The Cypress House

14

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.”

Arlen did as he said. They left Paul and Rebecca behind and walked in silence until they reached the Ford. When they got there, Wade pulled open the driver’s door and stood with one foot resting in the car and one on the ground, his arm leaning against the roof. He put the Panama back on his head.

“Shame to hear about the loss of your savings,” he said. “Tough country right now for a man with no dollars.”

He was staring back up at the inn, where Paul was watching them and Rebecca was pretending not to.

“I’d expect,” Wade continued, “that you’d like to have that cash back.”

He was waiting for an answer again, just as he had with Paul. Arlen said, “I expect you’re right.”

Wade nodded. “Now of course I know nothing of the circumstance of your loss. I don’t know how much money you carried, if there even was any money.”

“Of course not,” Arlen said, wanting to smash those glasses back into Wade’s face.

“But I do know of a way that your loss could be made up. I have some sway in this county, and I believe I could see that you’re reimbursed.”

“On what condition?” Arlen said. “Because you’re damn sure not making that offer without a string on it.”

“On the condition that you do what you should have done all along, and tell me the truth about Walter Sorenson.”

“Judge,” Arlen said, “you’ve heard the truth. Heard it over and over. I can’t make you believe it.”

Wade gave a little sigh, as if this were expected but still disappointing.

“You believe you’re making a stand, Mr. Wagner, and, like so many foolish men, you believe that making a stand, even at the loss of a few dollars, is worth something. It’s a sad, silly notion. You couldn’t fathom the amount of money that passes through this place. Tell me, where do you think it goes?”

“Right into your pockets,” Arlen said, and Wade smiled and shook his head.

“You make my point for me. You possess a staggering lack of understanding of the world. The dollars that pass through my hands, Wagner, they rise and disappear like smoke. Then men you’d never imagine are connected to a place like Corridor County fill their lungs deep with it. You know my role in all that?”

Arlen didn’t say anything.

“I am,” Solomon Wade said, “the match.”

He shook out a cigarette, put it between his lips, then struck a match theatrically and lit the cigarette. When the tip glowed red, he inhaled and then blew smoke into Arlen’s eyes.

“Those men I speak of,” he said, “they need their smoke. I provide it. Someday, a day not far off, I will breathe of it myself.”

He leveled his gaze at Arlen. “I suspect you believe that you can carry on out of this place and out of my reach, Mr. Wagner. Believe that once you’ve made a few dollars from Miss Cady here, you can just go back to Alabama or West Virginia.”

Arlen bristled. He had never spoken of his home state. Not to the judge or the sheriff. In fact, he rarely spoke of Fayette County to anyone.

Wade looked at him and nodded. “Yes, I know where you’re from. The boy, too. And if I desire, I can tamper with his life same as yours. Hell, I’m one phone call away from bringing shame down on his family.”

“What do you know about his family?”

“More than you, probably. His old man used to work in a silk factory in Paterson. Got into an accident, lost the use of his legs. Was in a wheelchair until he killed himself on some bad hooch.”

“I don’t see any shame in that,” Arlen said. “I just see some sorrow.”

“Sure. Thing is, with no father around to work, his mother had to. Pretty woman, his mother, or so I’ve been told. She took to waitressing at a few supper clubs. They aren’t the sort of clubs where you want your mother waitressing, you know? She’s not getting paid for delivering steak and potatoes. Be easy enough to send some local police down to make life hard on her.”

Arlen felt a slow, liquid heat spreading through his body. “Listen,” he said, “you want to stick your short, sorry pecker into my life, have at it, Judge. But you tamper with that boy’s mother? With that boy, period? Wade, I’ll cut your damn throat. Think that’s a lie? I will cut your throat, you son of a bitch.”

Wade’s voice was cool. “You’re an ignorant man, Mr. Wagner. Not a brave one-just stupid. We can stand here and trade threats, but when the time comes to deliver on them? That won’t be a pleasant day for you.” He nodded at the inn. “Go on back to work. Go on back and hope I don’t have cause to venture your way again. Pray for it.”

15

IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON BEFORE Arlen had the opportunity to get Rebecca Cady alone for a few minutes. Paul was immersed in work on the porch, the rest of the world vanishing from his mind the way it always seemed to when he was on a job, and when Arlen heard Rebecca moving around inside the barroom, he told Paul he needed a drink of water and then went inside.

She was cleaning the bar with a wet rag and merely glanced at him. Only after he’d stood and watched her for a few minutes did she look back up.

“Can I help you?”

“I hope so. We’ve been helping you, so I figured you might do the same.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Why did the judge come out here?” Arlen asked.

Her face darkened, and she looked back down at the glossy bar top.

“You heard him. He’s going to rent the place on Monday night.”

“I heard that he was sending people down here Monday night,” Arlen said. “I didn’t hear a word about renting, though. Which brings to mind another question: where in the hell is your business? You know, customers?”

“There was a hurricane.”

“So you’re telling me that a few days from now, when people have settled from the storm, this place will be busy?”

She didn’t answer.

“That’s what I figured,” he said. “Now tell me about Solomon Wade.”

“I’ve got nothing to tell. You’ve met him and you’ve met the sheriff. You should be able to gather plenty from that.”

“I’ve gathered that they’re crooked as snake tracks, sure. I’d like to know what in the hell it is they’re up to, though, and where Sorenson figured in.”

“I’d have no way of knowing.”

“I don’t believe that. As soon as the poor bastard blew up, you suggested we leave and let you handle the sheriff. Just as if you knew what might happen.”

“I knew there was a chance you’d be treated unfairly.”

“Treated unfairly,” Arlen echoed, nodding. “You mean locked up, beaten, robbed? That’s what you knew there was a chance of?”

She held his eyes.

“Sorenson was a bootlegger,” he said. “But this isn’t a dry county. What was his business here?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“That’s a damned lie and you know it.”

She looked away, then back to him, and said, “What did Wade tell you when you were talking at his car?”

“That he might have a way of finding our money if we told him what he wants to know about Sorenson. Trouble is, we don’t know anything.”

“Really?”

“Really. You do, though. You probably know a hell of a lot. Care to tell me what a man from Cleveland’s doing as sheriff of a place where visitors from the north are about as common as penguins? Care to tell me what it is brings men like those two to a backwater like this, what brought your father to it, what put your brother in-”

“Don’t you speak of my family,” she said, and her voice was so low and cold that she seemed truly dangerous.

He studied her, then nodded and said, “I’ll keep such questions to myself. They’re of no concern to me. Solomon Wade and his thug sheriff are.”

She dropped her gaze, and when she spoke again her voice was soft and measured. “You should be careful with Solomon Wade. Whether you’re here or somewhere else, you should be careful with Solomon Wade.”

It was a different version of the same speech Wade himself had given.

“I’m wondering,” Arlen said, “why all of these boys seem to spend so much time at your place? What are you doing here?”

She picked up the rag and began to scrub again, rubbing so hard that the muscles in her arm stood out.

“As you already said, my private affairs are of no concern to you.”

He watched her for a long time, waiting for more, but she didn’t look up again. At length he turned and went back outside.

They finished the porch roof by noon on Sunday, and as they stood in the sand surveying their work, Arlen was unable to avoid feeling a small tug of satisfaction at the way the job looked. For what they’d had to work with, it was damn fine construction.

“Could leave,” he suggested. “Most everything’s done now.”

“We’re not even close to done,” Paul said, smearing sweat around his face with a rag. He looked older, with his skin burned dark brown and his hair a few weeks past cutting. “Haven’t even started on the widow’s walk or the generator.”

Arlen stopped with a cigarette halfway to his mouth. “The generator? Have you lost your senses?”

“She can’t buy a new one,” Paul said calmly. “So I’d say that one will need fixing.”

“Son, ain’t a mechanic alive can put that thing back together now, and neither of us is a mechanic. You’ve got to know what you’re doing to work on one that’s solid, let alone one that’s been busted up into a hundred pieces. That thing’s covered in sand and grit and-”

“I’ve got it cleaned up. Come have a look.”

So they went around to the front porch, and Paul pulled free a tarpaulin and there were the pieces of the generator, all neat and tidy.

“When’d you do that?”

“Been getting up early,” Paul said, dropping to one knee and running a fingertip over one of the flywheels. “Brushed all the sand off and then wiped it down with a rag and oil, because that salt water would rust it awfully fast, I think.”

“Any chance the thing came with some sort of a book? A manual?”

“She said she never saw one. But she has all the tools for it.”

Arlen stared down at the mess and shook his head. “You ever worked on an engine before in your life?”

“No. But the way it works is, it charges that bank of batteries,” Paul said, pointing at a row of batteries stacked against the back wall. “All of them seem fine. The exhaust pipe is still solid, too.”

“Great. But the engine is not. Not to mention that however it was connected to the house is no more than a memory.”

“Well, let me show you what I’ve done. There were two plugs on the frame, and I got those out and then the frame came off and I could get at the flywheel and the camshaft and the main bearing. All of those are intact.”

“How in the hell do you even know what they are?”

Paul shrugged. “I’ve read a lot about engines. My point is, the main assembly of this thing is fine. So now that I’ve got it cleaned up, it’s just a matter of figuring out how it went together in the first place. That’ll be common sense.”

“Sure,” Arlen said, looking down at the gears and wrenches and belts scattered on the porch floor. “Common sense.”

“I got the inspection plate off,” Paul said, oblivious to Arlen now, focused on the machine, “and you can see the connecting rods in here. Looks like they got loosened up when it was knocked around. See here, when I move the crankshaft? It’s wiggling down at the bearing. That shouldn’t happen. It needs to be tight. So I’ve got to get those tightened up before we try and run it again.”

“Even supposing you get the thing in a condition that it could run again,” Arlen said, “you’ve got to get it set up so it actually feeds power the way it used to. Those wires were all torn apart.”

“Oh, that’ll be easy. Just a matter of looking, seeing how it makes sense.”

“I suppose that leaves me to that damn widow’s walk myself?”

Paul’s lack of response allowed that it did, and Arlen walked out into the yard, grumbling and swearing, and stared up at the peak of the roof. The widow’s walk was perched onto the back, affording an expansive view of the Gulf, and all except for one corner piling had been torn off. They’d gathered the pieces from out in the yard and stacked them up alongside the house. Even from down here, Arlen could tell that it was going to be awkward and dangerous work.

He found the stairs to the attic, sweat springing out of his pores as he climbed into the dank, closed space. It was so dark he had to feel around with his hands to locate the trapdoor, but it opened easily enough and he poked his head up through the roof and into fresh air. He’d never been unsettled by heights, but this roof was pitched steeply, and he felt a swirl of doubt as he climbed out onto it, keeping a tight hand on the braces of the door frame. Ordinarily the railings would keep you from tumbling off, but they were stacked on the ground now, nothing between him and a broken spine but a few bounces off the shingles.

Had to admit, though-once he was up here, the view was stunning, like being in a lighthouse. He could see out into the sea and along the shore. This was his first realization of just how damn isolated the inn was. To the south the beach ran on unbroken, and to the north the trees grew thick along the winding inlet. No such thing as a neighbor. He turned to look east, inland, and saw the boat in the inlet.

It was positioned around a bend, where there was a slot in the trees that afforded a view of the house. The boat was flat-bottomed, outfitted only with oars-a craft you could move damn near silently if you knew how to use it. There was only one man inside. From here, all Arlen could tell was that he was an older man: stringy gray hair showed along his neck down to his shoulders.

Don’t stare, he thought. He’ll know that you’ve seen him.

He turned away and got busy taking measurements for the roof deck, working with his back to the inlet for a while. When he finally turned around and risked a glance, the boat was gone.

That night they all sat together on the porch, as had become their custom, and ate dinner as the sun went fat and red in the west and slipped down toward the horizon line. It moved at a crawl right until the bottom edge touched the water, and then it was as if something greedy were waiting for it on the other side, snatched it away quick, leaving only a crimson smear on the horizon.

