The Cypress House (40 page)

    "We're
good," he said. "All right? Wade thinks your brother is in league
with him, and he thinks he's got you owned by fear. They aren't waiting on
trouble. Not from us."

    She
nodded, but her face was pale and she couldn't match his smile.

    The
door swung open, and then Owen was back inside and dripping rain all over the
place, his blond hair turned dark with water and plastered over his forehead
and down into his eyes. He gave them a stare and lifted the case high.

    "Here
we go," he said.

    Arlen
nodded. "Here we go."

    They
counted the money back in the kitchen, hidden from windows. Arlen saw the
stacks of bills inside and thought of the money he'd worked so hard and saved
so long to gather, those
367
stolen dollars. He wondered if they were
included in this pile.

    Rebecca
did the counting. She fingered the bills swiftly and familiarly and didn't say
a word as she riffled through the stacks, kept a silent count in her head until
the last bill had touched the edge of her thumb. Then she turned to them and
said, "Ten thousand."

    "Ten
thousand dollars?" Arlen echoed. He'd been watching her count it, had seen
the bills with his own eyes, but he still wasn't sure he believed the number.
The CCC paid thirty dollars a month. There were more than twenty-five years of
work sitting in that simple black case.

    "Yes,"
she said, and then, for the first time, she smiled. "He's not going to
like losing it."

    "Hell,"
Arlen said, "he's going to lose something else he'll like even less."

    Somehow
that got them all to laughing. It wasn't a healthy kind of laughter. More the
sort born out of fear, jangling through nerves strung tight as bowstrings, but
it felt good all the same. They had their laugh together, and then a
particularly strong racket of thunder struck and shook the walls of the inn and
they all fell silent again.

    "Paul
gets his cut," Arlen said. "I'll give it to him, and I'll take him to
a train station and see that he gets on one headed far from here."

    "How
much are you intending to give him?" Owen said.

    "Half."
He said it flatly. Owen rocked his head back and stared with wide eyes.

    "Bullshit,
he gets half. He'll be gone 'fore anything even starts to happen! He ain't
playing a role in this, ain't helping, ain't —"

    "He
gets half," Arlen said, and there was a challenge in his voice that shut
Owen's mouth for once. He went tight-lipped and angry and stared at Arlen with
distaste, but when he spoke again his tone was softer.

    "There's
four of us here," he said. "Fair split would be twenty- five hundred.
That's more than fair."

    "That
boy's got a mother was counting on CCC checks,"

    Arlen
said. "He's got to look after her and himself. He gets half."

    Owen
started to shake his head again, but Rebecca cut in.

    "That's
fine," she said. "That's right."

    She
counted out half the money and placed it in a burlap bag and handed it to
Arlen. He put it on a high shelf behind a sack of flour and then he and Owen
both watched as Rebecca replaced the rest of the money in the black case and
fastened the latches and set it beneath the table.

    "One
day left," she said.

    Paul
returned at the height of the storm. The rain had lessened just a touch, but
the lightning and thunder were gathering energy, the walls and windows of the
inn trembling consistently, wind howling in off the Gulf. It wasn't yet sundown
but might as well have been; no sun would shine on this day again. The three of
them had returned to the barroom, ostensibly to discuss the plan, break down
each movement and time it out to the last second. Nobody had much to say,
though. It was as if the delivery of the money, that first squeeze on a trigger
nobody else even saw, had somehow silenced them.

    Instead
they sat and listened to the storm and drank. Arlen and Owen passed a bottle of
whiskey back and forth, and even Rebecca had a short one. Her eyes moved from
the beach to the fireplace to the clock, flicking from place to place as if
taking inventory.

    "What's
on your mind?" Arlen said.

    "I
was thinking that it really isn't such a bad place."

    It
was the same notion he'd had that morning, working on the boathouse.

    "I
came to hate it, you know," she said. "To almost blame the physical
location for everything that was happening here, for everything that had
happened. But you know what? My parents were right. It's a gorgeous spot. It
will be special someday. Someone will probably make a nice living doing just
what my father always hoped to do here. They will be different people, though,
and it will be a different time. Right now, it's as if this place is infected.
The sickness will pass. But no time soon. No time soon."

    Arlen
nodded. She wasn't alone in those thoughts, and they weren't limited to this
place. It was an infected world right now. He remembered reading newspaper
pieces about the black dust that had risen in the plains and driven farmers to
take shelter in the ground, dust clouds so mighty that they'd drifted all the
way across the country and darkened the skies above New York. It was a hell of
a thing. Grasshoppers had descended over the same farms like a biblical plague,
picking crops to shreds and ruining any hope of a cash harvest. At the same
time banks were going under and women and children standing in breadlines, and
young men like Owen Cady and Paul Brickhill were willing to throw in their lots
with the Solomon Wades of the world because they saw no other way to climb out
of the trenches in which they lay.

