The Cypress House

by Michael Koryta

  “You get seasick?” Paul said.

  She looked away.

  “I’d be very, very sick out on that boat.”

  There was less than an hour of sunlight left when they got aboard, and it took ten minutes to satisfy themselves with an understanding of the engine and get the anchor up. It would have taken Arlen an hour to do the same, but Paul took one look at the boat’s cockpit and began addressing the various elements as if they were old friends.

  “Look,” Paul said as they headed out, “rifles.”

  There were two of them in a rack in the cockpit. Springfields. Same rifles Arlen had used to take more than a few German lives. The sight of them made him uneasy.

  “Ignorant place to store rifles,” he said. “Unless you rub them down with oil constant, that salt water will work on them fast.”

  Paul walked up as if to inspect them, and Arlen called him off. “Leave them be, damn it. I thought you wanted to play with the boat, not the weapons.”

  They kept it at a crawl all the way out of the inlet and into open water, and then Paul wanted to let it run.

  “We don’t know what’s out there,” Arlen said. “Could be a reef or—”

  “Rebecca said it was clear straight out from the Cypress House.”

  “Fine,” Arlen said. “You want to drown us both, go ahead.”

  He turned the wheel over, and Paul opened the throttle up and got the big engine chugging away, and soon they were well out in front of the inn, chasing a setting sun across the Gulf.

  It was, Arlen had to admit, a hell of a nice thing.

  Behind them the rural coast extended with its stretches of beach and thickets of palms and sea grasses, and ahead the water shimmered bloodred and endless. The wind was coming up out of the southwest, warm and mild, putting just enough chop in the water that the hull of the boat spanked against the waves and sent spray over the stern and let them feel like real sailors.

  When they were far enough out that the Cypress House looked like a thimble, Arlen told him to bring it around.

  “Let’s shut the engine off for a minute,” Paul said.

  “You shut that engine off, we’ll likely not get it started again. Drift halfway to Cuba before somebody comes for us.”

  “It’ll start again, Arlen. I started and stopped it three times back there before you let us take it out.”

  Arlen grunted and muttered but didn’t lay down a firm objection, and Paul cut the engine.

  “There we go,” the boy said when the clattering had ceased, breathing the words out like a prayer. It was silent now, save for the wind and water, no other boat in sight. “Isn’t this something?”

  It was something, all right. They were alone on the ocean, rising and falling with gentle waves, nothing but warm red light and water all around them. Arlen stood up, holding on to the cockpit roof with one hand for balance, and stared out to the west, squinting against the fading sun. So much water. It just went on and on and on, a sight that squeezed the soul. He felt so damn small out here. And that felt good. Maybe that was strange, but it felt good. He was insignificant. The world was too big to care about his decisions. There was no weight here, no burden.

  “I’ve never been on the ocean before,” Paul said. “All the time we’ve been working there, I kept wishing she had a boat. I’d look at the water and wish I could see what it’s like out here.”

  “You’re seeing it.”

  “It’s wonderful.”

  Arlen sat back down in one of the fishing chairs mounted in the stern and stretched backward and looked at the darkening sky. A pale orb of moon was rising, climbing even as the sun retreated. The boat was tinted with an ethereal red glow.

  “What do you want to do, Paul?” Arlen asked.

  “Sit here a little longer, if that’s—”

  “No. I mean with your life. What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What in the hell happened? Back at Flagg, you were full of plans. Had everything all mapped out. I know we didn’t make the Keys—which is a damn good thing—but what happened to the rest of your ideas?”

  The boy was quiet. When he spoke again, his voice was low.

  “I’ve got my whole life ahead of me, Arlen. Right now, I’m just worried about finishing that dock.”

  “Well, that’s an ignorant way to think,” Arlen said, enough heat in the words to raise Paul’s head. “You got a damned gift, and you know it. Aren’t you going to try and make something of it?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Get a plan in your head, then. The CCC was good for you, but it’s—”

  “I don’t want to go back to it. Not anymore.”

  “That’s fine. Where you ought to be is some sort of engineering or mechanical school. I don’t know much about them, but I know they’ve got them, and that’s what you should be looking for. Something that’ll let you go on to designing projects instead of hauling supplies for them. You ever heard of that Carnegie school in Pittsburgh?”

  He knew the boy had; it was Paul who had told him about it.

  “Sure,” Paul said. There was a wariness to him now.

  “Well, you ought to try to get in something like that.”

  Paul seemed to think on his next words carefully before he said them.

  “Right now, I don’t want to think about leaving this place. Not without her. I know what you’re saying, but I’ve got different priorities right now.”

  “Is that so?” Arlen said, voice soft.

  “It is.”

  Arlen nodded and went silent. There wasn’t much of the sun left now, and behind them the Cypress House had disappeared into darkness. The wind had stilled a bit as the light faded, the boat’s rise and fall gentler now than before.

  “If I were to tell you,” Arlen said, “as clearly as I could, and as sincerely, that you need to get out of this place, what would you do?”