“This place sure is something,” Paul said, stretched out on the porch floor with the already empty plate on his lap. “It’s beautiful.”

Rebecca nodded but didn’t speak, and he turned to her.

“Why doesn’t anyone ever come out here?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well… why don’t you have any customers?”

She looked away from him. “Corridor County is a very rural place. There aren’t a lot of people. Less now that the lumber mill closed.”

“Well, still, somebody has to live around here.”

“I don’t have much business from locals. Mostly people who rent it out for a few days at a time. There’s less of that now. Hard times.”

“Have you always been out here alone?”

“Not always.” Her voice was tight. “Tell me, where are you from?”

If Paul sensed that the redirecting of the conversation was intentional, he didn’t show it.

“New Jersey. Town called Paterson. Back there, we’d be sitting in an alley and looking at trash cans if we wanted to eat outside.”

“You don’t care for it?”

He looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know. It’s just a place… doesn’t look anything like this, though.” Then, after a pause, “But there’s a bridge you ought to see. Just up from the waterfalls.”

Rebecca Cady laughed, and Paul looked perplexed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just thought it was amusing that you’d mention a bridge before you would a waterfall.”

He shrugged. “I just like it, that’s all.”

Arlen smiled and sipped his beer. She didn’t know him yet. With the exception of the ocean in front of them, Arlen had never known the boy to show the slightest interest in the natural world, only in man-made structures. He was mighty American in that way: show him a river, he’d want to see a bridge; show him a mountain, he’d wonder how you could get a tunnel through it. For all his carpentry experience, Arlen didn’t have the same mind-set. The older he got, the more he wished people would leave things alone. As a boy he’d watched the hills around his hometown blasted open with dynamite, laced with gouges that looked like wounds of the flesh, and in their own way they were exactly that. Had watched the skies above them turn black with soot and coal smoke, the stretches of ancient forests replaced by stump fields. No, he wasn’t the conquering sort. That was one of the things he’d liked so much about the CCC. Back at Flagg Mountain, they’d spent weeks at hard labor to build a tower. Its purpose? To afford a view of the beauty around it. That was all. Arlen loved that damn tower.

He didn’t know for certain what he’d even have thought of the bridge in the Keys, that attempt for road to conquer water. Maybe it would’ve been impressive. Maybe it would’ve been heartbreaking.

“Did you always live in Paterson?” Rebecca was asking Paul, and Arlen looked back at the boy, realizing Arlen himself didn’t know the answer to this one.

“Yes.” Paul got to his feet and set the plate aside. “I’m going to go for a walk before it gets too dark.”

He left without another word, headed south with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched. Rebecca Cady said, “Did I say something wrong?”

“I think you both did.”

“Pardon?”

“You didn’t want to answer questions about yourself,” he said, “and neither did Paul. Everybody’s got a few things they’d like to keep quiet on.”

He finished the warm beer and tilted his head and studied her. Her face was lit with fading sunset glow, and it made her blond hair look red.

“Can you really see the dead?” she asked. The question hit him like a punch.

“Paul told me about the train,” she said when he didn’t answer. “Why you two got off.”

“Wasn’t his place to tell you that.”

“Don’t be angry with him. He was just fascinated by it. Maybe a little frightened, especially after reading that newspaper article and learning what happened to the men who stayed on the train. He told me you see smoke or-”

“I don’t know why we’re talking about this.”

“I just wanted to hear what it’s like,” she said.

“I can’t tell you what it’s like. You won’t believe it if I try, and I don’t give a damn what you think. It’s a waste of everybody’s time.”

“I might believe it.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“You can see death before it happens,” she said. “That’s what Paul said.”

He didn’t answer.

“Did you see anything with Walter Sorenson?” she asked.

He studied her for a long time before saying, “No, I didn’t.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“I’m not sure. But I suspect it’s got something to do with this place.”

“This place?”

“That’s right. There’s something wrong here.”

He could see her throat move when she swallowed. She said, “You can feel that?”

“Sure,” he said. “Can’t you?”

She said, “I’m not part of it. You think that I am, but I’m not. When I arrived, it was with the expectation that I’d be leaving soon, just like you.”

“That some kind of warning?”

She didn’t reply.

“Answer the question I asked,” he said. “Do you feel like there’s something wrong with this place?”

“Of course. It hangs in the air like the salt smell from the water. But I don’t need to have feelings about it. I’ve been here far too long for that. You have bad feelings; I have bad memories.”

They fell silent after that. Eventually he said, “As long as everybody’s trading questions, I have one for you. Why don’t you like to be called Becky?”

She’d bristled every time someone said it, from Sorenson to Barrett, the delivery driver. It seemed to Arlen to go well beyond a dislike of the nickname.

She looked at him with a steady gaze, but something in her face faltered. He felt, for just a moment, as if she were about to tell him things that had gone unsaid for too long. As if she kept a silence that pained her. He knew about that. He had his own untold tale, guarded for years, but somehow, on this porch, lit by the fading sun and warmed by the Gulf breeze, he wanted to tell it to her. That last part was key. To her.

She turned from him, though, and when she spoke her voice was distant and her eyes were on the sea.

“People used to call me that,” she said. “Different people in a different place. I’m not that person anymore, so that name… it doesn’t suit me these days. It’s not mine, not anymore.”

She rose then and walked to the end of the porch and stood with her back to him as the last smears of red light faded, and though they shared the shadowed space, they were each alone with their silent sorrows.

16

REBECCA WAITED UNTIL THE next morning to try to get rid of them. She came out onto the porch, where Paul was working on the generator and Arlen was sanding down pieces of the broken railing from the roof deck, and held out a slim stack of worn dollar bills.

“Here,” she said. “You’ve earned it, and I don’t want to make you stay any longer. I can drive you into High Town, let you find a ride from there.”

Arlen just sat back on his heels and didn’t speak. Paul looked from the money in her hand to her face and frowned.

“We’re not finished,” he said.

“You’ve done enough. You’ve done more than enough.”

He shook his head. “No. I’m going to get this generator running again.”

“There’s no need to-”

“You trying to run us off because the judge’s friends are coming?”

That stopped her.

“No, it’s just… you’ve both already done enough,” she fumbled. “You were a big help, but you’ve done enough, and I can’t afford to keep you on anymore. So please take the money and I’ll drive you-”

“I’m going to finish this job.”

She stared at him, then slowly folded her hand over the bills. Her eyes were still on Paul, but they’d gone distant.

“Listen to me,” she said. “It might be best if you weren’t around tonight.”

“Why? Who are these guys? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Arlen said, “Paul, it ain’t your concern,” but the boy never looked at him.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” he repeated.

“No, I’m not. But when Solomon Wade rents this place out, he wants it empty. It’s supposed to be for his friends; no one else is allowed.”

“Well,” Paul said, “we’re here.”

“All right,” she said, “then you stay in the boathouse tonight.”

“The boathouse?” Paul said. “It doesn’t even have a roof.”

“You’re the one who won’t leave; you can deal without a roof for one night.” She snapped it at him, and Paul’s jaw tightened and he looked away.

That’ll do it, Arlen thought. He’s going to say enough is enough, finally, and take that money from her hand and we’ll be on our way…

But Paul said, “Fine. We’ll stay in the boathouse.”

Rebecca lifted a hand to the side of her face, and for a moment, just a blink, it was the gesture of some other woman, a gesture of someone vulnerable. Then she seemed to catch herself and pushed her hair back over her ear as if that’s what she’d been planning to do all the time.

That was the last that was said about it. Paul continued to battle with the generator. By midafternoon he was satisfied that the mechanical workings were solid again and began to put the pieces back together. Arlen watched him do it, rebuilding something he’d never built in the first place, working without benefit of a manual or diagram, and shook his head. The kid was a natural, no question. He still didn’t think the thing would ever work again, though.

By five he had the generator together and hollered at Arlen to come down so they could test it. He came over and watched as Paul filled the tank with gasoline and explained that he had it connected to the battery bank, and once he was sure it would work all they’d have to do is wire it back into the house and build a new enclosure for it. Rebecca came out while he was talking, and as soon as she arrived Paul’s voice deepened and his speaking became more authoritative, as if he’d been repairing generators all his life. Arlen lit a cigarette to hide a grin.

“Here we go,” Paul said, and then he made some adjustment, which Arlen figured was to the throttle, with his left hand while turning the crank with his right.

Nothing happened. There wasn’t a sound but the turning of the hand crank, not so much as a gurgle or cough of gasoline power. Paul frowned and jiggled the throttle and spun the crank faster, sweat beading on his forehead. Still nothing. He dropped his hand from the crank and stepped back.

“Give it a minute,” Rebecca said. “Maybe you just need to crank longer.”

He shook his head. “It’s not even trying. Something’s still wrong. It wouldn’t even try to start.”

His voice was his own again, softer and younger. Arlen blew out some smoke and said, “You did more than I thought you could just getting it put back into one piece. Getting it to run is a mighty tall order.”

Paul didn’t answer, dropped to his knees and picked up a screwdriver and set to work removing the inspection plate again.

Rebecca said, “You may not be able to get it, Paul. It may just be ruined.”

“It’s not ruined,” he said, but she’d stopped looking at him and the generator, was instead staring up the road and into the dark trees. She wet her lips.

“You’ll have to stop soon,” she said. “I need you to be gone by the time the… guests arrive.”

“Right,” Paul said. “The guests.”

Her “guests” had arrived in three vehicles that came in succession, like the funeral procession of an unpopular man. The cars pulled in and parked, and their occupants began to pile out. The first was a battered truck, with dents all over the door panels, and the last was the sheriff’s car. Between them was a shining black Plymouth.

Arlen and Paul watched from the trees, silent. It felt like the war again to Arlen, crouched in the brush with a comrade, treachery nearby. When he saw the Plymouth, his throat tightened, and he thought for a moment that he ought to get the license number. Who would he give it to, though? Sheriff Tolliver? Judge Solomon Wade? No, he didn’t need to have any more knowledge of that car.

A man and three boys who couldn’t be out of their teens filled the lead vehicle. Country folk. Wore clothes you wouldn’t see in a department store, the sort that you ordered from a farm-supply catalog, with tattered hats that had been kicked around in the dust a time or two. The man had a thin string of gray hair that hung down past his neck. The watcher from the boat in the inlet. The three boys followed at his heels like obedient but wary dogs.

There was only one man in the Plymouth, a sharp-looking, tidy boy in a suit. Tolliver had also traveled alone, no deputy along for this ride. He stood in the yard and looked around with a suspicious stare while the rest of the group went inside. His gaze floated over the trees where Arlen and Paul hid, but he did not see them. At length he followed the others into the Cypress House, and then they were gone from view, hidden behind the closed door.

“I don’t like this,” Paul whispered. “We ought not leave her-”

“Shut up,” Arlen said, his own nerves making his voice harsh. “We’ll do as she asked. She knows what to expect; we don’t. You in a hurry to chat with the sheriff again?”

That quieted him, and they slipped out of the trees and back down to the dock. Paul settled on one of the floor planks, with his feet dangling in the gap where others were missing.

“We could fix this dock easy enough, if she had the lumber,” he said.

“I expect we could.”

“And isn’t anything to that boathouse but basic carpentry-roof repairs, wall reinforcements, that sort of thing.”

“Sure isn’t.”

“So we could do it.”

“Sure could.” Arlen was distracted, thinking of that group up at the inn.

He lit a cigarette and looked at the boy’s slumped shoulders and then out at the wooded inlet. The sun had disappeared, vanished beneath the waves of the Gulf, but a faint pink smudge along the horizon remained, fading fast to shadow. The air was the sort of warm that made you comfortable, ready to stretch out and watch the stars rise as your eyelids became heavy.

A heron slid in, sleek and swift as a bullet, then hit the shore across from them and stood on spindly legs, studying the water. If you looked away from it and then back, the bird was tough to find, a pencil-thin shadow amid the backdrop of plants. Deeper in the woods, insects trilled and creatures rustled.

