Back to Wando Passo, David Payne [little red riding hood ebook .TXT] 📗

in the night sky over Arles, something that was really there. And Ransom knew because he saw the same thing now, a swirl above the drawn bow of the moon, a vortex spinning slowly in the sky above the South Carolina coast.

“Hope! Charlie! Come on! It’s time to go!”

“Just another minute, Dad!”

“Right now!” he roared into the night.

“Again! Again! Again!”

So this is where the journey leads…this is where the journey leads….

“I need help,” he said aloud then, not to them, or to the voice, but to the painter of the canvas overhead, the author of the world, in Whom, even then, Ran only indifferently believed. Yet he had nowhere else to turn except himself. And his self, Ran realized, was no longer something he could trust.

That was the moment when it finally dawned on Ransom that the little voice, the familiar one that helps out in the morning when you hesitate between the blue shirt and the red, had stopped being his, stopped being him. At some point, it had become the voice of something other, not himself, not aligned with Ransom Hill and not his friend. And what point was that? The moment Ran dug up the pot.

This is where the clues were leading all along…. And what do you do then, when you’re already on the path, in the moment you finally realize where it leads…?

“What do I do now?”

The first part of the answer—but the first part only—came to Ransom as he carefully (oh, so carefully) strapped the children into the car and started off with them again.

THIRTY-NINE

The first scream registers surprise and grief. It’s the second that will wake Addie late at night in her remaining years. There are no screams after that. By the time the cemetery gate swings to, the creaking of the rusty hinge is all there is to interrupt the morning’s silence. Paloma is lying faceup in the grass. Except for her left eyelid—which has drooped three-quarters closed and is twitching—the old woman seems composed, staring almost thoughtfully up into the dappled light that filters through the beard of the old cypress.

“Paloma?” Addie slips a hand beneath her head. “Paloma, can you hear me?”

“Escuche, niña. Los periquitos…¿Usted los oye?”

“Paloma, I’m sorry. It’s Addie, I can’t understand you.”

“Han venido para mí.”

Paloma smiles with one side of her mouth, and Addie thinks, decisively, A stroke. She can’t be sure if Paloma recognizes her. The old woman’s face is like a mask, half of comedy, half tragedy, and her eye beneath the fallen lid has taken on a terrible opacity, like that of a poached fish, as though some hot explosion in her head has cooked it from within. Like a gunshot, then, the slamming door at Jarry’s house breaks the stillness, and only now does Addie see the green cloud rise above the dike and drift uneasily back down into the fields. “Periquitos”—the word comes clear. Half shouldered on, his coat flutters as he runs—like a flag, it strikes her, the black flag of an army charging toward defeat. She feels a futile impulse to cry out, to tell him not to run, and stifles it.

“What’s happened? What is this? Is she…?” Falling heavily to his knees in summer grass that looks suddenly, cruelly lush, he looks to her.

“I found her only now.”

He leans and whispers, “Mama? Mama, what is it? Talk to me.”

“¿Percival, eres tú?”

“No, Mama, it’s me, Jarry,” he answers with a stricken look.

“You sound so like him. Tienes la voz igual que tu papá.”

“What is it, Mama? Are you ill?” He strokes her hair. “Where does it hurt? ¿Dónde le duele?”

“You should go for the doctor,” Addie says, willing measure into her tone. “I think you should ride straightaway for Dr. Sims.”

He looks at her, his reddened eyes filled with a brief flight of indecision and despair, and she is sick for him. To lose his mother now…Let it pass, Lord, Addie thinks, and if that be not possible, give him strength to bear.

“No te preocupes por el doctor,” says Paloma. “Ya es demasiado tarde.”

“No, Mamá.” With a reckless desuetude, he collapses and lifts her head into his lap. “You’re going to be all right.” He’s weeping now, yet Addie notes the way he keeps his voice in a clear, tender register and gently strokes her hair. There’s a softness in his jawline as he gazes down, as if Paloma were a child or some unweaned, defenseless animal he’s determined to protect. When he looks at Addie, his eyes are full of naked pain and questioning, and she holds his stare as long as necessary, taking what she can, sharing what it’s possible to share.

Paloma, who seems far more unconcerned than they, tries to lift her arm. Palm up in the grass, the fingers uncurl slightly, further letting go. With the other, then, she weakly cups his cheek. “¿Tú ves lo que ha hecho tu hermana?”

“What, Mama?” he answers. “What has she done?”

“Mira, niño.” Paloma’s expression has now clarified. In it, there is some unspeakable surmise. Jarry glances soberly at Addie, then at what she’s long since seen…. Beside the stone, its name still sharp from the chisel, lies a mound of tumbled yellow earth, abandoned when daylight caught the diggers at their work, rifling the grave of Percival DeLay.

“Ve a traerla,” Paloma says.

“Let us get you in the house first, Mama.”

“Bring her, now!”

“No hace falta.”

At the voice, they turn and find Clarisse, staring impassively through the bars at them like animals in a cage. From her headscarf to her skirts, she’s dressed in white homespun, clean, pressed, and virginal, almost blinding in the light. Her feet are bare and there are strings of colored beads around her neck. She’s carrying a staff of varnished wood with a leopard’s head with staring eyes of somber jet.

“¿Quién es?¿Clarisse, eres tú?”

“Sí, Mamá. Estoy aquí,” she answers. Her face is sober, watchful, keen, the look of someone stepping into an ambush she expects and does not