“I get it,” he said. “But you’re asking for trouble. You won’t take anything from this but—”
“I can’t leave her, Arlen.”
The thick, choked sound was gone from his voice now, and there was the ring of finality to the words. He looked Arlen in the eye when he said them, held the look, and then turned and stared back across the inlet. The heron had moved on a fish in the shallows, moved with a splash and flourish, then stepped back. Its beak was empty. Swing and a miss.
“I thought we’d agreed on returning to Flagg,” Arlen said.
“I know it, and there isn’t anything makes me feel worse than arguing with you. But, Arlen?” He turned and looked at him again, and in the shadows he seemed more man than boy, had the weariness of an adult in his countenance. “I cannot leave her. Okay? I’m going to stay.”
“What if she won’t have you?”
“She’ll have me. She needs this dock fixed, and then the boathouse, and I’ll be damned what anybody says, I can make that generator run. I can do it. There are things for me to do, and they’ll let me show her… show her…”
“That she needs you,” Arlen said softly.
“Yeah.”
Arlen’s chest filled and he blew out air, but this time the cigarette was still held down against his side. Darkness had shrouded them, and the cacophony of buzzing insects from the woods had increased as the daylight faded. Out in the inlet, the heron was marking new territory, ready for another strike.
“I brought you down here,” Arlen said. “It was me who brought you south, and it was me who took you off the train. Was also me who put you in Sorenson’s fancy car and dragged you this way, and I’m not going to leave you here now.”
He felt, as he often had since the start of this journey, like a man pushed by unseen but powerful currents.
“You don’t need to stay,” Paul said.
“I’m not leaving you here alone. You’re no fool, boy; there’s trouble up there and you know it. I won’t leave you alone in such a place.”
Paul said, “Thank you.”
“Shit,” Arlen said, and fumbled in the dark for another cigarette.
It was quiet for a moment, nothing but the night sounds around them, and then Paul said, “You don’t think she can ever love me.”
Arlen said nothing.
“I think she can,” Paul said. “But it’ll take some time. It’ll take a chance for me to show her who I really am. Who I can be. But I think…”
His words trailed off, and Arlen didn’t spur them back into life or add to them. He just leaned against the mangled side of the boathouse and smoked his cigarette, and the boy looked out across the inlet as the heron struck and missed once, and then again, and then it was too dark to see all the way over to him.
17
THEY SPENT AN HOUR OR TWO sitting and talking about insignificant things but both of them jerking at every sound, their minds back at the Cypress House. Once, Paul started to mosey that way, said he had to relieve himself. Arlen pointed into the trees.
“All the privacy you need right there. Don’t you even think about going back up into the view of that tavern unless you want to cause trouble for her.”
That seemed to convince him. He went off into the bushes and pissed.
“Think she’s okay?” he said when he returned.
“I know she is,” Arlen said. “She’s run this place on her own for a time, Paul. She’s had men like that visit more than once, and she’s handled herself fine. Don’t trouble yourself over it. It’s a normal night for her.”
He wasn’t sure of that, but he needed the boy to be. He took his flask from his pocket and uncapped it and offered it to Paul.
“Sip a little.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Go on,” he said. “You’ve earned it tonight, Paul. It’ll ease your worry.”
After a hesitation, Paul accepted the flask and drank. They passed it back and forth as they sat on the floor of the boathouse, which was now like a lean-to shelter, open to the night sky on one side. Just to Paul’s left, the water from the inlet lapped gently inside the boathouse.
“This isn’t such a bad spot to spend a night,” he said at length, his voice beginning to show the booze. “Hear that ocean, see those stars?”
Arlen didn’t say anything. After a while the boy slumped down against the pile of blankets. Arlen lit a cigarette and let the sound of wind and water fill the silence. By the time the cigarette had burned down to his fingertips, he could tell the kid was already asleep. He always went down hard and fast, the way the boys in the CCC had—you worked them enough during the day, and they forgot their homesickness and orneriness as soon as their heads touched the pillows—but he was also unfamiliar with drink, and it would help to keep him down. Arlen had been counting on this.