The Cypress House

by Michael Koryta

  “Tate’s awful,” Rebecca said. It was the first time she’d spoken. “He’s a terrible human being. Just like Solomon.”

  “Why do you let them come around here?” Paul said.

  She didn’t answer. Arlen went behind the bar to pour a glass of whiskey. His hands were trembling and he shifted so they wouldn’t see. When he turned back, he noticed that the cigar box was missing from the top of the bar. She’d already moved it.

  “Hey, Arlen,” Paul said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Who was Edwin Main?”

  Rebecca looked up at that, too, looked Arlen in the eyes for the first time since that afternoon.

  “Nobody, Paul. He was nobody.”

  Silence overcame them quickly. Arlen’s mind was lost to the sudden appearance of smoke in Paul’s eyes, and Rebecca was quiet, with Paul trying too hard to lure her back into conversation. She went upstairs early, but not without first giving his arm a squeeze and telling him to take care of his forehead. He stuttered out something about not being able to feel a thing, giving her the tough-guy routine, but she was already moving up the stairs.

  The two of them sat there in silence for a while, and then Paul went out to the porch. Arlen could see him through the windows, leaning on the rail and staring out at the dark water. He went to the bar and poured two glasses of whiskey, one tall and one quite short, mixing a touch of water in the short glass to level them out. Then he took the two glasses and went out on the porch.

  “Here,” he said, handing the watered-down whiskey to Paul. “After a man gets in a fight, a man deserves a drink.”

  Paul stared at the glass for a moment and then a smile slid over his face and he nodded and took it from Arlen’s hand.

  “Thanks.”

  Arlen drank his whiskey and pretended not to notice when the boy’s eyes began to water after his first sip. They stood there together and listened to the waves breaking.

  “What do you think those guys are doing out here?” Paul said eventually.

  “I don’t know, and like I told ’em tonight—I don’t care. It’s got nothing to do with us.”

  “Well, I do care. Because they’re—”

  “Yeah,” Arlen said. “Because they’re bothering her. I get it.”

  Paul frowned and fell silent.

  “You been gone from Flagg for a while,” Arlen said. “Your mother know where you are? You written her?”

  Paul blinked at him. “What?”

  “Does she think you’re still in Alabama, son?”

  “I, uh, I don’t know. I told her I was going to try to get down to the Keys.”

  “Well, shit, if she’s been reading about that hurricane, she’s probably worried. Show some respect; sit down and write a letter.”

  “She doesn’t do much writing herself,” Paul said, “and I doubt she’s real concerned about me.”

  There was bridling resentment in his voice.

  “But is she counting on your CCC checks?” Arlen said. “I bet she is.”

  “Sure she is. And the first time I’ll hear from her is when she notices the money’s stopped coming in.”

  Arlen took a sip of the whiskey and said, “You’re not making money here, son. You need to find your way back to a camp and do another CCC hitch.”

  “No.” Paul shook his head. “I’m staying.”

  “It’s time we leave.”

  “You know I’m not going to do that.”

  “Paul,” Arlen said, “I don’t think you understand…. You need to leave this place. It’s just like the train, son. I can feel it.”

  Paul lifted his head and stared at him. “What?”

  Arlen nodded.

  “You mean right now? You can see it in me right now?”

  “Not now. Before. When they were here.”

  Paul was quiet for a moment before saying, “Well, it was probably that fight. Maybe he would have cut me or shot me or something.”

  “It was after the fight. When Wade touched your shoulder.”

  Paul frowned.

  “You know I’m not lying,” Arlen said. “You know it’s the truth, Paul. You saw what happened to those men from the train.”

  “When he touched my shoulder?”

  Arlen nodded.

  “Well,” Paul said after a lengthy pause, “it’s gone now, right?”

  “Yes, but that’s not the point.”

  “Sure it is. Whatever was there, it passed. It’s gone now.”

  “Paul, that’s not how it—”

  “Stop it,” Paul said. “I don’t want to hear it. It’s gone, okay? It’s gone!”

