The Cypress House

by Michael Koryta

  He woke when the wind reached a scream. The door swung open, and he spun with a grunt and found himself facing Paul Brickhill.

  “Arlen? Rebecca says you’d best come downstairs. It’s getting close.”

  Arlen just stared at the kid for a moment, too disoriented to speak or move. Then he managed a nod and struggled out of bed. A blanket was snarled around his foot and he almost fell, but caught himself and tore free. The motion set off a bolt of pain that began in his head and ended in his gut, nausea sliding in behind it. He bent over, bracing his forearms on his knees, and sucked in a few breaths until it passed. Paul moved from the door as if to help, but Arlen held a hand up, breathed a few more times, and then straightened. His eyelids scraped like sandpaper with each blink, and his throat was dry and scorched.

  “Sorry,” he said, his voice harsh as a rasp on a cedar plank. “I shouldn’t have… I didn’t mean to drink like that. It’s just the money was gone and I—”

  Something tore on the side of the house, and Paul looked at the window as if he might be able to see through the boards to the other side.

  “Let’s get on downstairs, Arlen.”

  “Time is it?”

  “Noon.”

  Noon. He’d been up here for an entire night and morning.

  They went down the steps and out into the barroom. The electric lights were still on and the fan still blowing, but even so the room was dark and hot with all the windows and doors sealed. Rebecca Cady was sitting with a radio at a table in front of the bar. The radio was off. She looked up as they entered, let her eyes hang on Arlen’s for a moment, and then said, “The water’s coming up.”

  “Out of the ocean?” Paul said it like he didn’t believe it.

  She nodded.

  Paul crossed the room and went to one of the windows. Arlen noticed now that there was a jagged shaft of gray light where a piece of the board had been torn away. Paul put his face to the glass and stared at the beach.

  “How high will it get?” he said. “It’s getting close to the porch.”

  He was trying to say it calmly enough, but there was a tremor in his voice.

  “I’m not sure how high it will go,” Rebecca Cady said. There was no tremor in hers.

  Arlen crossed the room and joined Paul at the window, nudged him aside and looked out at the shore. The palm trees to the side of the back porch were bent at an incomprehensible angle—how the trunks didn’t split, he couldn’t imagine—and the Gulf of Mexico had turned into a wild, thrashing expanse of gray water speckled with white froth. Where the beach had once ended, now there was only water, furious water, pushed ahead by the wind and climbing with ease. The waves splashed no more than twenty feet from the base of the porch now, and even as Arlen watched, they seemed to grow closer.

  “House is raised?” he said.

  “Yes,” Rebecca Cady said.

  “By how much?”

  “Three feet,” Paul said quietly. “Block pylons. It’ll move through them instead of around the sides of the house. Higher than that, it’ll be on the porch.”

  Arlen didn’t answer, still looking out at the water. A frond tore loose from one of the palms and snapped through the air, plastered onto the window just below Arlen’s eye with such force that he gave an involuntary jerk. The wind’s scream rose, as if it were laughing at him as it flattened the tops on the waves in the tossing sea. He stepped back from the window and shook his head. How could anything unseen have such savage strength? You could only watch its effects; the beast itself was invisible.

  He followed Paul to the table and sat with Rebecca Cady, each of them listening to the sounds of the storm. He nodded at the radio.

  “What do they say?”

  “That it’s here.”

  “That’s all they say?”

  “The seawall failed in Tampa. There’s flooding.”

  “How far away is that?”

  “Fifty miles south. That’s nothing like what happened in the Keys. They still don’t have a death toll settled on.”

  Arlen and Paul looked at each other until something crashed against the back of the house and gave them an excuse to turn away.

  “Why don’t you turn it back on?” Arlen said, pointing at the radio.

  “Saving the batteries.”

  “I can’t believe your lights are still on.”

  “It’s a good generator.”

  “Sure is,” Arlen agreed. “How’d you pay for it, with no business?”

