by David Payne
“A shock…”
“So help me, Claire. The thing felt hot. That’s why I thought I’d hit a buried power line.”
“Oh, Ran,” she said. “Sweetie.”
“I know, I know,” he said, “fine, whatever. Call the funny farm—you know the number—but before you tell the guys in the white coats to unfurl their nets, do me a favor: touch it.”
Claire hesitated briefly, then went to the table and complied. “Okay, what?”
“Nothing?”
She shook her head. “Nothing, Ransom. Not a thing.”
Ran, for once, could think of no response.
“Maybe the sun had been shining on it,” Marcel offered. “I mean, it’s black. It was pretty hot out there today.”
Ransom looked at him and felt a swell of love. “It was under six inches of periwinkle, Cell. Thanks, though. I don’t suppose you’d try it, just to humor me….”
He laid his hand where Claire’s had been, and Ransom arched his brows, but Marcel pursed his lips and shook his head.
“Okay,” Ran said, “once more we’ve proved that I’m a jerk, as if more proof were necessary.”
“You know, though…” As Marcel removed his hand, he brushed it as though rubbing something off and looked at Claire. “At the risk of adding darkness to obscurity, you know what suddenly occurred to me?”
“What?”
“Ben’s story. Didn’t you tell me that when the minister came out here to look for them, he found the table set and a chicken dinner scattered in the dining room?”
“Whoa,” said Ransom. “Who’s Ben? What story? What’s all this?”
“Ben Jessup,” Marcel said. “Our librarian.”
“This morning he was telling us about my great-great-great-grandparents, Ran,” Claire said. “You know the portrait in the library? That’s Adelaide DeLay. She disappeared from Wando Passo right after the Civil War.”
“Not the blonde?”
Claire nodded. “Her husband, Harlan, was a Confederate prisoner of war. He came back from up north somewhere, bought some shot in Powatan, and started walking out here, and that was the last anybody ever saw of them.”
Ransom pointed down the hall. “Her?” As though drawn by his own hand, he went to the library door and looked back. “White dress? Botticelli hair?”
“Yes, I’m fairly sure,” Claire said as she and Marcel followed. “I’m going to call Aunt Tildy in the morning.”
“Let’s call her now.”
“It’s too late.”
Ran checked his watch. “It’s eight fifteen!”
“She’s eighty-eight years old. I’ll call her in the morning.” She turned to Cell. “So what are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. It just popped into my head. It’s probably a coincidence.”
“Unless the pot made you think of it.”
They both turned sober stares on Ran.
“Joke! J-o-k-e. Jesus, folks…Hey!” Ran slapped his forehead. “The tub! Let’s go see what came out in the wash!”
They followed him upstairs, where Ran switched on the bathroom light. The water had drained out and left a snaking spill of gray alluvium, like lava covering the remains of a small town. Ran turned on the handheld, and several stones appeared out of the rinse: a pointed black one rayed with white, a translucent piece of pink quartz crystal, one of cuprous red, shaped like a heart, a fourth which proved to be a lodestone—there were several rusty pins attached. Ran lifted a rectangle of moldy, dripping wood with fittings of corroded copper wire. Preserved in its anaerobic state, traces of stamped blue writing were still visible. “Looks like some kind of antique mousetrap,” he said. “And what do you suppose these are?” He held up a pair of rusty rings connected by a length of chain.
“Handcuffs?” Claire ventured.
“Manacles,” said Cell.
There was a horseshoe, what appeared to be a railroad spike, the head of a small doll, an ivory ring, and several shells—a lightning whelk and several smaller striped ones similar in size and shape to pasta shells. Finally, out of the black mud, the skull of some small animal, perhaps a dog.
They all stared in silence as the water drummed.
“Call me crazy,” Ransom said, “call me irresponsible, but this reminds me of the stuff you see in those shops along North Rampart in New Orleans.”
Claire looked up. “What shops?”
“The vodou stores.”
“Oh, great,” she said, “now it’s a vodou pot?”
“Hey,” he said. “We all know I’m the voice of unreason here. What’s your view?”
