The Cypress House(101)

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

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

Silence.

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

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

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

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

“But you won’t do it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What are you talking about?”

Paul lifted his head and met Arlen’s eyes. “I wanted to hurt you,” he said. “And her. How I wanted to hurt her.”

“What in the hell are you—”

“I didn’t come back because I had nowhere else to go,” Paul said. “I came back because I thought I could see you put in jail.”





44


THE TRAIN LEFT while he told it. They both watched it pull away and chug north, and neither of them commented.

He’d made it to Hillsborough County’s CCC camp. That part was true enough. The rest of it had been a lie—had he desired to stay on at the camp, he could have. And would have. At least until his third day there, when a pair of unfamiliar men in suits showed up with a visitor from Corridor County: Thomas Barrett.

“The shopkeep?” Arlen said.

“Yes. He’s been working with them for nearly a year.”

“Working with who?”

“Federal Bureau of Narcotics,” Paul said. “That’s what they told me at least. I guess they approached him because he was at odds with Tolliver.”

He surely was—had run against him for sheriff. Arlen thought back on the drive he’d made to the lumberyard with Barrett, and he could see it easy enough. If they’d wanted to enlist a local to help, Barrett made plenty of sense.