“She’s ready to pay us,” Arlen said. “And it won’t be much, but it’ll put us on a train and send us back to Flagg Mountain.”

“Arlen,” Paul said as the last glowing remnants of the sun slid beneath black water, “I can’t leave her.”

“Can’t leave her?”

Paul nodded, still with his back to Arlen. “Rebecca. I can’t leave her.”

Arlen closed his eyes and sucked deep at the cigarette, too deep, enough so the smoke that touched his throat was hot and harsh. He swallowed down the cough that wanted to rise, kept his eyes squeezed shut.

“Tell me why.”

“You know why.”

“Paul… that’s a mighty beautiful woman. One could have a son near as old as you. And I understand what you see in her. She’s the kind that would weaken the knees of most men. But she’s also in a situation that you can’t be a part of.”

“What do you mean? What do you know about it?”

“Those men up there, son, they aren’t good men. And Wade? You think he’s running a legitimate business through here? Hell, the man we rode in with was a damned bootlegger. What do I know about the details of her situation? Nary a thing. But I know the gist, and that’s enough.”

“Even so, I’m not leaving her. I feel like I’ve been traveling through time to get here, Arlen, just to find her. And now that I have… I can’t leave.”

Paul’s voice was thick, and the sound of it made Arlen open his eyes and look at the boy and then away, out across the dark waters and into the breeze that fanned toward them from the west.

“Son, she’s more than ten years older than you. Fifteen, maybe. She’s a grown woman.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing. She’s alone out here, Arlen, and I can tell she’s awful tired of being alone. I can see that clear as anything.”

“She made the choice to stay out here.”

“I don’t know that she did. Lots of people in this country are doing things they didn’t choose to do, things they have to do. And I’ll tell you something else: she doesn’t show it, but she’s scared. I saw that the day before the hurricane came in, when I helped her board up the windows.”

“Lots of people are scared of hurricanes.”

“She’s scared,” Paul repeated, “but it’s not of a hurricane.”

Arlen didn’t say anything. Paul turned and faced him, his jaw set.

“She’s lonely, and she likes me.” As if that ended the discussion.

“She does like you. I can see that. But it’s in a different way than-”

“How do you know?” Paul snapped. “How do you know what she feels? You married? You ever been married?”

There was a long silence, and then Arlen said gently, “You’re fixing to marry her?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Don’t twist my words on me like that. I’ll make that easy on you, and we both know it. What I’m saying is that I like her. I like her in a way… Arlen, I can’t even tell you the way.”

Arlen understood, though. Had seen it rising since they’d landed at the Cypress House, but now that Paul was trying to put it into words it set off a warning in his head, a sense of a new trouble joining those he already had.

“I get it,” he said. “But you’re asking for trouble. You won’t take anything from this but-”

“I can’t leave her, Arlen.”

The thick, choked sound was gone from his voice now, and there was the ring of finality to the words. He looked Arlen in the eye when he said them, held the look, and then turned and stared back across the inlet. The heron had moved on a fish in the shallows, moved with a splash and flourish, then stepped back. Its beak was empty. Swing and a miss.

“I thought we’d agreed on returning to Flagg,” Arlen said.

“I know it, and there isn’t anything makes me feel worse than arguing with you. But, Arlen?” He turned and looked at him again, and in the shadows he seemed more man than boy, had the weariness of an adult in his countenance. “I cannot leave her. Okay? I’m going to stay.”

“What if she won’t have you?”

“She’ll have me. She needs this dock fixed, and then the boathouse, and I’ll be damned what anybody says, I can make that generator run. I can do it. There are things for me to do, and they’ll let me show her… show her…”

“That she needs you,” Arlen said softly.

“Yeah.”

Arlen’s chest filled and he blew out air, but this time the cigarette was still held down against his side. Darkness had shrouded them, and the cacophony of buzzing insects from the woods had increased as the daylight faded. Out in the inlet, the heron was marking new territory, ready for another strike.

“I brought you down here,” Arlen said. “It was me who brought you south, and it was me who took you off the train. Was also me who put you in Sorenson’s fancy car and dragged you this way, and I’m not going to leave you here now.”

He felt, as he often had since the start of this journey, like a man pushed by unseen but powerful currents.

“You don’t need to stay,” Paul said.

“I’m not leaving you here alone. You’re no fool, boy; there’s trouble up there and you know it. I won’t leave you alone in such a place.”

Paul said, “Thank you.”

“Shit,” Arlen said, and fumbled in the dark for another cigarette.

It was quiet for a moment, nothing but the night sounds around them, and then Paul said, “You don’t think she can ever love me.”

Arlen said nothing.

“I think she can,” Paul said. “But it’ll take some time. It’ll take a chance for me to show her who I really am. Who I can be. But I think…”

His words trailed off, and Arlen didn’t spur them back into life or add to them. He just leaned against the mangled side of the boathouse and smoked his cigarette, and the boy looked out across the inlet as the heron struck and missed once, and then again, and then it was too dark to see all the way over to him.

17

THEY SPENT AN HOUR OR TWO sitting and talking about insignificant things but both of them jerking at every sound, their minds back at the Cypress House. Once, Paul started to mosey that way, said he had to relieve himself. Arlen pointed into the trees.

“All the privacy you need right there. Don’t you even think about going back up into the view of that tavern unless you want to cause trouble for her.”

That seemed to convince him. He went off into the bushes and pissed.

“Think she’s okay?” he said when he returned.

“I know she is,” Arlen said. “She’s run this place on her own for a time, Paul. She’s had men like that visit more than once, and she’s handled herself fine. Don’t trouble yourself over it. It’s a normal night for her.”

He wasn’t sure of that, but he needed the boy to be. He took his flask from his pocket and uncapped it and offered it to Paul.

“Sip a little.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Go on,” he said. “You’ve earned it tonight, Paul. It’ll ease your worry.”

After a hesitation, Paul accepted the flask and drank. They passed it back and forth as they sat on the floor of the boathouse, which was now like a lean-to shelter, open to the night sky on one side. Just to Paul’s left, the water from the inlet lapped gently inside the boathouse.

“This isn’t such a bad spot to spend a night,” he said at length, his voice beginning to show the booze. “Hear that ocean, see those stars?”

Arlen didn’t say anything. After a while the boy slumped down against the pile of blankets. Arlen lit a cigarette and let the sound of wind and water fill the silence. By the time the cigarette had burned down to his fingertips, he could tell the kid was already asleep. He always went down hard and fast, the way the boys in the CCC had-you worked them enough during the day, and they forgot their homesickness and orneriness as soon as their heads touched the pillows-but he was also unfamiliar with drink, and it would help to keep him down. Arlen had been counting on this.

He got quietly to his feet and left the dock and started up the sandy path to the tavern. By the time he reached the end of the trail, he could see the flickering light of oil lamps from the main barroom. All of the cars were still parked out in the yard.

He hesitated and looked up at the cars and wondered what the best approach was. If he really worked at being unseen, crept around staying low and in the shadows, he suspected he could do it. The problem then was with the off chance that they came bumbling out of the bar at just the wrong time and caught him. No, better to just walk up to the cars as casually as he could, and if someone came out and saw him, he’d feign ignorance, explain that they were staying at the boathouse and that he couldn’t sleep. Be easy to present as the truth, because mostly it was.

He circled around to the Plymouth and had just removed a matchbook so he could put some light on the license plate when something moved in the corner of his eye. He spun back with his fists raised and heart thundering.

There was a woman inside the sheriff’s car. Sitting in the passenger seat, staring through the shadowed glass at Arlen without expression.

For a moment he stayed there with his hands clenched into fists, and then he dropped them, looked once at the tavern, and approached the car, making a rolling gesture with his hand, indicating that she should lower the window. She did so, and he could hear a strange tinkling noise. It wasn’t until he stepped closer and knelt beside the door that he understood-she was wearing handcuffs.

“What are you doing out here?” he whispered.

“I’m waiting,” she said, “for them to finish bargaining.”

“Over what?”

“My life.”

He ran a hand over his jaw and stared at her, looking from the handcuffs back to her face. She was a beautiful woman, with full lips and hair so dark it looked like oil spilled across the front of her dress, which was a pale yellow. Beneath the clasps of steel, her arms were slender and elegant.

“What are you talking about?” Arlen said. “Who are you?”

“My name is Gwen.”

“I don’t mean your name, I mean what in the hell you’re doing here, with men like that. Why does that son of a bitch have you in chains?”

“I’m leverage,” she said, and for the first time he heard clear emotion in her words. Not fear but sorrow. The sort that rose up from the core.

“How?”

“There’s a man inside who loves me,” she said. “And they know that. They intend… I believe they intend to test the strength of his love.”

“The fellow who drove the Plymouth?”

“Yes. David.”

“Why do they have you out here, instead of in with them?”

“I was inside, once. So he could see me. Then Tate asked the sheriff to take me back out. I believe I unsettle him.”

Her voice was eerie, faint but firm and entirely matter-of-fact.

“Who is Tate? He the older guy? Long gray hair?”

“Yes. The three with him are his sons. A family of vipers. You and the boy will need to be careful with them, Mr. Wagner.”

When she said his name he tightened his hand around the door frame.

“You know me, eh? Tolliver’s been telling his tales.”

“These men aren’t concerned with you,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken, “yet. But they will be the longer you linger.”

“I don’t intend to linger. I’ve been trying to get-”

“Give me your hand,” she said.

“What?”

“You heard me.” Her whisper now held urgency.

The wind picked up, blowing cool off the water, and Arlen’s flesh prickled. He was looking into her eyes, and while he meant to object he could not. He released the door frame and extended his right hand, and she lifted both of hers, the cuffs rattling, and grasped it. His breath caught at the touch, her slim hands cool against his, her fingers gliding over his palm.

“You’re the girl from Cassadaga,” he said. “Sorenson’s girl.”

The fortune-teller, the palm reader. The one who’d told Sorenson to watch for travelers in need.

“I’m a girl from Cassadaga,” she said. “But not Sorenson’s. I already told you-I love the man in that house. David. And he loves me, and that will be our downfall, Mr. Wagner. Love is a powerful thing, and like all powerful things, it can be used to harm.”

She was rubbing his palm lightly with her fingertips.

“You fell in love with the wrong sort of boy,” Arlen said.

“Shh. I’m trying to see whether you’re-”

“Stop it,” he said suddenly, his voice rough, and he jerked his hand free. “I won’t have that bullshit. You can’t tell a damn thing from that.”

She frowned but didn’t respond to his harshness.

“You’re the boy’s guardian,” she said. “And you know that he won’t fare well in this place. I can tell that. You understand the danger and-”

“I told you to stop it,” he said. “You want to talk truth, lady, I’ll talk it with you, but I’m not inclined to sit here and listen to foolishness.”

“Of course not. You’ve tried long and hard to block the things you need to hear. At some point you’re going to have to listen.”

“What I will listen to is you explaining what happened to Walter Sorenson and what’s going on inside that…” His voice trailed off. He didn’t even get his mouth closed, just knelt there slack-jawed, staring into the dark of the sheriff’s car.

The glittering silver handcuffs were now resting on thin shafts of bone.

“What?” she said, and he raised his eyes, hoping to see those sculpted, full lips. A skull stared back at him.

No words came. The skull tilted and studied him, then said, in a soft and sad voice, “It’s happened now, hasn’t it? He’s told them. It’s done.”

Arlen couldn’t answer.

She said, “You can see it in me. You truly have gifts beyond measure.”

Finally, he spoke. Said, “Lady, you’ve got to get out of that car.”

The skull shook slowly back and forth. “No.”

“Yes. You have got to get out of that car and-”

“They’ll find me,” she said. “And it will end the same for me, only it will also be bad for you and the boy. And for Rebecca. I won’t initiate such things.”

“Lady,” he said, “Gwen, you’ve got to understand something. They’re going to kill you.”

“They always were,” she said. “It just took some time to confirm it.”

