The Cypress House

by Michael Koryta

  “Hello.”

  “I see two men with bags walking down this road at this hour, I figure they’re either lost beyond hope or headed to Pearl’s.”

  “Pearl’s the name of a roadhouse farther up this highway?”

  “Not but a mile ahead.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Arlen said. “Thanks. We’ll carry on now.”

  “Why walk that last mile when you can ride?”

  Arlen didn’t much want that, but Paul stepped up close and said, “Yeah, why walk when we can ride? This is an Auburn.”

  “The kid knows sense when he hears it,” the man with the shadowed face said, and then he slapped the side of the driver’s door. “And he knows cars—this is indeed an Auburn, and it moves like you won’t believe. Climb on in.”

  So they climbed in. The car was clean and new, and Paul was clearly impressed, running his palm over the seat and looking around with appreciation.

  “Say, this is nice. The twelve cylinder, isn’t it?”

  “It is. Fastest damn car I’ve ever held the wheel of.” To demonstrate, he accelerated—hard. The car’s engine gave a throaty howl and they lunged forward. Paul gave a chuckle and the driver grinned. Tall guy, lean, with big knobby hands wrapped around the steering wheel.

  “What’s your name, friend?” Arlen said.

  “Sorenson. Walt Sorenson.” He tucked the cigarette back into his mouth and reached a hand out. Arlen clasped it, and then Paul, offering their own names.

  “Wouldn’t ordinarily so much as slow for any poor soul walking on this road at night,” Sorenson said. “I’m in no hurry to have a knife stuck in my back.”

  Arlen released his hand from the knife in his pocket.

  “Bad area?” he said.

  “Isn’t everyplace after the sun goes down? Can’t trust the world anymore, you know? Was a time strangers helped strangers. That time’s gone. Too many people out to do harm, is my point. It’s hard to pick good from bad, and takes too much energy trying. But then I see you two, with bags in your hands, and I say, Walt, you’d be a bastard if you drove on by. Where are you headed?”

  Arlen kept quiet while Paul explained that they were CCC and had gotten off the train en route to a camp in the Keys.

  “Why’d you leave the train?”

  “Arlen wanted to get off,” Paul said uncertainly. “He had a bad feeling.”

  “A bad feeling?”

  “Let’s not worry over it,” Arlen said curtly. Lights glowed ahead of them then, a two-story building with a wide front porch coming into view. When Sorenson came thundering off the road and jerked the Auburn to a stop, Arlen could hear music from inside, somebody plucking at a guitar.

  “Pearl’s,” Sorenson said, and then the conversation was done, and Arlen was grateful for that.

  The only connection Arlen could see between Pearl and her name was that she was round. Plenty round. Looked to go every bit of three hundred pounds, in fact, and to call her an ugly woman would be an offense to the word—woman or ugly. She was in the midst of a profane shouting match. The argument sounded harsh but didn’t seem to stir much true heat from anyone in the bar, including the participants. She cut it off fast when Walt Sorenson flagged her down and told her that the gentlemen with him would need a room for the night.

  Arlen got some dollars out, and Paul started to reach in his own pocket but Arlen waved him off. He wasn’t sure how much money Paul had on him, but it couldn’t be much; the juniors in the CCC were required to send twenty-five of the thirty dollars they made each month directly home to help their parents. Pearl wouldn’t even accept Arlen’s money, though.

  “Friend of Walt’s,” she said.

  “Lady, we just met him ten minutes ago. Nobody owes us anything.”

  “Friend of Walt’s,” she repeated.

  Paul was gawking around the bar. It was a rough-looking crowd. One man wore a long knife in a sheath at his belt, and another had a raw red gash down the length of one finger, the sort of thing that could be left behind by a tooth. It wasn’t an old injury. At a table just inside the door, a man with a cigar pinched in the corner of his mouth was talking to a woman in a green dress that was cut so low the tops of her large white breasts were exposed completely. She had red hair and bored eyes.

  Pearl led them up a set of stairs so narrow that she had to turn sideways to wedge her way along. She jerked open the first door they came to, then lit an oil lamp and waved her fat hand out over the two cots.

