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

it now and have the matter done. You have my solemn promise I’ll free Jarry as soon as I return.”

Percival hesitates and looks to Addie, lost. “Perhaps that is the way,” he sighs. “Perhaps the war will not last long….”

“Your father is tired, Harlan,” she says, standing up. “And we’ve neglected our guests too long. We should leave this to a later time.”

“Yes,” says Percival. “Yes, I’m tired. I can’t wrestle with this any more today.”

“I need your answer before I go to Moultrie, Father,” Harlan says.

“You shall have it. Now, leave me, go.” He shoos them with a weak gesture of the wrist.

Harlan pulls to the library doors and turns to her. “Addie, you undermined me. I had him at the point.”

“I’m sorry, Harlan,” she replies. “But you saw fit to include me, and I think it’s a grave thing you’re asking him to do.”

“Jarry is a nigger, Addie. He’s a slave, our property. We’ve given him everything.”

“But the issue isn’t to whom one’s word is given, Harlan, is it? I would think it’s whom it’s given by, when the giver is a gentleman, as your father is, as I believe—and know—you are.”

Now Harlan frowns and his brows gather. “Madam, I’ve been lectured once today upon the obligations of honor by a servant; I don’t need another lecture from a woman, and particularly not my wife. You must be ruled by me in this.”

“Must I, sir?”

“Yes, madam, you must indeed. We are married now. I understand that you are used to independent ways, and you shall continue to enjoy them here, within reason. I shall always welcome your opinions, but, in the end, when I’ve rendered mine, I expect your unconditional support. I have a right, I think, to nothing less.”

Addie’s lips are pressed into a line. Yet she doesn’t contradict.

“I did this, in large part, for you.”

“For me…”

“Have you not grasped what is at stake? I don’t believe you have. What I’m seeking to prevent, Addie, is returning from the war a season hence, or in a year, and finding our gardens overgrown and you wandering the roads in rags, with matted hair, begging crusts of bread. I assume this outcome would be unwelcome to you, too.”

“It is not a charming picture,” she concedes.

“We’re agreed then. Come now, let’s not fight. Will you shake?”

Addie doesn’t smile, but neither does she reject his hand.

“All this will work out for the best. You’ll see. Now let us smile and join our guests and go to cut the cake.”

FIFTEEN

As the motorcade crawled down the strip, Ran saw the CVS approaching and began to sweat. “Pull in, jerkwad,” he advised himself, but Claire’s car was right there in the mirror. Having lied, on balance, it seemed best to stick it out. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. This proposition was one he’d spent the best part of his youth putting to the test. It had not panned out exactly, but maybe he just hadn’t traveled far enough—who knew, it still might.

And if he’d left his scrip unfilled for a few days—it couldn’t be as much as two weeks already, could it?—hadn’t it been partially unselfish, partly for Claire’s benefit as well? It was the reunion, don’t you see, the thought of making love to her unfettered by the troublous side effects…which in Ransom’s case—to get down to the grim brass tacks—amounted to an inability to come. True, he could get it up—he was one of the lucky ones in this regard, as his physician never tired of pointing out—but to be unable to come, to ejaculate, to jouir—try that for a week sometime, then try it for a year! To Ran, it was a form of punishment, of torture, servitude, which he, in the main, accepted manfully. But when Claire, the hundredth time, said yes, he’d allowed himself to want once more the thing life had apparently decreed that he could never have again: to be himself. He’d thought, Well, maybe, just this once… Was that so damnable?

And even if he went in now, you see—if he exposed his lie to Claire and gave her further ammo to add to the arsenal she already had—it had taken two weeks to reach this point (not three, surely! Ransom, out of guilt perhaps, had been less than wholly conscientious in keeping count), and it would take another two (or three) to get his levels back to where they’d been. Better to put it off until tomorrow. So there was the decision made, and by then the CVS was far behind them anyway. They’d reached the light, and Ransom, turning, still felt fine. Ran, in fact, felt buoyant.

He was on a journey—the idea suddenly came clear. “Something’s leading me,” he muttered, “but who, or what? To where?”

Was it toward his True Self?

“That must be it!”

“What, Daddy?”

“Nothing, Pete.”

He’d been on this same journey once upon a time. Way back in Killdeer long ago, when he dreamed of Shea and Fillmore East and hitting that impossible riff, art and music had been his fearless path toward uncovering and releasing it. Then something happened. What? Somehow he fell asleep or merely blinked, and when he looked again, half his life had passed. It didn’t matter, though. His eyes were open now; he was awake, and here the path was at his feet! Why had he ever left? It was because of other people, wasn’t it? And why was it that whenever he reached this state of triple XL happiness and clarity of vision they started having problems? Why was his True Self something others seemed to want him to suppress? Whenever he got close, like now, he saw the look of fear and worry; he saw them start to shuffle backward toward the door. And this was true of Claire especially. How sad this made him. Claire wanted him to take the drugs, but what the drugs did, all they did—this was crystal clear to Ransom