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

in the briar-patch, too, enty? Sho nuf, Budder, bof we two gon drap right back.’ He told me that for years. And then, one day, we did.”

“You went,” she says.

“We almost made it, too.”

Having drawn him to this point, Addie almost asks, “What happened? Why didn’t you?” then, catching sight of the cardinal across his shoulder, doesn’t. A heaviness steals over her from no apparent source. Watching the bird sing on the branch, it occurs to Addie that the wall of glass that arose between Paloma and herself has now arisen between her and Jarry, too, and he is singing on the other side, and his song, though not inaudible, has become muted, now, in a way it wasn’t then, that morning in the swamp. And it’s clear to her that Jarry has no chance to penetrate the wall because he cannot see it. Only Addie can. Her secret confers this power over him. To surrender it might shatter the glass wall, and Addie cannot break the wall because…because…But suddenly she can’t remember why this would be wrong, and heaviness gives way to an electric pang of fear.

“Did Clarisse do this to me?” she asks, with sudden, seeming inconsequence.

The question takes him by surprise. “I don’t know,” he says eventually. “I don’t think so, but I honestly don’t know.”

“Then it’s possible.”

“There are unnatural illnesses, yes. And there are also natural illnesses that are caused unnaturally.”

“That thing I saw in the swamp…Your mother said it’s called a prenda. Tell me what that is.”

Something veils itself in his expression now. He gets up and paces to the window. “I’m hesitant to speak of that.”

“Paloma didn’t believe it was there at all.”

“You’re mistaken,” Jarry says, and now he turns to her, grave-faced. “What’s hard for Mother is to accept what it would mean.”

“And you?”

“I don’t believe a lie is in your character.”

Addie blushes now. “Don’t think me better than I am.”

“I’ll think well of you until you give me reason to do otherwise. And even if you had some motive to deceive, how would you know what a prenda is, even to describe one? You could never make up such a thing. Mother knows that just as well as I.”

“It is some implement of witchcraft….”

“No,” he answers, frowning. “No, it would be a mistake to think of it that way. Father told you something about Palo.”

“He said it’s used for good, for healings and exorcisms.”

“If you’re good, the prenda works for good. If not…” He leaves her to draw the inference. “A prenda, in some ways, is like a gun. On this river there are, what, a hundred families? Each one owns a gun. The husband uses it to puts food on the table, to protect his children and his wife. It’s a tool for life. But if there is just one, one angry man with bad intentions in his heart, he points that gun at you and pulls the trigger, you are dead. That’s how a prenda is. It’s exactly like a gun, in itself neither good nor bad. What makes it so is what is in the Palero’s heart.”

Addie reaches out and grips his arm. “And Clarisse’s heart? She hates me, doesn’t she?”

“You have everything she thinks should be hers by right.”

“But I don’t even want it, Jarry—don’t you see?”

“So you have, for nothing, everything she wants and will never have at any price? Do you imagine that absolves you in her sight?”

They stare into each other’s eyes with an openness that’s like the swamp, only what was sweet that morning is now an agony to her. The secret she holds over him is like a thorn in Addie’s flesh; she wants nothing more than to pluck it out, but can’t.

“But your story,” she says. “You were telling me about when you and Thomas left.”

“Our adventure failed.”

“So I gathered. What happened?”

He measures her and sits back in the chair. “We took a piragua from the boathouse—two, actually. The first we set adrift and let the current carry it downstream for them to find. The second, we paddled upriver all night past Society Hill. At dawn, we pulled to the bank and broke the bottom out with stones and sank it. We heard the dogs barking that day, but it was far off and confused. There was no scent for them to find. So we hid and slept till nightfall and set out again.

“We traveled for six nights up past Cheraw and into North Carolina, where the Pee Dee turns into the Yadkin, and we both felt this quiet excitement growing. We thought we’d made it, and it was on the seventh morning, right at dawn, as we were standing in the shallows, washing up, that they found us. We never heard them come. They were just there, on the embankment above us, two bearded men in hats, on mules, with rifles scabbarded. For a moment, I thought maybe they were just chance travelers, but then one of them said, ‘Looks like you boys have had your fun…. It’s time to head on home.’ He smiled and spat tobacco juice, and the other one unsleeved his gun. Thomas shoved me toward the shore and started backing out toward deeper water, and the man said, ‘Nigger, stop right where you at,’ and Thomas looked at me—he was smiling—and he said, ‘Whah our mammy fotch us up?’ And he let out a yell and turned and dove. ‘Goddamn, stupid nigger,’ the man said, and then I heard the gun echo off the bluff. The first shot caught him in his shoulder blade, and Thomas kept on swimming, weakly, with one arm. The second bullet hit him in the head. He stopped then, and the current rolled him over. His eyes were open, and his mouth filled up with water, and he sank.”

“Oh, Jarry.” Addie reaches out and puts her hand on his balled fist. Though he doesn’t unclench it, for this moment the abyss between them shrinks to the distance between her bed and