  “Privy’s outdoors,” she said. “Wasn’t the Astor family that built this, you might have noticed.”

  “It’ll do fine,” Arlen said.

  She clomped back out the door and down the hall, and they could hear her let out a grunt as she started down the stairs. Paul caught Arlen’s eye and grinned.

  “Don’t be getting any ideas,” Arlen said. “She’s too old for you.”

  “Oh, go on.”

  “I’m going downstairs to buy that fellow a drink. Thank him for the ride. You get some shut-eye.”

  Paul nodded at the wall and said, “Hear that? It’s raining.”

  Yes, it was. Coming down soft but steady, would’ve soaked them to the bone if they’d still been out walking on the dark highway.

  “Good thing we caught that ride,” Paul said.

  “Sure.” Arlen pulled his bag up onto his bed and sorted through it until he found his canteen, unscrewed the cap, and shook the contents down, tugged a few bills out. He had $367 in it, savings accrued over the past twenty months. No fortune, but in this driven-to-its-knees economy, where men bartered heirlooms for bread, it felt close.

  Outside, the rain gathered intensity.

  Yes, Arlen thought, it was a good thing we caught that ride.

  The bar was dim and dusty, with a crowd of men Arlen could smell easier than he could see bunched at one end, keeping conversation with Pearl. The guitar player had given up for the night, but the redheaded woman in the green dress was still at the table with her cigar-smoking companion, and Walt Sorenson sat alone at the far end of the bar, counting out small white balls with black numbers and placing them into a burlap bag. Arlen dropped onto a stool beside him and said, “Mind telling me what you’re doing?”

  Sorenson smiled. “You ever heard of bolita?”

  “I have not,” Arlen said. The woman in the green dress stood up and walked to the bar, her breasts wriggling like something come alive. Her hips matched the act, but the eyes stayed empty. She disappeared up the stairs, never casting a look back at the man with the cigar who followed her.

  “Bolita,” Sorenson said, “is a game of wagering. You should put in a dime, Mr…. what’s your name? Wagner, was it?”

  “Arlen Wagner, yes.”

  “Well, Arlen Wagner, I’ve developed what some might call an unusual ability—I can feel luck in the air. I mean, just taste it, like when you walk into a room where something good’s been on the stove. And I’m telling you, sir, that luck rides with you tonight. There’s no question about it. Luck rides with you.”

  Arlen thought of the station platform again, all those men with bone faces and bone hands climbing back onto the train. His mouth was dry.

  “All right,” he said. “Sure. I’ll put in a dime.”

  “There you go. Now, pick yourself a number. One through one hundred.”

  He waited with a wolf’s grin.

  “One,” Arlen said. “As in, how many times I’ll try this game.”

  “Very nice, very nice.” Sorenson chuckled and sorted through the balls until he found the number one. He held it up so Arlen could inspect it, then leaned it against his whiskey glass, which was now mostly ice. “I’ll rest it right there so you can keep an eye on it.”

  “I’m going to expect such a game is illegal in this state,” Arlen said.

  “A good many of the best things are.” Sorenson spent some time studying his betting sheet, cleared his throat, and called, “All right, boys, gather round, the losing is about to begin for most
, and the winning for but a single soul.”

  He scooped the balls off the bar and into the bag. By now the crowd had gathered around Sorenson, and he wrapped the top of the bag until the balls were hidden from view, then gave it a ferocious shake.

  “Here,” he said. “Someone else take a try.”

  A man with skeptical eyes stepped forward and took the bag. He shook it for a long time. Sorenson took the bag back, opened the neck, and slid his right hand inside. He closed his eyes and let out a strange humming sound. This persisted for a moment as he felt around the inside, and then he snapped open one eye and told the crowd, “I’ve got to tune into the winner, you know. It’s not so simple as just pulling one out. There’s one man here who deserves to win tonight, one whose destiny is victory, and I must be sure that I hear his selection calling my name.”

  “You’re so full of shit,” one onlooker said, “I’m surprised it don’t come out your ears.”

  Sorenson smiled, then snapped his hand out of the bag, his fist closed. “Gentlemen, I give you our winner.”

