The Cypress House

by Michael Koryta

  “There.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure. We still got our job tomorrow night?”

  Owen looked at Arlen, uneasy, but nodded. “Yeah. We got our job.”

  “Good,” Paul said. “I could use the money. No offense to you, Owen, but I’ve had my fill of this place.”

  Arlen went to the bar and poured a drink but didn’t take a sip of it. He was watching Paul and remembering him the way he’d looked that day when he corrected Arlen’s mistake on the pitch of the roof at Flagg Mountain, the good-natured, deep-rooted interest he took in every joint and every hinge. The way he’d taken that generator apart and scattered its pieces over the porch and set to work putting it back together again without a doubt in his head, sure it could be done. He remembered those times, and the night they’d taken the boat out, and he looked at this thin young man with the permanent scowl who stood before him now and thought, I did this. I was only trying to help, but I did this.

  “What are you staring at?” Paul said.

  “Nothing,” Arlen said, voice soft. “Nothing at all.”

  He took a drink, but he had no taste for it, and then he slid the glass away from him and went through the swinging door into the kitchen.

  Rebecca had a slice of ham frying in a skillet on the stove, and she turned to him as if to speak but instead she just stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him and put her face to his neck. He wrapped his own around her, and they held each other in silence for a long time. Her face was warm on his neck, and he could feel her breathing and for some reason he had to close his eyes and hold that moment in darkness.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sorry?”

  “For it all. This isn’t something you should be a part of. I wish I could—”

  “Stop,” he said, voice gentle. “We’re going to handle this. All right? It’s not but a day left, Rebecca. By the time the sun goes down out there on the water tomorrow, you’ll be gone from this place. Going north, to Maine, just the way you hoped. I’ll see that it happens.”

  He pushed her back and lifted her chin and kissed her. Soft and slow. When he broke the kiss, he said, “Is there a train that could be taken yet tonight?”

  She frowned. “One more before the end of the night, but it’s an hour’s drive. What are you asking for?”

  “I’d like to give Paul his share and put him on it.”

  She stepped back and looked at him in surprise. “Already?”

  He nodded. “I want him clear of this, Rebecca. Make no mistake—I intend to see it through just as we’ve planned, but I want him clear of it. He’s ready to leave this place. We’ve soured him on it, on us, on damn near everything. I can’t change that. But I can put money in his pocket and get him aboard a train and hope for the best for him.”

  She put her hands on his shoulders and said, “I love you.”

  All he could get out was “Yeah.” They both laughed then, and he took her close and said, “I love you, too. And I don’t give a damn what’s happened since I got here, or what’s left to come—I found my way to you. Any price that must be paid in exchange for that is a small one.”

  She kissed him again, and this time he could feel a tear gliding off her skin and onto his own, and then she took the burlap sack with the five thousand dollars down from the shelf and handed it to him. He left her there in the kitchen and went for Paul.

  43

  PAUL WAS DRINKING WITH OWEN. Trying to engage him in some of the usual tales, asking about Dillinger and Handsome Harry Pierpont, the one they electrocuted up in Ohio, inquiring about them as if he thought Owen had ridden at their sides. Even Owen wasn’t having it tonight, though. He looked worn, and all he said was “Ah, those boys didn’t hardly spend any time in Florida at all. A few months when they was hiding out once, but that was all.”

  Arlen said, “Paul?”

  He turned and looked at Arlen with that usual expression of distaste, a glass of liquor in his hand. “What?”

  “Give me a minute, would you? Step out on the porch.”

  “I’m having a conversation.”

  Arlen said, “Paul,” one more time, no change of tone at all. He got a sigh of annoyance and the slap of the glass smacking down hard on the table before the boy rose and followed him out onto the back porch. It was still raining, but the wind had shifted direction and lessened enough so that it didn’t spray under the porch roof and soak them. They stood out there in the dark, and Paul folded his arms across his chest and stared at Arlen.

