41
TIME WAS SHORT, and moving fast. Tolliver was to bring the money down that evening, and on the next the Cubans would arrive with their boat packed with orange crates. They would, if everything went without a hitch, sit out on the Gulf and wait for lights that never came and then they’d turn around and return to their own country, still with the orange crates on board. Paul would be on a train, perhaps, and Rebecca and Owen driving north, and Solomon Wade would be dead.
All of this had to be done in less than forty-eight hours.
Arlen went down to the boathouse that morning and cut boards and sanded them down same as he would on any other day, thinking that if McGrath or Wade happened by it would be best for them to see things as they always were, no indication of a change in plans.
He spent most of the morning considering what he’d say to Paul. He wanted to prepare him for what was to come but didn’t think the boy would hear him out. He would have to wait until Owen had the money, break off a portion of it for Paul, and drive him to a train station. If Paul wouldn’t listen to Arlen, he’d listen to the money. He was looking for a way out. They’d give it to him.
That was what was in Arlen’s mind when he walked back up from the boathouse shortly before noon and discovered that Paul was gone.
“Said he was walking into town,” Rebecca told Arlen. “Owen offered him a ride, but he said no, he wanted to be alone and wanted to walk.”
Arlen didn’t care for that.
“What in the hell does he want in town? He doesn’t have a dime to his name. What’s he going to do?”
Rebecca spread her hands. “I don’t know, Arlen. He wasn’t holding discussions over it. He just left.”
He thought about borrowing Rebecca’s truck and going after him but decided against it. He was probably the reason Paul had wanted to get out of here; it would serve no purpose to chase him down.
The day dragged by, and Paul didn’t return. The heat had gone unbroken for a full week, but there were thin, swift-moving clouds skidding over the sun today, and Arlen thought there was the promise of rain in the air. The sea was riding stronger swells than normal, the Gulf carrying a green tint, the gulls shrieking and fighting the wind currents above him. All the things that had become standard to Arlen now, the smell of the salt breeze and the feel of that intense, near-tropical sun on his neck and arms, the rustle of palm fronds. It should have been a beautiful place. Was a beautiful place, were it not for the men who’d invaded it. Reminded Arlen of the Belleau Wood, once he got to thinking about it. That had been a pretty parcel of land in its own right, field and forest. Damned gorgeous spot until the wrong men came across it, and then it was tangled with bodies and barbwire and the cries of the wounded.
By four Paul had still not returned, and the clouds had thickened and begun to move slower, like troops massing for an advance. When the first fat drops began to fall and the woods around the inlet took to swaying and rattling in the wind, Arlen gathered his tools and retreated to the house. It was really starting to come down by the time he got inside, and he joined Rebecca and Owen at the back window and watched the rain lash down and pelt a gray, tossing sea.
The rain fell different here than in other places Arlen had been, thicker and faster, turning the yard into an ankle-deep pond in a matter of minutes. The beach drank it in easier for a time, but then it began to form puddles even on the sand, and the waves raced up and chased the rain as if they intended to work together and turn the whole world to water.
It had been raining this way, Arlen recalled, the day they’d returned from the jail. He remembered how he and Paul had broken into a run on their way up to the porch, laughing like children, bursting through the door feeling like they’d just stepped out of the worst of it in more ways than one.
That seemed a mighty long time ago.
He was lost in that memory when he realized Rebecca and Owen had turned and gone to the front windows, were looking out at a car parked at the top of the hill, its headlights glowing against the gray gloom of the storm. The sheriff’s car. Tolliver was parked up there in the exact place where he’d let Arlen and Paul out that day before the hurricane.
He’s come with bad news, Arlen thought, a sudden certain clench going through his gut, images of Paul stretched out in the back of that car with a white sheet over his body. He’s come to tell us—
But right then Owen said, “He’s here for me. He’s here with the money.”
They all turned and looked at one another as a gust of wind shook the inn and lightning sparked almost on top of them, filling the dim barroom with one blinding flash. Thunder crackled, an angry, aggressive sound.