The Cypress House(128)

“I’m here for one reason,” Arlen said. “Paul Brickhill, the boy you’ve got chained under the dock.”

If they wondered how he knew Paul’s location, they didn’t show it. Neither of them spoke or moved, just waited.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Arlen said. “One of you is going down to get him and bring him to me. The other is going to stand right where he is. I’ll wait five minutes before I set to killing.”

There was a hesitation as they looked at each other, holding some silent conference.

“Something you’d better keep in mind,” Arlen said. “Paul Brickhill doesn’t mean a damn thing to either of you. I expect the three of you mean plenty to each other. So ask yourself if any of this is worth dying over.”

Neither answered, but the one on the left broke off and went back down the road. These were the younger brothers, Arlen knew—they’d looked no more than fifteen when they’d come up to the Cypress House. Looked like the many boys he’d worked with at Flagg Mountain, in fact.

It took the boy a long time. Too long. The wound in Arlen’s shoulder was becoming more painful with every passing moment, and he was having trouble keeping the Springfield up. How in the world could eight pounds possibly feel so heavy? He shifted his gaze from the boy in the road to the one in the reeds, but neither moved. The wounded one had closed his eyes, his face drained of color. Suffering. Arlen thought about their father, floating dead back there in the swamp, and felt a sudden, savage hate. Who raised boys like this? Put guns in their hands and knives on their belts and sent them out into the world as killers? He was glad he’d dispatched with Tate. Had probably been far too late to save his sons from the life he’d set them on, but he was glad all the same.

When the boy finally reappeared, with Paul Brickhill walking at his side, Arlen almost dropped the rifle. He’d been struggling with it anyhow, but the sight of Paul took strength from him that the bullet had not. He felt his breath slide out of his lungs, and the Springfield almost went with it.

“Bring him here,” Arlen said, and then he waded through the water and fought his way past the reeds, staying well clear of Davey McGrath and the knife in his hand, and up to the road.

Paul Brickhill was pale and covered with dirt. His nose had been broken and there was dried blood on his face, and he was taking halting steps, as if his legs and maybe his ribs were hurting him, but he was alive. He was alive.

Arlen said, “Paul, come here and take these handcuffs.”

He shuffled past, looking at Arlen with a face caught between amazement and horror. Arlen had a sense that anyone who saw him would be horrified. Covered in mud and water and with blood flowing freely along his neck and down his chest, a rifle in his hands and a pistol tucked into his belt. Arlen kept the rifle pointed at the McGrath boys as Paul took the handcuffs. The McGraths watched with sullen hatred.

“You’ll want to tend to your brother,” Arlen said. “But I don’t mean to leave one of you to do that and the other to follow us. Paul, you fasten that one’s right hand to the other’s left. That’ll leave them moving well enough, but it won’t make things easy on them.”

He held the Springfield on them as Paul did as instructed.

“Get in the sheriff’s car now,” he told Paul.

Paul said, “All right,” the first words he’d spoken, and then he was out of sight and it was just Arlen on the road facing the McGraths.

“Davey isn’t going to die,” Arlen said. “But he’s bad hurt. Do what you can for him. There will be men headed this way soon. The law. They’ll see to your brother, but I expect they’ll have some reckoning to do with you as well.”

Neither of them answered. They looked every bit as mean as the water moccasins that had sunk fangs into their father’s corpse.

“You want to know who’s responsible for it all,” Arlen said, “you need look no farther than Solomon Wade. Your daddy thought of him as a friend, I’m sure. But he’s the one who dug your daddy’s grave. Remember that.”

He backed up, keeping the gun on them, and fumbled the door open. Fell in beside Paul and said, “Time to drive the hell out of here, wouldn’t you say?”

He put the sheriff’s car into gear, backed it up, and then turned it and drove away. The McGrath brothers were paying no mind to the car, busy instead with climbing down into the ditch to find their eldest. Once he was cared for, they’d go after their father, Arlen knew. They wouldn’t like what they found.

“There’s blood all over this car,” Paul said.