The Cypress House

by Michael Koryta

  “I’ll be able to use some eggs and milk tomorrow,” she told Barrett. “I can finally keep them cool again. He actually got it to work.”

  Barrett left then, promising to return with the perishables the next day, and Arlen and Paul got to work rebuilding the enclosure for the generator. Paul insisted on making it wider than the original, which made sense because it allowed you to move around and access the thing if there were problems. He’d gotten the timing adjusted, and the cylinders were firing smoothly and accurately. Arlen watched it hammer away and thought there weren’t many men in the world who could put a thing like that back together without any training or experience with engines—hell, without so much as an instruction or a diagram. Looking at the generator, Arlen realized he was feeling a small surge of pride. That was undeserved—he couldn’t take any credit for the kid’s success. It was there all the same, though. He was proud of him.

  At sunset they joined Rebecca on the back porch and ate dinner, Arlen sipping a cold beer.

  “First I can really appreciate of the boy’s contributions,” he said to Rebecca. “Beer sure does taste better once it’s been chilled.”

  Paul frowned when he said that, and Arlen assumed it was related in some way to drinking, but a few minutes later when Rebecca had gone inside in search of salt, Paul said, “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call me that in front of her.”

  Arlen stared at him. “Call you what?”

  “The boy.”

  Arlen raised his eyebrows and gave a little nod.

  “That’s not how I want her to think of me,” Paul said. “Understand?”

  “Sure,” Arlen said. “Won’t happen again.”

  He was starting to worry about Paul’s infatuation, though. It was none of his business, but he didn’t for a minute believe Rebecca Cady did—or would—think of him as a man, let alone as a romantic interest. She treated him with affection, yes, but it wasn’t in the way the kid was hoping.

  Rebecca had just stepped back out with saltshaker in hand when they heard a car pulling in. Arlen looked up at her and saw a shadow pass across her face. She set the salt down and went back inside but hadn’t even made it across the barroom when the front door opened and two men stepped through. What was left of the sun was shining off the windows and it was impossible to look through and see them clearly, but Arlen was certain the one who’d entered first was Solomon Wade, because he could see the outline of the white Panama hat. Wade said something to Rebecca, and then they came back out onto the porch.

  The judge’s companion tonight was the man called Tate. He had a wide leather belt like the kind issued to police, with a holstered pistol hanging off one side and a sheathed knife on the other. Wade appeared to be unarmed, wearing dark pants and a shirt with suspenders, no jacket, wire-rimmed glasses over his eyes. He looked like a small-town banker.

  “You two haven’t found your way up the road yet?” Wade said. He’d taken Rebecca’s chair, sat facing Arlen. Rebecca was standing back by the door, and Tate had circled around behind Paul and was leaning on the railing, the one they’d just repaired. Paul shifted uneasily, as if he didn’t like having Tate behind him. Arlen didn’t like it either.

  “What’s keeping y’all in Corridor County?” Wade asked when no one responded to him.

  “They’re helping me,” Rebecca said from the doorway. “I told you that, Solomon. I needed help and—”

  “I was asking them,” Wade said.

  Arlen took a long drink of his beer. “Maybe you didn’t catch it the last time you were out here and spoke to us, but we were robbed. Tough to move on down the road without a single dollar.”

  Wade gave him a long, cold stare. Arlen wanted to meet his gaze, but he also couldn’t help glancing at Tate every few seconds. There was something damned unsettling about the old bastard. He had a face like untreated saddle leather, dark eyes, strings of unkempt gray hair trailing along his neck and down to his shoulders. There were scars over almost every inch of the backs of his hands, a variety of colors and textures to them, souvenirs of different incidents. When the breeze pushed in off the Gulf, Arlen could smell the odor of stale sweat coming from him.

  “So you want to make some money before you move on,” Wade said. He had a distant way of speaking, as if he always had minimal interest in the conversation.

  “Want to,” Arlen said, “and need to.”

  Wade blinked and looked out at the sea, purple and black filling in around the edges now, a shrinking pool of orange in the center.

