The Cypress House (11 page)

    "Hell
of a way to run a tavern," Arlen said. "Real sense of
hospitality."

    Paul
shifted uneasily, touched Arlen's arm, and said, "It isn't any of her
doing. Let's just find our own way."

    Arlen
turned and waved his arm at the wide window facing the beach, where rain
drummed off the sea and wisps of pale fog hung over the water.

    "Find
our own way through that? It's many miles of walking, Paul. She's got a truck.
She could —"

    "She
could
do a lot of things," Rebecca Cady said, pulling her shoulders back
and tightening one slender hand back around the hammer, "but she won't.
Your bags are behind the bar. Take them and go."

    She
and Arlen stood and stared at each other with naked dislike, but she kept her
head high and those blue eyes firm on his
. Hell with it,
he thought
,
no use arguing with the likes of her. We'll have ourselves a wet walk, but
it'll take us away from here, and that's the only thing I want right now. That,
and a drink
.

    "Fine,"
he said. "Let it never be said that you're lacking in generosity, Miss
Cady."

    She
didn't answer, and he walked around the bar to find their bags. They were
stacked back by the swinging door that led into the tiny kitchen. Arlen sorted
out his and saw immediately that the contents had been disrupted.

    "Sheriff
and his deputy did that," she said.

    "They
never touched our belongings. Didn't set a foot inside the door."

    "They
came back. After you were in the jail, they came back. To talk to me." She
gave him a long look, enough pause to let him imagine what Tolliver might have
been like with her, and then said, "They tore through all your things and
left them on my floor. I put them back as well as I could."

    "Thank
you," Paul said, joining Arlen behind the bar. Arlen just grunted, fingers
searching through his shirts and under his jacket for the canteen. It was
there. He withdrew it, unscrewed the cap, and tilted it.

    There
was no familiar rustle of paper. He shook it, feeling a cold rope tighten
around his throat, and then turned it all the way upside down and reached
inside with his index finger, slid it in all directions.

    Nothing.

    He
stood there with the canteen in his hand as Paul shuffled around beside him. At
length the boy went still, too, and then spoke in a soft voice.

    "Arlen
. . . my money's gone. All I had."

    "Yes."

    Paul
looked up. "You, too ? They took —"

    "Yes,"
he said, and turned to look back at Rebecca Cady. "Someone did. Someone
stole every dime we had."

    She
held her palms up. "I didn't
touch
your money."

    "Did
you see them steal it?"

    "No."

    "I
find that hard to believe."

    "The
sheriff talked to me while the deputy went through your things."

    "Easy
story for you to tell," Arlen said.

    She
smiled. It was the first time he'd ever seen her smile, and even though this
one was anything but an expression of pleasure, it stung him. She was something
beyond beautiful.

    "You
want to see how much money I have," she said, "you're more than
welcome to search the place."

    Arlen
didn't answer. He dropped the canteen down on top of his bag and leaned on the
bar and stared out the windows into the building storm. He'd been worried
enough about getting to a train station. Now they had no means of obtaining
tickets once they got there. Outside the rain fell relentlessly and the wind
had already begun to rise. It was miles just to get back to High Town, and what
waited there for them? A sheriff who'd shown little interest in legality the
first time he'd locked them up.

    
Almost
four hundred dollars,
he thought
.
Nearly two years of saving,
with no goal in mind but to keep this dark damned world at bay. Gone, gone,
gone
.

    "Arlen,"
Paul said. "What are we going to do?"

    The
row of liquor bottles stood before him, glittering. He found a bottle of
whiskey and took it off the shelf and located a glass and poured.

    Paul
said, "Arlen?"

    He
took a long drink, closing his eyes when he felt the wet heat spread through
his chest.

    "We'll
take advantage of Miss Cady's hospitality."

    Rebecca
Cady didn't say a word.

    "What
do you mean?" Paul said.

    "We'll
wait here for the rain to break. Then we'll start walking."

    "Could
be a long wait."

    "Yes,"
Arlen said, topping the glass off. "It could."

    It
was an afternoon of pouring—for the rain, and Arlen. He sat at a table beside
the cold, empty fireplace and drank whiskey and didn't speak. After a few
glasses the gentle burn turned to a pleasant, protective fog, and he put his
feet up on the table and lifted his glass to the storm in a toast
.
Come
on in, you big bitch. Let's see what you can do. No worse than what's already
been done to me. Think I'm scared of some wind and rain? Then you weren't in
the Wood, friend. You weren't there when the gas went off and the men too slow
with their masks ended up choking on their own insides, spitting and sneezing
out pieces of pink and gray while I watched it all with a gun in my hands. No,
I'm not scared of some wind and rain
.

    Paul
had wandered off somewhere. He and Rebecca Cady both. Hell with her. Arlen
still wasn't certain she hadn't stolen the money herself, but she damn sure
wouldn't be telling him to leave until this storm was past. He wasn't about to
go walking down that dirt road in the rain without so much as a nickel in his
pocket, turned into just another beggar in a country full of them, no better
off than the migrant pickers or hoboes in search of a breadline.
Three
hundred sixty-seven dollars. Three hundred sixty-seven...

    It
was his own fault. Hid his money in a canteen, like a child saving coins for
the candy store. Back at Flagg Mountain, though, it had been safe enough. Safer
than the banks, where your only question was what would happen first: Would the
bank fail or get robbed? Either way, you lost. His canteen had looked more
secure.

