“There was that boy on Aldridge’s land,” Hackstedde said. “We had him cornered in the woods when I got myself stung by a whole swarm of bees. Now, listen—I was so swollen from head to toe that I had to leave the Negro behind and get the rest of the gang to carry me back to town. I was on bed rest for a month of Sundays.”
There was a waste bucket in the cell, half-filled by the last prisoner. No bed. Just an empty space. A pen hardly fit for a pig.
“Another time,” Hackstedde said, “they sent me over to Pawnee, and I get to the front door of the plantation house and who owns the place but a Negro. Yeah, you heard me right, they had in there a Negro who went on and bought himself some other Negroes. I could hardly figure such an arrangement. And this Negro tries to tell me it’s not so uncommon. That might be the case in Pawnee, I tell him, but it’s not exactly a natural occurrence up in Old Ox. But anyway, his property was long gone, we didn’t even get a sniff of the boy. Probably in Canada by now.”
Prentiss never responded, and eventually Hackstedde took offense, pausing to cast a wandering glance over the empty jail cells and tempting Prentiss to fill the silent lull. When he didn’t, the sheriff scowled at him.
“Ain’t too long now,” he said balefully. “Tim should be back with that judge by dawn. Good Southern gentleman. He’ll take Webler’s word on things, sure enough. Promise you that much.”
Prentiss retreated into himself. He knew how to live in his head. He’d made a similar journey every day in the fields, wandering in his mind’s eye to a place he’d never been, a place that was equal parts destination and idea. Elsewhere was the only name it carried. The barn beside George’s cabin was elsewhere; a patch of free ground up north was elsewhere; his mother was elsewhere; salvation was elsewhere; all those lives that passed outside the jail existed elsewhere （praise be to their good fortune）; and a fate, any fate, other than the one that lay before him would be a perfectly fine road to elsewhere. The map, with all its many variations, was in his head, yet he knew quite well he would never make the journey.
“Tim gets a bad reputation,” Hackstedde said, reclaiming his good cheer. “He is stupid, that I grant you, but the boy is a veteran, fought that first year before he was gutshot, and if you show your mettle on the battlefield, who am I to say you can’t be a county deputy? The least I can do is give him some time to show his grit. Besides, I spoke to the doctor, who said the boy is ‘battle weary.’ That’s what they’re calling it. He can hear a footstep and think he’s got his flank compromised, eyes all big, sweating and carrying on. Doc says he’ll get better, though. A matter of time.”
For no other reason than boredom, Prentiss had begun to tabulate the many symptoms that Hackstedde’s girth inspired. The man’s mouth closed only when he needed to swallow; he was unsteady in his chair, prone to falling over but never quite doing Prentiss the favor; his skin was blotchy; and when he breathed, especially after one of his monologues, it sounded like the airy whine of a child nearing the end of a tantrum, so labored that the flame of the candle atop his desk would often flicker.
His daughter, a young woman, had brought him lunch wrapped in paper—from the tavern next door, Prentiss guessed. It had been too hot to eat, but after a few minutes Hackstedde stuck his finger in the mashed potatoes, judged the temperature, and commenced. In contrast to what one might expect, given his slovenly appearance, he ate daintily, quietly, and with a solemn devotion to the task, as if it were an act of prayer.
The silence didn’t last.
“You know,” Hackstedde said, working through a chicken thigh, “you had yourself a visitor this morning while you were napping.”
Prentiss propped himself up against the wall.
Hackstedde waved the bone at his face.
“That got your attention, didn’t it?” He laughed and clanged the chicken bone down. “Mrs. Walker came by. Drove that donkey all the way over here to make sure you’d made it in one piece. Tried to bribe me with a basket of fruit to see you. I told her, ‘Now, Mrs. Walker, do I look like someone who gets stirred up by the sight of a peach?’”
“You ain’t let her in?”
“I did you a service, boy. You needed that rest.”
Prentiss could still feel the chafing imprint of the irons upon his wrists, though that wasn’t the worst of the punishments he’d faced on the journey to Selby: when they’d reached Stage Road, Hackstedde had shortened the leash, and Prentiss was bound so close to the horse that he could not avoid its droppings when they fell at his feet. The smell, ripe and putrid, was still on him. He couldn’t help thinking, much as it pained him, that it was better Isabelle had stayed outside.