  “Whatever you got to say, it’s probably not worth the time. I don’t need to go through it again. I don’t need to hear your stories or your warnings or your—”

  “Open that up and take a look inside,” Arlen said, passing him the sack. He watched as Paul took it warily, opened it, and went slack-jawed. He reached inside gingerly, as if he were going to frighten the money right out of the bag by moving sudden, and fanned his thumb over the edges of the bills.

  “Where’d you get all this?”

  “The same man you were hoping to earn it from.”

  Paul looked up. “Wade?”

  “That’s right. There’s five thousand dollars in that bag.”

  “Five thousand—”

  “And it’s yours,” Arlen said. “Provided you get your gear together right now and ride with me to the train station. You go wherever you like from there. I’m not going to tell you another thing, not going to give you another bit of advice. You don’t want to hear it, and I don’t deserve to say it. Not anymore. But regardless of what you think or what you believe, I want you to know this: you better get your ass out of this state, and fast.”

  Paul was still staring at the bag.

  “We got an agreement?” Arlen said.

  “How’d you get this?”

  “Don’t worry about that. It’s my concern. The money, though, is yours. And it’s enough to take you far from here and put you up for a time. Be smart with it, though. Use it to get yourself set in a way…” He stopped then and shook his head. “Hell, I just said I was done telling you what you ought to do, and here I go again. I’ll shut my mouth now. But you take that money and tuck it down in your bags and let’s go. You ready to do that?”

  Paul nodded. He seemed to have gone pale at the sight of the money. When he swallowed, it looked like it took some effort.

  “Okay,” he said. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

  Arlen hung back and sat with Owen while Paul got his bags together, moving slowly, as if his limbs had gone numb. Rebecca came back out of the kitchen and watched him ready his gear.

  “You can’t even stay for a meal?” she said. She was speaking to Arlen.

  He shook his head. “Faster we move, the better. Aren’t going to be trains going through if we let it get much later.”

  “Long drive to the station, too,” she murmured. She’d already given him instructions on how to get there. With no train station left in Corridor County, it would take some time. Might be longer than an hour, with rain like this.

  Paul straightened and looked around as if he had no idea what to say or do next. He knew there was something playing out in the room that he wasn’t privy to, but in the end he decided not to ask. He just said, “You all take care.”

  Rebecca crossed the room and hugged him. He bristled for an instant, as if he wanted to resist, but then he returned the embrace, and Arlen saw him, for just an instant, close his eyes exactly as Arlen had done back in the kitchen.

  “Take care,” Paul repeated, and then he stepped away.

  They went outside and splashed through the yard and climbed into the truck. There was another band of storms passing over now, and the thunder was so loud and close that for a moment Arlen didn’t even realize the truck’s motor had caught. Once he had it in gear, he cast a backward glance at the Cypress House, the top half dark, the bottom lit, Rebecca’s silhouette in the window, watching them. He saw her lift a hand, and he lifted his own, though he knew she c
ould not see it.

  The road was a washout of gleaming silver rainwater, and the truck’s tires spun once in the wet mud and threatened to bog down before finding enough purchase to push ahead. It was the hardest rain Arlen had seen since the hurricane they’d come in with. Seemed fitting to take Paul out in the same weather.

  Paul was quiet until they got to the paved road. Then he said, “You going to steal that money or earn it by working for him on some crooked thing?”

  Arlen didn’t look at him, didn’t answer.

  Paul said, “Arlen, if I’m traveling with those dollars in my pocket, I ought to know how they were gained.”

  “You know damn well. They belong to Wade. You think they came to him honest?”

  “But how did you get them?”

  “Don’t trouble yourself none over that. Just take them and go on. You have an idea of where you might go?”

  “Not really.”

  “Could try that Carnegie school you’ve talked of,” Arlen said. “Don’t know how much money would be needed for such a thing, but I imagine that’s a hell of a start.”