  “I believe you were offered a chance to make your money back overnight. I believe you passed on the opportunity.”

  Paul turned his head and looked at Arlen, a frown on his face.

  “There was no opportunity,” Arlen said. “You tried to bribe me with my own dollars, and what you wanted, I didn’t have. I still don’t.”

  “Supposing you made back your losses as well as an additional profit, might you be inclined to reconsider?”

  Arlen looked at him for a long time. Then he said, “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  It was the first time Wade had shown any spark of emotion. His eyes had narrowed behind the glasses.

  “Even if I’d been holding out on you,” Arlen said, “I wouldn’t tell you a damn thing now. I don’t like being pushed around, by money or muscle.”

  He’d spent most of his life without money in his wallet; he had not and would not spend any of it being run around by men like Solomon Wade. The man wanted him to cower like a whipped dog, expected him to. After all the things Arlen had seen in this life, he’d be damned if he’d cower for this son of a bitch.

  “You know who you are?” he said. “You’re Edwin Main.”

  Wade tilted his head and stared. “What?”

  “A man I used to know back home. You remind me of him.”

  Arlen could remember going to get the sheriff, walking down the street with his legs trembling and two faces trapped in his mind: his father’s bearded one and a dead woman’s pale-lipped one. When the law came back, it came with Edwin Main, who wasn’t a member of it but thought he was and had the rest of the town convinced of the same.

  When Arlen spoke again, his voice was harder than he’d heard it in years.

  “We’ve told you again and again all that we can tell you about Sorenson—nothing. You tried to beat it out, threaten it out, and buy it out. How you can be so damned stupid not to realize that we’ve been telling the truth the whole time, I don’t know. But I’m done with it. And something you need to understand, Wade? I’ve been around for a while, done a lot of hard living, seen a lot of tough boys. You ain’t the first.”

  Wade didn’t answer. Arlen hadn’t seen Tate move, but the older man’s hand was resting high on his thigh now, near the pistol.

  “Your business is of no interest to me,” Arlen said. “None. Nor to the… nor to Paul. But I’ll tell you something else: ours ought not to be of any interest to you. It better not be.”

  It was quiet for a long time. The sun was all the way gone now, the porch covered in darkness. Wade finally spoke.

  “Fourteen days left,” he said. “You be ready for him?”

  Arlen didn’t understand what in the hell he was talking about. Then Rebecca Cady spoke, and it became clear the comment had been intended for her.

  “You know the answer,” she said. Her voice was strained.

  Wade nodded congenially. “Yes, I do. I just wanted you to know I can keep track of the days, too.”

  He stood up, scraping his chair back across the porch floor. “Becky, let’s take a moment inside. In private. Just you, me, and Mr. McGrath.”

  McGrath was apparently Tate’s last name. The three of them started for the door, but Arlen interrupted.

  “Hold on. You can stay right out here and have your talk.”

  Wade spun back to him. “You were just telling me the virtues of minding your life while I mind my own. Weren’t you?”

  Arlen r
an his tongue along the inside of his lip and stared at him but didn’t say anything. Wade gave a short nod and pulled the door open and went inside.

  “Who do you think he really is?” Paul said in a whisper when they were alone. “Doesn’t behave like a judge.”

  I am the match, Wade had said.

  “He’s a big fish,” Arlen said, “in a small pond. Sharp teeth, though. Even the ones in the small ponds got their teeth.”

  He was watching them through the shadowed glass. Wade was standing close to Rebecca, talking to her, while Tate McGrath floated around in silence. Arlen thought of McGrath’s three sons and the man they’d loaded into the black Plymouth the previous night, of the way his legs wouldn’t support his weight and his mouth couldn’t form words. He thought of the woman in the yellow dress.

  Rebecca’s face was flat, betraying no emotion. She turned away from Wade and lit an oil lamp while he talked, the light throwing a pale glow across his face, making his glasses shine again. At length he turned to Tate and snapped a few words, and the older man went out through the front door. He was gone for only a minute, and when he came back he had a box in his hands, what looked like a large wooden cigar box wrapped with twine. He set it on the bar in front of Rebecca, who kept her eyes down and didn’t look at it.

