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

think she did right well by me. And if I’m good enough for her, I’m plenty good enough for you and Clive and anybody else. And if you don’t think so, frankly, I don’t give a shit. I always liked the fact that you were a straight shooter, but, beyond that, I never liked you that much either. I find you tight-assed, punitive, and colder than the winter wind in Buffalo. Most of all, I think you’re puffed up with specious pride over something you did nothing for, and what does it amount to, Tildy? A name, a houseful of nineteenth-century antiques…Who really gives a shit but you?”

“What I’ve done, Ransom Hill,” she said, “that I’m proud of, is to bear that name, honorably, for almost ninety years. And there are no—or precious few—nineteenth-century antiques here, sir. That chair, for example—the one you’re presently soiling with your hand—is English Chippendale, from the third quarter of the eighteenth century. It—or its identical mate—may be viewed in The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director. Among the few nineteenth-century pieces I own is the gasolier downstairs, which was installed when the house was piped for gas in 1846. I’ve heard you wax lyrical about the rice sheaves on the globes a dozen times, but to me it is an abomination, a crass allusion to the family wealth. My people were capable of such a lapse in taste, but they were gentlemen and ladies, nonetheless, even then. Where were yours in 1846?”

Tildy left a pause, but not enough of one for him to answer—if he’d had an answer.

“You don’t know, do you? I do, though. In sod houses in the west of Ireland, eating potatoes, with their smutch-faced children running around with lank hair, runny noses, and bare feet, beating each other on the head with sticks. Let me tell you something, Ransom Hill, something you don’t know, because you can’t. It takes three generations, if not four, to make a name, another three or four to make it matter, and three or four from there to get to where I am and where your wife and children are. You, sir, are at the low and sad beginning of that trip. Your father—what was he? A common mill hand. Nothing. And you, in my opinion, have not appreciably advanced. It’s my hope and fervent prayer that your son will be as unlike your side and as much like Claire’s and mine as possible.”

“And I hope he grows up,” Ran said, “both him and Hope, and never do to another human being what you and yours have done to me for nineteen years, which was to judge me, sight unseen, before I ever walked into the room. In all that time, you never had the imagination—or the respect for Claire—to wonder who I really was and what she loved in me, much less the generosity to support her choice. I hope our children grow up and listen to my songs and think, Hey, once upon a time, my dad wrote that, and some kids who were struggling and lost and mad as hell, weighed down by a lot of bullshit piled on top of them in homes like this, listened to his words and took permission to go out and free themselves, or, at least, encouragement to shoot for it. You may not see it, Tildy, but I pray Hope and Charlie do, and I believe they will. I’ll put what I’ve done beside you and your whole line, and let my children weigh them in the scales and then decide. And you know what else? I think that’s what Claire did, too, and what you really can’t forgive me for. She had all this, all the Charleston pride and antecedents, and she walked into a dingy New York City club one night and heard me playing rock and roll and threw it all away. She scraped it off the bottoms of her shoes like so much dogshit, which is really what it is.”

“Your language is disgusting,” Tildy said. “Claire acted out of youthful folly, and now, from the perspective of maturer years, she sees the cost.”

“That’s your opinion,” Ran replied. “Mine is: Claire was the best she ever was with me, the truest to herself, and I believe, deep down—even from the perspective of ‘maturer years’—she knows it, too, which is why we’re going to make it, whether you like it or not.”

“If you mean to make your marriage work, why aren’t you up there with Claire and your two children, instead of down here harrying me?”

Ransom frowned and turned away. “Because I have to find out what happened to them,” he said, suddenly struggling to hold his train of thought.

“Why?” persisted Tildy. “What do Harlan and Adelaide DeLay have to do with you and Claire? What conceivable connection could there be?”

She’s right, you know, the voice piped up from the peanut gallery.

“Shut up,” said Ransom, clutching his temples.

“Whom are you addressing?” she demanded.

Now Ransom looked at her with his red, harried eyes, and she looked back.

“You’re not in your right mind,” she said.

“Just help me, Tildy,” Ran implored. “I don’t know why it’s important, I just know it is. Help me figure out what happened, and I’ll leave.”

“What happened is, he shot her and then turned the gun back on himself from simple shame and self-disgust.”

“And then?”

“What do you mean, ‘and then’?”

“I mean, if Harlan killed her and then blew his own brains out, he could hardly proceed to get up, dig a hole, and bury himself and Addie after he was dead.”

“Spare me yo’ irony,” Tildy said. “Obviously, someone else buried them.”

“Who? The nigras?”

“For heaven’s sake, anybody could have! What difference does it make?”

“Quite a bit,” said Ran. “Let’s say you’re invited to someone’s home for Sunday dinner. You knock and no one answers. You go in and find the wife and husband dead of gunshot wounds. Wouldn’t you call someone? Notify the sheriff? Wouldn’t it stand to reason they’d be buried in