“Why?”
Well, because he’d happened to be in the area when he hired on. It was that simple. A local experienced man, that was what they called him, but truth was he was hardly more local than the boys he supervised. Experienced, yes. Local, no. Wasn’t any place where Arlen could be considered a local.
“You don’t have any reason not to head down there,” Paul said. “You’re not one with family around here, or…”
He stopped as if fearing he’d said something offensive, but Arlen just shook his head.
“No, I don’t have any family here.”
Here, or anywhere. The work at Flagg Mountain was nearing a close—there was a reason these boys were about to be transferred west—and it might be interesting, as Brickhill suggested, to work on an ocean bridge…
That was how Arlen Wagner came to be sitting beside a boy from New Jersey in a muggy train car on the last day of August 1935.
For a time after the train had left, they just stood there in the glow of the station platform and stared off down the dark rails. The flat air billowed up one long gust and pushed the trapped wet heat out of the woods and into their faces, and Arlen dropped his hand for his flask and then stopped when Paul’s eyes followed the motion. He didn’t want the kid to think this was all due to liquor. Wasn’t drinking that caused it, was drinking that could ease it.
“All right,” Paul said at length, “we aren’t going to die on that train tonight. We also aren’t going to get anywhere on it. So unless you intend to spend the night right here…”
“Hold on. We’ll find someone to ask.”
There was a station attendant, a stooped man with a squint that seemed permanent, who met all of Arlen’s questions with the same statement: I don’t understand—why didn’t you get back on your train?
At last he was made to accept the idea, if not understand it, and informed them that there was a boardinghouse five miles up the highway.
“Look here,” he said, “why go five miles away to spend the night if you’re not looking to stay around here anyhow? Now that you got off your train, where is it you’re bound?”
That was a hell of a question. Paul looked at Arlen, a challenging look.
“Next train to the Keys?” he said.
“If’n you still want to go to the Keys,” the attendant said, “why in the hell didn’t you stay on your damn train?”
Arlen ran a hand over his face. The next train for the Keys might well be safe, but it might well not. How could he explain that to the boy? All he knew for certain was that those men they’d just left were heading toward death. And if somehow he’d been wrong, then he wasn’t real eager to chase after them, set up in a camp down where every man looked at Arlen and chuckled and whispered.
“You said you’re with the CCC?” the station attendant said.
“That’s right,” Paul said.
“Well, there’s a camp down in Hillsborough County, out toward Tampa, and I could get you on a train headed that way tomorrow afternoon. Bunch of you boys are down there. Working on a park.”
“We aren’t heading to a park,” Paul said. “We’re going to build a bridge. A highway bridge. In the Keys.”
“Well, don’t know that you can get on another train to the Keys till late tomorrow. If you’re still headed that way, then why did you—”
Arlen interrupted him and pulled Paul aside.
“Here’s the problem, as I see it,” he said, fumbling out a cigarette and lighting it. “It’s not just a matter of finding another train. It’s a veterans’ camp, not juniors, you know that. They didn’t want you down there in the first place. Now those fellows are going to show up ahead of us and tell this tale, and we’re going to have ourselves a reputation before we arrive. Understand?”
Paul gave him a long look, one that said, You’re going to be the one they’ve heard tales about, not me, but he didn’t let the look turn into words.
“So there you’re going to be,” Arlen said, “in a camp where you don’t belong, and now they’ll see you coming and see a problem. That’s my fault, not yours, but it’s the fact of the matter, son. I wasn’t sure I could get you a hitch down there to begin with. Won’t be near as easy now. So could be time we think about a different direction.”
All of this sounded like wheedling even to Arlen, and it dropped Paul Brickhill’s face into a sullen frown. This was the first time in their short acquaintance that Arlen had actually seen him show displeasure.
“We had it all set and planned,” Paul said. “You got a worry with that train, okay. We need to get on another one, though!”