  Wade leaned close, his face within inches of hers, and he spoke softly into her ear, tapping the box with his index finger as he talked. Still she didn’t look up. Wade wrapped his fingers in her hair and pulled slowly, until her chin lifted.

  “Hey,” Paul said, “what’s he doing? That son of a bitch.”

  Arlen said, “Paul,” but it was too late: the kid was out of his chair and through the door. Arlen swore and went after him.

  Solomon Wade still had a fistful of Rebecca’s hair, and he turned to them and a small smile showed on his face as Paul rushed forward.

  “Get your hands off her,” Paul was saying. “Damn you, take your hands off—”

  Tate McGrath stepped in front of Wade and swung. He hit Paul square in the forehead with the punch, stepping into it, a good solid crack that sounded as if someone had dropped a clay pot. Paul’s feet went out from beneath him, and he fell straight backward. He got his hands out, kept his head from drilling into the floorboards. Rebecca Cady gave a little cry when he went down.

  Paul struggled to his feet, unsteady, and charged back at McGrath, who sidestepped the rush, hooked his right hand around Paul’s arm, and sent him spinning into one of the tables. He went down again, this time in a clattering mess, taking three chairs and the table with him.

  McGrath walked to one of the chairs and lifted his foot and brought it down hard, shearing the leg right off the chair. He reached down and picked it up, a heavy chunk of wood, and then he advanced on Paul, bouncing the wood in his hand, as Arlen finally caught up to them.

  McGrath heard him coming and whirled to strike, but Arlen had just bent to pick up what was left of the chair and he used it to block the blow. He shoved ahead, holding the chair, and McGrath twisted, trying to clear away from it. Arlen leaned his weight forward, bracing the chair with his left arm, and then reached down for McGrath’s waist with his right, made one quick clean grab and came up with McGrath’s own knife.

  McGrath gave a grunt and tried to go for his pistol, but Arlen shoved the chair into his face and then dropped it entirely as the older man stumbled back. By the time McGrath had regained his balance, Arlen had his greasy hair in one hand and the knife at his throat with the other.

  He jerked on the hair and maneuvered McGrath sideways so that the whole room was visible. Paul had gotten to his feet, breathing hard, but Wade hadn’t so much as moved. He still had hold of Rebecca’s hair, but he hadn’t stepped toward the brawl.

  “Seems like the way schoolgirls would fight,” Arlen said. “Here we are, both hanging on to somebody’s pretty locks.”

  McGrath was breathing hard through his nose. The blade of the knife was firm against the worn, sunburned skin of his throat.

  “What do you say, Wade?” Arlen said. “You let go of your lady, I’ll let go of mine.”

  Wade’s face showed no change in expression, but he released Rebecca’s hair. She stepped back quickly, went around the side of the bar.

  “Let him go, Arlen,” she said.

  “I guess I will,” Arlen said. “I was thinking I might dance with him a little longer, but maybe not.”

  He gave another twist of McGrath’s hair and leaned his face down.

  “I let you go, you can reach for that pistol,” he said. “I don’t want that to happen. So you’re going to stand where you are and let the kid take the gun off your belt. You’re not going to move an inch while it happens.”

  McGrath made no response. Arlen said, “Paul.”

  Paul came forward, moving as reluctantly as if he’d been asked to handle a snake, and reached down and got the gun out of the holster.

  “Hang on to it and go stand by the door,” Arlen said. “We’ll give Mr. McGrath his toys in just a minute.”

  He waited until Paul was at the door and then he dropped the knife from Tate McGrath’s throat and shoved him away, taking a step back as he did. McGrath straightened and looked at him, and for a moment Arlen was sure he was going to try, even with Arlen holding the knife and Paul holding the gun. Tate McGrath was the sort of alley cat who fought dogs of his own volition. By holding his own knife to his throat, Arlen had just bought a lifetime of hatred.

  “Wouldn’t be wise,” he said as McGrath took a circling step toward him.

