The Cypress House

by Michael Koryta

  Tolliver was a strong man but not a fit one. Before long the exertion of knocking Arlen’s ass around the hot, clammy room had taken its toll, and he was breathing damn near as hard as Arlen and mopping sweat from his face and neck.

  Wade reached up and adjusted his glasses. “Doesn’t seem to have been very productive.”

  “He’s a stubborn son of a bitch, I’ll give you that,” Tolliver said.

  “Could be he’s telling the truth.”

  “You think?”

  Wade shook his head.

  “That’s where I landed, too,” Tolliver said. “Shall I keep at it?”

  “No.” Wade came off the bars and looked down at Arlen as if he were studying a carcass. “We’ll let him sleep, let him get used to the way that cot feels and stare at those bars and begin asking himself if it’s worth it. We’ll let him remember that if we’re so inclined, it can be arranged for him to stay here a powerful long time.”

  He tilted his head at the cell door, and Tolliver opened it and Wade stepped out, then turned and looked back at Arlen with cold eyes.

  “On behalf of the good people of Corridor County, we’d like to thank you for being such a helpful witness, Mr. Wagner.”

  Arlen dragged in some of the dusty air and didn’t answer. Tolliver locked the cell and followed Wade out the door. For a long time after they were gone, Arlen stayed down on the floor, sweat dripping into his eyes and salting the corners of his mouth. Outside, the wind gusted hard against the stone wall and found it solid. Still it pushed, though, undeterred, driving on as night settled and the slanted light in the empty jail edged toward gray dusk.

  9

  THEY BROUGHT PAUL BRICKHILL in before it was full night. By then Arlen was back on the cot and breathing normally, and the deputy locked Paul in the cell next to him and brought them each a plate of buttered bread and a mug of water. When he was gone, Arlen said, “How rough did they go on you?”

  “He did some shouting.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes. Why? They didn’t try anything more than that on you, did they?”

  “No,” Arlen said. “No. Was the judge there?”

  “Yeah. He didn’t say much. He just listened. But I don’t know why he was even there. I mean, you don’t think… Arlen, there’s no way they’ll keep us here, is there? We weren’t anything but bystanders, we’d—”

  “Settle down,” Arlen said. “They’ll kick us loose soon enough.”

  Paul said, “We should’ve taken our chances on that train.”

  Neither of them spoke much after that.

  * * *

  Night passed and dawn rose and with it the heat, and no one set foot in the jail. Paul couldn’t sit still—he paced the narrow cell most of the night and then in the morning began to do push-ups on the floor, grunting out the count as he went. Poor as this predicament was, Arlen still couldn’t help grinning. The kid was acting like a con from some prison flicker. Before long he’d probably start laying escape plans, set to work sawing on his cell bars with his fingernails.

  “Aren’t they going to feed us any breakfast?” Paul said when he tired of exercising. “That’s a legal requirement, Arlen! They can’t deny a man food.”

  “They’ll feed us.”

  “We should have a lawyer. Not one we have to pay for either, but one they provide. You know, to protect our rights.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  At noon the sheriff and deputy brought them their meals: buttered bread and a strip of beef so tough it ate like jerky and tasted like boot leather. They remained in the room while the inmates ate. The redheaded deputy stood with his arms folded and glared into the cells, and Tolliver sat on a stool in the corner of the room and read a newspaper. At one point he gave a grunt of disgust and shook his head.

  “If they had two boys who threw like Mel Harder, my Indians would win the pennant going away, Burt,” he told the deputy. “Win it by ten games.”

  Arlen, chewing his stale bread, heard that and thought, Cleveland. That’s where Tolliver was from. He surely wasn’t local—both his voice and his sunburned skin spoke of a life spent far north of this place. How did a man from Cleveland find himself as sheriff of a backwater Florida county, though?