  He turned and stomped back inside the Cypress House.

  That night Arlen spent some time lying in the dark, watching the patterns of shadow shift as the moon rose, sipping from the flask and adjusting his position constantly on the bed, as if sleep were just one angle-change away. By now he knew the routine too well, though, and gave up earlier than usual, got to his feet and dressed again, walked downstairs and topped the flask off before going outside.

  For a time he stood just below the porch and smoked a cigarette and watched the waves. Their tops sparkled as they broke. When the cigarette was gone he began to walk, heading south. He walked for a long time, sticking close to the waterline, his hands in his pockets and his mind dancing among Solomon Wade and Edwin Main and his father. Paul was in there, too, and Rebecca Cady, and every now and then someone else would slip through those chinks that even the whiskey was unable to caulk. When an unusually strong wave drove far enough up the shore to catch his feet, he finally came to a stop, looked around to see that the moon was much higher and the Cypress House was nowhere in sight. The coastal forest had encroached quietly around him, the stretch of beach much narrower here, the trees leaning close to the sea. He turned and started back.

  Eventually the silhouette of the Cypress House showed. He had the passing thought that he needed to finish the widow’s walk, and then he saw something moving along the beach and everything else faded from his mind.

  It was a shimmering white shape that seemed to emerge from the waterline, and for one short, frozen-heart moment he had visions of all the stories of ghosts and haints that he’d heard in his boyhood. Then the figure turned, and he saw that it was Rebecca Cady. She was wearing a white gown, and she’d walked all the way down to the water’s edge and was now wading into the surf.

  He advanced slowly, grateful for the sand that allowed silent steps. He could see that she was holding something in her hands but couldn’t make out what. She stood for a moment as if in hesitation, then backed out of the water and set the object down in the sand. It looked like the cigar box Wade had given her.

  She dipped her hands and grasped the hem of her gown and lifted it up her body and over her head and then it was off and she was standing naked on the sand. Arlen felt his breath catch, a flush rising through him. She was a tall woman, and somehow both soft and absent of fat, each curve sublime and sculpted. Even in the moonlight, her body was enough to numb his brain. He stood dumbly and stared as she picked the box up and went back into the sea.

  She paused when the water reached her knees, as if adjusting to the temperature, and then stepped out deeper, lifting the box as she went. When the water reached her breasts, she stopped and, for just a moment, stood with the box over her head and the waves breaking high enough to drench the ends of her hair. Then she pivoted back toward the shore and whirled out to sea again, flinging the box away from her.

  She didn’t get it far. The wind was working against her, and her motion was awkward. The box tumbled maybe fifteen feet out into the sea and landed flat, barely making a splash. For a few seconds it floated, riding back toward shore with the swells, almost all the way to where she stood, and then it began to sink and disappeared from sight.

  Rebecca Cady stayed in the water and watched it. She looked for a long time at the place where it had vanished, and then she turned and waded back out of the sea and onto the beach.
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  For a while she stood on the sand, her head bowed, letting the wind fan over her body and dry her skin. Arlen’s throat felt thick, watching her. He didn’t move, just stood where he was until she’d picked up the gown and pulled it over her head and walked up to the house.

  Only when he was sure she would be back in her room did he slip off his shoes and remove his shirt and trousers and venture into the water in search of the box.

  22

  IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT when he found it. He’d seen the spot clearly enough where it entered the water, marked it the best that he could, but it was a big ocean and things shifted as they sank. He went up and down the short stretch of shore where it had to have ended up, walking carefully, dragging his feet through the rough sand, waiting for the telltale feel of the wooden box. He didn’t like being out in the dark, with so many unseen creatures circling the waters around him. Sharks were like alligators, prehistoric beasts that had somehow managed to last through one world and into the next. At least you could see their fins in daylight. Out here in the dark, one of them could be at his side and he wouldn’t know.

