Arlen said, “Paul?”
He turned and looked at Arlen with that usual expression of distaste, a glass of liquor in his hand. “What?”
“Give me a minute, would you? Step out on the porch.”
“I’m having a conversation.”
Arlen said, “Paul,” one more time, no change of tone at all. He got a sigh of annoyance and the slap of the glass smacking down hard on the table before the boy rose and followed him out onto the back porch. It was still raining, but the wind had shifted direction and lessened enough so that it didn’t spray under the porch roof and soak them. They stood out there in the dark, and Paul folded his arms across his chest and stared at Arlen.
“Whatever you got to say, it’s probably not worth the time. I don’t need to go through it again. I don’t need to hear your stories or your warnings or your-”
“Open that up and take a look inside,” Arlen said, passing him the sack. He watched as Paul took it warily, opened it, and went slack-jawed. He reached inside gingerly, as if he were going to frighten the money right out of the bag by moving sudden, and fanned his thumb over the edges of the bills.
“Where’d you get all this?”
“The same man you were hoping to earn it from.”
Paul looked up. “Wade?”
“That’s right. There’s five thousand dollars in that bag.”
“Five thousand-”
“And it’s yours,” Arlen said. “Provided you get your gear together right now and ride with me to the train station. You go wherever you like from there. I’m not going to tell you another thing, not going to give you another bit of advice. You don’t want to hear it, and I don’t deserve to say it. Not anymore. But regardless of what you think or what you believe, I want you to know this: you better get your ass out of this state, and fast.”
Paul was still staring at the bag.
“We got an agreement?” Arlen said.
“How’d you get this?”
“Don’t worry about that. It’s my concern. The money, though, is yours. And it’s enough to take you far from here and put you up for a time. Be smart with it, though. Use it to get yourself set in a way…” He stopped then and shook his head. “Hell, I just said I was done telling you what you ought to do, and here I go again. I’ll shut my mouth now. But you take that money and tuck it down in your bags and let’s go. You ready to do that?”
Paul nodded. He seemed to have gone pale at the sight of the money. When he swallowed, it looked like it took some effort.
“Okay,” he said. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
Arlen hung back and sat with Owen while Paul got his bags together, moving slowly, as if his limbs had gone numb. Rebecca came back out of the kitchen and watched him ready his gear.
“You can’t even stay for a meal?” she said. She was speaking to Arlen.
He shook his head. “Faster we move, the better. Aren’t going to be trains going through if we let it get much later.”
“Long drive to the station, too,” she murmured. She’d already given him instructions on how to get there. With no train station left in Corridor County, it would take some time. Might be longer than an hour, with rain like this.
Paul straightened and looked around as if he had no idea what to say or do next. He knew there was something playing out in the room that he wasn’t privy to, but in the end he decided not to ask. He just said, “You all take care.”
Rebecca crossed the room and hugged him. He bristled for an instant, as if he wanted to resist, but then he returned the embrace, and Arlen saw him, for just an instant, close his eyes exactly as Arlen had done back in the kitchen.
“Take care,” Paul repeated, and then he stepped away.
They went outside and splashed through the yard and climbed into the truck. There was another band of storms passing over now, and the thunder was so loud and close that for a moment Arlen didn’t even realize the truck’s motor had caught. Once he had it in gear, he cast a backward glance at the Cypress House, the top half dark, the bottom lit, Rebecca’s silhouette in the window, watching them. He saw her lift a hand, and he lifted his own, though he knew she could not see it.
The road was a washout of gleaming silver rainwater, and the truck’s tires spun once in the wet mud and threatened to bog down before finding enough purchase to push ahead. It was the hardest rain Arlen had seen since the hurricane they’d come in with. Seemed fitting to take Paul out in the same weather.
Paul was quiet until they got to the paved road. Then he said, “You going to steal that money or earn it by working for him on some crooked thing?”
Arlen didn’t look at him, didn’t answer.
Paul said, “Arlen, if I’m traveling with those dollars in my pocket, I ought to know how they were gained.”
“You know damn well. They belong to Wade. You think they came to him honest?”
“But how did you get them?”
“Don’t trouble yourself none over that. Just take them and go on. You have an idea of where you might go?”
“Not really.”
“Could try that Carnegie school you’ve talked of,” Arlen said. “Don’t know how much money would be needed for such a thing, but I imagine that’s a hell of a start.”
“It is.” Paul’s tone had changed, the sharp edge dulling as they drove farther into the swamp woods. “Arlen, what are you going to do?”
He stayed silent, wondering whether any harm could come from the boy knowing the plan. If they caught up with him, Tate McGrath or somebody else entirely, would ignorance help? Arlen didn’t figure it would. Not at that point.
“I’m going to kill him,” he said finally. They’d just passed their first car, the road fading back to darkness as soon as its headlights went by.
“Wade?”
Arlen nodded.
“Are you crazy? What do you mean, you’re going to kill him?”
Rebecca had said it was an hour’s drive to the train station. That was time to tell it. Arlen figured it might as well be told.
“You remember the day McGrath came at you with that chair leg?”
“Of course.”
“You remember the box Wade brought with them that day?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Arlen said. “Let me tell you what was inside. It’s as good a place to start as any I know.”
They drove along through the darkness and the rain and Arlen explained it all, starting with the night he’d retrieved the box containing Walter Sorenson’s hands from the sea. He explained about Rebecca and Owen’s father and the threats that had been made to Rebecca while her brother was in prison.
“There’s plenty of evidence as to what happens when a man tries to run from Solomon Wade,” Arlen said. “More than enough evidence for me. I’m not going to leave him behind to chase her. I can’t.”
“When are you going to do it?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“That’s when the Cubans are coming in,” Arlen said. “It’ll have to be done then or he’ll miss his money. We’ll need that money to have a chance.”
Paul dropped his eyes to the bag on his lap. “How much is there? Total.”
“Ten.”
“You gave me half?”
“That’s right.”
“Why? I’m not doing a thing. You’re giving me half that money and setting me out a day before anything’s to happen?”
“Hell, yes, I am,” Arlen said. “I don’t give a damn what you care to believe, because I know that it is true: you’ll die at that man’s hand if you stay in this place. All your words of argument aren’t going to change the truth of it.”
But Paul didn’t offer any words of argument. Instead he said, “Rebecca told me about your father,” in a soft voice.
“I heard that.”
Paul looked up. “Is it true?”