Arlen looked at him for a long time and then said, “It was a mighty strange journey, Barrett. And I don’t think you’d like to hear the details. Or that you’d believe them if you did.”
Barrett seemed unhappy, but he nodded. “I’ll give you this much,” he said. “I believe they are questions that don’t need answers.”
“You’re right about that,” Arlen said, and then he asked for his reward. Barrett told him he was crazy. Arlen said he didn’t believe that was the case. A lot of blood had been spilled in Corridor County because of the ineptitude of a federal police agency. Arlen could do some talking on that to the press, or he could not. He wasn’t sure yet. A certain reward, a bounty, could impact his decision.
* * *
It was only two days later that Paul came in to tell him the incredible news. They were sending him to Pennsylvania once all this was done. To the Carnegie engineering school. Someone had arranged it as a token of gratitude. Arlen did his damnedest to act surprised.
Arlen had been ten days in the hospital when Thomas Barrett returned to Tampa with an envelope in his hand. He tossed it onto Arlen’s bed.
“That was mailed to me direct. Inside another envelope. The one for me came with a note that said she’d trusted me once and saw what had come of it, but she was going to try it again. She asked that I deliver this to you unopened.”
It was unopened. Arlen’s throat felt tight, but he kept his eyes on Barrett.
“I should open it,” Barrett said. “You know that. There’s plenty of people who’d like to talk with her and are probably entitled.”
“I’m sure there are.”
Barrett nodded. “When you talk to her,” he said, “you tell her that I’m sorry.”
He turned on his heel and walked out of the room. Arlen waited until his footsteps were no longer audible, and then he opened the envelope. Inside there was nothing but a sheet of stationery with a telephone number.
Rebecca didn’t answer his call. It was a boardinghouse, evidently, and the woman who took the call went wary as soon as Arlen asked for her.
“Tell her it’s Arlen Wagner,” he said, and something changed in the strange woman’s voice, and she went away for a time, and then Rebecca was on the line. At the sound of her voice, Arlen closed his eyes.
“You’re okay,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“It made the papers at first, but then it went away. I wanted to come back, but you’d told me not to, and so—”
“You did the right thing. You should never come back here. Barrett didn’t open the envelope either. Nobody saw it but me.”
He was talking low because there were people passing nearby, but no one was interested.
“Paul’s safe?” she said.
“He’s safe, and Solomon Wade’s dead. Tolliver, too. And Tate McGrath.” The weight of it was settling on him now as he put it into words for her in a way it never had when he’d explained it over and over to the police. The memory of the Springfield bucking in his arms and the feel of the mud on his face and the damp heat of the marsh and the whispers of dead men in his head…
“Will you come?” she said.
He laughed. It was all he could think to do. Then he said, “Yes. You better believe I’m on my way. Soon as they let me out of this place, I am on my way.”
The smile left his face then, the first smile he’d worn in many a day, and he added, “I’ve got to make a stop first. Shouldn’t take long, though.”
“A stop where?” she said.
“A place I used to call home. There’s something I’ve left unsettled too long. Then I’ll move on. Did you make it all the way?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m in Camden.”
“How is it?”
“Lonely,” she said. “But when you get here, that will change.”
“Seen any snow yet?”
“Not yet. But the wind’s already cold. At night, it’s quite cold. You have no idea how much I love the way it feels.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “And I’ll see you soon. Just a few days. Like I said, there’s just the one stop.”
He and Paul left Tampa together. Arlen’s legs were steady beneath him, but they didn’t last long. He tired quickly, and figured he would for a time to come. Barrett drove them to the train station and shook their hands and said they were welcome in Corridor County anytime.
“It’ll be different,” he said. “I can promise you it will soon be a very different place.”
“I’m certain it will be,” Arlen said. “All the same, don’t look to see me again.”
Barrett nodded, tipped his fingers in a salute, and drove on.
They could take the same train as far as Nashville, and then they’d have to part ways. Paul was excited about the Carnegie school, had plenty to say. More talk than they had miles. Arlen sat back and listened to him and thought of another day and another train and at one point he had to make as if he’d fallen asleep because he didn’t want to respond any longer, didn’t want Paul to hear the thickness that had come up sudden and firm in his throat.
They had time to kill in Nashville between trains, Paul headed on to Pennsylvania and Arlen bound for West Virginia for the first time in almost twenty years. On to Maine, then, on to the town called Camden.
They were sitting there in the station sipping Coca-Colas when Paul turned to him and said, “I know it’s always been true, Arlen.”
Arlen looked at him and frowned, and Paul talked on, hurrying now, the words tripping over one another.
“What you can see,” Paul said. “I believed it from the first because I trusted you, but then I didn’t want to believe you anymore, I was scared to, and I didn’t know what to think of the world if something like that could be true, and—”
Arlen said, “I know.”
“But I’m so sorry. You were trying to keep me from harm, and I just—”
“Stop,” Arlen said. He was watching people wave good-bye from the platform as a train departed the station, and the sight allowed a memory to slide in and bite him. A picture of the train he’d ridden to join the war, all the other boys, older boys than he, hugging their parents long and hard on the platform while he sat alone at the cold window and watched.
