The Cypress House (14 page)

    "Better
than the inn," she said, and then added, "Stop calling me
Becky."

    "I
know, I know. Is there anything left of the back porch?"

    "Not
much. I lost the generator, too. No icebox."

    Barrett
groaned. "Can it be fixed? "

    "Probably
not. You can have a look if you'd like."

    "I'll
do that." He turned to Arlen and winked. "We'll talk in a minute,
gunslinger. Don't shoot me in the back now, hear?"

    "Awful
witty boy, aren't you?" Arlen said, and Barrett gave another of his loud
laughs and walked away. Arlen went in search of Paul.

    He
found him up on the ladder on the side of the house. He'd gotten the boards off
the windows and was now nailing a torn piece of the wooden siding back into
place. Arlen called for him to come down.

    "We've
got a job," Paul said before his feet had even touched ground.

    "I'm
sorry?"

    "Here,"
Paul said triumphantly. "I talked her into it this morning. She sure needs
the help, and we sure need the money. I know you don't want to stay, but it's a
different tune if we're getting paid, right?"

    "What
we need is a
ride,
boy, and there's one out front."

    Paul
frowned. "A ride where, Arlen? We don't have enough money for a meal, much
less a train ticket. You want to walk all the way back to Alabama? Rebecca said
she could pay us ten dollars each if we get this place cleaned up and the porch
put back together. Shouldn't take more than a few days. That's enough for train
tickets at least."

    Arlen
stared at him. "Paul . . . you remember where you are? You remember what
happened to the man who drove us down here?"

    "Arlen,
it's not like
she
blew his car up!"

    "I
don't care if she did or not, he ended up dead and we ended up in jail and this
ain't a place I intend to stay around."

    "So
where are you going to go?"

    "Away,"
Arlen said. "Hitch a ride into a town and figure it out."

    "Wouldn't
you rather do that with a few dollars in your pocket?"

    "They're
probably my own dollars," Arlen snapped. "I'm still not sure she
didn't steal it herself."

    Paul
sighed and shook his head again. "You know that's not the case."

    "I
don't know a damn thing, son! Neither do you."

    "Arlen,
she's here by herself. We can't just leave. It isn't right. I mean, if she were
my mother and somebody walked off and left —"

    "You
aren't confusing her for your mother," Arlen said. "I've seen the way
you look at her."

    Paul
flushed and looked down, twirled the hammer in his hands. "I got off that
train when you asked me to."

    "Aren't
you glad you did?"

    "Yes.
But now I'm asking you: stick for a few days. Just long enough to help her get
this place put together."

    Arlen
stepped back and ran a hand over his face. He didn't want to leave the kid here
on his own. Not in this place.

    "Listen,"
he said, his voice sharpening in a way that brought Paul's eyes up. "You
wouldn't lie to me, would you, son? Look me in the face and lie?"

    "No.
Of course not."

    "All
right. So when you tell me we'll stay just long enough to get the tavern
cleaned up, and then we'll go back to Alabama . . . that's the truth?"

    "Yes."

    Arlen
said, "Shit," and sighed.

    "Won't
be so bad," Paul said. "Working right on the ocean like this? It'll
almost be a vacation."

    "Just
find me another hammer," Arlen said. "Faster we work, faster we can
leave."

    They
walked back to the front of the house together in search of the second hammer.
Barrett was leaving, pulling away in his van with a honk and a wave, and
Rebecca stood on the front porch with a newspaper in her hands and a grim look
on her face. She glanced up at them, said nothing, and passed the paper to
Arlen. The front page was half covered by an enormous headline that shrieked:
1,000
PREDICTED DEATH TOLL IN KEYS.

    Below
that, a promise of the "complete hurricane carnage in pictures" stood
above a photograph of corpses stacked on the front of a ship.

    Arlen
didn't want to see the complete hurricane carnage in pictures. Nor did he want
to read about the dead. Paul had seen the look on his face, though, and he
said, "What's wrong?"

    "Nothing."

    Paul
came up and looked over Arlen's shoulder at the photograph of the dead men and
that headline. One thousand predicted dead. One thousand.

    "Let
me see," Paul said, his voice hushed. Arlen passed it over, fished a
cigarette out and lit it and smoked with his back to the boy and the newspaper.
Every now and then Paul would let out a murmur of horror or pain. Rebecca had
joined him and was reading at his side.

    "Arlen,"
Paul said, "most of these pictures are of the veterans' camps. They were
just waiting there for it. Waiting in tents and shacks."

    "Yeah."

    "It's
got an editorial in here someone wrote for the
Washington Post.
Says it
was a tragedy, but then says that the men in those camps were 'drifters,
psychopathic cases, or habitual troublemakers.' "

    Arlen
lowered his cigarette and smashed it out on the deck rail. He'd heard the camps
were rough. It's why the CCC hadn't wanted to send juniors. But something else
those men were, every last one of them? Veterans. Soldiers. Men who'd listened
to Washington when Washington told them to go across an ocean and pour their
blood into the soil of a place they knew nothing about, men who'd taken bullets
and bayonets and breathed in mustard gas. Heroes, Washington had called them
back in '18 and
'19, the war won and the economy strong. Now they were
"drifters, psychopathic cases, or habitual troublemakers."