“What is it? Some rocks and crap. I think you dug into a garbage mound,” she said. “That’s your big discovery. I mean, they had garbage back then, too; I’m going to venture they didn’t have curbside pickup, so what did they do? They buried it. And your vodou cauldron is just some old cook pot they threw away.”
“You know, though, Claire…” Marcel picked up one of the small shells. “These are cowries. In Africa, they use them for divination. I don’t think we even have them here.”
“Okay.” Claire held up both hands and backed away. “You’ve freaked me out. Both of you. I am now Officially Freaked Out.”
“Look, everyone’s on edge,” Cell said. “Something happened earlier tonight, and here we are in an old house in the country…. All we’re missing is the thunderstorm. Chances are, this is no more than a bunch of overcaffeinated med students contracting imaginary diseases from the PDR. As far as I know, they don’t even use black pots in vodou. If they do, I’ve never heard of it. But if—and I emphasize, if—we wanted to look into it a little more, I’ll tell you who might know….”
“Who?” said Ran.
“Shanté.”
“Shanté,” Claire said. “Shanté Mills?”
Cell gave her a confirming glance, but saved the balance of his stare for Ran. “She’s here, you know.”
Ransom’s expression emptied, turning as soft and guileless as a newborn lamb’s. “Here?” he said, with a small bleat.
“About an hour south of here, on the way to Beaufort, in Alafia.” Cell looked at them as though this ought to ring some bells. “‘Authentic African Village As Seen on TV’?”
Ran and Claire both blinked.
“Sixty Minutes did a piece on it. It was started by some disaffected urban radicals from Philly in the sixties. They bought a tract of land and moved down here and essentially seceded.”
“From what?”
“Everything. America. The West. The state of South Carolina. They went completely African—tribal dress, agriculture, everything. They’ve been down there for over thirty years. The place is famous.”
“What’s Shanté doing there?”
Cell looked at Ran. “Well, you know, after she stopped singing, she spent several years in Africa. Mostly in Zaire. I don’t know the whole story, but I know there was a guy involved, and then there wasn’t. After they split, she came home and went to Alafia to take some time and ended staying. But the thing is, while she was in the Congo she was studying to be ordained.”
“Ordained as what?” Claire asked. “Please don’t say a vodou priestess.”
“Well, I don’t think they call it vodou over there,” Cell said, “but that’s the general idea.”
Ran and Claire both stared.
“Dag,” Ran finally said.
Claire began to laugh. “Oh, yes! Yes! Better and better! This is all we need! Shanté Mills up here, drinking chicken blood and tossing goofer dust, shaking the dark twins in Ransom’s face! That will clear this right on up! Let’s call her now!”
Ransom, on another wavelength, looked at Cell. “Do you have her number?”
“At home.”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” said Claire.
“Mommy?”
They all turned, and there was Charlie in the doorway in his red firetruck pj’s, screwing a little fist into his eye.
“Oh, sweetie, did Mama wake you up?”
Claire knelt and took him in her arms.
“The doggy do it.”
“What doggy, Pie?”
“There’s a black dog in the hall upstairs.” Hope stepped from the shadows now. “I’m scared.”
Claire looked at Ran, and Ran looked back. “Sweetie, I don’t think there is. Maybe you dreamed it, but let’s go make sure, and then I’ll tuck you both in bed.”
“Doddy do it,” Charlie said.
Hope concurred. “We want Daddy.”
This clearly took her by surprise. She looked at Ran.
He shrugged. “Hey, I’m new,” he said consolingly. “They’ll learn. You guys go see what you can scare up for dinner. Maybe Domino’s?”
Claire obliged him with a smile.
“What?” Ran said. “They must have Domino’s.”
But she was wise to his old tricks. “Hill, I swear to God, you do still make me smile sometimes. You really do.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” He gave her his best sly, sheepish grin, and she returned it, but her eyes were thoughtful, as though her inclination toward him worked against her better judgment.
Ran, however, who’d never considered good judgment a large motivating factor in human affairs—not his, at least—took encouragement.
As Claire headed to the kitchen with Marcel, he turned to the kids. “Okay, dutes, let’s clear the premises of canine intruders. But, first, raise your right hands and repeat, ‘I pledge allegiance to the dad….’”