  This time her silence lingered. He’d just about given up on a response when she said, “My father put that in. Things were different then.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “In a coffin.”

  “A lot of good men are,” Arlen said.

  She scowled and turned away. Arlen said, “Is there beer in that icebox?”

  “I should think the last thing you’d need right now is another drink.”

  “Actually, the one thing I need right now is another drink.”

  He stood up and walked around the bar and into the kitchen, found the icebox. He took a bottle of beer out, then hesitated and withdrew two more.

  When he came back, he set a bottle down in front of Paul, then in front of Rebecca Cady. Both of them looked at him like he was crazy, and he shrugged. The wind shrieked around the house, and Paul reached out tentatively and touched his beer, then moved his hand away when Rebecca Cady shifted her eyes to him.

  “Go on,” Arlen said, “just one ain’t going to bite you. It’s a hurricane, son. If that isn’t a special occasion, what is?”

  It wasn’t strong stuff, but it was enough to settle Arlen’s stomach and ease his headache. Paul let the bottle sit untouched in front of him for a few minutes and then lifted it and took a small swallow.

  About ten minutes went by, and then there came a crash and a tearing from the back porch. Arlen and Paul got to their feet and went to the small exposed portion of glass to look out. One of the porch railings had ripped free and blown into the back wall, and the corresponding roof support had buckled. The porch roof was still standing, but on just three legs now.

  “That porch is almost finished,” Paul whispered. “I wonder what’s happening to that dock and the boathouse up in the inlet.”

  Before Arlen could answer, there was another crash, this one far louder and on the southern side of the house, out of sight at their angle. The entire building trembled with impact, and then the lights went out. There wasn’t so much as a flicker; they simply snapped off. The electric fan whirled down to a crawl and then a stop, and now there were no sounds but the storm.

  Arlen led the way back, picking past chairs and tables that existed as shadows. Rebecca Cady was where they’d left her, and though she hadn’t said a word, she was moving in the darkness. It took Arlen a minute to realize that she’d begun to drink the beer.

  13

  IT WENT ON THROUGH the afternoon and into the evening—wind and rain and the sounds of the house threatening to break up around them. One of the back windows splintered from the squeezing and shifting of the frame, then fell to the floor in shards when another gust shook the house. Paul and Arlen set to work cleaning up the glass and waiting on the rest of the windows to go, but they never did. The storm surge covered the beach and reached the porch and sloshed under the house. They could hear it moving beneath the floor, and Rebecca Cady kept her eyes downcast for at least an hour, looking for signs of it, expecting the water to begin seeping through. It didn’t rise high enough, though. Now and then a particularly inspired wave would splash up onto the edge of the porch, but it never made the door.

  The three of them went out onto the front porch once, with the building offering shelter between them and the wind, and took in the yard. Everything was awash with water, the sea moving all around them, as if they stood aboard a ship rather than a porch. The heavy Cypress House sign banged on its iron chains. Up the hill, the trees bent almost to the earth and the undergrowth had been picked clean by the wind. T
he air was thick with spray and sand, peppering the trees.

  “You ever seen one like this before?” Paul shouted in Rebecca Cady’s ear, his hand cupped to the side of her face. She shook her head.

  It didn’t begin to lessen until evening, and then it was subtle—the wind shriek losing its voice just a bit, as if its lungs were worn from the day’s ravings. An hour later it was noticeably calmer, and the rain had faded to an ordinary, steady summer shower as the ocean mustered a slow retreat, as if displeased with the results of its reconnaissance mission on land. Maybe it would invade sometime, but it wouldn’t be now and wouldn’t be here.

  As the storm eased away, real darkness settled in, and Rebecca lit more oil lamps. She had two lanterns, and around nine that evening, when the wind dangers seemed past, she lit them both and handed one to Paul and kept the other herself, and they all went outside.

  The yard was littered with pieces of siding and porch rails and shingles. The back porch was in shambles, but the roof had held; the widow’s walk deck hadn’t fared so well.

