Prentiss tried to listen past Hackstedde, to listen for his brother’s footsteps, but the sheriff had roped him in. He could think only of the rituals. Not his own people’s, but those he’d heard of on other plantations. Men and women gathering when certain stars aligned and heating clay, smearing themselves whole, dancing naked, first in unison but then alone, twirling endlessly, as though if they twirled fast enough they might spin themselves right into the ground and return to the earth.
“…And right then he puts his finger up to his mouth, with the widest grin I ever seen him give, like we’re in on a joke together. Only when I look close, his eyes are gone red, and there’s a steady little trickle of tears coming down his face.”
Hackstedde took a long drag, and Prentiss could smell the smoke as the sheriff exhaled.
“I jumped down that tree and told them there wasn’t nothing up there but a bird’s nest.”
Prentiss opened one eye and turned away from the wall to look back at Hackstedde.
“I could never shake the thought they knew I was lying,” the sheriff said. “I still wonder about that. Like I let them down. But hell, I was just a boy. And I liked the fellow. Tomorrow ain’t too far away, though. I got you to fix my conscience. Make things right.”
Prentiss didn’t linger on the sheriff’s words. He shut his eyes once more, thinking the judge would arrive and have his say and he would awaken to the sigh of the iron door swinging ajar, after which he would have a reckoning with a noose—his own return to the earth.
*
It felt like the fabric of a dream when a woman’s voice called his name. When he came to, he was so startled to see the figure before him that he nearly jumped. But she said his name once more in a soothing tone.
“You thought you wouldn’t ever see your cousin again, didn’t you?”
The woman winked, and Prentiss nodded along, as he would have done to any string of words coming from her mouth. It was night already—yet even in the dark her beauty was immense: her eyes like flowers in bloom, the lashes the petals. She wore a flowing blue dress with tassels at the bottom that looked like catkins hanging from a tree. His life had always been a loaded coil held taut by the discipline of hard work, the allegiance to the duties of each day, yet he could sense how the very sight of a woman like this could spring it loose and scatter a lifetime of order.
She reached through the bars with a peach, which he clutched dumbly, and assured him, in a whisper, that she’d come to see a certain Prentiss. “Haven’t you missed me?” she asked him, more an instruction than a question.
He hadn’t considered that he might need to respond. It seemed almost too great a task.
“Yes,” he managed. “Dearly.”
Her face came to a rest—his answer had satisfied her—and she settled back in her chair on the other side of the bars. Hackstedde was watching them intently from his desk.
The woman looked back at the sheriff and then turned to Prentiss again, whispering once more.
“You must be hungry, you poor thing. Eat.”
He looked at the peach in his hand, having already forgotten it was there. He hadn’t eaten in two days, since the evening of Landry’s burial, but although his hunger was wolfish, he took only a slow bite, keeping his eyes on this heaven-sent woman whose business with him he still did not know.
The woman explained her encounter with Isabelle and the mission to visit Prentiss that she had accepted.
“My name is Clementine,” she said.
“Pleasure,” Prentiss said.
“Mrs. Walker sends her regards.”
Hackstedde’s chair squeaked as he shifted forward.
“What’s all that whispering about?” he yelled.
“Just being polite, sheriff,” the woman said. “Minding you your space.”
She could inflect her voice with the softest of tones and Hackstedde fell under the spell of her words. He grunted and said no more.
“Are you well in here?” Clementine asked.
“It ain’t exactly paradise,” he said. “Apologies for the smell. He had me walking through filth before we made it to Selby. I don’t have no way to clean up.”
He could hardly look at her, but she returned his gaze so generously, so kindly, that his shame was expunged.
“You should see my home,” she said. “Oh, does it get filthy sometimes. Nothing shameful about a mess.”
He took another bite, thought to speak, but had to have another before going on.
“You know Isabelle?” he asked quietly.