Isaac Wagner smiled. Edwin Main fired. Then Arlen was on his knees in the road and his father’s blood ran into the dust and the wind blew down on them with the promise of coming snow.
33
IT TOOK HIM LONGER to tell it than he expected, and he was strangely nervous recalling the events, went through three cigarettes before he was done. Rebecca just listened. She didn’t interrupt, didn’t even give a murmur or a shake of the head as he spoke, never broke eye contact.
He told her about the way it had looked out there in the street, the wind blowing dust over the blood and Edwin Main with his coat flapping around him like some old-time gunslinger and the sheriff with his hat in his hands, and then he finished his last cigarette and put it out and it was quiet for a moment.
“So what happened then?” she asked eventually. “Who took you in?”
“Nobody took me in. I left.”
“Left?”
He nodded. “Worked in a mine for nearly a year, lived in a boardinghouse. The war was on in Europe, but we hadn’t stepped in yet. I figured I’d try to enlist. I was too young, but I lied about it and they let me in. Wasn’t a hard thing to do. After the mines, I didn’t seem much like a boy anymore.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen when I enlisted. I was almost nineteen before we started fighting, though.”
“You’ve never been back?”
“Hell, no. What’s there for me?”
She thought about it for a moment and then said, “This is what you meant when you said we were kindred.”
“Yes.”
“At least I didn’t have to see it happen,” she said. “But somehow that doesn’t seem much comfort.”
“I’d expect not.”
Out in the darkness the waves broke over the sand and insects trilled and there was the sound of something banging in the wind down by the boathouse.
Rebecca said, “How long was it before you realized he was right?”
Arlen frowned. “Pardon?”
“Your father. What he said about you having the gift.”
Arlen shook his head slowly. “He wasn’t right. I can’t speak with the dead, and neither could he. The man was crazy.”
“But you see warnings of death. You have for years.”
“That’s different.”
She pulled her head back. “How?”
“Nobody’s talking to the dead,” he said. “They can’t be talked to. They’re gone, Rebecca. Anyone who says anything else is as crazy as my father was.”
“So you don’t believe what he said about the dead woman.”
“No.”
“Then why would Edwin Main have shot him?”
Arlen felt a swelling of frustrated anger. There were a handful of reasons he’d never told the story, and this was one of them. He didn’t need some outsider telling him the crazy old bastard could have been right. Because if he had been… if he had been…
“Edwin Main was enraged,” Arlen said, “in the way any man might be after hearing the sort of story my father told. He reacted out of rage.”
“Was he arrested for shooting your father?”
“No.”
“But your father was in handcuffs! It was cold-blooded-”
“He was provoked,” Arlen said. “That’s what the sheriff ruled. Nobody argued.”
“I can’t understand how someone who’s had your experiences would be unable to believe in the possibility of what your father claimed,” she said.
“It’s a league of difference. I’ve got an ability with premonition, probably resulting from all the death I’ve seen, far too much of it. I don’t know, I can’t explain that, but it’s only premonition. A sense of what’s about to happen. Talking to the dead, though?” He shook his head. “That’s the belief of old women and children, not sane men.”
“Your father’s last words to you were to say you’d have to learn to believe.”
Actually, his last words had been a promise that love lingered. Spoken so soft, so kind, so damned forgiving, that years later Arlen would still wake in the night almost unable to breathe from the memory of it.
“The only thing I have to believe,” Arlen said, “is that I did the right thing. I’ve got to believe that. And you know something? I do. Always have, always will.”
She paused, then said, “Arlen, if you know that you can see the dead before they’re gone, why can’t you speak to them after they are?”
He got up out of the chair swiftly, ready to go inside and pour a whiskey and get the hell away from this conversation. He ought never have told the story.
“Stop.” She caught his arm, and her hand was soft and cool, and stilled him. “We won’t speak of it anymore.”
He ran a hand over his eyes and leaned against the wall, suddenly exhausted beyond measure.
“Let’s go to bed,” she said, rising with her hand still on his arm.
“It was wrong what was done to him,” Arlen said. “That was wrong. Murder, as you said. But what he’d done was wrong as well. He was out of his mind, Rebecca. Hearing about it is one thing, I suppose. But you didn’t see it. You didn’t see the way he held that poor dead woman and looked into her eyes.”
“I know,” she said.
“He was going to be a problem. He was going to cause harm.”
“Of course he was,” she said in a soft voice. “Of course.”
They didn’t speak of it again in the days that followed. He worked on the boathouse, the walls going up quickly, and there were no visitors. Rebecca’s brother was to be released on the upcoming Tuesday, and she went into Thomas Barrett’s store once to make phone calls and arrange to go out and collect him. Arlen asked if she wanted him to go along, and she said that she didn’t.
“You can meet him when we get back.”
Arlen nodded, but he couldn’t help wondering if he’d ever see her again. If she might pick up her brother and drive off in some unknown direction, and that would be the end of it. He hoped not, but he couldn’t help the thought.
It turned out he didn’t need to worry over it-she never had the chance to make the drive to Raiford. Owen Cady arrived on Monday, the day before his scheduled release, and he arrived in the company of Solomon Wade.
They came around noon, and Arlen and Rebecca were both out on the back porch, having just finished lunch. They heard the car and looked at each other with shared displeasure, fearing it would be Wade. When they walked through the barroom, the gray Ford coupe was visible in the yard, and Rebecca said, “He’s come to make a last round of threats in case I’m thinking about running tomorrow.”
Then the doors on the Ford opened and two men stepped out: Solomon Wade from the driver’s seat, and a tall, rangy kid with blond hair from the passenger’s. Rebecca said, “Owen,” in a whisper, and went onto the porch.
The two men walked toward her, Solomon Wade with a blank face, Owen Cady wearing a wide grin. He crossed to the steps and hugged his sister fiercely.
“I’m home!” he yelled. “Made it home!”
He stepped back from her and laughed, still wearing the easy grin, Rebecca standing there stunned and silent.
“Well, I thought you might be happy,” he said.
“I was supposed to get you,” she said. “Tomorrow. I was supposed to pick you up tomorrow. That’s when they said you’d be getting out.”
She was staring at Wade.
“Solomon here pulled a few strings and got me out a day early,” Owen Cady said. “Figured we’d surprise you.”
“You could pull strings?” she said woodenly, still looking at Wade. “You could do that to get him out a day early? A day?”
“You’re welcome,” Wade said.
“Get off my property,” Rebecca said. “Get away from here. And stay away from him. You stay-”
“Rebecca, what in the hell’s gotten into you?” Owen said, raising both hands in a peacemaking gesture, glancing back at Wade in apology. “Solomon hasn’t done a thing but help.”