  When they were finished eating, the deputy gathered their plates and Tolliver crumpled the newspaper and asked without interest whether they’d like to offer any changes to their stories. They did not. Paul inquired—a great deal more tentatively than he had with Arlen—why they were still in the jail if they hadn’t been charged with anything.

  “Have to ask the judge about that.”

  “When will he be back? I don’t believe it’s legal to keep us—”

  “You know who decides what’s legal?” Tolliver said. “Solomon Wade.”

  That was the end of it. Arlen never said a word. When the sheriff was gone, Paul said, “Arlen, this isn’t right.”

  Arlen said, “Kid, you been around long enough to know ain’t much about this world that’s right. Leastwise not lately.”

  “They could keep us locked up in here for weeks. Shoot, for months.”

  “It won’t be months,” Arlen said, “and it won’t be weeks.”

  “How in the hell are you so sure?” the kid snapped with an unnatural harshness. “You see that in your head, too, like the dead men on that train?”

  “No,” Arlen said. “This one’s more of a guess.”

  It was quiet, and then Paul said, “Arlen, I’m sorry. It’s just that—”

  “I know,” Arlen said. “For what it’s worth, kid, I’m sorry, too. But you’ll see a lot more of this in your time. Foul deeds done by men who have themselves some power. They’ll beat on you in some way or another just ’cause they can, and most times they won’t answer for it.”

  “When we get out of here,” Paul said, “I just want to get back to one of the camps. Doesn’t even have to be the Keys. I just want to get back to a CCC camp.”

  That brought some comfort to Arlen. He said, “We’re going back to Flagg Mountain. It isn’t wise to stay in Florida after this. We’ll have trouble even if we don’t deserve it. Word gets around.”

  “When do you think we’ll be back?”

  “End of the week at the latest.”

  “That sounds good,” Paul said. “Be nice to be back by Friday. Today’s Monday, right? Today’s Labor Day. Some holiday we had.”

  He was right, Arlen realized. It was the end of the holiday now, the end of Labor Day, 1935.

  Arlen had felt some swelter in his time, but not much that rivaled the way that jail got by midafternoon. The back wall faced west, and the sun came on and baked into the stone and there wasn’t so much as an open window to let the heat breathe. Paul Brickhill shifted and muttered and paced, and Arlen lay on the cot and felt the sweat bead on his flesh and waited for Tolliver’s return.

  It never came. That evening a new deputy brought them food, and then it was night and they were still in their cells. The next morning Arlen woke to the sound of rain, stretched, and ran a hand over his face. When he did it, he winced. The stubble was thickening up. Arlen shaved every morning, no matter what, refused to miss it. He hated to see the hint of a beard when he looked in the mirror. Even a touch of dark shadow on his broad jaw changed his face, made him look so much like his father it was frightening. Isaac Wagner had always worn a beard, and because of it, Arlen stayed clean-shaven. Less he resembled that man, the better.

  He was still on his back, studying moisture marks that seemed to be darkening in the old ceiling, when there came the sound of a key in the door and he sat up to see Solomon Wade stepping through.

  “Paul,” Arlen said in a low voice.

  “Yeah.”

  He’d just wanted to make sure the kid was awake. The judge walked over to Arlen’s cell and stood leaning forward with his hands wrapped around the bars. At the sight of him, Paul and his worries about prisoners’ rights had fallen silent; he offered nary a question.

  “T
hose beds aren’t too bad, are they?” Wade said.

  “I’ve had better,” Arlen said, “and I’ve had worse.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” Wade twisted his head to study Paul. “You know there’s men all over this country don’t have a bed for the night. Women and children, too.”

  Paul said, “Yes, sir. I know.”

  Wade nodded. “Just so we’re clear on that. Wanted to be sure y’all had a sense of appreciation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have a sense of appreciation?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. Because I was worried you were lacking in appreciation after I heard from the sheriff. Said there’d been talk of lawyers and lawfulness and a general quality of bitching, not a hint of gratitude in the air.”

