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

do or don’t, it ain’t never fucking good enough.” The kids began to squirm, and Ransom gave the ice cream project up.

“Listen, guys,” he said, “Mommy’s right upstairs. I’m going to call her, and she’s coming down.”

“Are you coming in?” Hope asked.

“No, Pete, I have to leave.”

“Why?”

“I just do.”

“Forever?”

He touched her cheek in sympathy. “No, sweetie. Only for a little while.”

“How long?” she asked.

“Where you going, Doddy?”

“I’ll be back soon,” said Ran, who didn’t have the answers to their questions. “Now you wait here,” he said, terminating the interview. “She’ll be right down.”

“Okay, Doddy.”

Hope, pointedly, made no reply, and Ran once more bit back the impulse to apologize.

Walking north, he flipped his phone and scanned facades, then chose the church. Stepping into the shadows of the portico of St. Michael’s, he hit number 2 and held.

Claire answered halfway through the ring. “Hello?”

“They’re right downstairs.”

“You left them on the street?”

Never fucking good enough…

“I have my eye on them. I’m right nearby.” He closed the phone.

The street door opened almost instantly. Claire knelt and kissed them; she hugged them to her, hard; she held them at arm’s length and peered into their eyes for signs of hidden trauma. Ransom, now, could no longer confidently aver that she found none. When the ritual was done, Claire ushered them inside, then lingered, peering into the shadows.

His phone rang. “Where are you?”

“Close, I’m watching you….”

Every move you make…every breath you take… The voice now, doing Sting, was singing in his head.

“Ransom, come inside. You need help. Let us get you some.”

“Us?”

The silence on her end made something wallow in his gut.

Tildy’s house was all lit up. On the upstairs piazza, Ran saw Della supporting one of Tildy’s arms. Marcel held the other.

“I know what’s going on,” he said, with a quaver in his voice.

“Ran, come home,” she said, denying nothing.

“I can’t. I better not.”

“Why? Why can’t you? Why had you better not?”

Because I have this feeling, Claire—this bad, bad feeling—and if I find out it’s true, I honestly don’t know what I might do.

The voice made its suggestion, but Ransom, weeping, merely closed the phone and dropped it in the trash can as he climbed into the van.

“What do I do now?” he whispered as he turned the key. “What the fuck do I do now?” But neither the author of the universe nor his arch-nemesis, Captain Nemo—the little voice that didn’t seem so little anymore—returned an answer. And Ransom didn’t have a clue.

Umm-umm-umm, blues falling down, like hail,

Got to keep moving…

sang the ghost of Robert Johnson, in the timeless voice of troubled people everywhere. Was that an answer? In the moment—as Ransom, in the darkness, watched his wife pull to the big black door, enclosing herself and their children in the safety of a lighted world—it was all the answer Ransom knew.

…keep moving

Got a hell hound on my trail.

FORTY-ONE

As Addie walks along the white sand road, she can hear drumming from the quarters. There are shouts and frenzied laughter. She can see firelight through the trees and leaping silhouettes against the pyre. Since nightfall, there’s been a feeling of unrest, of order breaking down and energies unleashed in the wake of Paloma’s funeral. For the first time at Wando Passo, she feels afraid, a stranger in a home she only tenuously possesses, yet despite her fear, she continues on her way to Jarry’s house.

Those who’ve gathered to commiserate are mostly house staff and some elder slaves who practice trades. She’s made a pound cake from her aunt’s recipe—and Blanche’s mother’s before that. Addie spent a good part of the day on it. The effort helped her nerves. The mourners look up when she knocks and enters with her covered basket. Conversation stops. Jarry looks at her, and in his glassy eyes, there is a brief, hot light she cannot read.

“Where should I put…?”

“Let me take that from you,” he says, with rushed politeness, rising and crossing the room.

“If you’ll just show me…”

“No, let me.”

And it is a pathetic comedy, she thinks, this mutual deferral.

She follows him into the small dining room, where the table is laden with other gifts of food. He takes the basket, puts it down, and when he turns to her, she whispers—for the door is open to the other room—“Jarry, I know this is not the time, but I’ve been in agony since yesterday. If I may only have a minute of your—”

“No,” he says, “no, I also wish to speak to you. And I have something for you, too. I’ll join you on the porch.”

And as she proceeds back through the room, Addie notes how studious the other mourners are not to look at her. They know, she thinks. They know. She has weighed anchor and has neither the ability nor the wish to return to port. The seriousness of it is heavy on her mood as she goes outdoors, yet it’s freeing, too, and only makes her more determined to say what she has come to say. She gazes at the leaping figures silhouetted by the pyre, and then she hears his step.

“It’s strange,” she says, “how different the feeling is today than at your father’s funeral.”

“They respected him. Her, they loved.”

And now she turns. “Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? You have that same thing she had, Jarry, that cutting thing that goes straight to the heart. I love that part of you, and I can’t bear to think you’re angry with me, Jarry. You have a right to be, but I can’t bear it if you are.”

“Love”—it’s the first time she’s used the word, and, strangely, he seems almost pained by it. “I’m not angry, Addie.”

“I’m so relieved!” She steps toward him, reaches for his hands and finds them occupied, finds her book, her Byron in red morocco. In the yellow lamplight from the window, she sees his solemn face, and her relief is short-lived.

“Anger isn’t what I feel,” he says, in a tone that’s soft,