“If you don’t believe it,” she said, “then why are you still here?”
“Oh, I believe it. Probably more than you. We’re kindred.”
“Yes.”
“In ways you don’t even understand,” he said, “we are kindred.”
“What do you mean?”
“You see blood on your hands that no one else does.”
She tilted her head and frowned. “And you do, too?”
He was silent.
“Tell me,” she said.
He shook his head. “Another day.”
“I’ll wait. I’ve learned how to wait.”
He wanted to smile, but it wasn’t a day for smiling. He sat back on his heels and stared at the gulls and felt the sweat bead and glide along his skin.
“What are you thinking?” she said.
“That I showed up here looking for a ride back to the CCC. That’s all I was looking for. We were supposed to be here an hour.”
“My parents were supposed to be enjoying this place right now. People were supposed to be coming in with hundreds of dollars in their pockets for fishing and drinking and sunshine. I was supposed to be in Savannah.” She shook her head. “ ‘Supposed to be’ doesn’t mean much to me anymore. Everyone in this country was full of plans a few years ago, and how many of them do you think even dare to make plans for the future now? They just get through each day. Times like these, it’s all you can do.”
He nodded and ran his fingertips along the edge of the board, wiping rough sawdust clear from the cut.
“If I’m staying,” he said, “I need to know the plan. I deserve that much.”
She said, “Maine.”
The word shivered through him. Edwin Main. Edwin and his wife, Joy.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing. That’s where you intend to go?”
She nodded.
“You ever been there? You know anybody there?”
“No. That’s why it’s perfect. We’ll be strangers there, far from this place and the people from it.”
She lifted a hand, rubbed at her forehead, brought it back glistening with sweat, and held it out to him as if it were evidence of something.
“As far from this place as possible,” she said. “You don’t know how often I think of Maine. How much time I spend imagining it. Right now it’s moving toward autumn there. There are cold breezes during the day, and at night you pull an extra blanket over yourself and in the morning the grass is crisp and a deep breath chills your lungs instead of choking you. The leaves are going orange and red and brown. It’s not trapped in green, always green. There’s change. In a month or so they’ll have the first snow. Just a tease of what’s to come, but it will snow. There will be a white dusting of it in the morning, maybe, or a few flakes in the air. You know I’ve only seen snow twice in my life?”
She was staring across the inlet as she spoke, into the thick green tangle that grew there, where a few unseen birds shrilled and occasionally something splashed in the water.
“Have you seen many winters?” she said. “Real winters?”
“I’ve seen a few.”
“I’ll see one this year,” she said, a blood vow in her voice. “I’ll see one this year.”
By nightfall the wind had returned, and Arlen was nearing completion of the dock. He figured to have the last board laid by noon the next day, and then he could start on the boathouse, though they’d need more lumber before he could make much headway there. It was a ludicrous endeavor, working so hard to rebuild a place that they’d soon abandon, but he didn’t know what else to do. It kept up the pretense that they’d remain, for one thing, but it also gave him a task to handle. He needed that.
He loved work. Physical labor. It was a strange thing, maybe, but he loved the ache in his muscles at the end of a day, loved the sweat that coursed from his pores, loved the sound of a saw and the feel of a hammer, the clean crack of a well-struck nail.
So many men wandered this country now, looking for so simple a thing as work. It was a bizarre notion when you stopped to think about it, and Arlen figured it was a birth pang of a new world. So much had happened to cause this Depression, so many things he understood and more that he did not, but in the end they all captured a simple idea: you couldn’t depend solely on yourself anymore. Not in the way men once had. You could have skill and strength and desire, but you had to find someone who needed to utilize those things. Was a time when, if you knew how to work metal, you’d set up a blacksmith shop and make enough to support your family. Now, if you knew how to work metal, you’d likely need a job in a factory where the needs of not a town but a state, a nation, a world, had to be met. It was all about size now: the big ran the world on the sweat of the small, and if the big faltered for any reason, the small were the first to go.
The funny damn thing was, Arlen had no desire to be among those in charge. That was the goal, supposedly, the ordained American Dream, to rise from the ranks of the small and become a colossus.
It wasn’t in him, though. The bigger your role, the more people you impacted with your decisions. He didn’t want to have to make those sorts of decisions. All he wanted to do was work. If his day ended when the last nail was driven, it had been a good day. It had been a damned good day.
Or at least it usually was. For once, the standard satisfaction stayed away from him when he gathered his tools and walked back up the trail to the Cypress House. He’d worked, yes, done the pure labor of a man who was small in the eyes of the world but content in his own heart, and even that hadn’t been enough today. Today, he’d felt the weight of decision upon him.
It was the right decision, he knew. It was right.
But, oh, how he’d hated to make it.
The days passed with surprising speed and silence. Solomon Wade didn’t come by, nor did Tolliver, nor anyone else except Thomas Barrett, the delivery man. When he arrived at the end of the week, Arlen asked if they could make a run for some more lumber.
“You’re not sending the boy this time? I enjoyed him.”
“He’s gone.”
Barrett’s freckled face split into a curious frown. “For good?”
“That’s right.”
“Strange. He told me he intended to stay. What put him back on the road?”
“I can’t speak for him,” Arlen said shortly.
“Well, it’s a shame. This is a tough place for a lad like that to be on the road alone. Did he have any money?”
“Let’s go get that wood,” Arlen said.
They went out to the paved road and then south toward High Town. It had been silent since they left, and though Arlen didn’t feel much like talking, he also didn’t want to seem ungracious, so he asked after the name of the town as a means of conversation.
“Where I’m from, the place would be called Flat Town,” he said. “Nary a hill in sight from what I saw.”
“Where are you from?”
“West Virginia.”
Barrett nodded. “Well, it’s plenty different terrain than that. High Town might not look much different to an outsider, but it’s one of the few places around here that’s always been clear of flooding. So, it’s High Town-and Dry Town.”
They turned east at the center of town, and Arlen twisted his head to look back at the jail as they passed. Tolliver’s car was parked in front.
“Didn’t you say you ran for sheriff?” Arlen asked.
“That’s right. Al Tolliver beat me fair and square,” Barrett said dryly.
“You had any policing experience? Or just wanted a piece of it?”
Barrett flicked his eyes over and then back to the road. “No policing. Did my time in the Army and then came back home. I like my home. I didn’t like the people who were taking control of it. That ain’t changed.”
“There anybody around here that could actually make those boys answer for something?”
“If there is somebody,” Barrett said, “I ain’t found him yet.”