  “He was mistaken,” Arlen said.

  “You calling the sheriff a liar?” Wade said, swiveling to look at Arlen.

  “I’m not.”

  “A fool, then?”

  “No, sir. Just mistaken.”

  Wade nodded sagely, as if this were a philosophers’ debate of intense interest.

  “I’ve made some calls,” he said. “Seems the CCC actually recollects the two of you. So does a train station attendant out in Bradford County.”

  “Good to hear,” Arlen said, still wondering why in the hell a judge would be making calls in an investigation. Seemed like Tolliver’s job.

  “Not a one of them answered the question I needed answered,” Wade said, “which is what you did to find yourself inside Walt Sorenson’s Auburn on the day of his demise. I’ll tell you something—it’s a question that vexes me.”

  “If we could ease your suffering,” Arlen said, “we surely would.”

  Wade cocked his head sideways and gazed in at Arlen. “Why’d you get off that train? Station attendant told me you didn’t miss the train, you just got off and didn’t get back on.”

  “I didn’t like the look of the crowd we were traveling with,” Arlen said. That was true enough.

  “Well, I’ll tell you something: you have fool’s luck watching over you.”

  The words gave Arlen a tingle, one that started low in his back and shivered all the way up his spine and tightened the muscles in his neck.

  “Train you were on was bound for the Keys,” Wade said. “Would’ve put you off down there, what, late afternoon day before yesterday.”

  He dropped his hands from the bars. “You know what happened to the Keys last night?”

  He waited, so Arlen said, “No. We’ve been in here. Nobody kept us posted on the news.”

  “Well, let me get you posted, then—the Keys are gone.”

  Paul said, “What do you mean, gone?”

  “I mean obliterated. Nothing left but sand and shells. And blood.”

  “The hurricane?” Paul said, voice soft.

  “ ‘Hurricane’ isn’t even the right word,” Wade said. “That’s what they’ll call it, yes, but sounds like this was more devil than storm. I’ve been listening to the radio reports; they say they’ve got bodies in the trees down there. Whole towns blown to the ground, men and women and children swept out to sea. They sent a rescue train, and it was torn right off the tracks.”

  Arlen couldn’t find his voice. Solomon Wade was staring in at him like he wanted to hear a response, but Arlen simply couldn’t muster one.

  “They say it’s coming here now,” Wade said. “This rain’s the first of it. Wind’ll come next, and with it? We’ll have to wait and see. Could be as bad as what the Keys got, could be that it’s tasted enough blood by now. Either way, I ain’t got time to deal with you sorry bastards. But if a complaint rises to your lips about your stay here in Corridor County, you remember where you’d be if we hadn’t locked your asses up. You remember that.”

  10

  THE SHERIFF WAS WAITING in the car, parked just in front of the station, no more than fifteen steps from the door. Even so, they were soaked by the time they fell into the backseat. The rain was coming down in a way that made Arlen wonder if the power of gravity had been increased while they’d waited in the jail; things didn’t fall from the sky now, they plummeted.

  Tolliver didn’t say a word to them as they sat dripping in the back of the car, just put it in gear and drove slowly away from the center of High Town, back into the shrouded woods that today looked more black than green. Arlen watched the rain come down, pouring so furiously the sheriff had to keep the car at a crawl because he couldn’t see out of the windshield, and wondered how in the hell they were going to get to a train station today. Be a mighty wet walk. And if there was a hurricane on the way…

  Shit, hurricane or not, he wanted out, and he wanted out now. Regardless of the rain, the wind didn’t seem all that powerful yet, had the trees swaying and shaking but not stretching out sideways the way they would when it really began to blow, like they were roaring mad at the roots that bound them to the earth, determined to get free. He’d never seen a true coastal hurricane, but he’d been in Alabama in ’28 when the remnants of a bad one blew out in the wooded country where he’d been staying. The sheer power of that storm, the ferocity of the wind, had lingered in his mind. It wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted to experience hiking down the highway. No, they’d best grab their bags and hitch whatever ride they could, get inland and find housing for the night.