    "You
think those men on our train died?" Paul said.

    "Yes,"
Arlen said. It was the first time he'd given the boy a flat, honest answer on
that question. The dead deserved that much right now. They deserved a little
honesty.

    Rebecca
had been staring at Arlen, but when he looked over she turned away. Paul folded
the paper, but Arlen shook his head, took it from the boy, and lit a match and
held it to the edge, watched as the flame caught and licked along until the
rolled paper was a torch in his hand. Then he dropped it out into the sand, and
they watched it burn down to embers.

    Solomon
Wade made his first appearance the next day. By then they'd gotten the yard
cleared and all the damaged siding repaired and had turned to the back porch.
The railing could be salvaged, but many of the spindles were lost and the
pillar that supported the roof had been smashed and sheared in half. They got
the railings in place easily enough and then Arlen went to the roof pillar,
turned the pieces over in his hands and studied them, looking at the jagged
ends.

    "Won't
fit together anymore," Paul said. "There's some scrap wood around but
nothing like that."

    "Got
to make it work, then," Arlen said, eyeing the uneven fit of the broken
wood. "If we shave it down and smooth it, we can drive nails in like
this" — he indicated the angle with his index finger — "and make it
solid. Will it look perfect? Nah. But it'll hold. Problem is, we'll lose some
length, so we'll have to cut a block to put between this piece and the rail.
Maybe put it between this piece and the roof, actually. That'll hide it
better."

    It
was nearing noon and had been, much as Arlen was loath to admit it, not an
altogether bad day. He enjoyed working with the boy, and they'd made swift
progress. All things considered, he was in fairly good spirits when he went
around the side of the house in search of a drill and heard the clatter of an
engine and saw the visitor approaching.

    Rebecca
Cady was also on the south side of the house, using a shovel to move sand out
from under the foundation, where it had been heaped by the wind. Give her this
much: she'd worked hard and without complaint alongside them. At the sound of
the car, she straightened without much interest, but when she got a glimpse of
it, her body went tight.

    It
was a steel-gray Ford coupe, and it rumbled right down the hill and into the
yard, parked beside the truck. The engine shut off and the driver stepped out,
and when Arlen saw who it was, he cursed himself instantly. They shouldn't have
lingered to give Solomon Wade another crack at them. It was begging for
trouble.

    The
only thing that reassured him was that Wade appeared to be alone, not
accompanied by Sheriff Tolliver.

    Wade
had a cigarette in his mouth, and now he removed it and blew smoke and studied
the house with a quality of ownership. He removed his white Panama hat and
fanned himself and shifted his gaze their way. He took his time walking down to
them, looking around the property and smoking his cigarette and not saying a
word. When he was close enough, he came to a stop and stared at Arlen. Behind
his glasses his eyes were gray, reminded Arlen of the color of the sea as it
had crawled up the beach in the storm.

    "I
expected you would have left my county by now."

    "Hurricane
slowed us down a touch," Arlen said.

    Wade
showed no reaction. At that moment Paul rounded the corner, half of the broken
porch support in his hand, and everyone turned to face him. He pulled back and
swung the piece of wood around in front of him, as if to ward off their stares.
He looked as thrilled at the sight of Wade as Arlen had been.

    "They're
helping me with repairs," Rebecca said.

    "I
gathered that."

    "And
their money was stolen. Sometime after Tolliver arrested them, all of their
money was stolen."

    "Is
that so?" he said without apparent interest. "How's the dock?"

    "Nearly
ruined. Same with the boathouse."

    His
scowl said that was of personal annoyance.

    "There's
a lot to be done," she said.

    "Well,
get the tavern cleaned up first, and get it done fast. You'll be having
visitors soon. Friends of mine."

    "Solomon"
— she waved her hand at the building behind them — "you see what this
place looks like? I can't be ready for anyone."

    "They
won't mind the condition."

    "There
was a
hurricane —
"

    "I
am aware. But it's gone now."

    Paul
Brickhill shifted the piece of wood in his hands and frowned at Wade, disliking
the judge's tone. Arlen watched it and saw what he'd already suspected — the
boy was beyond smitten with Rebecca Cady.

    "I
don't have electricity," she said. "No lights, no icebox, no —"

    "Then
put out some oil lamps," Wade said. "They'll be down Monday evening,
and you need to be ready to receive them."

    "Hey,"
Paul said, "she just told you . . ."

    He
didn't finish the sentence. Both Arlen and Solomon Wade turned to him with
daggers in their eyes, daggers carried for different purposes, and Rebecca Cady
laid her hand on his arm, the word "stop" clear in the touch.

    "Son,"
Wade said, "do you remember that cell?"

    It
seemed a rhetorical question, but Wade held the boy's eyes until it became
clear he wanted an answer. Paul managed a nod.

    "I
hope that you do," Wade said. "It would serve you well to
remember."

    They
all regarded one another in silence, and then the judge dropped his cigarette
into the sand and ground it out with his shoe.

    "Becky?
Be ready for my guests." He turned to Arlen then and said, "Mr.
Wagner, walk on up to the car with me."