The Cypress House(30)

“You have anything in that boathouse?” Arlen asked.

“It was moved,” she said shortly, and then turned and started back to the house. “Let’s look at the generator.”

“We might be able to get it running again tonight,” Paul said, full of forced optimism.

That idea lasted for the amount of time it took them to get back to the house. The generator was in an enclosure that had been constructed on the north side of the building. Where it had once stood, nothing was visible but tangled branches. A tree of at least forty feet in length—it was some sort of coastal pine whose branches and needles had been pruned away by the storm—had blown directly into the side of the building, crushing the shed. The smell of fuel hung in the air, and when Paul leaned over the tree and lifted his lantern, a piece of an engine became visible.

“It’s ruined,” Rebecca Cady said. “Destroyed.”

Paul set his lantern on the ground and tried to heave the tree off the generator. After watching him struggle for a few seconds, Arlen fell in to help, and they rolled the tree back enough to see the damage more clearly. It looked to Arlen to be catastrophic—the generator had been broken into pieces and was now covered with wet sand. He could see a metal plate with the words “Delco-Light” stamped onto the side. Arlen was a damn fine carpenter, but he was no mechanic, and even a great one wouldn’t be able to put this wreck back together.

“Going to need a new one,” he said.

“I can’t afford one.” She looked up from the ruined generator and out at the rest of her property—shanks of damaged siding littered the yard, pieces of the back porch lay half buried in the sandy hill above the inn, the bed rails from her truck had been ripped off and deposited somewhere in the darkness.

“We’ll get it cleaned up,” Paul said, and Arlen looked at him with wide eyes. The hell they would. They were leaving.

“I can take care of it,” she said.

“No, you can’t. You going to rebuild that porch?” He shook his head. “We won’t leave until it’s cleaned up.”

Arlen said, “Have you lost your senses?”

“We have to stay long enough to help—”

“We don’t have to stay long enough for anything! I don’t recall that we invited the hurricane here, and I’ll be damned if I take any sense of neighborly kindness at a place where I was jailed and robbed. We’re leaving in the morning.”

Paul shook his head, and Arlen wanted to knock it right off his shoulders.

“We came in together,” Paul said. “That doesn’t mean we have to leave together. I’m staying at least long enough to help her get this place cleaned up.”

They stood there for a while in the lantern light and the soft rain, looking out at the inn that was now bound by darkness.

“Come on,” Arlen said at last. “Won’t be able to do anything out here till daylight, and there’s no use burning the lantern fuel. Way that generator looks, you’re going to need it.”


Nobody came by to check on the Cypress House until the next morning, and then it was a man in a white panel van. Arlen was in the bathroom and Paul and Rebecca Cady were already outside, pulling the boards off the windows. They hadn’t reached the second floor yet, so when Arlen heard the sound of the approaching engine, he had to go downstairs to see the source. The van had parked and the driver got out, a short, squat man in a watch cap. He stood with his hands on his hips, looked around the tavern, and shook his head.

Arlen opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, lifting a hand. The man lifted one in response and walked up to join him. “How’d you folks fare?”

“Well enough,” Arlen answered, “but it’s not my place.”

“Oh, I know that,” the visitor said. He had a heavy drawl, a spray of freckles across his face, blue eyes that held good humor. “Y’all are the criminals.”

Arlen raised his eyebrows, and the man laughed.

“You best expect that to be known by now. Think a pesky thing like a hurricane will keep folks from talking?” He put out a hand. “Thomas Barrett. I reckon you’re Wagner, not Brickhill.”

Arlen didn’t take his hand, and Barrett laughed again. “Relax. I’m nothing but a delivery driver. You can put away your guns.”

“Sorry,” Arlen said, finally reaching out to accept the handshake, “but I’m a bit leery of folks out here. They kill some men, lock others up, and probably steal from everyone.”

Barrett’s smile went sour as he pulled his hand back. “Ain’t everybody around here that’ll do you that way.”