by David Payne
But the voice said, Relax, you lox, it’s human nature, take a peek, it’ll be over in a second and a half.
Ran actually reached out and touched them, before he stopped himself. Suddenly something opened in his head; awareness rushed back like air into a pierced vacuum. Like a sleepwalker who comes to on the edge of a precipice, Ran found himself in the upstairs hallway, glomming the dirty-clothes hamper, drawn to a pair of Claire’s new underpants, fixated like the Millennium Falcon in the Death Star’s tractor-beam.
“What am I doing?” he said aloud, and fled.
Taking refuge in the library, he sat down at the partners desk and took his head between his hands. “This is Claire,” he said. “Claire.” Whatever image she projected, had she ever been casual about sex? No, never. (Oh, many—including him, early on—had made that sad and bad mistake!) Nor, so far as Ransom knew, had she ever been unfaithful to him. And to say, to imply, “so far as he knew” wasn’t fully honest either. In his heart, Ran was certain, one hundred percent sure, that whatever their troubles, Claire had kept faith with him there. The only way he could imagine Claire cheating on him was if it was for keeps, if the marriage, for her, was truly over. And if it was for keeps, wouldn’t she tell him? Wouldn’t Claire—Claire!—have the decency, the respect, to look him in the face and honor their years together with the truth? Of course she would! And Cell was a straight shooter, too. He always had been. The notion of the two of them humping in a motel room somewhere, getting their jollies over Ransom’s credulousness, his pathetic hope that the marriage might yet work—preposterous! It was like a dream, some horrible dream from which he’d suddenly awakened, and once more the strange thing was, it wasn’t like his dream. It was as if, for an hour, two, he’d fallen into someone else’s nightmare like a swimmer in a riptide, and it had almost carried him away to sea. Sitting there, Ran had the sense he’d made the thinnest and narrowest of narrow, thin escapes. But whose dream was it, if it wasn’t his? What was all this strangeness?
Disturbed, he took a reading-glasses case that had no reading glasses in it from the top drawer of the partners desk. Secreted there, in a cloudy Baggie the yellow of old Scotch tape, a few brittle tops and flowers shifted amid a plenitude of seeds. As Ran rolled the joint, an elephant trumpeted, lumbering across the black ground of the computer screen. Firing up, he held the toke and threw the window up and exhaled into the night.
When he turned back to the room, he noticed the blue bottle on the corner of the desk. Giving it a swirl, he heard the liquid whoosh and the illiquid tink. Holding it to the light, he promptly fumbled it and watched it burst into a hundred fragments at his feet.
“Shit,” he said as the puddle spread.
In the center was a small gray lump that looked like nothing more than mud. When he picked it up, he felt hardness at the center. It was nickel-sized and round, with a hasp or fitting on one side. Something was embossed on the surface, and when Ran wiped away the sediment, he saw writing. He read and blinked, and blinked and read again.
OshKosh, it said, in burnished letters that seemed newly pressed into the tin.
“OshKosh,” he said aloud. When he looked up, Addie was waiting for him in the portrait, her blue eyes heavy with some information she seemed anxious to impart.
TWENTY-SIX
When it began, nobody can remember
No doubt at the beginning: one fine day
The surface world collapsed around his longing
The deep world yawned and took his love away
And he dove after it with righteous passion indignation passion…
And after nineteen twenty years he knew….
Ran woke up, heavy-headed, at the partners desk and found these lines. They seemed alien at first, but slowly, as he read, the details of his late-night session returned. The first verse had come in its entirety in fifteen seconds. He’d struggled with the second for an hour and a half. Was Nemo’s mission undertaken out of love or anger? Should Ran use nineteen years, like his marriage, or the thin disguise of twenty? And whether nineteen or twenty, what, after all that time beneath the sea, had Nemo learned? Here, the process finally broke down. Ransom put his head down on the desk, and woke up hours later with a stiff neck and the imprint of tooled leather on his cheek.
It was almost seven. The windows had been left open and the room was cold. Under the high ceilings, everything was shadowed, gray. On the buckram spine of a nearby book, he noticed mildew, and then he looked at all the books there were—so many of the titles obscure, forgotten. He thought of all that effort, all the self-important striving, moldering away, and it came home that the odds of his success on this song, or a future one, were very long. A twinge of fear seized in, and it struck Ransom that his dereliction with his meds might not be so easily forgivable as he’d assumed; camels’ backs were broken, after all, with straws, not bricks. His project to become a different, better man—was it fully realistic at his age? To change, at any time, is hard, but forty-five? To become someone other than you’ve been? Come on…And then he heard a thud above him on the ceiling, the tattoo of little footsteps running down the hall.
Into his dark mood ran Charlie, shouting, “Doddy! Doddy! Wake up! Bi’truck!”
Charlie ran to the window and looked back with his fresh, excited face. “Dere! Come see!” Ransom joined him as the excavator’s dump truck pulled into the frame, hauling a trailer with a yellow Caterpillar loader chained on top.
“Bi’truck?”
Ransom shook his head. “Excavator.”
“Escavator?”
“Yep.”
“No bi’truck?”
“No fire truck.”
“Wha’s exsavator do?”
“He’s going to dig a hole.”
“A hole?”
“Let’s go talk to him.”
“Talk to him?”
“Come on.”
“Okay, Doddy.”
Charlie offered his hand, no bigger than a silver dollar, and Ransom, as he took it, saw in one clear flash how his day would have gone without this interruption. His stiffness left him, the engine began to gather speed.