  “I’ve never seen rain like this,” Paul said. He had one hand on the seat in front of him, squeezing it as he stared out the window and into the downpour.

  “It’s heavy,” Arlen agreed.

  They limped along a ribbon of gray that looked more like a creek bed than a road. Here and there the sheriff slowed and eased them one way or the other to avoid washouts of mud and gravel. He moved his hands on the wheel constantly, shifting their positions as if he weren’t sure which one worked best, and Arlen realized he didn’t like the rain any more than Paul did. He was breathing shallowly and there was sweat on his face. Twice he swore at the storm, and his voice was uneasy. This was the first hurricane he’d seen. Arlen was sure of it, and with that recognition the old questions returned: How had he found his way down here, and how had he gotten elected sheriff in a place where strangers had to be scarce?

  “Hey, Arlen,” Paul said.

  “Yeah?”

  “What the judge said about the hurricane… you think the men we were with on the train… you think they died?”

  Arlen turned his head from the kid, looked back out the window, and said, “No. I don’t.”

  “That’s a lie,” Paul said softly. “You know they did. You always knew it.”

  There were answers for that, but Arlen didn’t offer any of them.

  Down near the Gulf, without the woods as a screen, the rain actually seemed less imposing. The sheer expanse of gray sky lightened things up, and the ocean winds pushed the rain sideways and sprayed it around. There were no cars parked in front of the inn, but lights showed inside. The sheriff drove them to the top of the hill, just where the Plymouth had parked, and then said, “Get out. I’m not trying the hill in this mud.”

  “It’s been a real pleasure,” Arlen said. He pushed open his door and felt a spray of rain drill into his face, stepped out and let the wind swing the door shut as he walked for the inn. He intended to go all the way down there at a stroll—couldn’t get much wetter—but then Paul passed him at a run and Arlen thought, What the hell, and followed suit.

  Paul beat him to the door and jerked it open, but Arlen slid on the wet boards of the front porch and knocked right into the kid. They fell through the door together, stumbling, and by the time they had it shut they were both laughing, acting like a couple of schoolboys instead of two men who’d just been released from the county jail.

  “Well, we’re out,” Paul said. “I didn’t think I’d ever be so happy to stand outside and get rained on!”

  “You’d have thought we were in there for ten years, way you talk.”

  The kid grinned and
wiped rain from his face. “Felt close enough to me.”

  Arlen was sweeping his palms over his clothes, trying to shed the water, when he looked over Paul’s shoulder and finally saw the woman. He’d thought the room was empty when they entered, but Rebecca Cady stood in the corner nearest them, a hammer in her right hand. When he saw her, neither of them spoke. Then Paul followed his eyes and spotted her and blurted out, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” she said.

  “The sheriff just dropped us off,” Arlen said. “We had a nice couple nights in jail. Evidently it didn’t matter to them that we were in here with you when Sorenson’s car blew up.”

  “I didn’t expect it would,” she said, stepping forward and dropping a handful of nails onto the bar, then setting the hammer down.

  “Don’t seem awful concerned,” Arlen said.

  “Would my concern mean much? You seem to hold me responsible.”

  “I’m just wanting to let you know that we’re damn lucky the judge didn’t decide to keep us in those cells until the end of the year.”

  Something changed in her face. “You met the judge? Solomon Wade?”

  Arlen nodded. “That’s right. You a friend of his?”

  That put fury in her eyes. “No.”

  There was something odd here, but Arlen had no wish to pursue it.

  “We’ll take our bags,” he said shortly, “and be on our way. I’d appreciate it if you’d give us a ride to a train station.”

  “I’m not driving you anywhere in this weather.”

  “Seems the right thing to do. We were visiting on your property when our last ride was killed and we ended up in jail.”