Back to Wando Passo by David Payne (books to improve english txt) 📕

church bell ringing in the distance and a tang of frost. He’d never tasted anything quite like it, and this was saying something. For he’d had something to prove with wine, distancing himself from the threaded jelly jar that Mel was often clutching when Ran came home and found him passed out in the front seat of the Thunderbird, listening to the Town and Country playing softly off a charger from the house. None of the rare vintages that, in better times, had cost him many hundreds—and, on occasion, more than that—had ever affected Ran the way this one did, which hinted of imperishable truths in the very process of its vanishing.

And it was wholly vanished by the time he put the final piece of chicken on the plate and glanced up at the clock. “Holy shit! The kids! The party! Claire! Fuck me!”

And Ransom grabbed the keys and ran.

TEN

Harlan catches Addie’s wrist and wheels her to the storehouse door as it snicks shut. Pressing close, he kisses hungrily—her mouth, her neck, her collarbone. Moving from below, his hand nudges her breast upward as he drops his face into her décolletage.

“Harlan! Harlan!” she whispers, in mingled scolding and entreaty.

“Is this unwelcome to you?” he asks with flaming cheeks and an expression that is suddenly indolent, almost dull.

“No! Of course not, no. I only meant…”

“I’ve waited so long, Addie. I’ve so looked forward to tonight.”

“But, you must wait,” she tells him, straightening herself. “You must wait till then.”

“Must I? Tell me why I must. What if I cannot?”

She laughs, half complimented, half alarmed, and starts off down the aisle. “What a strange place,” she says, wiping a spot of saliva off her breast as she gives her top a hoist. A few stray sunbeams work their way through cracks of daub and show dust motes rising from the earthen floor, where tubs of lard, rendered from the Christmas killing, have been sunk to cool. When Harlan lights the sperm-oil lamp, she makes out burlap sacks of coffee, row on row, and shelves of pickles and preserves; corned beef and pickled pork in tubs, hams and sides of bacon strung up from the rafters. There is flour by the barrel, soap and olive oil, candles, hogsheads of molasses, boxes of cigars and fancy sugar in the nine-pound loaves. And all across one side, the spirits, wine in racks, perhaps a thousand bottles, with a heavy representation of the vinos generosos—Jerez, Málaga, and Amontillado—the strong, heavy wines of southern Spain, which Harlan, like Percival before him, developed a taste for in his Cuban days. For the quarters, there are casks of the cheap Spanish red called vino Catalán and of the raw cane brandy Cubans call aguardiente.

“You see how much there is,” he says. “It’s absurd of him to plague me over one lost order. We’ll be in Washington by summer anyway. This will more than see us through.”

“It’s like the granaries of Egypt,” Addie says.

Harlan laughs. “Yes, and now you are the Pharaoh’s wife. But come here in the light where I can look at you.” He unrolls a bolt of flannel on the coffee sacks and pats, inviting her to sit. “I don’t know what reception you’re to have from Father and the others, Addie, so before I take you to them, I want you to know what has occurred.

“So, Thursday last,” he says, removing the chimney of the lamp and relighting his cigar, “the day after my return from Charleston and the wedding, Father called us all together in the library—and by all, you understand, I mean myself, Paloma, Jarry, and Clarisse. With great solemnity and mystery, as though he were about to lead us in some arcane rite, he produced a key from around his neck, opened the drawer of the partners desk, and produced his final will and testament. Most people, Addie, have the decency to die before inflicting their intentions on their kin, but Father, knowing he was going to stir a fracas, could not deny himself the stimulation of observing it firsthand. So it was read. To be exact, Jarry read it to us. Father, you see, prefers Jarry’s style of oratory to my own…or do I mean rhetoric? But, never mind, I’ll spare you the catalog of petty insults I endure, which would no doubt bore you and keep us here into the middle of next week.” Harlan smiles perfunctorily, as though he’s tasted something spoiled.

Addie, who has never heard this tone from him before, folds her hands and, with some effort, manages to keep a neutral face. “I take it you were displeased by its provisions?”

“In a word, I was,” he replies. “Though the document leaves the property to me—to us—as I expected, as it should, there were surprises. Paloma, for her years of…‘service,’ shall we say, is to be freed. I didn’t know of that, but, frankly, she’s past her prime, and I’m content for her to live out her days in the pine barren cottage with Clarisse, if that is her desire. What came as a far greater shock,” he says, puffing furiously, “what I can neither brook…nor tolerate…nor allow to stand…is Father’s intention to free Jarry. Not to put too fine a point on it, this would be ruinous to us. It is, moreover, by current law, illegal in the state of South Carolina, and in every state of the Confederacy, to manumit a slave except by special action of the legislature. Father, of course, does not concede the authority of the government in Montgomery. The law, you see, according to his settled view, is changeable according to his whim, whereas his word has a force equal to, if not somewhat in excess of, biblical decree.”

“He gave it then?” she asks.

“Apparently, he did,” says Harlan, pacing up and down with one arm squared behind his back. “They all knew of this, of course. It was only I—his legitimate son and heir—who was kept