  “It is.” Paul’s tone had changed, the sharp edge dulling as they drove farther into the swamp woods. “Arlen, what are you going to do?”

  He stayed silent, wondering whether any harm could come from the boy knowing the plan. If they caught up with him, Tate McGrath or somebody else entirely, would ignorance help? Arlen didn’t figure it would. Not at that point.

  “I’m going to kill him,” he said finally. They’d just passed their first car, the road fading back to darkness as soon as its headlights went by.

  “Wade?”

  Arlen nodded.

  “Are you crazy? What do you mean, you’re going to kill him?”

  Rebecca had said it was an hour’s drive to the train station. That was time to tell it. Arlen figured it might as well be told.

  “You remember the day McGrath came at you with that chair leg?”

  “Of course.”

  “You remember the box Wade brought with them that day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” Arlen said. “Let me tell you what was inside. It’s as good a place to start as any I know.”

  They drove along through the darkness and the rain and Arlen explained it all, starting with the night he’d retrieved the box containing Walter Sorenson’s hands from the sea. He explained about Rebecca and Owen’s father and the threats that had been made to Rebecca while her brother was in prison.

  “There’s plenty of evidence as to what happens when a man tries to run from Solomon Wade,” Arlen said. “More than enough evidence for me. I’m not going to leave him behind to chase her. I can’t.”

  “When are you going to do it?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “That’s when the Cubans are coming in,” Arlen said. “It’ll have to be done then or he’ll miss his money. We’ll need that money to have a chance.”

  Paul dropped his eyes to the bag on his lap. “How much is there? Total.”

  “Ten.”

  “You gave me half?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why? I’m not doing a thing. You’re giving me half that money and setting me out a day before anything’s to happen?”

  “Hell, yes, I am,” Arlen said. “I don’t give a damn what you care to believe, because I know that it is true: you’ll die at that man’s hand if you stay in this place. All your words of argument aren’t going to change the truth of it.”

  But Paul didn’t offer any words of argument. Instead he said, “Rebecca told me about your father,” in a soft voice.

  “I heard that.”

  Paul looked up. “Is it true?”

  “It’s true.”

  “She told me about France, too,” he said. “The things you claimed you saw…”

  “Claimed” you saw. Still not believing.

  “Tell you something about that,” Arlen said. “The worst things I saw there were the real ones. A man with smoke-eyes, he could still be saved, time to time. The others, though? The fields I walked through stacked with corpses? Those men’s chances had passed, Paul.”

  Paul didn’t say anything. Arlen knew he didn’t believe it, and that was fine. He’d long ago lost the hope of convincing people to believe him. Some might for a time—Paul had once, Rebecca seemed to now—but most wouldn’t or couldn’t, and he’d made peace with the realization that all he could do was provide help. Tonight was more of that.

  You’re going to need to believe.

  His father’s words floated across the years to him now, the sight of his bearded face and those eyes that had looked so soft, so gentle in the moment that he’d uttered his final sentences to his son.

  He told you that, Arlen thought, and you’ve spent the rest of your days trying to convince others to believe you, but you still won’t believe him. That’s what Rebecca doesn’t understand. How come you can’t believe him?

  It was a question with an easy answer, but Arlen had avoided facing that answer head-on for years and would continue to do so. If his father had been telling the truth, then his death out there in the cold wind and the dust, well, it had been at Arlen’s hand every bit as much as Edwin Main’s. Arlen had gone and brought that death home, had sought it out and betrayed his own family and…

  He was crazy, Arlen thought with so much vehemence that he nearly said it aloud. What he believed, no man should. You can’t speak to the dead. Those who try are fools, and those who claim to… well, they’re a shade darker.

  They came to a crossroads unmarked by signs, but Rebecca had described it and he knew to turn left, north. They were probably twenty minutes from the next town now, from the train station. The rain was slackening, but the lightning had picked back up, illuminating the countryside in ghoulish flashes.

