Back to Wando Passo

by David Payne

“And Mommy—is she coming, too?”

  Ransom holds the little agony of understanding in his daughter’s eyes. “I don’t think so, Hope,” he answers, gently brushing back a lock of fallen dandelion hair. “Mommy and I aren’t going to be together anymore. I’m very sad about it. But it’s going to be okay.”

  “How, Daddy?”

  “I don’t know. I only know we’re going to make it be.”

  She considers. “Do you have time to push us in the swing before you go?”

  “Yes, I have time.”

  “Higher, Daddy! High as the morning sky!” Hope cries.

  “Not today, Zurg!” Charlie says.

  No, not today, thinks Ransom as he pushes them. It was not that day after all. Not the day he thought it was…Or maybe it was. And when he cried out of the wilderness, when I called out from the belly of the whale, did He not answer me?

  Perhaps, perhaps. Or maybe it was just the words of an old song. That chapter, too, already fading. And Ransom Hill, like all of us, will know the answers before long.

  And as he pushes them and listens to them laugh, the last verse comes:

  But I must go now, Nemo’s calling for me.

  And having had my say, I’m ready to go back.

  Because for me at last there is no mortal satisfaction

  Beyond the beautiful wild rush of his attack.

  And so the song is done, and maybe it is Nemo talking to Ran now—as the Odyssey pulls down the white sand road and disappears where the lines of trees converge in the allée—maybe it’s that other, better man he’d always wanted to become but never actually was, maybe, once again, it’s just the little voice that in the morning helps you choose between the blue shirt and the red, or maybe it is simply Ransom talking to himself, wide awake now, saying, Hold it, boy, don’t run, hold the bitter wonder of the world, close your eyes and lift your face toward the sun, love it all you can and listen to the children cry with plaintive appetite, “Again! Again! Again!”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This note is to thank the many friends and strangers who contributed to this work, both the living, who reached out in person, and the dead, whose spirits touched mine through the ancient spell we sometimes take for granted—words on the page.

  First, the people.

  I’m grateful, above all, to my wife and children for their love, support, and forbearance through the five-year writing of this book; to my mother and father (the artist formerly known as Quid Nunc); to my brothers, George A. and Bennett; to Bob Richardson, whose library was my phoneless, e-mail-less sanctuary, the place I retreated each day to write and came to think of as my whaling ship; to Joel El Endoqui, who challenged me to deeper seriousness, and without whom I could not have written the Palo sections; to Bob Schofield, owner of Hasty Point plantation, who shared his real garden spot with me and showed me the old map where I found the name for my imaginary one; to Don Dixon, whose soliloquies kept me entertained as they instructed me on the fine points of rock musicology; to Tina Bennett, my brilliant, kind, unflappable agent; to my three editors: Gary Brozek, who encouraged the green shoot; Meaghan Dowling, who lavished such passionate attention on the sapling; and Jennifer Brehl, who oversaw the pruning that made the thing a tree; to the writers who spoke up for it: Lee Smith, Craig Nova, Randall Kenan, Annie Dillard, Pat Conroy; to R and S, who listened to me maunder on about the title and feigned interest, and whose good cheer and bad influence were as reliable as their friendship; to Bob and Terry and the Wednesday warriors, who helped with the instruction manual; and, not least, to the nfumbi of my line.

  I would also like to thank Rich Aquan, Seale Ballenger, Pinckney Benedict, Rachel Bressler, Jamie and Marcia W. Constance, Pam Durban, Bill Emory, Lil Fenn, David Ferriero, Lisa Gallagher, Sarah Gubkin, Angela Haigler, Robin Hanes, Allan Harley, Richard Howorth, Frank Hunter, Svetlana Katz, Barbara Levine, Kim Lewis, Peter (“Pistol Pete”) London, Adriana Martinez, Madge McKeithen, Roland Merullo, Kate Nintzel, Nancy Olson, Harris Payne, Dr. Louis A. Perez, Jr., Carol Peters, Ron Rash, Mark Reed, Mary Gay Shipley, Sherry Thomas, Katharine Walton, Dr. M. W. Wester, Jr., Fran Whitman, Joyce Wong, and John H. Zollicoffer, Jr.

  The books.

  On Palo Mayombe: above all, the great ethnographic works of Lydia Cabrera: La Regla Kimbisa del Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje, Reglas de Congo and El Monte. (Their unavailability in English is an impoverishment that I hope the current copyright holders will soon address.) Also, the works of Robert Ferris Thompson, and The Book on Palo by Raul Canizares.