TWENTY
Turned away from him in bed, Addie awakes from a light sleep as Harlan goes into the bath. It’s the shank of the afternoon now, judging by the melancholy light that filters through the bedroom window. Returning, he leans over her, scrutinizing, and Addie continues feigning sleep as he dresses and goes out. From the window, she watches him cross the lawn and come out of the barn on Runcipole again. He disappears into the same break in the same wall of trees, and this time, Addie dresses and sets after him.
The way is wet and low and quickly she is in the swamp, where dusk is more advanced than on the lawn and has a gloomier timbre. Overhead, the bearded cypresses are roped with tangled vines. A large crow flits and disappears. On her left spreads a broad water meadow full of lily pads and rotting cypress knees. There are wildflowers and green, tender ferns. Her steps make a wet, quashing sound in the mud, where Runcipole’s prints, already filled with water, show the way. Addie’s shoes are ruined, her hem sopped by the time she enters the pine barren. Under the stand of old-growth longleaf pines, stillness presides, and as Addie walks over the carpet of fallen needles, the soughing of wind through the treetops sounds almost human. She thinks she hears voices, and when she stops to listen, she catches sight of a cottage through the trees. Surrounded by beds of flowers and herbs—there is pink deer grass and yellow orchis, tiger lilies with their great brilliant trumpets, and basil, asafetida, and dock—it’s made of squared pine logs with white clay daub, with a rustic porch and a chimney made of ballast stones. The shake roof is black and scabbed with lichen, like pale green sores, and she can hear hens brooding and clucking somewhere, though she doesn’t see the coop. Addie’s eyes and full attention are fixed on the porch, which is hung with braids of drying herbs and flowers, and in whose deep shadow Harlan stands talking to Clarisse.
Clarisse is smiling. The unhealthy, mottled flush, the glassy eyes—these are gone. She’s radiant. She offers Harlan something, but he pushes her hand away, and now she frowns and her face darkens, as though a cloud shadow has passed over it. Lighting a cigar, Harlan starts to pace, to make the large, emphatic gestures of the hands.
They’re arguing. Addie can make out their angry tone, but not the words. The whole forest has grown still around her. The wind has ceased to blow. They face each other. Clarisse is weeping now. As Addie watches, Harlan reaches out and curls a lock of hair around her ear, and Clarisse, by way of answer, slaps him hard across the mouth. Harlan appears stunned, and then—to Addie’s astonishment, her horror—he laughs. His laugh is strong and bold, reverberating in the wood. He lifts Clarisse’s hand and takes what she was offering before. A slant ray of sun illuminates the glass. There’s something in it, a small red berry floating, suspended, like a drop of blood. He reaches in a finger and a thumb. He takes the granadilla out. Clarisse’s face has lost its coldness now. It’s come alive. With both her hands, she takes his one and pulls it to her mouth.
Addie watches as the eating of the passion fruit becomes, between them, a hungry kiss. She turns and starts to run.
TWENTY-ONE
See? No black dogs.” Turning from the closet, Ran switched the flashlight off. “Okay?”
“Okay, Doddy.”
Nestling them on either side of him in his and Claire’s—or only Claire’s?—big bed, he opened The Bad Dream, one of Mercer Mayer’s Critter books, and read to Hope and Charlie about a sweet and fuzzy little creature who dreams he’s bad and turns into a sort of Critter Hyde with fangs and spiky hair. He acquires a gorilla sidekick and gets everything he wants, ice cream and pizza pie for breakfast. He gives up bathing, takes the other children’s toys, and does, in short, whatever the hell he feels like, only to find out in the end that no one loves him anymore, and then he cries and wants his mommy, but it all turns out to be a dream.
Maybe that’s what this is, too, thought Ran as he turned the pages on parental autopilot—mysterious intruders, vodou pots, black dogs, the antagonism between him and Claire—that, most of all. Last night, they seemed to have reached a truce—a place from which negotiation might begin—but here it was again tonight, hardened into old, familiar forms. And his manic depression—even after almost thirty years, it still sometimes seemed to Ran that this, too, was only a bad dream from which he’d presently awake.