  “You might put some of those dollars in an envelope and send them to your mother,” Arlen said. “If you need it all, fine. But she was used to your CCC checks. Don’t forget your family, no matter how they seem to you.”

  Paul didn’t answer. Arlen knew his days of influence with the young man were past, but he couldn’t help himself, not now that more cars were passing and the woods were broken here and there by clusters of homes, making it clear that they were nearing the town. This would be the last he’d see of him, and he couldn’t hold back from offering advice even when he knew he should not.

  “You keep a sharp eye out for a time to come,” he said. “I expect you’ll never be looked for, never be connected to what we do. But there’s a chance, and you better be ready for it. Get far from this place and live quiet for a time. Keep your head up and your eyes open. If they send somebody, you’ll need help, and you’ll need it fast. I hope they don’t send anybody.”

  His voice went a little unsteady at that, and he cleared his throat loudly and blinked at another flash of lightning.

  “I want you to know,” he said, “I didn’t plan on her.”

  Paul turned and looked at him, didn’t say a word.

  “It wasn’t a decision I made,” Arlen said. “What I did to get you to leave was, and maybe it was the wrong one. She always thought it was. I just thought… I needed you to leave. But I didn’t plan on her. All right?”

  Silence.

  Arlen nodded as if Paul had offered some response, and drove on through the dark.

  “We’ve got the money,” Paul said eventually. “Maybe you left half of it back there, but I’ve got five thousand in this bag. We could get on a train together. Isn’t any reason you’d have to kill him. We could head out together, same as we came in.”

  All the bristle that he’d carried since his return was gone. He sounded, once again, like the boy Arlen had met at Flagg Mountain, the boy who’d conceived of the concrete chute that saved them who knew how much money and time. It made something in Arlen loosen and sag a little, knowing that the old Paul was still in there. It was a hell of a thing, the way a simple change in tone of
voice could hit you. The idea that he’d be willing to leave this place at Arlen’s side, after everything that had happened, stilled the words in Arlen’s throat.

  “I appreciate that,” he said finally. It was an odd thing to say. Awkward, formal.

  “But you won’t do it.”

  “When I leave here,” Arlen said softly, “it’s going to be with her. It’ll have to be with her. I can’t go any other way.”

  Paul went silent. Arlen thought again of the night they’d spent sleeping on the broken boards of the boathouse, the way the boy had told him he couldn’t leave her behind, and he felt hot shame spread throughout his body.

  I can’t help it, he wanted to say. You’d think we’re supposed to be matched up one by one, and the matching would be easy. You’d know her for certain when you saw her, and she’d know you. That’s how easy it should be. It isn’t, though. It isn’t, and I’m sorry.

  They’d crossed into the outskirts of the town now, and train tracks had appeared parallel to the road. Up ahead the lights of the station were visible. There was a locomotive spitting easy, gentle smoke from its stack. Warming, ready to take to the rails and head north. Last train for the night.

  Paul said, “You can’t kill Solomon Wade tomorrow.”

  “Don’t you worry on it,” Arlen said. “I’ll do what needs to be done. You just look out for yourself. I’m sorry for the way it’s come to pass, sorry for a hell of a lot of things, but—”

  “No,” Paul said, shaking his head. “You can’t kill him tomorrow, Arlen. You’ll be jailed if you try. You’ll likely be jailed anyhow.”

  “The least of my concerns is the law,” Arlen said. He was bringing the truck in close to the station, slowing. “The good sheriff of Corridor County is a threat, but not the jailing kind of threat.”

  “It won’t be the sheriff,” Paul said. “It’ll be a team of treasury agents from Miami and Tampa.”

  Arlen brought the truck to a stop as the train whistle blew. He turned and looked at Paul and didn’t speak. The boy’s face was pale.

  “There will be two boats on the water and more than a dozen men on land, watching every step you take,” Paul said.