He couldn’t bear to look at the skull anymore. He pulled out his matchbook and struck a match and leaned into the car, held it close to her. In the flickering light, flesh spread like butter over the bones and she was whole again. Whole except for the whirling pools of gray smoke where her eyes belonged.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re leaving. We’re going to run. All three of us. I’ll get the boy up here and we’ll run.”

“You can’t run from them,” she said. “I hope you understand that. You’re going to need to. There will be no running from what lies ahead.”

“Quiet,” he said. “We’re going now.” The match had burned down to his fingers, and he shook it out and reached for the door handle.

“No!” she said, and she took the handle in her bone fingers and pulled back against his efforts.

“Get out of the car!”

“Leave me,” she hissed.

“I won’t. Get out of the damn car.”

He got the door partially opened, but then, with surprising strength, she slammed it back. The sound of metal on metal rang out loud in the still night. She said, “Hide. Now.”

He did not argue this time. He knew that he could not. He dropped to the grass and rolled forward, toward the Plymouth, as the front door of the Cypress House banged open and footsteps slapped onto the porch and someone called for a lantern. It was still dark back by the cars, and Arlen wriggled forward until he was entirely beneath the Plymouth. He was there when Tolliver tramped past him, nothing showing but a pair of boots and the angled glow of a lantern.

“You were told not to move,” the sheriff was saying. “Not to make a sound. Think you’ll be able to take so much as a step, chained like that?”

She was chained to the car, Arlen realized. Maybe at the feet. She couldn’t have run if she wanted to.

“We’re about done, darling,” Tolliver said, his voice so rich with mocking menace that Arlen clenched his teeth together, willing down the urge to roll out from under the Plymouth and start swinging. There were more men inside. All of them probably armed.

“We’ll be on our way soon. We’ll be taking you home. But if you move again, make a sound again, I’ll put a bullet in your beautiful face. Understand?”

There was a long pause, and then Tolliver passed the Plymouth a second time. Arlen waited until he’d heard his boots on the porch and the sound of the door closing, and then he slid back out from under the car. He crept around to the sheriff’s car and stared in at her. The skull face regarded him.

“They’re going to need you,” the woman named Gwen said. “Paul and Rebecca. You can’t leave them here. They need you.”

There were loud voices inside again. She looked in that direction, then back to him, and said, “Go. You can’t be caught here. Go now.”

He backed into the trees without answering, unsure of himself. He was there, among the storm-torn mangroves, when they all came out of the tavern. Sheriff Tolliver and the gray-haired man she had called Tate led the way. The three boys followed-dragging the man from the Plymouth between them. He could not hold his own footing, and though he mumbled constantly he could not make intelligible words. It sounded as if he were trying to speak without lips or teeth.

They loaded him back into the Plymouth, but this time he was in the backseat, and this time all three of Tate’s boys rode with him. Tate fired up the truck as Tolliver leaned in the Plymouth window with an inspector’s stare, spoke to the boy at the wheel, and then moved back to his own car. He climbed in and started the engine and led the procession out of the yard and up the road.

Arlen searched for the girl in the darkness, hoping that her appearance would change as they left this place. It was too dark, though. He couldn’t see a thing.

18

HE WENT TO THE BOATHOUSE to check on Paul first. The boy slept soundly, curled up against the stack of old blankets, water lapping at the dock pylons beneath him. It was pitch-black, but the later it got the louder the night seemed-insects and nocturnal animals and wind sounds filling the trees all around the inlet. To the east, farther inland, the woods thickened, a mass of weaving silhouettes against the night sky. Arlen thought that if he lived in this part of the country, he’d want to hug the coast as much as possible, where things were open and bright and you could see what was coming.

He picked the flask up from where it lay on the dock and had a long drink. Then he capped it and walked back to the inn. The lights were still glowing, and he could hear a scraping sound. He swung open the door and stepped inside, and Rebecca Cady gave a shout of fear.

She was standing in the center of the barroom with a mop in her hands, and when he opened the door she pulled the mop back and brandished it like a weapon. Then her shoulders sagged and she dropped it back to the floor.

“What are you doing? I told you to stay out!”

He stood in the doorway and looked around the room. Everything was as it had been, except that the floor around the fireplace was shining with soapy water.

“Late for washing the floors, isn’t it?”

“Get out.”

He let the door swing shut behind him. There was a strange smell in the air. Kerosene and cleansers, yes, but there was something else to it. A faint copper tinge. He felt his stomach stir and the muscles in his neck go tight.

“How was the party?”

“It wasn’t a party.” The mop was shaking in her hands. She tightened her grip, trying to still it, but that only seemed to intensify the rattling. As she stood there and stared at him, a tear leaked out of her right eye and glided down her cheek, dripped off her jaw, and fell to the wet floor.

“What in the hell happened?” Arlen said, walking toward her.

“Get out!”

He stopped halfway across the room. She pulled her shoulders back and gave him a look that would have been cold and strong if not for the tears.

“Maybe if you want me out of here so bad, you should go call the sheriff,” he said. “My guess is he’ll see that I’m gone fast enough. Me and the boy both. And he’ll probably help you clean the floor.”

He had edged closer to her, was only a few feet away now. He looked from her face down into the pail at her feet. Even in the dim glow of the oil lamps, the crimson tint was clear. There was a lot of blood in that water.

“I’d like you to leave.” Her voice was shaking, and Arlen had the sense that if he reached out and laid one fingertip against her skin, she’d collapse.

“Did you see her?” he asked.

“What?”

“The woman they brought in. Her name was Gwen. Did you see her?”

She shook her head, and another tear fell free.

“They had her in handcuffs,” he said. “Chained up in the sheriff’s car. They went all the way to Cassadaga to find her.”

“I was upstairs,” she said in a whisper so faint he could scarcely hear it. “I always stay upstairs. I don’t want to see any of them. I don’t want to hear… anything.”

“Like the sounds of that man getting beaten within an inch of his life?” Arlen asked. “You didn’t hear that upstairs?”

Her face was wet with tears now.

“I can’t speak to you about this,” she said. “I can’t. Just promise me that you’ll leave. That you’ll take Paul and go. You don’t belong here. You shouldn’t be here. Leave.”

“All right,” he said. “You want us gone, I’ll see that it happens. But something to remember? If we’re not around, it means you’re here alone.”

He watched her eyes break from his and go to the pail of bloody water.

“The mess you’ve got on your hands,” he said, “isn’t the sort you clean up with a mop.”

19

HE WOKE TO THE sound of the generator.

It was well into the morning, and he lay on his stomach on the boathouse floor. Somehow he’d thrashed his way off the blanket in his sleep, and his cheek was pressed to the bare boards. He was lucky he hadn’t pitched himself into the water. Dreams of a woman in a yellow dress had stalked him.

He pushed himself upright now and blinked and cocked his head, listening. Yes, it was definitely the generator; he could hear the distinctive hammering of the cylinders. The timing was off, making it sound like the motor had a limp, but it was running. The damn thing was running.

He got up slowly, feeling stiffness in every joint, then leaned off the edge of the dock and splashed briny water into his face, licking the salt off his lips. He groaned and rolled his head around on his neck and then started up the path. In the yard, he could see the indentations the cars had left the night before. He thought of the sheriff’s car and the woman in handcuffs and the way he’d let them drive off into the darkness, and he felt his chest tighten.

In front of the porch, Paul stood beside the generator with a wide grin on his face. Rebecca Cady had her hands at her temples as if she couldn’t believe it. When Arlen joined them, Paul kept smiling but didn’t say a word.

“I figured it out last night,” he said finally. “Woke up at dawn, thinking that everything was ready to move the way it should mechanically. I had all that done right. But it wasn’t even catching, and so I thought the problem had to be in the electrical. It’s an electrical ignition, you know. You turn that crank to make the current that fires the ignition, and then the batteries take over. The engine charges the batteries.”

“I get it,” Arlen said. “But what did you do?”

“Checked the cutouts to see if the circuit was alive or if one of them was open. Turned out two of them were. I closed them, and it started on the first try.”

“Hell of a job,” Arlen said, but he was looking at Rebecca Cady instead of the generator. The gaze she returned was as cool as winter wind. No trace of the nearly broken woman that had showed last night in the trembling hands that held the mop, in the tears that slid down her face.

“I’ve got to adjust the timing,” Paul said, shutting the generator off, the bangs slowing and then silencing altogether. “But I’ll wait until we have it back in place to do that. Then we’ll need to get that little shed put back together.”

“I guess we have a full day ahead of us,” Arlen said.

Rebecca didn’t offer a word of objection. I’d like you to leave, she’d screamed at him last night, but now she stood by silently.

Paul was right, Arlen thought. She’s scared, and she doesn’t want to be alone anymore. Won’t tell anybody a damn thing, though, so she’s nearly as alone now as she would be if we were gone. You can’t find much company from inside a padlocked, stone-walled fortress.

He had to get her to talk. If they were spending so much as another night in this place, he had to understand what in the hell was going on. And they’d be spending another night, because what he’d told her before was bullshit-he couldn’t convince the boy to leave. Not anymore. Paul was anchored here by a love that Rebecca didn’t even see.

Love is a powerful thing, and like all powerful things, it can be used to harm, the woman named Gwen had said the previous night, just before her face became a skull. The memory left Arlen wishing for his flask, even though he hadn’t yet tasted coffee.

“Going to need lumber,” he said, just to fill the air with talk. “Not much left of that generator shed that’ll be usable.”

“Going to need some for the dock and boathouse, too,” Paul said.

If she wanted them gone, now was the time to say so.

“I’ve got enough money to get it started at least,” she said. “If you know what you’ll need, I can give you enough to get it started.”

So there it was. They were staying. The proclamation had been issued quietly, but it rang loud and clear to Arlen, and from the satisfied smile he saw on Paul’s face, he knew the boy had registered the implication, too.

“We’ll take some measurements,” Paul said, “and figure out what we need. It shouldn’t be too expensive to get started. We’ll build that generator shed first and then work on the dock. I think that would make the most sense.”

Off he went, talking a mile a minute. Rebecca Cady was responding, but Arlen was no longer listening to either of them, was instead gazing up at the house and the empty expanse of sand and sea behind it.

It was supposed to be an hour, he thought. Maybe less. Time enough for a beer and whatever business Walt Sorenson had to conduct, and then we were moving on down the road.

This wasn’t a world you planned your way through, though. He’d known that much for many a year.

It was nearing noon when Thomas Barrett’s panel van pulled into the yard. Rebecca talked to him briefly and then waved a hand, calling for them.

“So you boys going to be visiting a little longer, huh?” Barrett said when they walked over, the mellow grin on his face the same as always.

“We got no money,” Arlen said. “Might as well make some.”

“Good sense. Becky here tells me y’all’ll be needing some lumber.”

“That’s right,” Paul said. “We’ve got it all written down.”

“Well, I told her I’d be happy to pick it up for a small charge, but I’ll need a hand loading.”

“Paul can go along,” Arlen said.

Paul frowned. “I was going to wire that generator back in.”

“It’ll hold,” Arlen said. “My back ain’t up to heavy lifting today, not after sleeping down in the boathouse. Go on and show off your muscles.”

Rebecca passed Barrett a tightly folded roll of bills, all of which looked to be singles, and he slipped them into his pocket and winked at Paul.

“Ready to go blow this on booze and loose women?”

The two of them were off. Arlen watched the van pull away, and by the time he turned back to Rebecca, she was already gone. He gave a grim smile, thinking, Not going to be that easy, gorgeous. You and I are going to talk.

She was back in the barroom, cleaning the stools with a rag that reeked of some powerful disinfectant. She didn’t hear him enter, and Arlen watched her work, scrubbing furiously at the nicked legs of the old bar stools.

“Blood get on those, too?” he said.

She gave a start, then saw who it was, and her eyes hardened and her hand tightened around the rag. A drop of the cleaning fluid dripped onto the floor.

“I thought I was paying you to fix things,” she said. “Not stand around in the dark watching me.”

“There are lots of things around here need fixing,” he said with a nod, stepping closer. “I’m just trying to get a sense of all of them.”

