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

he wanted it to work, however hard he was prepared to try no longer mattered? What if Claire was out of reach? The thought that she might give her heart to someone else had somehow not occurred to him in all these months—much less that she might give it to Marcel. And why? Because Marcel was black? Whether this had weighed with Claire at seventeen, Ran didn’t know; yet its deterrent value on the woman she was now, at forty-two, was clear to him: the answer being none at all, and maybe somewhat less.

And what would Ransom do if it was true? Return to New York City and the cab? Pick up his dinner at the Korean deli salad bar on the way back from the garage each night? Take it home to the empty apartment? Drink too much wine while Maria Callas sang “Vissi d’arte” in the background, or listen to CDs—Neutral Milk Hotel and Manitoba, Cannibal Ox, the Wrens, this month’s crop of hot young bands, kids with talent, prepared to bleed, knowing in his heart that they were now where he and RHB were then, thinking they were going to be the Beatles or the Stones, knowing, unlike them, that it would never happen. To return to that small, bitter life without the dream of love and family that had sustained him through the last few months…Ransom didn’t know how he could face it, if he would.

Deep inside him, something Ran had never felt before, or not in a long time, began to stir. It was like a seismic tremor, like a trembling in the rails, like the coils of a great snake thrashing awake after a long sleep, and all these things—snake, volcano, locomotive—were one thing: rage, the rage of one who, all his life, had tried to give his best—to his music, his marriage, his family and, not least, his wife—only to find his best was not enough. Wasn’t good enough.

Gripping the edge of the cold slab, Ran looked down at the chisel marks the slantlight of the moon had filled with fresh black ink….

CAPT. HARLAN P. DELAY

21ST SOUTH CAROLINA, C.S. A.b. Dec. 8, 1820 d. September 1, 1863

Fallen in Defense of Home and Country

Resting Now in Patient Hope

Of Resurrection

Wasn’t he the one—the name tugged at Ransom’s memory—the one from Claire’s story, who came home from the war and disappeared with Adelaide, his wife? How, then, did he come to be here? Ran’s first thought was that there was some mix-up. Then the answer dawned. There was no one here, nobody in this tomb. No body. Adelaide had buried him—must have—when he was listed killed in action. Then he came home, and…what? Walked into the park one afternoon, into the dappled light that fell through the old oaks and magnolias, and found his own name on the new tombstone in the family plot. And what would that be like, Ran wondered, to come home from some Northern prison, after years of suffering and privation, to find your wife has grieved and buried you and moved on with her life?

At the sound of footsteps, a faint, wet quashing on the rain-soaked ground, he turned, but there was nobody there. No body.

The kitchen screen slammed at the house, and suddenly there were voices, real ones, on the porch.

“Ransom? Oh, Ran-som?”

He recognized the tipsy humor in her voice and started to answer, then didn’t as Marcel came out.

“Where do you suppose he is?”

“No idea.”

“Out giving his new broomstick a spin?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out.”

“Maybe he and Nightmare, his trusty steed, are taking a midnight gambol around the fence lines.”

“Also possible,” said Cell, following her down the steps into the drive.

“I hate it when you humor me.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“Yes,” she said, turning toward him at his car, “it is. After thirty years, I ought to know.”

“I guess you should.” Cell left a silent beat before he asked, “Will you be okay?”

“Yeah, I think so. Thanks for coming. I really appreciate it, Cell.”

“I had a nice time.”

“Vodou pots and all?”

“Vodou pots and all.”

“Well, you’re a liar, but a pretty nice one.”

“I’m glad you think so. It was interesting.”

“Interesting…Uh-huh.”

Ran expected them to laugh, but neither did. He took the moment hard, the next one even harder….

“I guess I’ll see you in the morning then.” Marcel stood, expectantly, beside his open door, as though their business remained to be concluded.

“I guess you will.” Looking up at him, Claire cradled her arms across her front, something she did when she was cold. The gesture somehow made her young.

Ransom watched this like a dream, a spell, a hologram of people long dead or not yet born sent forward or back through time to enact some fateful moment long concluded or still to come. Then Claire rocked up on her tiptoes and simply kissed his cheek.

“Good night,” she said, and he climbed in.

She watched his brake lights flash and dim in the allée and went inside, and Ran got up and followed her; through the door, down the hall, up the grand staircase, beneath the chandelier on its fifty pounds of sterling links. The portraits of the ancestors looked down on him, unsmiling, a jury, not of his peers.

What are you going to do? the voice inside him asked.

“Just talk,” he said, annoyed at its disingenuous alarm. As if there were any question of something other, something more.

The dead DeLays regarded his upward progress with suspicion and did not seem reassured.

The upstairs hall was dark, and the bathroom door was parted. Standing just outside, Ransom listened to the iron ring of rain in the old tub, then pushed the door. A cloud of warm mist billowed toward him, then he saw her through the bloom of condensation on the transparent shower curtain. Her body was white, but not really—really, there were shades of ivory, pinks, soft yellows, brown hair up and down. Her nipples and her lips were different strokes of the same brush, a slash less red than umber, a period stabbed