  On Hoodoo/Conjure: above all, Hoodoo in Theory and Practice, Catherine Yronwode’s work in progress, published on her learned and fascinating website, luckymojo.com. Also, the works of Harry Middleton Hyatt, Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Deren, Ras Michael Brown, and, also on the web, Inquiceweb.com.

  On contemporary Kongo belief: above all, Death and the Invisible Powers by Simon Bockie.

  On Cuba: above all, Cecilia Valdés by Cirilo Villaverde, in the Sidney Gest translation, invaluable to me for nineteenth-century Cuban idiom and general period detail. Also, The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave by Esteban Montejo; The Life and Poems of a Cuban Slave by Juan Francisco Manzano; Cuba by Hugh Thomas.

  On nineteenth-century South Carolina: above all, Chronicles of Chicora Wood by Elizabeth Waities Allston Pringle and A Woman Rice Planter by the same author. Also, Within The Plantation Household by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese; The Plantation Mistress by Catherine Clinton; Intellectual Life in Ante-Bellum Charleston, Down by the Riverside by Charles Joyner; Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs; A Bondwoman’s Narrative, Slave Narratives by Henry Louis Gates; and The Black Border by Ambrose E. Gonzales.

  On the Civil War: The Civil War by Shelby Foote; A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary by John B. Jones; Battery Wagner by Timothy Eugene Bradshaw, Jr.; Gate of Hell by Stephen R. Wise; Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor; The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara; and Robert E. Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman.

  About the Author

  DAVID PAYNE lives in North Carolina, and is the author of four previous novels: Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street, which won the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award; Early from the Dance; Ruin Creek; and Gravesend Light. He welcomes comments from readers, and is available to speak with your book club. He can be reached at david@davidpaynebooks.com.

  WWW.DAVIDPAYNEBOOKS.COM

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  CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR

  David Payne and Back to Wando Passo

  “Delicious…. Chock-full of lust and betrayal, miscegenation and madness, but held together by Payne’s gorgeous writing. At the very least, this should be the most literate beach read of the year.”

  —Washington Post

  “So full of life with all its sadness and joy, hope and despair. [Back to Wando Passo] has…undeniable allure.”

  —USA Today

  “A haunting portrait of the American South.”

  —Vanity Fair

  “A saga of family, music, war, romance across racial lines, African Cuban religion, magic, and murder…. Like Cold Mountain, [Back to Wando Passo] could turn out to be both a bestseller and a modern masterpiece.”

  —Durham Herald-Sun

  “A master fabulist, Payne hooks the reader like a wide-eyed catfish…. Payne’s plot is a fine, twisty marvel, but what ultimately sells this epic is his outsized passion. Steamy sex, family life in all its closeness and conflict, landscape in high relief, and quasi-biblical prose poetry…. Basically defining ‘sweeping saga,’ [Back to Wando Passo] is heaven for die-hard romantics.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “A remarkable novel written by a master craftsman…. Not to be missed.”

  —Raleigh News & Observer

  “Destined to be a breakout publication…. Readers will gleefully embrace this book. It’s big. It’s exotic…. Payne hits pay dirt.”

  —Asheville Citi
zen-Times

  “Payne’s richly ornate Southern saga…fashions elaborate prose and touching characterization into an absorbing tale.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A big book, big in ideas, lush in its poetic text, large in its expansive reach through centuries, and extravagant in its addresses on slavery, war, love, race, marriage, and spirit…. Like [Pat] Conroy, Payne is irresistible.”

  —State (Columbia, South Carolina)

  Back “to Wando Passo quivers with authentic life and is so bold in concept and audacious in scope that it seems like the summing up of a great writer’s career. The novel contains everything.”

  —Pat Conroy

  Back “to Wando Passo is like a delightful, slightly dangerous party that swept me up for days. I adore Payne’s wicked humor; his rich, inventive language; and his deep engagement with the moral tangle of American history. Though this book is Southern down to the molecular level, its ambition, scope, and range are universal.”

  —Annie Dillard

  ALSO BY DAVID PAYNE

  Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street

  Early from the Dance

  Ruin Creek

  Gravesend Light

  Copyright

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to reprint excerpts from Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung. Reprinted by permission of Random House. Copyright 1961, 1962, 1963.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  BACK TO WANDO PASSO. Copyright © 2006 by David Payne. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Mobipocket Reader November 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-180006-1

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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  1As told by Col. C. C. Jones, in The Black Border by Ambrose E. Gonzales, A Firebird Press Book / Pelican Publishing Company, Gretna, LA, 1998.

  1Adapted from Fitzhugh’s 1850 essay, “Sociology for the South,” by George Fitzhugh, A. Moms, Publisher, Richmond, VA, 1854.