As he watched the critter morph into his monster form, Ran remembered the first time it had struck him—alone in New York, not long after Delores closed the door, and Shanté, in the dormer, put her hand against the glass and watched him go; not long after Mel, at the bus station late at night, amid the tired winos and the lonely women sleeping with their handbags clutched and the drone of idling engines and the diesel smell, took a twenty from his wallet and said, “Don’t spend it all in one place, hot shot,” and left to be the first to go. A kid Ran met in group and never saw again gave him a thumbed paperback of The Mysterious Stranger, and Ran read the ending again and again till he had the words by heart…. “It’s all a dream…a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short…. You perceive now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. Nothing exists save empty space—and you!” How Ran had loved that story! And he believed it, too, what Satan said to Theodor—every word of it rang true.
Yet reading to his children, feeling their small, warm presences leaning in, Ransom felt such solipsism was a luxury he could no longer afford. He wanted the world to offer Hope and Charlie other, better sweetnesses than the despair he’d tasted in that book and been, like Twain, too partial to.
“Doddy, what’s a critter?” said Charlie as he closed the book.
“Hmm.” Ran studied the illustration. “Good question, buddy. I’m not sure. What do you think?”
“I’n’t know.”
“Maybe it’s a woodchuck.”
“It’s not a woodchuck, Dad,” Hope said, slathering his title with heavy irony.
“A groundhog?”
“Uh-uh.” She tossed her locks negatingly.
“Could it be, perhaps,” Ran proposed, with a trace of mincery, “a muskrat?”
“No musk cat!” Grinning, Charlie joined the game.
“Guys, you’re a tough audience,” he said. “A nutria? A capybara? I’m running out of options here.”
“Da-ad!”
“What do you think, Hope?”
“They’re guinea pigs,” she said, simply.
“Hmm,” said Ransom. “Hmm. Actually, you may be right.”
“I am right.” Her conviction was a cloudless, unwavering blue.
“Hey, Charlie-boy,” he said, “is it just me, or is your sister, La Princesa, a bit full of herself? A bit big for her cat pajama britches?”
“Hmph.” Hope shrugged up a shoulder and looked away, like a snooty princess on TV.
“What do you think, Charlie—does she need a tickle?”
“Yesssssssss!”
“Little or big?”
“Little…No, big!”
Ran made threatening claws at Hope, whose deadpan showed no signs of cracking under stress.
He went straight for the pits.
“Daddy! Daddy, stop!”
When Ransom did, she gave it up and squealed, “Again, Da-dee, a-gain!”
He arched a brow. “What, more?”
“Again!” said Charlie.
“Again! Again! Again!”
“What are you,” he asked her, laughing, too, “a guiner pig?”
Behind her eyes, the little cogwheels stopped. Then, like a starfish straddling a clam, she broke the seal and sucked the tender meat. “A guiner pig! A guiner pig! Oh, Dad! Da-dee!” Ransom’s heart went bump, as though he’d watched a tiny acrobat do her first flip on the trapeze.
“Lie down with me,” she said as Ransom carried her from Charlie’s room and laid her in her bed.
“Hope, it’s late.”
“Please, Daddy! Please? Just for a minute.”
“One.” He lay down beside her and clasped his hands behind his head.
“Daddy?”
“Go to sleep.”
“I have to ask you something.”
“What?”
“What happens when we die?”
Oh, Jesus, Ransom thought. “I don’t know, Pete. Some people say we have a soul inside us, and when we die it leaves and goes to live with God.”
“Do our bodies go, too?”
“No, we leave those here. Just our souls or spirits go.”
“What’s a spirit?”
Ransom sighed. “It’s hard to explain, Hope. You see this lamp? If the lightbulb is your body, then your spirit’s sort of like the light that shines out through the glass.” He tapped the bulb. “Even when the bulb wears out or breaks, the light goes on and on. Some people believe it goes to heaven and stays there. Others think it goes to a sort of waiting place, then gets reborn into another, different body. When we come back to earth, we don’t remember who we were before. Some very special people may, but not most of us.”