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

“And you expect my thanks….”

“That would be asking a bit much.”

She stared at him and then at Cell. It was a look that Ran knew well, as if to say her prophecy had been fulfilled. The expression was one she’d heretofore reserved for him.

“I’m fine, by the way.”

Claire’s look turned forthright now, and it dawned on Ran that this was all he was going to get. “Are you?”

“Nothing to worry about,” he said. “Just a lot of pain, is all.” The quote was Henry Fonda—On Golden Pond. In days gone by, they’d watched that movie many times, eating popcorn, holding hands, passing back and forth the Kleenex box. They’d seen themselves, their fretted love, in it and thought—or Ransom had—they’d end up old like Kate and Hank, and Ran, the first to go, would meet his maker staring into these crème caramel eyes which would have forgiven him—surely would have done by then—for the burn he more than anyone had helped to put in them.

There was no forgiveness in them now. If the allusion to the movie registered, Claire gave no indication.

And Ransom had to contemplate the possibility that Claire might not be there to grieve him when he went, that he might be denied the consolation of knowing he’d been wholly loved one time, one time at least, by one other human being on this earth, even if he couldn’t love himself. And was that—being loved once in this life—just another sentimental dream of youth, like playing Shea and Fillmore East? Where, finally, do you make your stand? And is there any bedrock in this world? Ran was getting down to that point now, down to bedrock, down through flesh to bone and wholly unprepared to yield his point. He’d begun to contemplate the sanctity of vows…. In sickness and in health, for better and for worse… Deep inside, something he’d always felt, felt as long as he remembered, felt as long as he could stand—then ceased to feel, or ceased to know he felt—began to stir toward consciousness again. And it was like the coils of a great snake thrashing awake after a long sleep, like a seismic tremor, like the trembling in the rails you feel before you see the train…. Then suddenly there it is, barreling toward the crowded station, no sign of slowing down….

Then Claire reached out and lifted up his hair. Her gaze was clinical, nurselike, but at her touch, every joint in Ransom’s body turned to liquid.

“Okay,” he said, feeling something in his chest, hope or panic, he couldn’t tell. “Okay,” he said, panting slightly, “so it isn’t going to be The Big Chill. We can still be grown-ups, can’t we? I think we can manage that at least.”

“Who wants a drink?” said Claire, with foxhole gaiety, driving home another long, sweet nail.

“Excellent idea,” he said. “Let’s drink some alcohol and burn some meat. What say we fry a chicken? I’ve still got a hankering for that.”

“I wouldn’t mind a glass of wine,” said Shanté with a look of hard compassion toward them both. “But before we get too far into the night, I’d like to see that pot.”

FORTY-NINE

September…The last water, roiled white and stirred with chaff, mingles with the river’s brown. John drops the counterweight and shuts the gate, and on it flows, one thing. It’s harvest now, and down the rows they wend, bending over, with their sickles, the small, curved knives called reap-hooks here, cutting always toward themselves, laying the gold heads on the stubble, singing in slow cadence as they go:

In case I never see you anymo’…

Where they cut yesterday, the women gather up the sheaves and bind them with a wisp of rice, leaving small cocks in the field to dry until tomorrow, when they’ll tote them to the flats. And Addie comes behind them with the children, last of all and singing, too, gleaning unhulled grains out of the mud. She has an apronful and she’s perspiring, though the sky has lifted off and there’s a difference in the light today. When she climbs the dike, a puff of wind blows back her hair and catches in her dress as in a sail. The sun is striking off the water, and Addie smiles and closes her eyes, feeling its reflected warmth. The goodness of life, she thinks, is mostly little things like this, a breeze as soft as a caress, September light, an apronful of rice.

When she opens them again, Jules Poinsett is standing on the piazza in his uniform, one arm behind his back, the other sleeve folded up and pinned. Below him in the drive, Peter holds his saddled horse. Jules is gazing straight at her, and Addie, across the distance, knows from this…She’s been expecting this visit for some time now, truly, since that night in Charleston, when Harlan spoke about the blue cloud swirling over him, and Addie gazed into his face and seemed to see its shadow there and knew him marked. Once upon a time, the girl she was, or thought herself to be, would have released the corners of her apron and allowed the rice to spill, unheeded, on the ground, but she resists this now and carefully puts her contribution in the fanner with the others’, then wipes her hands and calls Tim to pole her back.

“Jules,” she says, holding out her hand, forgetful briefly.

He takes it with his left. “Mrs. DeLay,” he says, not Addie, yet there’s something personal in the pressure he exerts that makes her know he is no stranger to his task.

She sits in the rocking chair, leaning forward slightly, erect, and folds her hands.

“It’s my sad duty…,” he begins, and though Addie expects the news and feels herself prepared, she flies away, some part of her, for a time, however long or brief. She becomes aware of the dappled sunlight falling through the old trees in the park, the softness of the air, the