  “I’d stay. I’d be careful, but I’d stay.”

  “All right,” Arlen said. They were quiet for a time then, as the remnants of sun melted away and the moon sharpened against the night sky and the wind died down altogether until they seemed to be adrift on the world’s largest pond.

  “Let’s go in,” Arlen said.

  Paul fired up the engine and brought them back. They’d stayed out too long; by the time they neared the shore it was so dark they wouldn’t have been able to find the inlet. Rebecca was ready for them, though, had walked down to the dock with a lantern, and Arlen took the wheel and followed the glow through the darkness.

  They’d anchored the rowboat in the center of the inlet, and he managed to position the big boat close enough so that they could climb down into it. Rebecca was waiting in silence on the dock. Just as Arlen bent to the oars, Paul said, “Thanks for that, Arlen. I wanted to be on the water. It was special, you know?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sure was.”

  He waited no more than ten minutes after Paul had gone to bed before he went to Rebecca’s room. He paused in the hallway and looked at the two doors, set so close together. He could hear Paul still shifting in his bed when he knocked softly on Rebecca’s door and stepped inside, and she looked up with surprise. She was standing by the window.

  He walked over and took her face in his hands and kissed her.

  “I was going to come to your room,” she whispered.

  “We can stay here,” he said, not in a whisper, and then he kissed her again, moving her toward the bed. She went willingly, but there was confusion in her eyes.

  They kissed for a while. He moved roughly on the bed, shifting, banging the old wooden headboard off the wall, springs creaking beneath him.

  “Paul will hear,” she whispered once.

  He didn’t reply.

  They’d shed their clothes and he’d rolled over on top of her when she pushed him back with her hands on his chest and looked at him knowingly.

  “You want him to hear.”

  “It’s not want,” h
e said. “It’s need.”

  She hesitated and then nodded slowly. “I understand.”

  They got back to the show then. She played her part well.

  30

  HE DIDN’T STAY LONG after they were finished. She watched as he dressed but said nothing. He gave her one silent look as he stood at the door, and then he opened it and stepped out into the hallway. It was dark and empty, and there was no sound from Paul’s room. He walked down the hall and opened the door to his own room and found Paul sitting in the chair by the window.

  Neither of them spoke. Arlen shut the door behind him and leaned against it and waited. It was dark in the room, and he was glad.

  “Of all the things to lie about,” Paul said, voice trembling, “you picked the dirtiest. Lying about my death, Arlen? Trying to scare me away with stories like that so you can have her?”

  “Wasn’t a lie.”

  “Yes, it was!” Paul came up off the chair, his hands clenched into fists. “It was a damned lie, and you said it because you want me to leave.”

  Arlen didn’t answer.

  “You bastard,” Paul said. “You lying old bastard. You knew how I felt. Sat there and listened to me tell you all about it like we were close, like there was trust between us. You heard it all, and then you went and took her.”

  “She’s a woman,” Arlen said. “Not a boat. She can’t be taken or left at the whims of other people. Don’t think of her like that.”

  “Don’t tell me how to think of her. You know how I think of her, and still you did this.”

  Arlen folded his arms over his chest and stared at a shadow just over the boy’s shoulder.

  “How long has it been happening?” Paul said. “Was this the first time?”

  “No.”

  “No!” he cried, and the genuine anguish in his voice slid into Arlen like a knife between the ribs. “So it’s been days of this? Days of it, and you haven’t had the courage to say a word? How much older than me are you, and you couldn’t be a man? You couldn’t say the truth?”

  Arlen was silent.

  “Then you lied,” Paul said, his voice softer but no less outraged. “You told me I was going to die, Arlen, told me I was going to be killed. That’s how you handle it? Instead of the truth, you tell me that?”

  “That wasn’t a lie. It was just like on the train. You had—”

  “Stop! Don’t tell me more of that; I can’t hear it again. None of it’s true. You’re crazy. You ought to be locked up somewhere.” His voice broke as he said, “And she picked you?”

  For a moment Paul stood there as if trying to gather himself to continue speaking, but then he crossed the room in a rush. There was an instant in which Arlen thought the kid was going to hit him, and wishing for it. He’d gladly take the blows. Then he realized he was going only for the door, and moved aside as Paul shoved past him and into the hall, slamming the door behind him. The wall trembled with the force of it, and his footsteps echoed through the hall, and then another door slammed and it was silent.

  Arlen found his flask and climbed into bed.

  Rebecca woke him in the morning. She was standing beside the bed with her hand on his forearm, and when he opened his eyes she said, “He’s gone.”

  He sat up stiffly, the now-empty flask still on his lap, and walked down the hall. The door to Paul’s room was open. Inside, no sign of the boy remained. His bags were gone. The bed was neatly made.

  They went downstairs, and Arlen stepped out on the front porch and then went to the back and looked in all directions, and there was no trace of him. He went back inside. Rebecca was sitting at one of the tables.

  “I wonder if there was another way,” she said.

  “There wasn’t. He wouldn’t have gone.”