Outside, he showed the man the rotten sill, explained his idea for a swale.
“Sounds good to me.”
“So how long do you think all this will take?”
“No more’n a couple hundred hours.”
Ran gave him a narrow smile. “So you’ll be done by lunch.”
“Most likely, if I skip my doughnut break.”
“Doesn’t look like it would do you major harm.”
“You sound like my wife.”
“Tell me about it, brother.” Ran grinned and held his palm out, and the man conceded a reluctant but good-natured five. “I have to drop my kids at school in Powatan and run a couple errands. I should be back before you leave.”
“I guess I’ll be here till you pay me.”
“Good, then I’ll catch up with you.”
Claire, sipping coffee, ran out the back door, her hair wet from the shower.
“I’ve got to run,” she said. “Give Mama a kiss.” She knelt and took it. “Later, dute.”
“Bye, Mama.”
“And you…”
Ran searched her face, but found no evidence of condemnation in the look she gave him, which was full of coded messages suspended in a medium of suppressed hilarity. “You were in rare form last night, Hill.”
“So were you, madame.”
She made a pleasant little smirk, and Ran felt his whole day turn the corner. He went in and made the children breakfast; he got them in the car and drove them into town. The process went more smoothly than before, except for the logistics of the T-Bird. Remembering Claire’s complaint, he pulled into a used-car lot.
An aged salesman with an unapologetic see-through silver pompadour strolled out and whistled. “Nice car—a ’55?”
“Fifty-six.”
“Always wanted one of them,” he said as he did the walkaround. Dressed i
n the manner of an old-fashioned country dandy, in madras slacks, he had the air of one who’d been a ladies’ man and was under no interior compulsion to get over it. “I don’t suppose you want to sell her.”
“I was thinking of a trade,” said Ran. “Something for the wife and kids.”
“There’s your vehicle right there.” Old Silver pointed to a Honda Odyssey two shades darker than his mane.
“A minivan?” Ran asked skeptically. “I don’t know, padre. I’m not sure my self-esteem and a minivan could coexist in the same universe.”
“That ain’t your father’s minivan, my friend,” said the dealer, taking a quick read of the customer and demonstrating no mean grasp of human nature. “It’s got leather, two automatic sliding doors”—he prompted one, and Ran looked in—“fold-down seats for cargo. And check this out.” He flipped down a rooftop screen.
“A TV, too?” said Ransom, warming.
“That ain’t just a TV, brother. That’s a DVD.”
“No kidding?” Knowing it was wiser to play coy, Ran, unable to, smiled and stroked his chin.
“She’s sweet, my brother. Plus, I’ll throw in five free DVDs.”
Ransom laughed. “Like that’s really gonna seal the deal.”
“It has before,” the old man said.
“Does that include The Lion King?”
The salesman looked nonplussed, but only temporarily. “If it ain’t, we’ll put it on the list.”
Ran held out his hand and grinned.
Afterward, he picked up his prescription, bought a Coke and downed his pills right there, then let the nurse at Claire’s OB draw blood. By the time he started back to Wando Passo, surrounded by the new-car smell, Ran felt righteous, he felt good. His former mood had vanished like the shadow of a cloud that touches you and passes on. As he drove the Odyssey, Ran began to feel himself settling in, becoming grounded. Through the windshield, he saw the day he would have had in New York in his cab; saw, beside it, the day he now had ahead of him to live…thanks to Charlie’s little interruption, thanks to Claire’s remark and pleasant smirk. Selling his father’s T-Bird somehow capped the deal, like surrendering some old baggage he didn’t have to carry anymore. In New York his depression would have gone on, gathering momentum as it went; here that hadn’t happened. And that had been what Nemo lost, what made him a vengeful monster, scarcely human anymore—Captain Nemo lost his family and his wife. Now Ran saw it all. By the time he got back to Wando Passo, the sun was peeking through the overcast. It seemed worth fighting after all.
When he pulled into the allée, however, there beside the excavator’s dump truck and trailer were six police cars parked haphazardly with flashing lights. As he pulled into the gravel turnaround in back, he could see the yellow backhoe idling, a tangle of roots and mounded earth in the toothed bucket. Under it stood Sergeant Thomason, conferring with the excavator.
They both turned and watched as Ransom parked and got out of the car.
“Mr. Hill,” said Thomason.
“We meet again,” said Ran. “What’s going on?”
Thomason nodded down into the grave-shaped trench, which had appeared where the former periwinkle patch had been.
Looking up at Ran as though his long-awaited hour had finally come, Officer Johnson lifted a blue plastic tarp. Beneath it, an intact skeleton lay beside a second set of remains the backhoe had disturbed. Ran recognized a pelvis, a string of vertebrae, what looked like a human femur bone.
“Doc?” Thomason called to a gray-haired man in an unkempt suit, squatting on his hams at the far end of the trench, studying something Ransom couldn’t see. “Doc Sneeden?”
“Umm,” the ME said perfunctorily. Only as he turned did Ransom see the second, larger skull he held. In it was a dime-sized hole with fracture lines radiating out like rays from a black sun. He shook it by his ear and something rattled.
“What the hell is that?” said Ran.
“Let’s take a look,” said the ME. Unhinging the jaw, he reached into the mouth and took out a small black pellet. “Birdshot. Looks like number 8.”
“This here’s Mr. Hill, Doc,” Thomason said. “The homeowner?”
Remembering his manners, Sneeden hurriedly removed 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 we
re 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.