Back to Wando Passo David Payne (find a book to read .TXT) 📖

to imagine him, when she still believed that he would come. Some little voice she used to hear more often then spoke up, and Addie, just three days before her wedding, her last three as a maid, put her money down.)

Harlan’s thoughtfulness is wonderful, too wonderful for words; at any other time, she would be moved, but in this moment—with the dead birds bobbing in the wash (and others she tries not to look at flopping softly on the lawn), with the men regarding her with their glazed, slightly drunken smiles—Addie is too unnerved. Some heaviness has stolen over the bride, creeping like a spell. A thought flies into her head like a sparrow through the open window of a house, upsetting everything: she barely knows Harlan—he, her—can it really be they stood before the altar at St. Michael’s and vowed to God to love each other until parted by death? What if the wisdom of the girl of seventeen—who never doubted that Evangeline must wait for Gabriel no matter what, however long it takes, even if she dies before he comes—wastruer than the wisdom of the bride of thirty-three that said get on with it and live? The little voice she remembers, though not from where, clearly forms the words: All this is a lie that everyone believes but you. For one moment, this thought seems truer than the party, truer than the smiling guests, truer than the house with its six chimneys, truer than the oaks and the magnolias in the park, truer than the world itself. But, no, this is only nerves. Of course it is! A brief stir; the bird has flown.

Has Harlan seen it streak through her blue eyes? God forbid! But, no, he’s smiling, welcoming her. They all are. All but one…

Standing at the corner of the dock—conferring with the captain about the tierces of rough rice prepared for loading on the Nina now that her outgoing cargo is ashore—he’s already aware of her by the time her eyes find him. Tall and lean-waisted, he wears a coat of fine black gabardine that is slightly worn, and this slight wornness separates him from the other guests as effectively as his physical distance from them on the dock. (Nor, on his lapel, does he sport the cockade of blue ribbon worn by all the rest, with the gold palmetto, the lone star, and the coiling snake.) What separates him still more is the extreme gravity in his agated, dark hazel eyes that are like ocean water when it thins out in a rising wave and the sun shines through it from behind. It is this gravity that draws the bride’s attention like a compass needle to magnetic north, for though it cannot be, it is as if this man (whom Addie feels she knows, or ought to know from somewhere), alone among the revelers, has looked into her depths and seen the bird before it flew. There is no judgment in his face, but no dissembling either. And it is only in the second moment, as Addie tells herself this cannot be, that his expression must mean something else, that she catches the resemblance—it is to the bridegroom. In the third, she realizes who he is: this is the plantation steward, Jarry, Percival’s dark son, the brother whom the brother owns. Only in the fourth and final instant, before she looks away, does Addie note he’s black…. A look sustained for four long blinks—it is no more than that. Yet Addie will remember it for the rest of her short life.

But, goodness, here is Harlan, beaming at her, even bigger than she recalls! A strident flush has spread from his collar, lapped by a small pink fold of flesh, to his hairline, which has receded to the crown of his large head. On his gleaming brow, beads of perspiration have formed like seed pearls, and Harlan wipes them with his handkerchief, which is heavy, gray with sweat. Handing his shotgun to an elderly retainer, he takes a glass of champagne from the tray the old man holds, then sips and offers it to her. Addie smiles, but, wait, there’s something in it, several crimson berries floating like suspended drops of blood. Now Harlan reaches in. A finger and a fleshythumb, flushed the same pink as his cheeks, go down. Addie sees the black hair on his knuckle joint float out in the champagne and lie flat down again as he extracts…

“But, Harlan, what on earth?” she says. “Is it a pomegranate seed?”

“No, dear, a granadilla, a bit of passion fruit, all the way from Cuba, through the blockade, for you.”

He holds it out, dripping on the grass. He cups his hand to catch the drops. For a moment, Addie doesn’t understand. Now her face has turned as red as his. All around, the crowd nods its encouragement. And what else can she do but smile and eat?

The crowd applauds. Just that quickly, it is done.

Harlan takes her arm. As they start to cross the dock, the steward intercepts. “I’m sorry, but the captain says he cannot take our rice.”

“He what?” asks Harlan.

“They were fired on running the blockade, and he’s afraid the weight may compromise his headway. It may be possible to flat the tierces to the bridge at Mars Bluff and take them into Charleston via rail.”

“See to it then.” Harlan starts to turn away.

“There’s something else…. We’ve lost the order.”

“What order?”

“From the factor. The entire spring order was jettisoned into the sea last night. Cloth, tools, oil, salt, seed…”

“Damn it, man, I don’t want a list. It’s my wedding party. Don’t bother me with this. Figure something out. Now is that all?”

Jarry frowns. “It’s getting late. We should call the mincers back.”

“I want them in the fields till all my friends have shot.”

“They haven’t eaten since this morning.”

“Then measure them half a gill of rum when they come in and make it up to them.”

“Only for the beaters?” Jarry asks. “I’m sure everyone