  He looked for more than an hour and didn’t find anything. Tired, he went back to the beach and sat in the sand. The air was warm, but the breeze chilled the moisture on his skin and soon had him ready to return to the water.

  He was still searching but the expectation of success was dimming in his mind when the side of his right foot thumped against something solid. He paused and dragged his foot back and felt the impact again, dipped and let a wave slap over his head, drenching him, as he felt with his hands. As soon as his fingers made contact, he knew this had to be it. He pulled it from the sand and broke the surface again, then waded out of the surf.

  There was a book of matches in his pants pocket, and he went back up and sat in the sand again and took them out. The twine was still there, and Rebecca had used it to secure a flat stone to the box, ensuring that it would sink. He untied it, lit a match, and opened the lid. He was kneeling in the sand now, and when the match light caught the inside of the box and revealed its contents, he stumbled upright and backward. The match dropped into the sand and snuffed out. He stood where he was for a moment, then took a deep breath, lit another match, and bent for a second look.

  Inside the box was a pair of hands.

  They’d been severed just above the wrists, cut with a clean chop from a cleaver or an ax, not sawed away. What blood had been in the hands had long since drained, maybe before they were put into the box, maybe once the seawater found its way inside; what was left was swollen gray flesh with strings of muscle and shards of bone exposed at the bottoms. They were a man’s hands, but the decomposing flesh hid any clue as to what kind of man; details like calluses or scars or carefully tended fingernails were now impossible to detect.

  The match burned down and scorched his fingers, and then he dropped that one, too, closed the lid of the box, and sat down heavily in the sand. He found his flask and took a long drink and then fastened the cap and sat staring at the box as the wind drove hard across the water. He stared for a long time and then got to his feet and walked to the house and found the shovel.

  Back at the beach, he gathered the box, feeling a prickle of horror as he heard the contents slide around inside, and then walked down the shore with the box in one hand and the shovel in the other. He walked until he found a tree that had been broken in half by the hurricane, and then he carefully marked five paces out from it and began to dig. When the hole was about three feet deep, he dropped the box into the center and filled it back in with sand. He smoothed the surface with the underside of the shovel’s blade, then spent some time walking back and forth over the top, until he was satisfied that the disturbed ground would be nearly impossible to spot.

  When he was done, he walked back to the house and replaced the shovel. He paused on the porch and smoked a cigarette in the dark, and then he opened the door and went inside to find Rebecca Cady.

  Her room was dark and the door was closed. There was no sound inside but the occasional creaking of the house in the wind. Paul’s room was directly next to hers, but it was silent as well. Arlen opened the door as softly as he could, looked inside and saw the outline of her body on the bed. Her chest rose and fell slowly. She was asleep.

  He crossed the room until he was standing at the side of her bed. There was a chair next to the bed, and a pair of pistols rested on it. He stared at them for a few seconds, and then he reached out and laid his hand on her shoulder.

  She came awake with a start, was about to let out a cry, but he moved his hand to her mouth in time to muffle it. She twisted to the side and reached for the chair where the pistols lay, but he blocked that with his hip and said, “Easy.”

  She bit his hand.

  It was a damn good bite, one that broke the flesh and made him grunt with pain. He jerked away and stepped back and she went for the guns again, but he kept in front of the chair.

  “Get out. What are you—”

  “You lost your box in the ocean,” he said in a low voice, conscious of Paul in the room next to them, wanting very much for the boy to sleep through this. “I went in and found it for you.”

  She went still and silent. She was propped up on the heels of her hands now, pushed back against the headboard, lit by the moon glow.

  “I think it’s time we talk,” Arlen said. “At least it’s time I talk to somebody. You got a chance for it to be you. Pass, and I’ll find someone else.”

  She said, “All right. We’ll talk.”

  “Downstairs,” he said. “We don’t need Paul waking up for this.”

  “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Arlen smiled in the dark and shook his head.

  “We’ll go on down together,” he said. “I’d like to make sure those pistols don’t make the trip with you.”