  Rebecca Cady looked everything over without comment and then said she wanted to go to the boathouse. She led the way, holding the lantern out in front of her body, picking over branches and planks and other debris. There was a narrow path that led north from the house and into the palms. It curved away from the Gulf, then opened up on an inlet that appeared to wind back into ever deeper undergrowth. The boathouse stood before them, little more than a tall shed built out onto the dock. Most of its roof was gone. Rebecca walked to the edge of the dock and lifted the lantern high. A third of the floor planks were missing, but the pilings that supported them were intact.

  “You have anything in that boathouse?” Arlen asked.

  “It was moved,” she said shortly, and then turned and started back to the house. “Let’s look at the generator.”

  “We might be able to get it running again tonight,” Paul said, full of forced optimism.

  That idea lasted for the amount of time it took them to get back to the house. The generator was in an enclosure that had been constructed on the north side of the building. Where it had once stood, nothing was visible but tangled branches. A tree of at least forty feet in length—it was some sort of coastal pine whose branches and needles had been pruned away by the storm—had blown directly into the side of the building, crushing the shed. The smell of fuel hung in the air, and when Paul leaned over the tree and lifted his lantern, a piece of an engine became visible.

  “It’s ruined,” Rebecca Cady said. “Destroyed.”

  Paul set his lantern on the ground and tried to heave the tree off the generator. After watching him struggle for a few seconds, Arlen fell in to help, and they rolled the tree back enough to see the damage more clearly. It looked to Arlen to be catastrophic—the generator had been broken into pieces and was now covered with wet sand. He could see a metal plate with the words “Delco-Light” stamped onto the side. Arlen was a damn fine carpenter, but he was no mechanic, and even a great one wouldn’t be able to put this wreck back together.

  “Going to need a new one,” he said.

  “I can’t afford one.” She looked up from the ruined generator and out at the rest of her property—shanks of damaged siding littered the yard, pieces of the back porch lay half buried in the sandy hill above the inn, the bed rails from her truck had been ripped off and deposited somewhere in the darkness.

  “We’ll get it cleaned up,” Paul said, and Arlen looked at him with wide eyes. The hell they would. They were leaving.

  “I can take care of it,” she said.

  “No, you can’t. You going to rebuild that porch?” He shook his head. “We won’t leave until it’s cleaned up.”

  Arlen said, “Have you lost your senses?”

  “We have to stay long enough to help—”

  “We don’t have to stay long enough for anything! I don’t recall that we invited the hurricane here, and I’ll be damned if I take any sense of neighborly kindness at a place where I was jailed and robbed. We’re leaving in the morning.”

  Paul shook his head, and Arlen wanted to knock it right off his shoulders.

  “We came in together,” Paul said. “That doesn’t mean we have to leave together. I’m staying at least long enough to help her get this place cleaned up.”

  They stood there for a while in the lantern light and the soft rain, looking out at the inn that was now bound by darkness.

  “Come on,” Arlen said at last. “Won’t be able to do anything out here till daylight, and there’s no use burning the lantern fuel. Way that generator looks, you’re going to need it.”

  Nobody came by to check on the Cypress House until the next morning, and then it was a man in a white panel van. Arlen was in the bathroom and Paul and Rebecca Cady were already outside, pulling the boards off the windows. They hadn’t reached the second floor yet, so when Arlen heard the sound of the approaching engine, he had to go downstairs to see the source. The van had parked and the driver got out, a short, squat man in a watch cap. He stood with his hands on his hips, looked around the tavern, and shook his head.

  Arlen opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, lifting a hand. The man lifted one in response and walked up to join him. “How’d you folks fare?”

  “Well enough,” Arlen answered, “but it’s not my place.”

  “Oh, I know that,” the visitor said. He had a heavy drawl, a spray of freckles across his face, blue eyes that held good humor. “Y’all are the criminals.”

  Arlen raised his eyebrows, and the man laughed.