She hesitated a moment, down on her hands and knees, and then got to her feet with a small sigh and stood with her back against the bar.

“There was a fight. It’s not uncommon when those men get together. People get hurt.”

“People got hurt,” Arlen said, “but that was no fight.”

“I have no idea what happened,” she said. “I was upstairs, trying not to hear it. That’s what I always do.”

“I believe that, but you know damn well that whatever happened in here last night wasn’t a fight.”

“You think I should call the sheriff?” she said, scorn clear in her voice. “Or maybe call Judge Solomon Wade himself?”

“There are other people to call.”

She didn’t answer.

“If we’re staying here,” he said, “I’m going to need to be told the truth about some things.”

“Why?”

The abruptness of the question startled him. He leaned his head back, staring at her, and said, “Because I don’t want you to be mopping up me or Paul Brickhill next time around.”

“I don’t know why you’re staying,” she said. “You should go. Don’t you understand that? Even I understand it.”

“You want us gone?”

Her jaw trembled for an instant before she said, “You know that I don’t, you said it last night. If you’re gone, I’m alone again. With them.”

“If you don’t talk to me, you’re damn near that alone anyhow.”

“No,” she said. “I’m nowhere near as alone as that.”

You can’t leave them here, the woman from Cassadaga had told him. They need you.

“I can’t help you,” he said, “if you won’t speak the truth.”

“I’ve told no lies.”

“You’ve told nothing, period.”

“My problems are my own. I don’t need to share them.”

Her face floated there just before his, those smooth lines and endless eyes.

“But you’re right about this place,” she said. “It’s filled with trouble. I’m filled with trouble. You don’t need any of it, and Paul certainly doesn’t. The best thing for both of you would be to-”

He leaned down and kissed her. Lifted his hand to the back of her neck and kissed her on the lips just as smoothly and sweetly as he could.

She stepped back and struck him.

Her slap caught him high on the left side of his face. He stood where he was and stared as she hissed, “That’s what you want? Is that all you want?”

She moved away from him in a rush, went around the bar and through the swinging door into the kitchen, and then he was alone with the imprint of her slap stinging on his cheek.

20

HE COULDN’T SAY why he’d done it. Hadn’t been thought-out, planned. No, he’d just been looking at her face and seeing those lips and… hell, what a mistake.

He went outside and stared at the wires coming out of the generator and knew damn well that he wouldn’t make any progress without Paul there. He walked down to the dock and set to work tearing some of the damaged planking free and stacking it on the shore. He worked hard and angry, frustrated and embarrassed with himself for what had happened. What would the boy have thought if he’d seen it?

While he was working, he thought he heard a boat. A faint sound, but he’d have bet money it was the creaking of a set of oars working in their oarlocks. He straightened and stared up the inlet, but it curled away from him, and the trees with their draperies of Spanish moss screened what lay beyond. He waited for a time and didn’t see anything, and then he returned to work.

It was more than an hour before Paul and Thomas Barrett made it back. The panel van had been replaced by an old pickup that was so loaded with lumber, it flattened the tires.

“Enough for the dock and the generator shed,” Barrett told Arlen when he walked up to join them. “Won’t be enough for the boathouse, but it’ll do the rest.”

“That’s a start. Hey, Paul? Why don’t you look at that generator while I get this unloaded. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of that.”

“Your back’s feeling better?”

“Yeah,” Arlen said. Rebecca had come out on the porch to watch them, and he didn’t look her way.

Paul went off to the generator, and Barrett hung around to help Arlen with the boards. They unloaded the lumber and carried it down to the boathouse. By the time they got back from the last load, the generator was running again, and Rebecca Cady stood on the porch with a rare smile on her face.

“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 ran 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 truck 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.

“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.

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.”

“And you’re helping him lay the foundation.”

“I just told you why! It’s not as if I made some decision to-”

“Whose hands were they?” he said.

“What?”

“The hands in the box. Who do they belong to? That man in the Plymouth who came by last night?”

“Yes. Tate McGrath killed him, I’m sure. Tate and his sons. His name was David Franklin. From Tampa. He worked with Walter Sorenson.”

“Doing what?”

“Collections. Bookkeeping. They were the money men.”

“I get the feeling,” Arlen said, “that Mr. Franklin tried to get more than his share. Apparently Wade and his boys didn’t appreciate that he melted Walt Sorenson in his attempt.”

She turned away as if feeling ill.

“Why would they bring the hands to you tonight?” he asked.

“That’s Solomon’s idea of a message. He’s reminding me of his power.”

“But why would you care about this David Franklin?”

“Because,” she said, her voice dipping to a near whisper, “we do the same sort of work for Solomon. He’s reminding me to do it right.”

Neither of them spoke for a while then. The wind blew and the waves broke and they sat in silence.

“There was a woman with Franklin last night. Do you know-”

“I have no idea what happened to her,” she said.

But they both knew.

Arlen took out a cigarette and lit it and smoked. “This is why you stayed,” he said. “Because you believe that if you leave, he’ll have your brother killed.”

“I don’t believe it. I know it.”

“So this place has value to Solomon,” he said, “because he can let his boys meet out here, bring in visitors to talk about things that can’t be overheard, maybe kill a man or two. You’ll keep silent because you’re worried for your brother.”

“That’s right.”

He smiled in the darkness and tapped ash from the cigarette. “Do you truly take me for a fool?”

She pulled her head back. “What?”

“I’m supposed to believe that’s all there is?” he said. “That’s the most ignorant thing I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s not worth the risk to him. There are a thousand places you could land a boat offshore here and smuggle into these creeks. There are a thousand places you could hold meetings. Hell, if he’s so damned determined that this be the spot, he’d run you off from it and take over.”

She ran her fingertips across her cheekbone and said, “Long enough ago, he might have done that. He didn’t have to, though. He had my father working for him willingly. My father and my brother. And there aren’t a thousand places like this, not with a deep-water inlet. You can bring a large boat in here and get trucks right down to it, unload quick, and the whole place is such a jungle that it would be almost impossible for anyone to watch you do it, for anyone to surprise you. No, this is actually the perfect place for Solomon Wade.”

“Your father was partners with him.”

She nodded. “For a time. Back when it was only liquor and people weren’t being killed and he thought Wade was someone he could trust.”

“So your father, he just allowed the smuggling to go on, is that it? Pretended not to know what they were doing, took a cut to keep his mouth shut?”

“He did a little more than that. Tate McGrath’s no mathematician. Solomon needed somebody who could think, somebody who could handle the dollars, the real dollars.”

“Your father did those things.”

“He did,” she said, “and now I do.”

He looked at her for a time and then stretched his neck first one way and then the other, felt the stiff joints pop.

“I don’t believe that,” he said. “I don’t believe a woman like you could be forced into doing so much for a man like that based on nothing more than intimidation. Someone like you? Shit, you’d have called the governor by now. Called old J. Edgar Hoover himself, had all of them down at Raiford, hauling your baby brother out while they fastened shackles around Wade.”

“Nothing more than intimidation,” she echoed. “Nothing more.”

“That’s all it sounds like to me, and you don’t seem the type to crumble under it as completely as you’re wanting me to believe.”

She lifted her chin and gave him that challenging stare she had. Her shoulders were pulled back and he could see her breasts pushing at the gown and the smooth lines of her sides swerving out into her hips, could see her hair tracing her neck. When he took another drag off his cigarette, he held the smoke longer than he intended. Almost like he’d forgotten it was there.

“Okay,” he said. “You’ve made your decisions. Something you need to understand? I’m about to make mine.”

She was silent.

“There any reason I shouldn’t walk up the road with that cute little box, show it to the law, and tell them what I’ve seen?”

“Where is the box?”

“That ain’t the question, honey.”

“It’s my question. Where is the box?”

He grinned at her and shook his head.

It went quiet again. They listened to the water break on the beach, and Arlen finished his cigarette and put it out under his toe.

“I’ve told you all I care to tell you,” she said. “This isn’t a game. My brother will die. He’s the same age as Paul, almost. Ten months older.”

“And he’s almost out,” Arlen said.

“How do you know that?”

“I only look ignorant, Miss Cady. Solomon told you fourteen days left. I suspect he meant until your brother gets out. Am I right?”

Her silence told him that he was.

“So he’ll come back,” Arlen said. “That’s your idea at least. Then what?”

“I’ve got a plan.”

“Many of the dead people I’ve known did.”

“You’ve such an encouraging touch.”

“Is that what you need? Encouragement?”

“What I need,” she said, “is to be left alone again.”

“Bullshit. Last thing in the world you want is to be left alone. You could’ve sent us off days ago, but you didn’t. You let us linger.”

She was quiet.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose I’ll have to do some thinking.”

“What have you done with that box?” she said.

“It’s in a place of my control. Don’t get any bright ideas about having Wade hang me up by my toenails to find out where.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“You’d do damn near anything you decide to do,” he said. “That much has been made clear.”

She went quiet again, and he realized that she was crying. Hardly making a sound, but her cheeks were damp and her breathing unsteady.

“Like I said,” he told her, the edge dulling from his voice, “I’ve got my own decisions to make.”

They sat there for a long time in the silent dark, and eventually he stepped away from the railing and went to the door and held it open. She hesitated but then rose and walked inside. Her body passed close to him, almost brushing him, and he could smell her hair, clean and with some hint of flowers.

She turned to him, still standing very close, her chest inches from his, and said, “So what do you expect me to do? Go upstairs and wait for you to think?”

“You can do that,” he said, “or you can kill me while I sleep. Let me know what you decide.”

24

SHE CAME INTO HIS ROOM just before dawn. He’d finally found sleep; the flask still lay in his hand, held against his side the way a child holds a dear toy. He wasn’t sure what sound stirred him or even if one had. He just opened his eyes and she was there, the white gown almost all that showed of her in the dark. The sky hadn’t begun to lighten yet, but he knew it must be close to morning. For a moment he didn’t speak, just looked at her and then dropped his eyes to her hands, thinking of the pistols. Her hands were empty.

“You don’t believe that Wade’s intimidation is enough to keep me here,” she said. “Enough to keep me working for him. That’s what you said.”

He didn’t answer, just pushed up in bed. He was bare-chested, and the room that always felt too warm now seemed cool.

“You asked why he didn’t just run us off and take the place over for himself,” she said. “Do you know how much I would love to have him do that? I’d give him the property, sign it over to him without a dime in return. That’s not enough for him, though. Not at this point. This family has been connected to him for too long. We’re either working for him or we’re working against him. That’s how he sees it at least. The minute I try to leave this place, even if I want nothing more than peace, he will view it as a threat. And I can tell you something about how he handles threats.”

She went quiet for a moment, and when she continued her voice was lower, more controlled.

“Solomon’s had help at the Cypress House for years. Since not long after my father built it. My father thought he was financially secure and found out he wasn’t. He lost his savings, and he couldn’t make any money here. It was a foolish idea from the start. This place is too far from anywhere to make a success. So what if you can catch fish? You can catch fish anywhere.”

Her face was beginning to take shape in the gloom.

“I stayed in Savannah when they moved here. My brother was just a boy, so he went along, but I was grown and I stayed there. They’d been down for only a few years before my mother died. Drowned just out from the beach.”

Arlen remembered the way his mother had looked at the end, body and mind ravaged by fever, her eyes so far from the woman he’d known that he couldn’t look into them.

“My father was devastated, and he needed help with my brother. I came down for a time, stayed for just over a year. When the lumber company in High Town went under, they killed off the railroad spur and this place was truly isolated. I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I left. I hated it here. Hated it. I moved back to Savannah. I was there for five years.”

She paused, and he was about to ask why she’d returned, but something told him not to speak. Just let her talk.

“During that time my father worked with Wade. After Prohibition ended, things got worse. The people involved were more ruthless, my father’s role more important. He was scared of it, then. After getting in so deeply, he decided he was scared. He began writing me letters, telling me that I needed to help him convince Owen to come and live with me in Georgia, that Owen couldn’t stay in this place anymore. I tried to talk to my brother, and I was ignored. Then he was arrested.”

