“Oh, there’s not that much to it. I’m not saying we’ll sail to China, Arlen, I’m just saying I want to go out a little ways and-”
“Damn it, Paul,” Arlen began, riled now, but Rebecca cut him off.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Take it out.”
He cast her a surprised look. She met his eyes and nodded.
“It’s fine,” she repeated.
“See?” Paul said. “We’ll all go.”
Rebecca shook her head. “No. I won’t.”
“Oh, come on. I want all of us to-”
“Paul!” Arlen barked, and the anger in his voice made the kid pull back and stare at him in confusion.
“She doesn’t want to go,” Arlen said, fighting to control his tone. “Stop pestering. Far as I’m concerned, none of us should go on the damn thing.”
“I’d like you to,” Rebecca said. “Really, I would. I just can’t.”
“You get seasick?” Paul said.
She looked away.
“I’d be very, very sick out on that boat.”
There was less than an hour of sunlight left when they got aboard, and it took ten minutes to satisfy themselves with an understanding of the engine and get the anchor up. It would have taken Arlen an hour to do the same, but Paul took one look at the boat’s cockpit and began addressing the various elements as if they were old friends.
“Look,” Paul said as they headed out, “rifles.”
There were two of them in a rack in the cockpit. Springfields. Same rifles Arlen had used to take more than a few German lives. The sight of them made him uneasy.
“Ignorant place to store rifles,” he said. “Unless you rub them down with oil constant, that salt water will work on them fast.”
Paul walked up as if to inspect them, and Arlen called him off. “Leave them be, damn it. I thought you wanted to play with the boat, not the weapons.”
They kept it at a crawl all the way out of the inlet and into open water, and then Paul wanted to let it run.
“We don’t know what’s out there,” Arlen said. “Could be a reef or-”
“Rebecca said it was clear straight out from the Cypress House.”
“Fine,” Arlen said. “You want to drown us both, go ahead.”
He turned the wheel over, and Paul opened the throttle up and got the big engine chugging away, and soon they were well out in front of the inn, chasing a setting sun across the Gulf.
It was, Arlen had to admit, a hell of a nice thing.
Behind them the rural coast extended with its stretches of beach and thickets of palms and sea grasses, and ahead the water shimmered bloodred and endless. The wind was coming up out of the southwest, warm and mild, putting just enough chop in the water that the hull of the boat spanked against the waves and sent spray over the stern and let them feel like real sailors.
When they were far enough out that the Cypress House looked like a thimble, Arlen told him to bring it around.
“Let’s shut the engine off for a minute,” Paul said.
“You shut that engine off, we’ll likely not get it started again. Drift halfway to Cuba before somebody comes for us.”
“It’ll start again, Arlen. I started and stopped it three times back there before you let us take it out.”
Arlen grunted and muttered but didn’t lay down a firm objection, and Paul cut the engine.
“There we go,” the boy said when the clattering had ceased, breathing the words out like a prayer. It was silent now, save for the wind and water, no other boat in sight. “Isn’t this something?”
It was something, all right. They were alone on the ocean, rising and falling with gentle waves, nothing but warm red light and water all around them. Arlen stood up, holding on to the cockpit roof with one hand for balance, and stared out to the west, squinting against the fading sun. So much water. It just went on and on and on, a sight that squeezed the soul. He felt so damn small out here. And that felt good. Maybe that was strange, but it felt good. He was insignificant. The world was too big to care about his decisions. There was no weight here, no burden.
“I’ve never been on the ocean before,” Paul said. “All the time we’ve been working there, I kept wishing she had a boat. I’d look at the water and wish I could see what it’s like out here.”
“You’re seeing it.”
“It’s wonderful.”
Arlen sat back down in one of the fishing chairs mounted in the stern and stretched backward and looked at the darkening sky. A pale orb of moon was rising, climbing even as the sun retreated. The boat was tinted with an ethereal red glow.
“What do you want to do, Paul?” Arlen asked.
“Sit here a little longer, if that’s-”
“No. I mean with your life. What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“What in the hell happened? Back at Flagg, you were full of plans. Had everything all mapped out. I know we didn’t make the Keys-which is a damn good thing-but what happened to the rest of your ideas?”
The boy was quiet. When he spoke again, his voice was low.
“I’ve got my whole life ahead of me, Arlen. Right now, I’m just worried about finishing that dock.”
“Well, that’s an ignorant way to think,” Arlen said, enough heat in the words to raise Paul’s head. “You got a damned gift, and you know it. Aren’t you going to try and make something of it?”
“Of course I will.”
“Get a plan in your head, then. The CCC was good for you, but it’s-”
“I don’t want to go back to it. Not anymore.”
“That’s fine. Where you ought to be is some sort of engineering or mechanical school. I don’t know much about them, but I know they’ve got them, and that’s what you should be looking for. Something that’ll let you go on to designing projects instead of hauling supplies for them. You ever heard of that Carnegie school in Pittsburgh?”
He knew the boy had; it was Paul who had told him about it.
“Sure,” Paul said. There was a wariness to him now.
“Well, you ought to try to get in something like that.”
Paul seemed to think on his next words carefully before he said them.
“Right now, I don’t want to think about leaving this place. Not without her. I know what you’re saying, but I’ve got different priorities right now.”
“Is that so?” Arlen said, voice soft.
“It is.”
Arlen nodded and went silent. There wasn’t much of the sun left now, and behind them the Cypress House had disappeared into darkness. The wind had stilled a bit as the light faded, the boat’s rise and fall gentler now than before.
“If I were to tell you,” Arlen said, “as clearly as I could, and as sincerely, that you need to get out of this place, what would you do?”
“I’d stay. I’d be careful, but I’d stay.”
“All right,” Arlen said. They were quiet for a time then, as the remnants of sun melted away and the moon sharpened against the night sky and the wind died down altogether until they seemed to be adrift on the world’s largest pond.
“Let’s go in,” Arlen said.
Paul fired up the engine and brought them back. They’d stayed out too long; by the time they neared the shore it was so dark they wouldn’t have been able to find the inlet. Rebecca was ready for them, though, had walked down to the dock with a lantern, and Arlen took the wheel and followed the glow through the darkness.
They’d anchored the rowboat in the center of the inlet, and he managed to position the big boat close enough so that they could climb down into it. Rebecca was waiting in silence on the dock. Just as Arlen bent to the oars, Paul said, “Thanks for that, Arlen. I wanted to be on the water. It was special, you know?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure was.”
He waited no more than ten minutes after Paul had gone to bed before he went to Rebecca’s room. He paused in the hallway and looked at the two doors, set so close together. He could hear Paul still shifting in his bed when he knocked softly on Rebecca’s door and stepped inside, and she looked up with surprise. She was standing by the window.