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

the cigarette and smiled. “How do,” he said, and his gray eyes narrowed down on Ransom like the shutter of a lens.

Part II

A CHECKERED SUN

TWENTY-SEVEN

Addie awakens to the sound of shovels making unhurried cuts in sandy soil—chuck…chuck…chuck—and to the raining plop of turned, soft earth on turned, soft earth.

“Hu eh eh, dey yiz,” says a voice outside; another laughs. Hearing this, smelling river air, not salt, she remembers where she is and what happened in this bed last night. There’s something different, something new in her self-sense, and in her body Addie feels the weighty peace that follows pleasant strife. Is this it, she wonders, the mystery she waited for, was so long vigilant against? She almost feels an urge to laugh. But there’s another current, at cross-purposes with her happiness.

And there is Harlan at the window, already dressed—in uniform, with a black silk sash and his dress sword at his knee. He’s staring toward the black pond and the cypress, where the Gullah men are making Percival his place.

“Good morning.”

He turns, and there’s a lightness in his face, not grief, the look of one who’s been released. “You’re awake.”

“I am,” she says.

He sits beside her on the bed and takes her hands. “How I regret that I must go, Addie, especially now,” he tells her tenderly. “Especially now.”

She strokes his cheek. “You’ll be home soon. Washington in a month?” She smiles, and he smiles back.

As she offers him this reassurance, though, the sparrow once more flits into the room, making her aware she’s not entirely hopeful this is true. And if it isn’t? If she’s less than fully hopeful of his swift return…? “I was thinking, Harlan,” she says, energetically recoiling from the thought and sitting up. “About the shortages? If a few women could help me sew, we could make the crop hands’ clothes ourselves. And if there’s wool, we could spin and knit their stockings, too. I believe it could be managed,” says Addie, who’s often knitted baby things, first for friends, and then, increasingly, for young mothers who were little girls in pinafores when she came out.

He pats her hand. “My mother used to say that being a plantation mistress is to be the slave of slaves. I knew you’d do well. Speak to Paloma. She’ll get you what you need.” Now he rises and begins to pace. “I have to tell you, though…. It’s agreat weight off my shoulders, Addie—this business with Clarisse—to have it out and in the clear. I’ve wanted to discuss it with you for the longest time.”

“I can understand,” she says, noting the swift change of subject to himself. And why didn’t you? she thinks. What would have happened if he had? Her mind ranges as he speaks. If he’d come to her in Charleston, sober-faced and penitent, if he’d said, “There is this situation, Addie, this event that happened in my past…. I fell in love with someone without knowing fully who she was.” What could she have done except forgive? No, she thinks, it would have changed nothing—she’d still be where she is. But that he didn’t come, sober-faced or otherwise—that is where the trouble lies. That he went ahead and married her, leaving her ignorant of a truth fateful to her happiness, that he took upon himself the risk of ruining her life…This is who you are, she thinks, as Harlan smiles and speaks. She sees him, in this moment, clear, yet clarity does not defeat her tenderness. In light of what occurred between them, here, last night, it seems today they have a marriage after all, and Addie, for her part, came into it expecting to make allowances, didn’t she? Here, in the cool, sober light of morning, it dawns on her that this is the allowance she must make.

“…came to his senses in the end,” Harlan is saying. “This is the only conclusion I can draw.”

“I’m sorry,” Addie says. “My thoughts were drifting. Who?”

“Father. We’ve searched high and low, Paloma and I both, and it’s simply nowhere to be found.”

She sits up straight against the headboard now. “You’re speaking of the will?”

“He must have burned it in the night. Who would think, after all this time, that the old man would finally…But, Addie, what…? You’re ashen, dear.”

“Harlan, I’m afraid to tell you this….”

His face goes sober.

“He gave it to me.”

“He what?” he asks, with harsh surprise.

Addie blinks; her glance slides involuntarily to the nightstand. His follows hers. They reach at the same time. Each grasps the corner of the page.

“Do you mind?” he asks, pressing his lips into a prim line they seem ill-meant to convey. Addie can conceive of no response except to let it go.

Harlan scans the page and turns it with a brusque, loud flap. He scans again, and then finds what he seeks. “Goddamn,” he says. “Goddamn him. So there are no surprises after all.” With that, he tears the will in half.

“Harlan, in heaven’s name…”

Halving the halves, he halves those yet again, then throws them in the hearth. “What are you doing, Harlan? Stop.”

He strikes a match. Holding it between his middle finger and his thumb, he raises the index finger of that hand. “Not another word, do you hear me, Addie? Not one. We’ve had all the discussion I intend to have upon this matter. I’m leaving here today for God knows how long. As soon as Father’s in the ground, I’m gone, and I have neither time nor stomach to commence a tedious legal wrangle, which, in any case, would only arrive at this same place.” And now he puts the flame to paper.

“But, Harlan, it was his last wish….”

“I don’t know that,” he answers, brushing his hands. “I don’t know that at all. The last wish he expressed in my hearing was, in fact, the opposite. Had you not interfered…But, no, I don’t intend to fight. We’ve fought enough. I