A soft breeze slid in through the open window and flattened the sheet against Arlen’s thigh.

“I left Savannah and came back. Thinking”-her voice hitched slightly-“that I would save them.”

In his room at the far end of the hall, Paul coughed and muttered. It brought Rebecca up, held her silent. The moon painted her shadow on the wall.

“My father was terribly depressed. Near suicidal. He blamed himself for Owen’s situation, and he felt trapped here. He said anyone who betrayed Solomon Wade paid for it. That he’d follow you, find you no matter how long it took, and kill you. I didn’t believe that.”

This time she was quiet much longer.

Arlen said, “Tell me the rest. I don’t care how hard it is. You’ve got to tell me the rest.”

“It was my idea,” she said finally, her voice unsteady now. “My father was willing to try, but it was my idea. He kept talking about how the only way you escaped Solomon was through death. I told him we’d use that. He was going to take the boat out and sink it. Fake his death. He would leave, go to a place we’d agreed upon, but I’d have to stay for a while. For it to fool Wade, I would have to stay here at least long enough to make it look like we hadn’t run. I’d sell the inn, and when my brother was released, there’d be no reason for him to return here. It wouldn’t concern anyone when we decided to leave Corridor County once my father was dead. It would seem logical.”

“Your father actually did drown, though,” he said. “That’s what Thomas Barrett told me. So did he drown trying to scuttle the boat?”

“You don’t drown with your throat cut.”

He was silent for a time, and then he said, “No, you don’t. How can you be sure that’s what happened, though?”

“I saw the body. Who do you think was supposed to get him off the boat before he sank it?”

“You didn’t tell anyone.”

“You have trouble believing that,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve never seen your own father with his throat cut because of the way you handled a situation.”

No, not with his throat cut, Arlen thought. I saw my father spilling blood into the dust from a bullet, though, and you better believe it was because of the way I handled the situation. Difference was, I was right. Edwin Main might have been corrupt, but I did what was right. My father was dangerous. Insane.

“By the time I got back here,” she said when he didn’t respond, “Solomon Wade was waiting. His message was simple: either I did what was asked, or my brother would end up like my father.”

Another sound from Paul’s room, this time a garbled sort of cry. Talking in his sleep. Trapped in a nightmare.

“Is your brother aware of any of this?”

“No. How could I tell him while he was in prison?”

“He knows your father is dead, though.”

“Yes. But he believes that he drowned.”

“And you believe he’ll be killed if you leave or seek help.”

“I think that’s obvious.” She shifted her weight, the floor creaking beneath her, and said, “You want to know why Solomon Wade killed my father? It’s not just because what he knew made him a threat. I don’t think it had anything to do with that, really. It was the idea that he thought he could slip out of Wade’s control. The idea that he thought Wade had anything but total power over him.”

It went quiet again, and the morning wind worked through the window and swirled her gown around her feet.

“You wanted to know my reasons,” she said. “You wanted to know why I haven’t gone to someone for help. Said you couldn’t believe a woman like me would be intimidated into such an agreement with Solomon Wade.”

She took a step closer to him, so he could see her face clearly, and said, “Do you believe it now?”

He nodded. “You’ve been waiting for him to get out. Waiting for Owen.”

“Yes.”

“He’s almost out. He’ll be coming back.”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

She wet her lips and broke eye contact.

“It would seem to me,” he said, “whatever plan you’ve got, it’s going to need to be a damn good one.”

“We’ll be leaving,” she said.

“You don’t think Wade’s expecting that?”

“I know that he is.”

Arlen let his silence speak for him.

“Well, what do you propose?” she said. “Stay? Live the rest of our lives with a gun to our heads?”

“No, I wouldn’t propose that. But you’d better not make a mistake.”

“After the last six months of my life,” she said, “surely you don’t really believe you need to explain that to me.”

He gave that a nod.

“Well, there you are,” she said. “My reasons. You said you had your own decision to make. You can make it with those in your mind.”

He was waiting for more, expecting her to say something else, to implore him toward silence or trust, but instead she turned and walked almost soundlessly across the floor, opened the door, and slipped back out of the room.

25

THE NEXT MORNING they finished the generator shed and began work on the dock, and Arlen’s eyes wandered constantly, looking for Solomon Wade or Sheriff Tolliver or Tate McGrath and his sons. No one came. Paul sensed his distraction and asked after it, and Arlen dismissed it as a headache. He had a bandage on his hand from Rebecca’s bite, but Paul didn’t inquire about that.

She’d asked nothing of him. Told him her story and slipped back out of the room. What she wanted, evidently, was only his silence. She wanted her fourteen-now thirteen-days to wait until her brother’s release. No other help had been requested, no other plan shared.

It was at lunch that Paul asked about the clock.

The thing was massive, with a brass frame set in a beautiful piece of walnut that sloped away on both sides, its hands stopped dead on midnight. Arlen had seen it the day they’d entered with Sorenson but paid little attention to it then or anytime else.

“My mother ordered that clock,” Rebecca said, and though her eyes were empty her voice seemed to be coming from somewhere out at sea. “She loved it. It’s been broken for years now.”

“Maybe I’ll have a look,” Paul said.

“I think you’d have to know about clocks.”

“That’s what we all said about the generator, too,” Arlen pointed out.

“Exactly,” Paul said. “Arlen, help me get that down?”

The kid wanted so badly to have something to do for her. Let me help you seemed to issue forth from him like a constant shout, as if by helping her enough he’d convince her of something. I’ll show her that she needs me, he’d said. Now Arlen wanted to grab him and shake him and shout that he had no damn idea what she needed and what it could cost him. Her needs went beyond any that Paul could imagine. Her needs involved people who cut off a man’s hands and presented them to her in a box wrapped with twine, like a gift.

“Arlen?”

“Yeah,” Arlen said, blinking back into the moment. “Sure.”

They brought a ladder in and, with Paul on the ladder and Arlen standing on the bar, got the whole piece down. It weighed less than the generator but not by much. Paul studied the casing and then went in search of a screwdriver. When he was gone, it was just Rebecca and Arlen in the barroom. She looked at him in silence for a few seconds and then said, “You’re still here.”

“Wondering about my decision,” he said. “That it?”

“Yes.”

“Here’s a start on it,” he said. “There are two pistols on the chair beside your bed. I’d like one of them.”

“What?”

“Seems like a fair gesture of trust to me,” he said.

Paul’s footsteps slapped off the floor, and then the door to the kitchen banged open and he was back with them, in midsentence and midstride, discussing his theories on the clock’s malfunction before he’d even gotten the case off. When he’d knelt on the floor above it and ducked his head, Arlen stared back at Rebecca Cady, a look in his eyes that said, The rest is up to you.

She turned away.

All day long they worked, speaking to each other as if nothing lay between them. All day long Arlen watched the road for Wade and McGrath, and all day long he considered the countless reasons for gathering his bags and walking away from this place.

When darkness fell, his bags were where they’d been for days.

She came for him in the night.

He was in the chair at the window, had dozed off, and the sound of the door opening woke him. He could see her reflection in the glass as she entered. The pistol was in her left hand, looking big and ugly.

“Do you ever sleep?” she said, apparently thinking that because he was in the chair he’d been awake.

“I used to.”

He still hadn’t turned, and after a short hesitation she crossed the room to him. When she reached the chair, she didn’t say anything at first, just joined him in staring out at the sea. Then, still silent, she switched the gun from her left hand to her right and extended it to him.

He didn’t move to take it.

“There are bullets inside, if they make you feel better. I can give you more if you want them.”

He stared at the horizon line. Even in the dark of full night, you could make out the distinction once your eyes had adjusted. Shades of gray.

“Well?” she said, and gave the gun a little shake.

“You intend to leave,” Arlen said, not moving his hands from his lap, letting the big Smith & Wesson float in the air in front of his chest.

“What?”

“When your brother is released, you intend to leave.”

“That’s right.”

“He’ll look for you,” Arlen said. “And you want to know something else? He’ll look for me and Paul.”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“It didn’t.”

“It doesn’t now.”

“Like hell. It does now, and it will then.”

She moved the gun away, dropped it back to her side.

“So when he’s released, you’ll leave,” Arlen repeated. “And then I’ll have to deal with Wade, whether here or far away. You told me that yourself.”

She still didn’t say a word. He looked up at her for a time, and then he reached over and took the gun. He had to lean across her body to get it. When he touched the stock, his hand pressed against hers. Her skin was very cool.

He pulled the gun from her fingers and flicked open the cylinder and saw the cartridges, snapped it shut and set the weapon down on his lap.

“All right,” he said.

She didn’t move. He looked up at her and then got to his feet.

“That’s my answer,” he said. “I’ll be here in the morning again. Be damned if I know why, but I’ll be here in the morning.”

He crossed to the bed and leaned down and placed the gun on the floor beside it. She was still standing at the window, staring out at the ocean.

“When you kissed me,” she said, “I thought that’s what you wanted. That you’d make me… earn your silence.”

“I understand. You weren’t right, but I understand, and I shouldn’t have done it. It was a mistake.”

“I shouldn’t have hit you.”

“I think you probably should have,” he said.

She turned and took a few steps toward him.

“Why did you do that, though? It didn’t seem like something you would do. That’s why I reacted that way. It didn’t seem to fit you.”

“Why did I kiss you? I think you had it right. I wanted to control you. I’m a brute, same as McGrath or Tolliver or Wade.”

“That’s not the truth. Why did you do it?”

He studied her for a moment and then said, “You don’t need to ask a man why he’d be moved to do a thing like that. You don’t need to ask that at all. You damn well know why.”

She’d stepped even closer, was an arm’s length away now.

Tell her to get out, he thought. Tell her thanks for the gun, honey, but go on your way now.

She took one more step forward and he reached up with his right hand and placed it on the back of her head and pulled her face to his and kissed her, just as he had the last time. She didn’t slap him tonight. She returned the kiss but kept her body distant for a moment. Just a moment. Then she leaned in and he felt the press of her chest against his, the graze of her thigh.

He broke the kiss.

“All right,” he said. “You let me have one. Thanks. It was awfully nice. Now you need to leave.”

She stepped back from him and looked him in the eye and then she reached down and took hold of her gown and lifted it, brought it up over her head just as she had that night on the beach before she’d waded into the water. She held the gown in her hands for one long second and then dropped it onto the floor, and she was naked before him.

This is how far she’s willing to go, he thought. This is how far she thinks she needs to go. You’ll get your reward for keeping your mouth shut. How do you feel about yourself now? You proud of what you’ve got her ready to do?

“Go back to your room,” he said, and his voice was hoarse. “I’m a rotten son of a bitch, some days, but I’ve never been this kind of rotten. Get out of here.”

She didn’t move. The moonlight lit the curve of one breast, traced the swell of her hip and the length of her leg with white light.

“All I asked for was the gun,” he said. “You can go back to bed now. Go on and get to bed.”

“You want me to go?” she said.

“Yes.” But even as he said it he felt himself step forward. It was wrong, it was all mighty damn wrong, this moment built from everything that a moment like this should not be of-distrust, power, manipulation. A flickering thought-Just come toward me a little, don’t make me go all the way there, come toward me a little, that will make it better, so much better-danced in his brain.

She leaned into him just before he reached her. She leaned into him and something broke free in his mind and floated clear and then his lips were on hers again and his hands were resting first on the small of her back and then on her hips. Her hair slid over his cheek and her chest pressed into his, her nipples tightening against his skin.

When he pulled her back to the bed, his foot brushed against the Smith & Wesson. He almost tripped over it just before they hit the mattress, the old bed frame creaking under their weight. She had both of her hands on his belt now and he was trying to help with one of his own. He twisted and tugged free from his pants, then ran his hands along her sides, tracing the lines of her body as he moved his lips to her ear.

“Quiet,” he whispered. “Quiet. I don’t want the boy hearing.”

26

SHE WAS GONE when he woke, but the gun remained.