  23

  THEY WENT DOWNSTAIRS and she motioned at one of the tables in the barroom, but he shook his head.

  “Outside. Like I said, I don��t want to wake the boy.”

  So they went out on the porch, and Arlen leaned against the railing and faced her, his hand oozing blood from the bite. She didn’t sit but stood with her arms folded under her breasts. The breeze had cooled, and her nipples budded against the thin fabric of the gown.

  She cleaned a pool of blood off the floor and didn’t call anyone to report the crime, Arlen thought. She threw a pair of severed hands into the ocean and wouldn’t have said a word about that either. Don’t you look at her, Wagner. Don’t you dare let yourself keep looking at her like that. It’s only trouble.

  “I was out on the beach,” he said. “I saw you go in the water and throw Wade’s box out there, and I figured I ought to see what was in it. Took a damn long time to find the thing, but I did.”

  “You were watching me?” she said, squeezing herself tighter.

  “That’s right,” he said. “But I’m a lot more interested in that box than I am in your body. It’s a fine-looking body, even in the dark, but I don’t give a damn. I want to hear what in the hell it is that Solomon Wade is doing out here, and why you’re letting it happen. And I want to hear the truth.”

  She was quiet, looking past him at the moonlit sea.

  “You got one chance to tell it,” he said. “Otherwise, I’ll be back with the law. It won’t be Tolliver either. There’s real law in places not far off.”

  She dropped into a chair as if the strength had left her legs, leaned forward and clasped her hands together, like a woman in prayer.

  “It’s my brother.”

  “Your brother?”

  “He’s in prison,” she said. “Raiford. He’s only twenty years old. It was working with Solomon Wade that got him into trouble.”

  “That experience made you eager to work with him yourself?”

  She looked up at him. “If I don’t, Solomon will have Owen killed. He’s done it before. I can show you newspaper articles if you’d like. There are at least three men who have
been killed in prisons or work camps in this state because Solomon Wade ordered it to happen.”

  “That shows up in the papers?”

  “Of course not. But I can show you articles about the men who died, and then I can tell you the truth about why they died, and how.”

  “He’s a judge,” Arlen said. “A crooked one, sure, but still a judge. He’s not some sort of Al Capone or—”

  But she was shaking her head.

  “He’s as dangerous as anyone in the state.”

  “Who in the hell is he?” Arlen said. “How does a backwoods county judge like that get so much power?”

  “He’s not a backwoods county judge,” she said. “He’s a handpicked choice of evil men, sent here from New Orleans.”

  “Why? What was here for him?”

  “Smuggling.”

  “What’s he into now? It isn’t rum-running these days.”

  “Morphine. Or that’s what he calls it. Heroin.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Strength. One grain of heroin is the same as three grains of morphine.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  “He brings this in from Cuba?”

  “That’s right. Hidden in orange crates. The crates are dropped off in my inlet, loaded up in trucks, and taken to New Orleans, Memphis, and Kansas City. My brother was driving one of them when he was arrested. He refused to talk to the police, because to do so would implicate my father and Wade. So he told a pretty lie and now he sits in Raiford with no idea that Solomon Wade, his trusted boss, is using his life as blackmail.”

  “This is still happening?” Arlen said. “The smuggling, here?”

  “Yes. Every six weeks or so. A lot of drugs come through this inlet. And a lot of money.”

  “Solomon suggested as much to me,” Arlen said. “You said he was handpicked by people in New Orleans, but judge is an elected position. As is sheriff. How did those two come from other places and get themselves elected?”

  “Bribes, swindling, and intimidation,” she said. “Solomon was the first. Then he brought Tolliver down from Cleveland and got him elected the same way. They don’t answer to the people of this county or anyone in the entire state; they answer to New Orleans, New York, and Chicago. I don’t think smuggling has anything to do with Solomon wanting to be a judge, though. It has to do with power, and background. He’s building both. What he wants won’t be found in Corridor County. He intends to go far beyond that.”