Don’t stare, he thought. He’ll know that you’ve seen him.
He turned away and got busy taking measurements for the roof deck, working with his back to the inlet for a while. When he finally turned around and risked a glance, the boat was gone.
That night they all sat together on the porch, as had become their custom, and ate dinner as the sun went fat and red in the west and slipped down toward the horizon line. It moved at a crawl right until the bottom edge touched the water, and then it was as if something greedy were waiting for it on the other side, snatched it away quick, leaving only a crimson smear on the horizon.
“This place sure is something,” Paul said, stretched out on the porch floor with the already empty plate on his lap. “It’s beautiful.”
Rebecca nodded but didn’t speak, and he turned to her.
“Why doesn’t anyone ever come out here?”
“Excuse me?”
“Well… why don’t you have any customers?”
She looked away from him. “Corridor County is a very rural place. There aren’t a lot of people. Less now that the lumber mill closed.”
“Well, still, somebody has to live around here.”
“I don’t have much business from locals. Mostly people who rent it out for a few days at a time. There’s less of that now. Hard times.”
“Have you always been out here alone?”
“Not always.” Her voice was tight. “Tell me, where are you from?”
If Paul sensed that the redirecting of the conversation was intentional, he didn’t show it.
“New Jersey. Town called Paterson. Back there, we’d be sitting in an alley and looking at trash cans if we wanted to eat outside.”
“You don’t care for it?”
He looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know. It’s just a place… doesn’t look anything like this, though.” Then, after a pause, “But there’s a bridge you ought to see. Just up from the waterfalls.”
Rebecca Cady laughed, and Paul looked perplexed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just thought it was amusing that you’d mention a bridge before you would a waterfall.”
He shrugged. “I just like it, that’s all.”
Arlen smiled and sipped his beer. She didn’t know him yet. With the exception of the ocean in front of them, Arlen had never known the boy to show the slightest interest in the natural world, only in man-made structures. He was mighty American in that way: show him a river, he’d want to see a bridge; show him a mountain, he’d wonder how you could get a tunnel through it. For all his carpentry experience, Arlen didn’t have the same mind-set. The older he got, the more he wished people would leave things alone. As a boy he’d watched the hills around his hometown blasted open with dynamite, laced with gouges that looked like wounds of the flesh, and in their own way they were exactly that. Had watched the skies above them turn black with soot and coal smoke, the stretches of ancient forests replaced by stump fields. No, he wasn’t the conquering sort. That was one of the things he’d liked so much about the CCC. Back at Flagg Mountain, they’d spent weeks at hard labor to build a tower. Its purpose? To afford a view of the beauty around it. That was all. Arlen loved that damn tower.
He didn’t know for certain what he’d even have thought of the bridge in the Keys, that attempt for road to conquer water. Maybe it would’ve been impressive. Maybe it would’ve been heartbreaking.
“Did you always live in Paterson?” Rebecca was asking Paul, and Arlen looked back at the boy, realizing Arlen himself didn’t know the answer to this one.
“Yes.” Paul got to his feet and set the plate aside. “I’m going to go for a walk before it gets too dark.”
He left without another word, headed south with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched. Rebecca Cady said, “Did I say something wrong?”
“I think you both did.”
“Pardon?”
“You didn’t want to answer questions about yourself,” he said, “and neither did Paul. Everybody’s got a few things they’d like to keep quiet on.”
He finished the warm beer and tilted his head and studied her. Her face was lit with fading sunset glow, and it made her blond hair look red.
“Can you really see the dead?” she asked. The question hit him like a punch.
“Paul told me about the train,” she said when he didn’t answer. “Why you two got off.”
“Wasn’t his place to tell you that.”
“Don’t be angry with him. He was just fascinated by it. Maybe a little frightened, especially after reading that newspaper article and learning what happened to the men who stayed on the train. He told me you see smoke or—”