  He unfolded his hand and twisted the ball so the number was visible: 1.

  “And who had number one?”

  Arlen lifted his hand, and a few of the men grumbled.

  “He come in here with you,” the one who’d shaken the bag said. “It’s a damn swindle you’re running.”

  “Ah, but you’re wrong,” Sorenson said, unbothered. “I’ve not met this man till this evening, and he’ll tell you the same. But if that’s how you feel, then I suggest another round, only this time our current winner must sit out.”

  There was no interest in further wagering.

  “Hard to believe it here,” Sorenson told Arlen, “but there are places where this little game is treated with respect. I’ve known men who became millionaires off this little game.”

  “Running it,” Arlen said, “not playing it. And thanks for cheating me into the profit.”

  “Cheating?”

  Arlen nodded at the glass of melting ice near Sorenson’s hand. “You left the ball up there long enough to hold the cold. Then you could pick it out of the rest. It’s a neat trick, but it may get your arm broken with the wrong crowd.”

  Sorenson gave a low chuckle. “You’ve got a sharp eye, Mr. Wagner.”

  Arlen lifted his hand and got Pearl’s attention, asked for two whiskeys. When she’d shuffled off again, he said, “So is this your business, Sorenson? A traveling entertainment, that’s what you are?”

  “Oh, no. This little game is nothing more than a pastime.”

  “So what is it that you do?”

  Sorenson smiled as Pearl set their drinks on the bar. “You’re an inquisitive man. What I do has evolved a bit, but these days I’m an accounts manager.”

  “Accounts manager?”

  “That’s right, sir. I check in on clients all over the hellish backwoods of this forsaken Florida countryside. And once in a while, I get to the coast to do the same. I’ll assure you, the ladies are of a finer breed on the coast.” He nodded at Pearl’s enormous rear end. “Ample evidence, you might say.”

  “Quick with a pun, Sorenson. Mighty quick.”

  “Quick with so many things.”

  He laughed at that, so Arlen laughed, too. Arlen’s whiskey glass was empty, and Pearl had disappeared, so he slipped his flask out and poured his own. The flask was nearing empty now itself. Sorenson watched him and gave a soft sigh.

  “It hasn’t been so long since such an act was illegal.”

  “You don’t appear to be a teetotaler, yet you say that with some sorrow.”

  “Sorrow for what’s been lost, Mr. Wagner.”

  “And what was lost? Purity?” Arlen said with a snort.

  “Purity, no. What was lost when Roosevelt kicked Prohibition in the ass was a business environment the sort of which we may never see again.”

  “Ah,” Arlen said. “A bootlegger. That’s what you are.”

  “Now? No, Mr. Wagner. You can’t bootleg something that’s openly bought and traded. So a new commodity must be found and…” He shrugged. “I just miss the simplicity of booze. But let’s talk about you for a change. You and the young man departed a train in the middle of the night and lit out down an abandoned highway in an unfamiliar place. Due to a bad feeling, the boy said. It strikes me as a most exceptional decision.”

  “Paul said all that needed to be said. I had a bad feeling. End of story.”

  “I like it. Sounds ominous. A feeling of what? Impending doom?”

  “I didn’t see a black cat walking under a ladder or any such foolish shit,” Arlen said, feeling anger rise, Sorenson watching him with calm interest. “If you had any idea…”

  He let it die, and Sorenson said gently, “What did you see?”

  Arlen shook his head. “Let’s leave it at a bad feeling.”

  “And so we will. Make no mistake, Mr. Wagner, I’m a man who appreciates the art of the premonition.”

  “Mine are a little different than yours. Less manufactured.”

  “Than mine, sure. I’ve known others, though… there’s a village not far from here in which every resident claims to be a medium. The place is called Cassadaga. Anytime I pass close to the area, I pay a visit. A friend introduced me to a fortune-teller there. She’s remarkable.”

  “What does she tell you? Winning numbers for your games?”

  “Yesterday, she told me there was death in the rain.”

  “In the rain?”

