world itself, as he had on so many sleepless nights in his youth, after his mother was sold away.
“Thank God!” Caleb said, enlivened by the sight of his father, his protector. “Now we’ll really fix this, Prentiss. I vow to you.”
It was knee-jerk for Prentiss, thinking that the boy was trying to run off again. To step to him once more. This time Caleb did not startle, but stood there eyeing Prentiss, for Prentiss had no power now that they were not alone. He and Landry had played a game like this as boys. One would move forward, like a taunt, a threat, testing whether the other would flinch. Then Landry would give chase, his eyes wide, the two of them running in circles until Landry caught his older brother and slung him over his shoulder, then tossed him into a pile of leaves, or hay in the horses’ stable, with a flick of his arms.
There would be no chasing here. Prentiss retreated, turned away from George’s approach, and glanced again at Landry’s corpse （for that’s what it was, he’d settled on it, and the word must be said）。 The eyes that had once been as wide as could be were now shielded in blood and would see Prentiss no more. The sight brought him to his knees. Brought him, for one last time, to grab hold of the brother he’d lost.
CHAPTER 15
Prentiss refused to move from his brother’s side. George left him there and deposited Caleb at the cabin with his mother, who had returned home from church. She had no idea what had taken place but already sat beside him on the couch. He would not let her touch him, but only shifted back in his seat whenever she drew too close. He brushed away her hand. Looked beyond her when she sought out his gaze.
“There’s been a murder,” George said. “Landry.”