“Listen,” he said, looking Paul in the eye, “it’s mighty hard to believe in a thing you can’t see with your own eyes. I’ve had my struggles with it. I don’t fault you for a thing. And I don’t know what to make of this world either, most times. Been a long while trying to figure it out. You just take the days as they come and keep your mind open, hear? That’s all you have to do. All you can. Don’t always try to be the smartest fella in the room, all right? Because in the end, even the smartest of us don’t know much at all. If there’s anything I’m sure of, it’s that.”
Paul nodded. They finished the Coca-Colas and then Paul’s train was boarding, and they got to their feet. Arlen wanted to help him with his bags but didn’t yet have the strength.
“You’re going to her, aren’t you?” Paul said. It was the first either of them had spoken directly of Rebecca.
“Yes,” Arlen said.
Paul looked away, managed a faint smile, and said, “You tell her I said hello. Please?”
“I will. You know that. And I love her, Paul. I hope you understand that.”
Paul nodded. “Yeah. Didn’t make me glad at first, doesn’t really now, but maybe there’ll come a day… anyhow, I know you do. I know it, and it matters.”
“Good.”
“You know where to find me,” Paul said. “So when you land somewhere, let me know.”
“You’ll hear first thing,” Arlen said. “And you’ll come see us.”
Paul nodded again, and now people were shoving past them toward the train. Paul put out his hand. Arlen ignored it, reached out and wrapped his arms around the boy’s lanky frame and hugged him long and hard.
He remained on the platform long after the train was out of sight.
57
HE RETURNED TO FAYETTE COUNTY to put smoke in an old man’s eyes.
He had never wanted to set foot on this soil again, never wanted to see this place again, beautiful though it was. All he wanted to do today was head north, on toward Camden, but there were duties in this life, balances to be kept, and Arlen Wagner owed a large marker in Fayette County.
So did Edwin Main.
The town looked different, almost unbelievably so, but Arlen supposed it might say the same of him if it could.
His first stop after getting off the train was at the site of his boyhood home. It wasn’t there. A woman was out across the street, and she was a young woman, unlikely to remember, so Arlen walked by and inquired.
“You mean the devil house?” she said.
“Devil house?” He tried to keep his voice steady.
“That’s what the children and the old women called it,” she said, and she laughed. A light sound, carefree. “Man who used to live there, he was the craziest this place has ever seen, and then some. Thought he could talk to the dead.”
Arlen kept his eyes away from her as he said, “What happened to the house, though?”
“Fire took it. Has to be fifteen years ago now. I was a girl.”
He nodded and thanked her and told her to have a fine day. She smiled brightly, looking up at the overgrown yard where the devil house had once stood.
On into town then, his stride weakening the longer he walked. From time to time he reached under his jacket and touched the butt of the pistol in his belt.
Anything goes wrong, he thought, and your stay here will keep you from ever seeing Camden. You’ll see the bars of a jail cell for the rest of your days, or, if you’re lucky, a noose.
It had to be done, though.
The house that had once belonged to Edwin Main was now the property of another family. A young boy was playing in the yard, and when Arlen asked his name, he said Lichman, Ben Lichman, and nice to meet you. He had heard of no one named Edwin Main.
Arlen allowed that it was nice to meet him, too, and then he spent a time staring up at the house before he moved on down the road.
A man near the town square was unloading bricks from the bed of a truck, and Arlen stopped and tipped his hat and said beg pardon, but I have a question.
The man straightened, nodded, waited. It was a simple question, but Arlen was having trouble getting it out. The pistol was heavy on his belt.
“I’m looking,” he said, “for a man named Edwin Main. I was hoping you could tell me where to find him. I have some business with him.”
The man looked at Arlen, frowned, and said, “I can tell you where to find him, but I don’t know what sort of business you’ll be conducting at the graveyard.”
Arlen stood in the street and stared at him. The pistol felt much lighter on his belt now.
“Edwin’s passed?”
“Nine year ago at least. Horse threw him.”
“A horse,” Arlen echoed, and suddenly he wanted to laugh, wanted to fall down in the middle of this street where once his father’s blood ran into the dust and laugh until tears streamed down his face.
“That’s right. Was a powerful loss to folks around here. Edwin Main, he was the best we had.”
Arlen said, “Was he, though?” and then he tipped his hat again and walked on toward the cemetery.
It wasn’t hard to find Edwin Main’s grave. He had the largest monument in the place, a ponderous marble slab bearing the dates of his life and the phrase “missed and loved by all.” Joy Main’s grave, older, smaller, sat beside it. Arlen dropped to his knees and brushed aside the grass and leaves that had gathered on the stone’s face. When it was clean, he stepped back and looked at Edwin’s marker and drew his pistol. He thought about putting a few rounds off its shining marble, driving some nicks into that pretty stone, but then he slid the gun back into his belt.
“Thrown by a horse,” he said. Yes, there were balances to be kept, and markers owed. He’d come here to see to them, but the world, this wonderful, terrible world, had beaten him to it.