  “That’s what she said. I asked her if it was my own death, and she said it was not. Then she told me, as she has before, that I worry too much about death. All that dies, she said, is the body. That’s all. And she believes, quite firmly, that she can continue to communicate with those whose bodies are no more. Do you believe in such a thing?”

  “Absolutely not,” Arlen said, thinking, I’d better not. Because if I do, then I’ve got something to answer for.

  “You say that with conviction,” Sorenson said. “Yet you abandoned a train you needed to be on due to your own unusual perception.”

  “There’s a world of difference there,” Arlen said.

  Sorenson had set his hat down on the bar and shed his jacket, revealing a sweat-stained white shirt and suspenders.

  “The lad who travels with you was not in favor of the change of plans. He did not support the… bad feeling.”

  “He supported it enough,” Arlen said. “He got off the train.”

  “Hell, man, you’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

  Arlen turned to face him, the whiskey wrapping its arms around him now in such a way that he didn’t fear the man’s mocking.

  “You think your fortune-teller can sense death coming?” he said. “Well, brother, I can see it. Tell you something else—I ain’t ever wrong. Ever.”

  Sorenson gazed at him without reaction. Arlen held the stare for a time and then turned away, at which point Sorenson finally spoke.

  “I am most taken with games of chance and those who purport themselves as capable of beating them. And life, Mr. Wagner? That’s the best game of chance in this world. You think you can beat it.”

  “No,” Arlen said. “I do not think that.”

  “Sure you do. We’ll see if you can. The fate of that train will tell the tale.”

  “It may not be the train,” Arlen said, his voice starting to thicken with drink. “Could be something will happen that has nothing to do with the train. But the Keys aren’t safe, damn it, and I want to keep that kid from going.”

  “You say that as if you suspect it will be difficult.”

  “He’s determined. I’d like to get to Hillsborough County, to the CCC camp there. The boy doesn’t belong down in the Keys.”

  “I see.” Sorenson twirled his glass on the bar, watching the warm amber liquid devour his ice. Arlen had a passing notion that he was surprised such a bar even had ice; perhaps this was what Sorenson provided in these days of open liquor trade. “Well, Wagner, what I said
during our game holds true—luck rides with you tonight. Not only did you win the game, not only did you escape the train to the Keys, not only did you hitch with me just in time to avoid the rain, but you’ve found a ride to Hillsborough County. I’ll make a few stops along the way, but by sundown I’ll be within twenty miles. Can’t pass on a free ride.”

  “Generous offer, but all the same, I think we’ll stick to the trains.”

  “You wound me,” Sorenson said. “Think logically—it’s a five-mile hike back to the station and then you’ll have to piece together a day of travel at considerable expense. You will also have to convince the lad to change his plans. He likes that car, Mr. Wagner. I imagine he’d like to drive it.”

  Arlen looked up at him and frowned. “Why so interested?” he said. “What’s it to you, Sorenson?”

  “There are plenty of reasons. For one, I find you a most fascinating man, you of the bad feelings, you, the seer of death. For another, I could use the company. These highways get lonesome, Mr. Wagner. And a third reason? My fortune-teller in Cassadaga, the one who warned me of death in the rain? Her guidance for me on this visit was quite limited—all she said was that I needed to be aware of travelers in need.”

  “You expect me to believe that, you’re crazy.”

  “On the contrary,” Sorenson said, “if you’re anything close to the man I suspect you are, I know that you will believe it. Because it’s the truth.”

  Arlen held his eyes for a time, then looked away without speaking.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll ride with you tomorrow.”

  5

  HE DID NOT SLEEP WELL. In the room beside them, an ancient bed creaked a sad, hollow rhythm beneath first one man’s grunting efforts and then another’s. The redheaded woman who had once worn a green dress did not make a sound. Arlen lay in the dark and listened and wondered if Paul was awake. If he was, he didn’t speak. By three Arlen’s flask was empty and then so was the room beside them, the door swung shut one final time as the voices downstairs fell silent.

  He dozed off sometime around four but slept in uneasy fits, jerking awake often to the sound of an unrelenting rain. It was sweltering in the constricted, windowless room, and Arlen’s sweat soaked into the sheets as the night carried on and finally broke to dawn.