    It
would pass, though. Arlen believed that, had to believe it. You kept your head
down and you weathered what this life brought you and believed it would pass.
He looked at Rebecca now and thought,
You are all that I need.
She was,
too. Through all the hell that might come to pass in a few short hours, he had
no qualms about staying around to endure it. Just the chance to be with her, it
was enough. It was something the likes of which he'd never hoped to find.

    A
memory caught him then, Paul in the darkness on the dock while Tolliver and
Tate McGrath prepared to kill in this very room. Paul saying, I feel like I've
been traveling through time to get here, Arlen, just to find her.

    Damn
it, why did it have to afflict them both? Why couldn't love be parceled out
evenly and easily?

    It
was then that a sheet of white light filled the room, and for a moment nobody
reacted because they'd grown so used to the steady, brilliant flashes of
lightning. This one held, though, and Arlen turned and looked through the
window, and, as a snarling, raging clatter of thunder shook the sky, he saw
Thomas Barrett's delivery van parked at the top of the hill, its headlight
beams cutting across the yard. The passenger door swung open, and Paul burst
out and ran through the rain. Barrett gave the horn a little double tap and
turned the van around and headed back up the road.

    When
Paul broke through the door and stood before them in a sopping mess, everyone
stared at him in silence. He had a paper sack clutched to his chest.

    "Some
storm," he said.

    "Where
in the hell you been?" Arlen said.

    "Went
up to the store, if it's any of your business. Which it isn't."

    "That
store's every bit of five miles away."

    "Felt
about like that," Paul said, flip and indifferent. "Once it commenced
to storming, Mr. Barrett said he'd give me a ride back or I'd be waiting till
morning. He thinks this one isn't blowing off quick."

    "Come
on over here and get dried off," Rebecca said, rising and pulling a towel
off the bar. "Maybe we should start a fire. It's warm, but on a night like
this it just might be —"

    Paul
had been crossing to her, and everyone stopped short when Arlen reached out and
grabbed the paper sack from his hands.

    "Hey!"
Paul cried, and reached for it, but Arlen turned his shoulder and blocked the
grab long enough to open the sack and see the contents. There were some penny
candies and a few packs of cigarettes.

    "Give
me that," Paul said, and this time Arlen let him take it. "What's the
matter with you? Got to steal everything from me, is that it?"

    "I
haven't stolen a thing from you in the past," Arlen said. "Never took
a damn thing that was yours."

    Paul
gave him cold eyes and didn't answer.

    "You
don't smoke cigarettes," Arlen said.

    "What?"

    "You
got cigarettes in that sack, smart guy. Why?"

    "Because
I wanted a few, that's why."

    "I'll
say it again," Arlen said, "you don't smoke."

    Paul
drew his shoulders back and looked Arlen in the eye. "They're for Owen. I
figured he'd appreciate them. You probably would have, too, but I'm not of a
mind to give you anything."

    "Hey,
thanks," Owen said, and Arlen wanted to backhand the fool right through
the window.

    "So
all you got is candy," Arlen said. "You walked five miles up the road
to fetch yourself some candy?"

    "That's
right."

    "Arlen,
what does it matter?" Rebecca asked softly, passing Paul the towel. He
took to drying his face and neck, and Arlen looked at Rebecca in silence. He
didn't have an answer, really. All he knew was that he didn't like this. It
didn't feel right, Paul taking a walk that long in this kind of heat just to
get some damn candy.

    "You
happen across Solomon Wade in your travels?" he said.

    "No.
Didn't happen across a soul but Mr. Barrett and his wife. What it matters to
you, I have no idea. It's none of your concern what I do."

    "How'd
you pay for it?"

    Paul
stopped with the towel over one side of his face. "What?"

    "This
shit you went hiking for. Cigarettes and candy. How'd you pay for it? I was
under the impression you were busted-ass broke."

    Paul
switched the towel to the other side of his face and dried it slowly. He seemed
to be thinking.

    "Mr.
Barrett let me have it on credit," he said.

    "Credit,"
Arlen echoed. "Son, this is a Depression. That man don't know you from
Adam. Why in the hell's he giving you anything on credit? "

    "I
told him I'd be coming into some money shortly," Paul said. "Owen
here set me up with a bit of work."

    "Let
me fix us something to eat," Rebecca said, nervous, bothered by the
tension in the air. "We'll all sit in here where it's dry and have some
food."

    Arlen
and Paul held a long stare, and then Paul turned away and tossed the cigarettes
to Owen.

    "There."

    "Thanks."

    "Sure.
We still got our job tomorrow night?"

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

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

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

    "What
are you staring at?" Paul said.

    "Nothing,"
Arlen said, voice soft. "Nothing at all."