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“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 that 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.”

Arlen stared at him. “Paul… you remember where you are? You remember what happened to the man who drove us down here?”

“Arlen, it’s not like she blew his car up!”

“I don’t care if she did or not, he ended up dead and we ended up in jail and this ain’t a place I intend to stay around.”

“So where are you going to go?”

“Away,” Arlen said. “Hitch a ride into a town and figure it out.”

“Wouldn’t you rather do that with a few dollars in your pocket?”

“They’re probably my own dollars,” Arlen snapped. “I’m still not sure she didn’t steal it herself.”

Paul sighed and shook his head again. “You know that’s not the case.”

“I don’t know a damn thing, son! Neither do you.”

“Arlen, she’s here by herself. We can’t just leave. It isn’t right. I mean, if she were my mother and somebody walked off and left-”

“You aren’t confusing her for your mother,” Arlen said. “I’ve seen the way you look at her.”

Paul flushed and looked down, twirled the hammer in his hands. “I got off that train when you asked me to.”

“Aren’t you glad you did?”

Yes. But now I’m asking you: stick for a few days. Just long enough to help her get this place put together.”

Arlen stepped back and ran a hand over his face. He didn’t want to leave the kid here on his own. Not in this place.

“Listen,” he said, his voice sharpening in a way that brought Paul’s eyes up. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, son? Look me in the face and lie?”

“No. Of course not.”

“All right. So when you tell me we’ll stay just long enough to get the tavern cleaned up, and then we’ll go back to Alabama… that’s the truth?”

“Yes.”

Arlen said, “Shit,” and sighed.

“Won’t be so bad,” Paul said. “Working right on the ocean like this? It’ll almost be a vacation.”

“Just find me another hammer,” Arlen said. “Faster we work, faster we can leave.”

They walked back to the front of the house together in search of the second hammer. Barrett was leaving, pulling away in his van with a honk and a wave, and Rebecca stood on the front porch with a newspaper in her hands and a grim look on her face. She glanced up at them, said nothing, and passed the paper to Arlen. The front page was half covered by an enormous headline that shrieked: 1,000 PREDICTED DEATH TOLL IN KEYS.

Below that, a promise of the “complete hurricane carnage in pictures” stood above a photograph of corpses stacked on the front of a ship.

Arlen didn’t want to see the complete hurricane carnage in pictures. Nor did he want to read about the dead. Paul had seen the look on his face, though, and he said, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Paul came up and looked over Arlen’s shoulder at the photograph of the dead men and that headline. One thousand predicted dead. One thousand.

“Let me see,” Paul said, his voice hushed. Arlen passed it over, fished a cigarette out and lit it and smoked with his back to the boy and the newspaper. Every now and then Paul would let out a murmur of horror or pain. Rebecca had joined him and was reading at his side.

“Arlen,” Paul said, “most of these pictures are of the veterans’ camps. They were just waiting there for it. Waiting in tents and shacks.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s got an editorial in here someone wrote for the Washington Post. Says it was a tragedy, but then says that the men in those camps were ‘drifters, psychopathic cases, or habitual troublemakers.’ ”

Arlen lowered his cigarette and smashed it out on the deck rail. He’d heard the camps were rough. It’s why the CCC hadn’t wanted to send juniors. But something else those men were, every last one of them? Veterans. Soldiers. Men who’d listened to Washington when Washington told them to go across an ocean and pour their blood into the soil of a place they knew nothing about, men who’d taken bullets and bayonets and breathed in mustard gas. Heroes, Washington had called them back in ’18 and ’19, the war won and the economy strong. Now they were “drifters, psychopathic cases, or habitual troublemakers.”

“You think those men on our train died?” Paul said.

“Yes,” Arlen said. It was the first time he’d given the boy a flat, honest answer on that question. The dead deserved that much right now. They deserved a little honesty.