  “You best expect that to be known by now. Think a pesky thing like a hurricane will keep folks from talking?” He put out a hand. “Thomas Barrett. I reckon you’re Wagner, not Brickhill.”

  Arlen didn’t take his hand, and Barrett laughed again. “Relax. I’m nothing but a delivery driver. You can put away your guns.”

  “Sorry,” Arlen said, finally reaching out to accept the handshake, “but I’m a bit leery of folks out here. They kill some men, lock others up, and probably steal from everyone.”

  Barrett’s smile went sour as he pulled his hand back. “Ain’t everybody around here that’ll do you that way.”

  “I’d hope not. But it’s who I’ve met so far.”

  Barrett nodded. “You met the sheriff, and maybe you met the judge?”

  “That’s right. What do you know about them?”

  “Enough to stay out of their way. Enough to know that most folks with half a mind are scared witless of them.”

  “They’re elected positions, aren’t they?”

  Barrett threw his head back and gave a bull snort. “Elected, sure. And I ran against Tolliver for sheriff, so you ever want to hear about Corridor County politics, I can talk on it. But you probably don’t, and I probably shouldn’t.”

  “I got the impression he was from Cleveland.”

  Barrett gave him a surprised glance and a nod. “You had the right impression.”

  “How in the hell did he become sheriff down here, then?”

  Barrett’s smile was forced this time. “I wouldn’t waste your thoughts worrying on a thing like that. It’s Corridor County’s problem, not yours.”

  “Is High Town really all there is to the county?”

  “Most people are scattered. You know, live in the woods or out at places like this. Was a lumber mill outside of High Town that kept the place alive, but it went under five years ago, and, all told, a few thousand people probably went with it. Workers and their families and such. Take away the only real industry in a place like this, and it empties out powerful fast.”

  “So what do people out here do now?”

  “They try to get by,” Barrett said. “Just like Becky.”

  “How’d she end up alone in this place?”

  “Was owned by her parents. They came down from Georgia years back to try and build a sport fishing business. It didn’t take. Her mother drowned right out from the house. Some said it was tides tha
t caught her, others believed she went willingly enough. Tired of her husband’s methods of getting ahead.”

  “What methods were those?”

  Barrett gave him a long look, then turned away and said, “A few years later, Rebecca’s daddy took his boat out, lost the engines, and then lost himself. They found the boat but not him. All that was left of her family by then was her brother, and he’s in prison.”

  At that moment Rebecca Cady appeared around the side of the house, wiping her hands on a towel.

  “Hello, Tom.”

  “Becky, you survive all right?”

  “Better than the inn,” she said, and then added, “Stop calling me Becky.”

  “I know, I know. Is there anything left of the back porch?”

  “Not much. I lost the generator, too. No icebox.”

  Barrett groaned. “Can it be fixed?”

  “Probably not. You can have a look if you’d like.”

  “I’ll do that.” He turned to Arlen and winked. “We’ll talk in a minute, gunslinger. Don’t shoot me in the back now, hear?”

  “Awful witty boy, aren’t you?” Arlen said, and Barrett gave another of his loud laughs and walked away. Arlen went in search of Paul.

  He found him up on the ladder on the side of the house. He’d gotten the boards off the windows and was now nailing a torn piece of the wooden siding back into place. Arlen called for him to come down.

  “We’ve got a job,” Paul said before his feet had even touched ground.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Here,” Paul said triumphantly. “I talked her into it this morning. She sure needs the help, and we sure need the money. I know you don’t want to stay, but it’s a different tune if we’re getting paid, right?”

  “What we need is a ride, boy, and there’s one out front.”

  Paul frowned. “A ride where, Arlen? We don’t have enough money for a meal, much less a train ticket. You want to walk all the way back to Alabama? Rebecca said she could pay us ten dollars each if we get this place cleaned up and the porch put back together. Shouldn’t take more than a few days. That’s enough for train tickets at least.”