    In a
small room on the other side of the bar, something shook and rattled. The
generator, probably. He'd not paused to think about it until now, but the place
was lit with electric lights, there'd been an icebox in the kitchen behind the
bar, and a fan hummed and pushed warm air around the room. There were no
electric lines out here, so the Cypress House had to have one of those kerosene
generators. They cost some dollars, though, and this place didn't seem to be
thriving. So where'd the cash come from?

    He
sat with his head against the stone that surrounded the fireplace and closed
his eyes, trying to focus on the feeling of the liquor in his belly. Outside,
the wind had pulled something loose and was banging it against the house. An
incessant hammering. He scowled and snapped his eyes open, wishing Paul were
here so he could tell him to find the source of that damn noise and make it
stop. That was when he saw that his view of the ocean had been cut in half and
understood the hammering sound was truly hammering. Paul was out there with
Rebecca Cady, out in the rain, nailing sheets of plywood over the windows. She
was holding the boards in place while he drove the nails, and even under the
overhang of the porch the rain had found her and drenched her. That dark blond
hair hung in wet tangles along her neck and shoulders, and the pale blue dress
she wore was pressed tight to her body, her breasts pushing back against the
wet fabric. Arlen stared at her for a moment and felt a stirring, then frowned
and looked away and took another sip of the whiskey.

    Beautiful,
yes. The sort of gorgeous that haunted men, chased them over oceans and never
left their minds, not even when they wanted a respite. But was she trustworthy?
No. Arlen was sure of that. Whatever had led her out here was nothing honest.
Whatever paid for the electric generator and the icebox and the liquor behind
the bar, whatever brought someone like Walt Sorenson on a long drive to see
her, it wasn't on the level.

    Shadows
deepened around the room, all but the last window on the ocean side boarded up
now. Arlen cast one more glance that way, and when he did he saw Rebecca Cady
staring in at him as water dripped out of her hair and ran along her cheekbones,
tracing her jaw. She looked him full in the eyes.

    
Go
out there and help
.

    The
thought flicked through his mind, and he shook it off. Be damned if he'd help
this woman who'd shown no inclination to help them, who may well have stolen
from them, who'd stood in silence as the sheriff put them in handcuffs. Let her
work in the rain. He'd stay inside with the whiskey.

    By
late afternoon Arlen's head was beginning to pound, that pleasant fog turning
into something with teeth, and he went in search of a privy. He'd seen no
outhouse; seemed this place had indoor plumbing to complement its lights.

    He
found the bathroom upstairs, full of white tile and a ceramic toilet and a
large claw-foot tub. He'd relieved himself and turned to the sink before he
caught a glimpse in the mirror and stopped short.

    His
beard, always swift-growing, had filled in his face with nearly three days of
shadow, the same dark brown shade of his hair and eyes, covering weathered skin
turned brown by the sun and wind.

    You
look just like him. Look just like the crazy old bastard.

    He
braced his hands on the sink and leaned close to the mirror, fascinated by the
way a living man's face could so resemble a dead man's. He hardly trusted his
own eyes in the mirror; were they Arlen Wagner's or Isaac Wagner's?

    The
sight of the undertaker's shop came back to him then, the coffins lining the
wall, the sound of his father's chisel working the wood, shaping final homes.
And his voice . . . his conversations. With them. With the dead.

    Arlen
shook his head, ran water over his hands and splashed it onto his face,
blinking it out of his eyes. He kept his head turned away from the mirror and
went downstairs in search of his razor.

    Yes,
it was time to shave.

    He
was drunk by the time they finished working. Sitting back by the fireplace,
talking to himself with his head down on the table. Eventually Paul came over
and told Arlen he needed to lie down.

    "Go
on, then," Arlen said, that or something close to it, but evidently the
boy had been referring to him, because he got his hands under Arlen's arms and
heaved him to his feet. Arlen didn't like that, and he tried to shove him away
and prove that he could stand on his own two, thank you very much. When he did
it, though, he knocked the ladder-back chair over and tripped on its legs,
would've sprawled right into the fireplace if Paul hadn't caught him. He
stopped struggling then, let the boy wrestle him upright and leaned his weight
onto the kid's side as they moved across the room. Rebecca Cady stood behind
the bar in front of the electric fan, drying her hair and dress, and she
watched Arlen with knowing eyes. He grinned at her, a wide, mocking smile. It
earned no response.

    The
stairs were difficult, but Arlen had traversed stairs on unsteady legs before,
and this time he had Paul to help. At the top, he stopped and gripped the
railing because the building had taken to tilting and swirling around him, and
he thought it prudent to hold off on any further steps. Paul kept pushing him
ahead, though, down the hallway and past the bathroom, and then he opened one
of the closed doors and guided Arlen into a hot, dusty room with a bed. It was
stifling, and Arlen growled at the boy to open the window, let some air in.

    "It's
boarded up. They're all boarded up."

    That
was foolishness; why in the hell would anybody put boards over a window in a
place so hellish hot as this? Arlen was ready to raise the question when the
boy stepped out from under him and let him tumble down onto the bed, and it was
soft, so soft. He forgot his planned remark and pulled himself higher on the
bed, using his elbows to move, got his boots kicked off.