  “Tate,” Wade snapped, and McGrath came to a stop. “I’ve seen more than enough wrestling for one night. Mr. Wagner seems to have a mighty confused idea of what it means to mind his own business, but that’s all right. We’ll give him a chance to figure it out. I’m pretty sure he’ll take to it quickly.”

  Wade was looking at Arlen, but Arlen wouldn’t take his eyes off McGrath.

  “I’m a mighty fast learner,” he said. “Now are you boys ready to head out for the night, or do I need to hang on to this knife much longer?”

  “We’re on our way,” Wade said. “You can give him his knife.”

  Arlen shook his head. “Not until you’re in the car.”

  Wade shrugged. He turned to Rebecca and extended his hand, touched her cheek gently. She grimaced.

  “You remember our chat,” he said, and then he turned and walked toward the door. When he reached Paul he slowed and stared down into the boy’s face, then laid a hand on his shoulder. “Watch who you travel with, son,” he said. “Bad company can be disastrous.”

  Arlen had been keeping his attention on Tate McGrath, but now, as Arlen watched Wade talk to Paul, the backwoodsman fell from his mind entirely.

  Paul’s eyes had just filled with smoke.

  It twisted in the sockets, two gray whirlpools set high on his face. Arlen felt something clench in his throat and he took a step forward and raised the knife.

  Paul turned the smoke-eyes to face him, and Wade gave the boy a pat on the shoulder and then released his grip and looked back at Arlen. The instant his hand left Paul’s shoulder, the smoke vanished.

  Arlen stopped where he was, halfway across the room, knife in hand.

  Wade said, “What are you doing?”

  “Step back from him,” Arlen said. His voice was unsteady.

  Wade gave him an unpleasant look but stepped away. Paul’s brown eyes regarded Arlen with curiosity.

  “Let’s go, Tate,” Wade said, and then he stepped through the door. McGrath followed, and Arlen kept staring at Paul. There was no smoke now, but there had been. He was certain that there had been. Why had it disappeared so quickly?

  “Give me the gun,” Arlen said. Both Paul and Rebecca were watching him with a measure of confusion. Paul passed the gun over, and then Arlen went out to Tate McGrath’s truck. Tate was behind the wheel, Wade in the passenger seat. Arlen tossed the knife and the gun down in the bed, and then he banged his hand off the side of the tr
uck and stepped back.

  “Y’all have a nice evening now,” he called.

  “You’ll see us again,” Solomon Wade said. “And there will come a time when you will regret tonight’s decision.”

  “I’ve never been one for regrets,” Arlen said, and then he turned and walked back to the Cypress House. The whole way, there was a tightness through his back and he was ready for the sound of the truck door opening, Tate McGrath stepping back out and going for the gun. The only sound that came, though, was the truck rattling off down the road.

  It had been Wade’s touch, Arlen realized as he stepped onto the porch. Smoke had filled Paul’s eyes when Wade laid a hand on his shoulder; it had vanished as soon as the hand was removed.

  But the smoke had been there. He was certain of that, and of what it meant.

  21

  PAUL HAD A THICK red lump swelling on his forehead, just above his eye. He sat on a bar stool while Rebecca ran a cool rag over his face and inspected the wound. Arlen could see the boy’s breathing stagger when her fingertips slid over his skin. It wasn’t from pain.

  “You okay?” he said.

  “Yeah,” Paul mumbled. “I wasn’t expecting him to come on that fast. Once I got my bearings, I’d have been all right.”

  “Sure,” Arlen said, knowing that Tate probably would have beaten the boy within an inch of his life if he’d been allowed to start swinging that chair leg.

  “Thank you for stepping in,” Paul said. “I shouldn’t have needed your help, but—”

  “You were going to need somebody’s help. I would have, too, with that old bastard. Only reason I was able to get away with what I did was that he was paying attention to you. That’s a mean son of a bitch, Paul, and a dangerous one. You see him again, you stay the hell away from him.”

  A family of vipers, the woman named Gwen had said. Tate surely seemed to be, and tonight he’d traveled alone. If he’d brought those boys of his along, it might have been a very bloody evening.