Excerpt from The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Our apologies," said the man in front.

They began to bundle up their blanket, collecting a small knife, a bit of stripped beef, pieces of bread, but stopped once George started in again. His eyes wandered the ground in front of him, as if searching for something lost.

"I've been following a beast of some size," he said. "Black in color, known to stand on two feet but usually found on four. It's been years since I saw the creature with my own two eyes, but I often wake to its image, as if it's trying to alert me to its presence nearby. Sometimes, on my porch, I'll be dozing off, and the memory of it is so strong, so clear, that it travels through my head like an echo, bounding through my dreams. As far as tracking it, I'm afraid to say it's gotten the upper hand."

The two men looked at one another, then back at George.

"That's…well, that's mighty curious," the smaller one said.

In the last remnants of light, George could make out the taller one, a man whose eyes were so placid and displayed so little emotion that he seemed simple. His lower jaw was cracked open wide, revealing a hanging slab of teeth. It was the other one, the smaller one, who continued to do the talking.

George asked them their names.

"This here is my brother, Landry. I'm Prentiss."

"Prentiss. Did Ted come up with that?"

Prentiss looked at Landry, as if he might have a better idea.

"I don't know, sir. I was born with that name. It was either him or the missus."

"I imagine it was Ted. I'm George Walker. You wouldn't happen to have some water, would you?"

Prentiss handed over a canteen, and George understood he was expected to ask after them, investigate why they were here on his land, but the issue took up such a small space in his thinking that it felt like a waste of what energy he had left. The movements of other men interested him so little that the indifference was his chief reason for living so far from society. As was so often the case, his mind was elsewhere.

"I get the sense you've been out here some time. You wouldn't—you wouldn't have happened to have seen that animal I spoke of?"

Prentiss studied George for a moment, until George realized the young man's gaze was trained past him, somewhere off in the distance.

"Can't say I have. Mr. Morton had me on some of his hunting trips, I seen all sorts of things, but nothing like you described. Mostly fowl. Those dogs come back with the birds still quivering in their mouths, and he'd have me string 'em up to the others, and carry 'em home on my back. I had so many you couldn't see me through the feathers. Other boys would be jealous I got to go off for the day, but they didn't know the first thing about it. I'd rather be in the field than have that load on my back."

"That's something," George said, considering the image. "That's really something."

Landry pulled apart a chunk of meat and handed it to Prentiss before taking one for himself.

"Don't be rude, now," Prentiss said.

Landry looked over to George and motioned to the meat, but George declined with a shake of his head.

They sat in silence, and George found their aversion to speaking welcome. Other than his wife, they seemed like the only individuals he'd come upon in some time who would rather leave a moment naked than tar it with wasted words.

"This is your land, then," Prentiss finally said.

"My father's land, now mine, one day it was to be my son's…" The words fell away into the night and he began again on a different course. "Now it's got me turned around and I don't even know which way is what, and these damned clouds in the sky."

He sensed the woods themselves taunting him and went to stand as if in protest, only for the pain in his hip to coil itself into a tighter knot; with a yelp he fell back onto the log.

Prentiss stood and walked over to him, concern in his eyes.

Excerpted from The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris. Copyright © 2021 by Nathan Harris. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.