The Cypress House(12)

“Generous offer, but all the same, I think we’ll stick to the trains.”

“You wound me,” Sorenson said. “Think logically—it’s a five-mile hike back to the station and then you’ll have to piece together a day of travel at considerable expense. You will also have to convince the lad to change his plans. He likes that car, Mr. Wagner. I imagine he’d like to drive it.”

Arlen looked up at him and frowned. “Why so interested?” he said. “What’s it to you, Sorenson?”

“There are plenty of reasons. For one, I find you a most fascinating man, you of the bad feelings, you, the seer of death. For another, I could use the company. These highways get lonesome, Mr. Wagner. And a third reason? My fortune-teller in Cassadaga, the one who warned me of death in the rain? Her guidance for me on this visit was quite limited—all she said was that I needed to be aware of travelers in need.”

“You expect me to believe that, you’re crazy.”

“On the contrary,” Sorenson said, “if you’re anything close to the man I suspect you are, I know that you will believe it. Because it’s the truth.”

Arlen held his eyes for a time, then looked away without speaking.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll ride with you tomorrow.”





5


HE DID NOT SLEEP WELL. In the room beside them, an ancient bed creaked a sad, hollow rhythm beneath first one man’s grunting efforts and then another’s. The redheaded woman who had once worn a green dress did not make a sound. Arlen lay in the dark and listened and wondered if Paul was awake. If he was, he didn’t speak. By three Arlen’s flask was empty and then so was the room beside them, the door swung shut one final time as the voices downstairs fell silent.

He dozed off sometime around four but slept in uneasy fits, jerking awake often to the sound of an unrelenting rain. It was sweltering in the constricted, windowless room, and Arlen’s sweat soaked into the sheets as the night carried on and finally broke to dawn.

“Get on your feet,” Arlen said, giving Paul a shake. “We’ve got a ride. Sorenson’s going to take us south.”

“To the Keys?”

“He isn’t going that far. All I know is he’s going south, and we can ride with him in that fancy car you liked so much. Beats waiting all day for a train.”

Arlen felt a twinge at his own words. It wasn’t a bald lie—Hillsborough County was indeed south, but it was also west, when the train lines that would carry them to the Keys were on the state’s eastern shore.

They drove away in a gray, windy dawn, the Auburn gleaming as if freshly washed after the night of steady rain.

“Shouldn’t take but five or six hours,” Sorenson said. “I’ve a few stops to make along the way, but they’ll be swift enough. I appreciate you joining me on this short sojourn.”

Arlen winced, and Sorenson noted it. “What?” he said.

“Nothing,” Arlen muttered. “You just… it reminded me of something my father used to say.”

They’re only dead to people like you, Arlen. Truth is they’re carrying on, bound to a place where you can’t yet follow. This life is but a sojourn.

“A story you’d like to share?” Sorenson said.

“No,” Arlen said.

Their stops were roadhouses similar to Pearl’s. At each of them, a large black case with two metal locks entered and exited the establishment with Sorenson. The stops were swift indeed, short disruptions as they drove through a green, saturated land. The ditches on either side of the road were swollen with muddy water. Arlen’s father used to caution about dreams of muddy water, claiming they warned of impending trouble. Arlen wondered if his father had such a dream toward the end, or if dreams had failed him.

They pushed west as the heat continued to build and with it the thickness of the air. Sorenson had the windows cranked down on the Auburn, and out on the back roads he opened the engine up and let the big car run, Paul grinning as the speedometer hit seventy, eighty, ninety, one hundred. Sorenson let it fall off then but kept it closer to ninety than eighty for most of an hour. Their next stop was at a place called the Swamp. Unlike the previous roadhouses, this one seemed to be booming—the building was outfitted with electric lamps and glossy wood on the front patio, and cars filled the parking area already, new Plymouths and Chryslers and one Essex Terraplane that turned Paul’s head.

“That one would blow your doors off, Mr. Sorenson,” he said.

“You say.”

“Oh, it’s a fact.”

“Busy place,” Arlen said. “And one with some money.”