He turned away from the window to hide from the sunlight. The sheets and pillow smelled of her. He didn’t remember when she’d left, but he remembered the night. Long would he remember the night.

He heard voices from downstairs then, hers first, then Paul’s. The sound of the boy’s voice made him squeeze his eyes shut.

Out of all the reasons you shouldn’t have done it, his schoolboy’s infatuation doesn’t rank anywhere near the top, he told himself. Not even close.

Somehow it seemed to, though. Somehow it seemed mighty near the top.

They worked a full day, completing the first third of the dock, Paul in his usual high spirits. Once, Arlen went up to the house to fetch them both some water and found Rebecca with a set of ledger books. He didn’t ask what she was studying on, and she didn’t offer.

During dinner Paul mentioned how much he’d like to try some fishing. Rebecca left and came back with two beautiful rods and reels. “My father’s,” she said shortly. That evening Arlen stood on the dock and smoked a few cigarettes while the boy tried casting. He caught two black drum before the night was done, fish with high backs, steeply sloped heads, and a tangle of chin whiskers. They gave him some fun on the line, and he brought them up to the inn and made an awkward job of cleaning one before Rebecca stepped in and did the other.

“Fresh fish tomorrow,” she said. “You caught it, and we can keep it cold now because you fixed the generator.”

There was nothing the kid liked more than her praise.

She came back to Arlen’s room that night.

“I told you,” he said, “you don’t have to do this. I didn’t ask it of you.”

“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”

“If you don’t want to be here, then go on back to your room.”

“If I didn’t,” she said, “I would.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at her in the dark and said, “I need to believe that.”

“You should.”

He didn’t answer.

“If you’d like me to go, I will,” she said. “But do you really want me to?”

He did not.

The wind changed early the next afternoon. It had been blowing in hot gusts out of the west for the better part of two days, but now it swung around to the southeast and the water in the inlet rippled beneath it. The change brought a touch of cool, and they were grateful for it down on the dock, until they noticed the smell.

It was coming from farther up the inlet, somewhere back in the mangrove trees. Paul twisted his face in a grimace of disgust and said, “What is that?”

“Dunno,” Arlen said, but he was facing into the wind and thinking that he knew very well indeed.

“You mean you don’t smell that stench?”

“I can smell it.”

“It’s awful. You ever smelled anything so awful, Arlen?”

“A time or two.”

They got back to work then, and the sun moved west and shone down on the inlet, unbroken by cloud. The smell intensified-a fetid, rotting stink. Arlen saw vultures coming and going from a spot in the marsh grass just up the creek from them, maybe three hundred yards away. They flicked through the trees as silent shadows, but there were many of them.

“Something died back there,” Paul said. “Wonder what it was.”

Who, Arlen thought. You wonder who it was.

Of course, it could be an animal. One of the boars they had out in these woods. Or perhaps someone’s hound had gotten loose and found its way down to the inlet and ran afoul of a snake. There were any number of possibilities.

An hour passed before Paul went up to the inn and came back with a rake in his hand, a thing with a mean-looking array of wide metal tines.

“The hell you think you’re doing?” Arlen said.

“We better check that out. Arlen, it smells like death.”

“Could be an animal.”

“Could be.” Paul gave him a long, steady look, and Arlen sighed and swore under his breath and dropped his saw to the ground, gathered an ax.

“All right. We’ll have a look.”

It was remarkable how fast the beach gave way to forest in this part of the state. Or to jungle, rather. It was more like that than any forest Arlen had ever known, choked with thick green undergrowth and snarling vines and soil that squished under your boots. They picked their way through the mud and the brush until they were walking beneath the trees-scrub pine nearest the dock and mangroves farther inland. The woods were a litter of torn leaves and branches, and it seemed half the trees had been sheared or uprooted completely during the hurricane. The vultures ahead of them watched their approach and flapped their wings, creating an eerie background as they walked deeper into the shadows.

“Go on,” Arlen shouted at the birds. “Go on!” He reached out and grabbed hold of a large banyan leaf and gave it a vigorous shake. A few of the birds took to the air then, but others stayed. Arlen could see now that the object of the scavenging was actually down in the water, which was why the vultures were perched in the trees instead of clustered around the find; they had to make quick passes and snatches with their beaks because the carcass was floating and they weren’t waterbirds. Just death birds.

“Arlen,” Paul said, “that looks like…”

“Yeah,” Arlen said.

The carcass was on their side of the creek but still thirty feet away and mostly underwater. Even from here, though, a stretch of fabric was visible. It was covered with mud and water, but even so you could see that it was a pale yellow.

“Give me that rake,” Arlen said, and the words didn’t come easily. Paul traded him the rake for the ax, and Arlen ran his tongue over dry lips and then stepped forward. The boy hung back, watching. Arlen had his eyes locked on the floating object and didn’t see the snake in his path until he’d nearly stepped on it. There was a flourish of motion that froze him with one foot hanging in the air, and then the water parted almost soundlessly and the snake slid off. Arlen stared after it for a moment and then continued on.

When he got closer, he yelled again and banged the rake through the leaves and sent the remaining vultures into the air. They didn’t go far, though. Only to a tree on the opposite side of the creek, where they could monitor their prize.

He knew by then what he’d suspected since the wind shifted and began to carry the smell to them. The vultures and the fish and the heat had combined to do dastardly things to this remnant of human life, and when he stood over the body he felt his stomach clench and had to take a quick glance at the treetops to steady himself. The stench was hideous, and he’d pulled his shirt up over his nose with the hand that didn’t hold the rake.

She floated upside down, and he could see one hand just beneath the surface of the water, some of the flesh picked clean, bone remaining. He remembered the way she’d traced his palm with her fingers.

It’s happened now, hasn’t it? she’d said, watching his face after her own had gone from flesh to bone in the darkness. He’s told them. It’s done.

Arlen had let her go. He’d seen death on her and he’d let her go and now her remains floated in the marsh, picked upon by forest creatures and vultures. Yes, there’d been armed men inside, but he’d let her go, he’d let them take her.

They’ll find me, she had said. And it will end the same for me, only it will also be bad for you and the boy. And for Rebecca. I won’t initiate such things.

“Arlen,” Paul called. “Is that-”

“Shut up!” Arlen shouted, and his voice nearly broke. The boy fell into a stunned silence.

You can’t run from them, she’d said. I hope you understand that. You’re going to need to. There will be no running from what lies ahead.

Now he reached out with the rake, leaning off the bank and extending it as far as he could, and hooked one of the tines into the dead woman’s dress.

It took four tries to drag her all the way over. Her flesh was so decomposed that the rake went through it like soft butter, so Arlen had to keep catching the dress as best as he could. The clothes had held up better than the body.

He dragged her back, out of the dark waters of the creek and toward the bank. He bit down, squeezing his teeth together and tightening his lips, and then he held his breath and used the rake to turn the body over. More flesh slid off the bones when he did it, and a burst of putrid gases rose. The dead woman’s head rolled crookedly, turning to face Arlen. Only traces of skin remained, and they were swollen and discolored. Not even the dearest loved one would be able to look at this face and recognize it. Arlen felt his stomach clench again and his throat burn warningly, and he pulled the rake free and turned from the body, heard it slide down into the water. He walked back to Paul, cold rage in his veins.

“That’s a woman,” Paul said softly. “Isn’t it? That’s a dead woman.”

“Yes.”

“Where’d she come from? How’d she die?”

Arlen looked away. “She’s been in the water for a time. Probably dumped in upstream and drifted down and snagged here.”

“The body wouldn’t have sunk? They float?”

“Yes,” Arlen said. “They float.”

Paul stared at him. “Who was it?”

“Too late to tell,” Arlen said, and that was almost the truth.

27

ARLEN TOLD THEM they’d have to call for the sheriff, and both Rebecca and Paul stared at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“He’ll likely want to arrest us for it,” Paul said nervously.

“You’d let her sit there?” Arlen said. “Pretend we never found her?”

“No,” Paul said, but he still looked uneasy, and Rebecca was watching Arlen with confusion and wariness, reading something in him that the boy did not. He turned from her so she could no longer stare into his eyes. There was another reason Arlen wanted Tolliver down here, all right. He wanted to watch the man face the corpse. To see her as she was now, and remember her as she had been. He wanted to see if it made any impact, if the man would feel the weight of murder or if that ability was gone from him. Arlen had an idea that it was.

They got in the truck and headed out just as they had so many days earlier, when Sorenson’s body still smoldered in his twelve-cylinder Auburn and Arlen expected to be gone from the Cypress House by sundown.

Back to the same store, and this time they all went inside. The little shop was jammed with rows of shelves, and a dark-skinned, dark-haired girl stood behind a counter lined with jars of penny candy. She was an Indian, Arlen realized when she looked up at them, an absolutely beautiful girl.

“Hello, Sarah,” Rebecca said. “We’re going to need the phone.”

Before the girl could answer, a door behind the counter opened and Thomas Barrett stepped into the room, his face flushed and damp with sweat. Behind him Arlen could see a litter of tools and the panel delivery van.

“The whole gang,” Barrett said, grinning at them. “Y’all need that many cigarettes?”

“We need to call the sheriff,” Rebecca said.

Barrett’s smile faded. “Everything all right?”

“There’s a body in the inlet. A dead woman.”

Barrett looked at Arlen and then back at Rebecca, and he moved toward the girl at the counter, slipped his arm around her waist. It was a protective gesture. As if the three from the Cypress House carried danger.

“First that guy blowing up in his car,” he said, “and now this? What in the hell’s going on out there?”

Nobody had an answer.

Tolliver and the redheaded deputy brought a truck with an open bed out along with the sheriff’s car, and they carried a wide canvas tarpaulin down to the creek with them. The deputy said something under his breath and covered his mouth and nose with his hand, but Tolliver stood on the bank with his hands hooked in his belt and looked down at the rotting remains as if he were staring at a flat tire or some such minor nuisance.

“I’ve seen prettier women,” he said.

Arlen looked at him and found himself recalling the fields of France, the Springfield rifle bucking in his arms, plumes of blood bursting from strange men. He longed for it now, hungered for killing in a way he had not in the war.

The body’s decomposition was advanced by now. Nothing accelerated that process like heat, and the water in the inlet had to be damn near eighty degrees. Rebecca and Paul remained forty feet away, covering their faces. The day’s rising sun and the fact that Arlen had pulled the body most of the way out of the water had conspired to worsen an already hideous smell. Arlen could tolerate it, after the war. You grew an extra layer around yourself during something like the Belleau Wood. Or maybe growth wasn’t the right way to think of it. No, it was more shrinking than growing. A part of you that was there at the start got a little smaller. The part that viewed human life as something strong and difficult to remove from this world. Yeah, that part could get mighty small over time.

Tolliver spit into the water near the dead woman’s head and said, “Well, shit, we best get to it.”

He and the deputy pulled on thick work gloves and wrapped scarves over their faces before attempting to retrieve the body. They’d hardly cleared it from the water before Tolliver shouted at Rebecca to bring a bottle of whiskey down. When she returned, Tolliver added a liberal splash to his scarf and the deputy’s. Before he wrapped the scarf around his face again, he took a long belt of the whiskey, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

They wrestled the body into the tarpaulin and wrapped it as if they were folding a sail. Halfway through, the deputy straightened up as if someone had slipped a bayonet into his side, lifted a hand to his mouth, and then lurched sideways. He fell on his knees at the edge of the creek, splashing, and tore the scarf free just before he vomited.

Tolliver gave a sigh and leaned back and waited. The deputy purged and then stayed on his hands and knees above the creek, breathing in unsteady gasps.

“Come on,” Tolliver snapped, holding the scarf down from his mouth with one mud-streaked finger. “Let’s get it out of here before sundown.”

They finished wrapping the woman’s corpse and then carried it back through the woods and dropped it into the bed of the truck. Wet stains were showing through the canvas by the time they got it there.

“Enjoy your afternoon,” Tolliver said, wiping his hands on his trousers as he walked for the car, leaving the deputy to drive the truck. “You’ll see me again soon enough.”