He remembered the location of his mother’s stone, so it was easy enough to find his father’s. They were together at the base of a hill, overgrown and untended, but there was one feature that made his father’s stand out: someone had drawn a pentagram over it with charcoal.
Arlen knelt in front of it and took off his jacket and used the sleeve to wipe clean every trace of the charcoal. When it was clear again, he sat back on his heels, laid his palm flat on the stone, and said, “I think I can hear you now. If you care to be heard.”
Nothing answered but the wind.
“I heard you already,” Arlen said. “Down south, when Tolliver drew me in and nearly had me, I heard you. And I thank you.”
He sat there for a while and looked at the stone. No words of sorrow or love marked Isaac’s stay in this place. Just those dates, and too short a time between them.
That was all right, though. It wouldn’t have troubled Isaac, Arlen knew that. This life was nothing but a sojourn anyhow. A temporary stay, that of a stranger in a strange land.
“Love lingers,” Arlen said, and then he straightened, put his jacket back on so that it covered his pistol, and left the graveyard.
There was another northbound train today. If he hurried, he could catch it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve utilized—and misappropriated—some history in The Cypress House, and I would be remiss not to point readers to two excellent accounts of the 1935 Labor Day hurricane that took such a tragic toll on the Florida Keys: Willie Drye’s Storm of the Century and Les Standiford’s Last Train to Paradise.
Stefanie Pintoff took time away from her own fine writing to explain the science behind the decomposition of a body in a swamp and the means of identifying such a body in 1935, and no sooner did she invest her energies than I decided to cut most of that thread from the book. To Stefanie, my thanks for your time and apologies for wasting it!
The Little, Brown team—Michael Pietsch, David Young, Heather Rizzo, Heather Fain, Geoff Shandler, Terry Adams, Tracy Williams, Nancy Wiese, Eve Rabinovits, Vanessa Kehren, Miriam Parker, Laura Keefe, Karen Landry, and many others—make it happen. Echo that for David Hale Smith and Shauyi Tai of DHS Literary.
Sabrina Callahan, also of Little, Brown, deserves special recognition for bearing the brunt of my undoubtedly annoying day-to-day existence, and for promoting my books with a passion and enthusiasm that is truly humbling.
Tom Bernardo offered insight and support and listened patiently through a lot of late nights, and even though he never lets me win at darts, his friendship is much appreciated.
The rest of the usual suspects—Christine, Ben, Ryan, Michael, Dennis, my family, and the many others who continue to provide support, answers, and patience—should hopefully know my eternal gratitude by now.
Reading Group Guide
THE CYPRESS HOUSE
A novel by
MICHAEL KORYTA
A conversation with Michael Koryta
How did the idea for The Cypress House come to you?
I first had the thought of writing about a man on a battlefield who experienced premonitions of death. It intrigued me—everyone in combat understands that men around them may die, but if you saw who would die, before it happened, that seemed to me to be an intensified and unique horror in a land of horrors. It also occurred to me that for someone who had the gift of premonition there would be no worse place than the battlefield, no place so painful. With all that said, I didn’t want to write a war story, and I was determined to return to the detective novel form after So Cold the River. Best-laid plans, and all that.
There was a moment—Sunday morning, I was at home in Indiana; I recall this moment quite vividly for some reason—that the first scene of the novel sprang into my mind. I had been grinding away on a different book for a few months, and suddenly I had this vision of my clairvoyant soldier, now years removed from his service days, on a train r
attling through Florida. He’d been sleeping and woke to see that the eyes of the men traveling with him had turned to smoke. I knew where they were headed—the Florida Keys ahead of the devastating hurricane of 1935—and I could imagine the scene quite clearly, and even though I was in the midst of another book I couldn’t let that idea go. I wanted to write it immediately. So I did, and by the time I had the first chapter done I knew this was the book I needed to be writing.
Although history informs your other novels, The Cypress House is the first book you’ve set in the past. Why? Do you feel like the story fits better in 1930s Florida?
It never felt like a conscious decision, honestly. That’s just when the story seemed to be taking place, and I wasn’t about to argue with it. My first taste of writing anything close to a period piece was in So Cold the River, during the flashback visions. I enjoyed those portions quite a bit. The story I was writing in The Cypress House also required a level of isolation and corruption and displacement that felt quite at home in rural America during the Great Depression. I never considered writing it as a contemporary story.
In many ways, Arlen is similar to veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Did current events inform the plot or characters?
It would be hard for me to argue against that idea, because I think any writer’s work is informed by what he or she reads, watches, and considers. I certainly have read a great deal about those military campaigns, and now that I think about it I realize I was reading a lot in that vein in the days before I started the book. If the question is whether I wanted to make some sort of commentary about the modern soldier through a tale about a soldier in the past, the answer is no. But, without doubt, the current situation informed the work on several levels. I was writing about a period of economic disaster during a period of economic disaster, writing about a war-haunted veteran at a time when our troops were in combat or returning from combat, writing about corruption in a time when corruption ruled the news. All of those parallels occurred to me as I wrote, but I wasn’t writing about them, if that makes sense.
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