The Cypress House (20 page)

    "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.

    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."