He got into the car and drove away, and the three of them stood together in the yard and watched the truck with the corpse follow the sheriff through the dust and into the woods.

“Wasn’t what I expected from him,” Paul said. “I thought he’d have plenty of questions, like he did with Mr. Sorenson. Didn’t seem to have any at all with this one, though.”

“No,” Arlen said. “No, he didn’t.”

28

THEY DIDN’T HEAR ABOUT the body again until the next afternoon, when they had their first visitor from the water.

Paul and Arlen were on the dock, had fresh planking laid twenty feet out now. Paul was chest-deep in the water, hammering braces back into place, when they heard an engine. Arlen looked up toward the house automatically, thinking it was a car, but then he realized the sound was coming across the water, and when he turned around he could see the boat.

It was a motor sailer with one forward mast, sails furled, and a raised cabin making up the back third of the boat. Maybe thirty-five or forty feet long, and wide across the beam. A good-size craft, and one that had seen some weather-its white hull was pocked with nicks and gashes and streaks. Ran steady, though, the engine hitting smoothly as it came out of the Gulf and entered the inlet.

“Who’s this, I wonder?” Paul said, still in the water.

“Don’t know.”

The boat came up the center of the inlet with the confidence of a pilot who knew the waters-it wasn’t a wide stretch of water but evidently was plenty deep-and then the engine cut and the man at the wheel stepped back to the stern and let a windlass out, anchor chain hissing into the water. It was Tate McGrath.

Once the anchor was out, he straightened and stood at the stern and stared at them for a moment, then set to work lowering the small launch mounted on the stern. Coming ashore.

He got the launch into the water and then climbed down and rowed in. When he had the boat pulled up to shore, he walked past them without a word and headed up the trail to the inn.

Paul stood with the hammer in his hand and his eyes on the trail.

“One of us ought to be up there. She shouldn’t be alone with him.”

“She was alone with him for a long time before we got here,” Arlen said. “She can be alone with him now.”

He didn’t like it either, though. He had a memory of her standing in his room with one side lit by moonlight, a memory of her beneath him with her mouth close to his chest and her breath warm on his skin…

He missed the nail head and bent it sideways instead of driving it straight. It had been years since he’d done that. Many years.

Paul had started working again, but his eyes kept going to the house even though he couldn’t see a damn thing from here but the top of the roof. Arlen let him glance up there a half dozen times before he finally said, “You want to keep your head down while you work?”

They hammered away for a while, and McGrath didn’t return and no sound came from the Cypress House. Too damn quiet. There should be voices.

It was just while he was thinking this that another engine came into hearing range, a car this time. Arlen finally sighed and said, “Okay, I’ll go see who it is,” when he saw Paul staring into the trees with that same dark frown.

“I’ll come with you.”

“Like hell you will. Stay down here and keep working.”

The kid didn’t like that at all, but Arlen ignored the grumblings and went on up the trail. When he got back within view of the inn, he saw it was the sheriff’s car. Tolliver stood on the porch with Solomon Wade, Rebecca, and Tate McGrath. Arlen came out of the trees and walked up to the porch with his head down, as if he had no interest in the gathering. When he reached the porch steps he said, “Pardon,” and stepped past McGrath, who didn’t move to clear out of his way, and entered the inn without so much as breaking stride. He walked back behind the bar and into the kitchen and retrieved a beer from the icebox and cracked it open. Drank about a third of it down, standing there in the shadows, and then he took the bottle and went back out onto the porch.

He was ready to do the same routine, walk past them without a blink and return to the dock, when Wade spoke.

“Mr. Wagner?”

He pronounced it Vagner, like the composer, as Tolliver had in the jail. Arlen kept walking, said, “That’s not my name,” without a look back.

“My mistake,” Wade drawled. “Hold up. Don’t hurry off.”

Arlen turned to face them.

“Where is it you’re from?” Wade said. He and Tolliver were standing close to Rebecca, and Tate was leaning on the porch rail.

“No place near here.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Arlen took a drink of his beer. “West Virginia.”

“Really? What town?”

“It’s not someplace you’ve heard of.”

“I’ve heard of some Wagners from West Virginia,” Wade said. His face was damp with sweat, accentuating the glare from his glasses. “Only they pronounced it properly. Vagner. The ones I’ve heard of were from Fayette County, I believe. What was your father’s name?”

Arlen felt the back of his neck go colder than the beer in his hand.

“You haven’t heard of any of my people. We aren’t a famous bunch, and it’s a mighty small town.”

“Maybe so,” Wade said, “but you’d be surprised at all that I hear.”

A tremor worked into Arlen’s hand, the sort of muscle shake that white-hot anger touched off just before you swung on a man, but he willed it down.

“I’d be surprised, indeed, if you’ve heard anything of my people,” he said. “Like I said, it’s a mighty small town.”

“Why’d you leave it behind?”

“The war. Never went back. Went a lot of places, but never home.”

“And what did you do in the war?”

“Killed Germans,” Arlen said, wondering what in the hell this was all about.

“Well, good for you.” Wade seemed to amplify his southern accent when he desired. Right now he was laying it on heavy.

“What about you, Judge?” Arlen said.

“Pardon?”

“Where are you from?”

Wade’s eyes flickered. “Florida, sir. Florida.”

“You like the area, then. Trust the locals.”

“I do. They are fine people.”

“How is it you ended up with a sheriff from Cleveland, then?” Arlen said. He was doing now exactly what he’d promised himself he would not do-poking at Wade and Tolliver with a stick, riling them. He couldn’t help it, though. Not after that bullshit about the Wagners of Fayette County.

Tolliver’s eyes narrowed and then went to Rebecca Cady.

“Don’t look at her,” Arlen said. “She didn’t tell me. You want people to be unaware of your roots, you ought not go on about the Cleveland Indians in front of them, Sheriff. Nobody from another city would follow such a shitty ball club.”

Tolliver did not smile. He turned his gaze to Arlen and let it rest, cold and hard. Arlen winked and lifted his beer to his lips.

“That all you fellows need? Or do you want me to write a family tree?”

Tolliver turned to Wade. “It’s amazing he’s grown as old as he has, talking like that to men he doesn’t know. Someday it’ll be the wrong words to the wrong man, don’t you think?”

“I surely do,” Wade said.

“I believe it,” Arlen said. “It’s the reason I don’t do much talking to strangers. You might remember that you stopped me for this chat.”

“Speaking of being a stranger,” Wade said, “you seem to have made yourself right at home. Interesting, with the way people keep dying out here.”

“It’s one of the many things I don’t like about the place,” Arlen said. “I’ll be moving on soon enough.”

He waited for more questions, waited for some sort of threat relating to the dead woman they’d found in the creek, a promise of jail time, but nothing came. Wade stared at him for a few seconds, but then his eyes shifted, and when Arlen turned he saw Paul coming up the trail and felt a surge of annoyance. Why hadn’t the kid listened and stayed at the dock?

Paul walked to Arlen’s side, looking at the men on the porch warily.

“Afternoon, son,” Tolliver said. “Find any corpses today?”

“No.”

Tolliver smiled.

“What are you doing here?” Paul said.

Tolliver turned and gave Wade wide eyes. “Nosy little bastard, ain’t he? Why, we’ve come to provide a Corridor County resident with transportation. Mr. McGrath here was needing of a lift, and we take care of our citizens in this part of the world.”

Solomon Wade looked bored with the dialogue. He stepped down off the porch and walked toward the sheriff’s car. He paused when he reached Arlen and looked into his eyes.

“I’ll see what I can remember about those Wagners in West Virginia,” he said. “Be interesting to see what all I can recollect.”

Arlen reached out and extended a hand. Wade stopped and looked down at it as if he’d never seen the gesture.

“Always a pleasure, Judge,” Arlen said.

Wade gave a small cold smile and took his hand. Pressed hard against it and kept his eyes on Arlen’s.

“Paul,” Arlen said, “show some respect: shake the judge’s hand.”

Everyone looked confused at this.

“Do it, son,” Arlen said.

Paul glowered, but he reached out and offered his hand. Wade watched Arlen as if he were trying to understand the game, but he took the boy’s hand.

When he did it, Paul’s eyes went to smoke.

“Mention the man’s family,” Solomon Wade said, “and of a sudden he is most polite. I find that curious.”

He released Paul’s hand, and the smoke disappeared instantly.

“Take care now,” Arlen said.

Wade walked on to the car, with Tolliver and McGrath at his heels. The sheriff took the wheel and they went clattering away. Dust hung in the air long after they were gone.

Paul spoke to Arlen in a low voice.

“You see it again?”

Arlen nodded.

Paul seemed to blanch, but he nodded as if it were expected and said, “I’ll just have to stay out of his way, then. That’s all. Isn’t hard to do.”

Arlen didn’t answer.

“What are you talking about?” Rebecca said.

“Paul,” Arlen said, “go on back to the dock and get to work.”

He didn’t argue this time. Just walked off toward the water, moving with a quick stride that seemed uneasy.

“They say anything about the woman?” Arlen said when he was gone.

“No.”

“Then why the hell did they come out here?”

“Solomon wanted to bring the boat back.” Rebecca had come down off the porch and was standing close to him.

“Why?”

“To frighten me.”

“You’re frightened of a boat?”

She gave him cool, expressionless eyes, and after a few seconds he got it.

“That’s the one? Your father went out in that boat?”

She nodded.

He took another drink and stared up the road where they’d gone.

“What’s he use it for?”

“Smuggling. Mostly Tate runs it.” She lowered her voice and said, “What were you talking about just then? Why’d you have Paul shake his hand?”

He turned to face her again. “Wade’s going to kill him.”

“What?”

“I can see it when he touches him.”

She stared. “You’re not joking.”

“No.”

“How do you… what do you see?”

“The boy’s eyes turn to smoke every time Wade touches him.”

She was looking at him with her mouth parted, eyes wide with wonder.

“I’ve got to get him out of here,” Arlen said. “But it won’t be easy.”

“He believes you, though. He told me that. So he’ll know that it’s true.”

“He still won’t be willing to go.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s in love with you,” Arlen said.

29

IT WASN’T AS SIMPLE AS staying out of Solomon Wade’s way. Arlen was sure of that. And even if it was… Paul wouldn’t be able to stay out of his way. No, he’d remain with Rebecca, remain at her side, and Rebecca Cady was planted firmly in Solomon Wade’s path.

Arlen had trouble working that afternoon. Made the sorts of mistakes he never made, had to tear loose boards he’d just laid and remeasure and cut them correctly and lay them again. If Paul noticed, he didn’t comment. He was quiet himself, somber, but he didn’t miss a nail or a measurement. He never seemed to.

The uneasiness followed them back to the inn that evening. There, though, Paul endeavored to change the tone. His idea was a boat ride. As soon as he found out it belonged to Rebecca, he wanted to take it out.

“I’ve never been on a boat,” he said. “Not a real one. And that’s a dandy.”

“We aren’t down here to play on a boat,” Arlen said, seeing the pain in her eyes. “Quiet down about it.”

“There’s no reason we couldn’t take it out,” he said, undeterred.

“We don’t know how to run it.”

“Oh, there’s not that much to it. I’m not saying we’ll sail to China, Arlen, I’m just saying I want to go out a little ways and-”

“Damn it, Paul,” Arlen began, riled now, but Rebecca cut him off.

“It’s fine,” she said. “Take it out.”

He cast her a surprised look. She met his eyes and nodded.

“It’s fine,” she repeated.

“See?” Paul said. “We’ll all go.”

Rebecca shook her head. “No. I won’t.”

“Oh, come on. I want all of us to-”

“Paul!” Arlen barked, and the anger in his voice made the kid pull back and stare at him in confusion.

“She doesn’t want to go,” Arlen said, fighting to control his tone. “Stop pestering. Far as I’m concerned, none of us should go on the damn thing.”

“I’d like you to,” Rebecca said. “Really, I would. I just can’t.”

“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,” he 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.