  “I wish there’d been another way.” She sounded close to tears.

  He thought that he should go to her but didn’t want to, not right now. He became aware of a ticking as he stood in the silent room, and when he looked up above the bar he felt something swell in his chest.

  “He fixed your clock,” he said.

  Paul hadn’t been able to get the thing back up by himself, so he’d taken the brass casing and propped it up against the wall. The hands showed the correct time, and it ticked away steadily.

  “He fixed the damn clock,” Arlen said, and he didn’t like the sound of his voice. Rebecca looked up at him as if she were going to speak, but he walked across the room and out through the front door. He walked off the porch and down the trail and out to the unfinished dock. When he reached the end, he sat down with his feet hanging free above the water and pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He took a long drag and looked out across the inlet.

  “He’s better off,” he said aloud. “He’s safe.”

  He went for another drag, but this time his hand was shaking and he hardly got the cigarette to his lips. When he did, there wasn’t enough breath in his lungs to draw any smoke. He took the cigarette away again and the shaking was worse and it fell from his fingers and into the water. Once it was gone, he bowed his head and wept into his hands.

  Part Three

  OWEN

  31

  HE WORKED ALONE ALL DAY, measuring and cutting and hammering as the wind died off and the sun rose high and hot, the air so humid it felt like moving through tar, searing and sticky. In the afternoon Rebecca came down and stood on the dock with him.

  “You really believe he was going to be killed,” she said.

  “I don’t believe it. I know it.” He didn’t turn to look at her.

  “So he needed to leave. He had to.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Couldn’t we have talked him into it?”

  “No.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I know him. If I’d gone to him and told him the truth about us, he would have been shattered, but he also would have stayed. I’m certain of that. I had to hurt him. Drive him away.”

  “I hate that,” she said. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I hate that we had to—”

  “I know.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “It won’t be the same. It’s going to feel… empty without him.”

  “Yes,” Arlen said.

  “Why didn’t you leave with him?”

  He turned with a board in his hands and looked at her. “Do you really need to hear that answer?”

  “I hope I don’t,” she said softly.

  “You don’t.”

  She waited a minute and said, “Will you go with us?”

  “You and Owen?”

  She nodded.

  He looked away, out to the mouth of the inlet, where a pair of shrieking gulls circled, looking for a meal.

  “There’s no obligation to you,” he said. “I’m staying, and I’ll help. I will do what I can. If you want to take your brother and disappear, though…” He shrugged and left the rest unspoken.

  “I want to disappear,” she said, “from Solomon Wade. Not you.”

  “You say that firm,” Arlen said, “yet you haven’t known me long.”

  “I know you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you don’t believe it,” she said, “then why are you still here?”

  “Oh, I believe it. Probably more than you. We’re kindred.”

  “Yes.”

  “In ways you don’t even understand,” he said, “we are kindred.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You see blood on your hands that no one else does.”

  She tilted her head and frowned. “And you do, too?”

  He was silent.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Another day.”

  “I’ll wait. I’ve learned how to wait.”

  He wanted to smile, but it wasn’t a day for smiling. He sat back on his heels and stared at the gulls and felt the sweat bead and glide along his skin.

  “What are you thinking?” she said.

  “T
hat I showed up here looking for a ride back to the CCC. That’s all I was looking for. We were supposed to be here an hour.”

  “My parents were supposed to be enjoying this place right now. People were supposed to be coming in with hundreds of dollars in their pockets for fishing and drinking and sunshine. I was supposed to be in Savannah.” She shook her head. “ ‘Supposed to be’ doesn’t mean much to me anymore. Everyone in this country was full of plans a few years ago, and how many of them do you think even dare to make plans for the future now? They just get through each day. Times like these, it’s all you can do.”

  He nodded and ran his fingertips along the edge of the board, wiping rough sawdust clear from the cut.

  “If I’m staying,” he said, “I need to know the plan. I deserve that much.”

  She said, “Maine.”

  The word shivered through him. Edwin Main. Edwin and his wife, Joy.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Nothing. That’s where you intend to go?”

  She nodded.

  “You ever been there? You know anybody there?”

  “No. That’s why it’s perfect. We’ll be strangers there, far from this place and the people from it.”

  She lifted a hand, rubbed at her forehead, brought it back glistening with sweat, and held it out to him as if it were evidence of something.

  “As far from this place as possible,” she said. “You don’t know how often I think of Maine. How much time I spend imagining it. Right now it’s moving toward autumn there. There are cold breezes during the day, and at night you pull an extra blanket over yourself and in the morning the grass is crisp and a deep breath chills your lungs instead of choking you. The leaves are going orange and red and brown. It’s not trapped in green, always green. There’s change. In a month or so they’ll have the first snow. Just a tease of what’s to come, but it will snow. There will be a white dusting of it in the morning, maybe, or a few flakes in the air. You know I’ve only seen snow twice in my life?”

  She was staring across the inlet as she spoke, into the thick green tangle that grew there, where a few unseen birds shrilled and occasionally something splashed in the water.