He felt, as he often had since the start of this journey, like a man pushed by unseen but powerful currents.
“You don’t need to stay,” Paul said.
“I’m not leaving you here alone. You’re no fool, boy; there’s trouble up there and you know it. I won’t leave you alone in such a place.”
Paul said, “Thank you.”
“Shit,” Arlen said, and fumbled in the dark for another cigarette.
It was quiet for a moment, nothing but the night sounds around them, and then Paul said, “You don’t think she can ever love me.”
Arlen said nothing.
“I think she can,” Paul said. “But it’ll take some time. It’ll take a chance for me to show her who I really am. Who I can be. But I think…”
His words trailed off, and Arlen didn’t spur them back into life or add to them. He just leaned against the mangled side of the boathouse and smoked his cigarette, and the boy looked out across the inlet as the heron struck and missed once, and then again, and then it was too dark to see all the way over to him.
17
THEY SPENT AN HOUR OR TWO sitting and talking about insignificant things but both of them jerking at every sound, their minds back at the Cypress House. Once, Paul started to mosey that way, said he had to relieve himself. Arlen pointed into the trees.
“All the privacy you need right there. Don’t you even think about going back up into the view of that tavern unless you want to cause trouble for her.”
That seemed to convince him. He went off into the bushes and pissed.
“Think she’s okay?” he said when he returned.
“I know she is,” Arlen said. “She’s run this place on her own for a time, Paul. She’s had men like that visit more than once, and she’s handled herself fine. Don’t trouble yourself over it. It’s a normal night for her.”
He wasn’t sure of that, but he needed the boy to be. He took his flask from his pocket and uncapped it and offered it to Paul.
“Sip a little.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Go on,” he said. “You’ve earned it tonight, Paul. It’ll ease your worry.”
After a hesitation, Paul accepted the flask and drank. They passed it back and forth as they sat on the floor of the boathouse, which was now like a lean-to shelter, open to the night sky on one side. Just to Paul’s left, the water from the inlet lapped gently inside the boathouse.
“This isn’t such a bad spot to spend a night,” he said at length, his voice beginning to show the booze. “Hear that ocean, see those stars?”
Arlen didn’t say anything. After a while the boy slumped down against the pile of blankets. Arlen lit a cigarette and let the sound of wind and water fill the silence. By the time the cigarette had burned down to his fingertips, he could tell the kid was already asleep. He always went down hard and fast, the way the boys in the CCC had-you worked them enough during the day, and they forgot their homesickness and orneriness as soon as their heads touched the pillows-but he was also unfamiliar with drink, and it would help to keep him down. Arlen had been counting on this.
He got quietly to his feet and left the dock and started up the sandy path to the tavern. By the time he reached the end of the trail, he could see the flickering light of oil lamps from the main barroom. All of the cars were still parked out in the yard.
He hesitated and looked up at the cars and wondered what the best approach was. If he really worked at being unseen, crept around staying low and in the shadows, he suspected he could do it. The problem then was with the off chance that they came bumbling out of the bar at just the wrong time and caught him. No, better to just walk up to the cars as casually as he could, and if someone came out and saw him, he’d feign ignorance, explain that they were staying at the boathouse and that he couldn’t sleep. Be easy to present as the truth, because mostly it was.
He circled around to the Plymouth and had just removed a matchbook so he could put some light on the license plate when something moved in the corner of his eye. He spun back with his fists raised and heart thundering.
There was a woman inside the sheriff’s car. Sitting in the passenger seat, staring through the shadowed glass at Arlen without expression.
For a moment he stayed there with his hands clenched into fists, and then he dropped them, looked once at the tavern, and approached the car, making a rolling gesture with his hand, indicating that she should lower the window. She did so, and he could hear a strange tinkling noise. It wasn’t until he stepped closer and knelt beside the door that he understood-she was wearing handcuffs.
“What are you doing out here?” he whispered.
“I’m waiting,” she said, “for them to finish bargaining.”
“Over what?”
“My life.”
He ran a hand over his jaw and stared at her, looking from the handcuffs back to her face. She was a beautiful woman, with full lips and hair so dark it looked like oil spilled across the front of her dress, which was a pale yellow. Beneath the clasps of steel, her arms were slender and elegant.
“What are you talking about?” Arlen said. “Who are you?”
“My name is Gwen.”
“I don’t mean your name, I mean what in the hell you’re doing here, with men like that. Why does that son of a bitch have you in chains?”
“I’m leverage,” she said, and for the first time he heard clear emotion in her words. Not fear but sorrow. The sort that rose up from the core.
“How?”
“There’s a man inside who loves me,” she said. “And they know that. They intend… I believe they intend to test the strength of his love.”
“The fellow who drove the Plymouth?”
“Yes. David.”
“Why do they have you out here, instead of in with them?”
“I was inside, once. So he could see me. Then Tate asked the sheriff to take me back out. I believe I unsettle him.”
Her voice was eerie, faint but firm and entirely matter-of-fact.
“Who is Tate? He the older guy? Long gray hair?”
“Yes. The three with him are his sons. A family of vipers. You and the boy will need to be careful with them, Mr. Wagner.”
When she said his name he tightened his hand around the door frame.
“You know me, eh? Tolliver’s been telling his tales.”
“These men aren’t concerned with you,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken, “yet. But they will be the longer you linger.”
“I don’t intend to linger. I’ve been trying to get-”
“Give me your hand,” she said.
“What?”
“You heard me.” Her whisper now held urgency.
The wind picked up, blowing cool off the water, and Arlen’s flesh prickled. He was looking into her eyes, and while he meant to object he could not. He released the door frame and extended his right hand, and she lifted both of hers, the cuffs rattling, and grasped it. His breath caught at the touch, her slim hands cool against his, her fingers gliding over his palm.
“You’re the girl from Cassadaga,” he said. “Sorenson’s girl.”
The fortune-teller, the palm reader. The one who’d told Sorenson to watch for travelers in need.
“I’m a girl from Cassadaga,” she said. “But not Sorenson’s. I already told you-I love the man in that house. David. And he loves me, and that will be our downfall, Mr. Wagner. Love is a powerful thing, and like all powerful things, it can be used to harm.”
She was rubbing his palm lightly with her fingertips.
“You fell in love with the wrong sort of boy,” Arlen said.
“Shh. I’m trying to see whether you’re-”
“Stop it,” he said suddenly, his voice rough, and he jerked his hand free. “I won’t have that bullshit. You can’t tell a damn thing from that.”
She frowned but didn’t respond to his harshness.