“They wouldn’t let you re-up?”
“No. Want to know why? Because they’d heard about the trouble I got into up here. That’s what I was told. Evidently Solomon Wade called down there. Him or the sheriff.”
“When did he call? Day we were jailed?”
“I’m not sure. But somebody from up here called and spoke to them and warned them we might show up looking for work. Told them we weren’t wanted in Florida, so they should send us packing if we did show.”
Arlen felt the squeeze of anger in the back of his neck. That was the best job the boy could have found, and Wade had shut it down.
“I thought about trying to get back to Flagg,” Paul said, “but my company left in the summer anyhow. Besides, Wade called up there, too, checking on our story. I doubt they’d be any happier to see me.”
Arlen didn’t say anything. He would have liked to argue, say that the supervisors back at Flagg knew Paul too well to believe that sort of shit, but he knew it probably wasn’t true. The only supervisor who’d really gotten to know him well was Arlen.
“I stayed around Hillsborough for a few days. Hitched a ride into St. Petersburg. There’s this fancy hotel there called the Vinoy, right on the bay. Heard they were hiring porters, but I couldn’t catch on. So I headed back.” Paul finished the gin and added, “I don’t want to be here. Hope you understand that. I don’t want to be here, but I got nowhere else to go.”
Right then the front door banged open and Owen Cady stood before them. He was wearing a suit and polished shoes.
“How y’all doing?” Owen said. “We got ourselves a guest, eh? I hope he’s paying for that liquor.”
“He’s not paying for it.” Rebecca had stepped back out from the kitchen at the sound of her brother returning. “He’s my guest. Where have you been?”
“Seeing the free world again. Don’t you think I deserve that?” He crossed the room and put his hand out to Paul. “I’m Owen Cady. I own the place.”
“Paul Brickhill.” Paul shook his hand and passed a curious glance at Rebecca. “This your brother?”
She nodded.
“You’ve heard of me?” Owen said, retrieving a cigar from his jacket pocket and clipping the end.
“I worked here for a time,” Paul said. “Came down with Arlen.”
“Yeah? Why’d you leave?”
Paul looked at Arlen and then Rebecca and said, “I was hoping to catch some work down near Tampa. It didn’t go well.”
“Ain’t that the way anymore?” Owen lit the cigar and took a puff. “Well, welcome back to the Cypress House, Paul Brickhill. Stay as long as you’d like. We’re not busy, as you’ve probably noticed.”
“He’s not staying,” Arlen said.
Everyone gave him a hard look at that.
“Actually,” Paul said, “I think I will be until I get things straightened out.”
Arlen shook his head. “It isn’t safe for you here. It-”
“I told you that I don’t want to hear any more about that. It’s a pack of damned lies, and I won’t listen to it ever again. I’m not intending on staying here long, trust me. But I need a bed for a few days while I figure it out. You’d refuse me that?”
He stared at Arlen with challenging eyes.
Owen said, “What in the hell are you all talking about?”
Nobody answered.
“Listen here,” Owen said, tapping some ash free from his cigar, “I’ll not have anyone else laying out the rules for who stays here and how long. Rebecca’s not the owner. I am. When our daddy died, he left it to me. And I’m damn sure”-he pointed at Arlen with the cigar-“that he didn’t leave it to you.”
He waited for somebody to object. When no one did, he smiled, satisfied, and said, “So, Paul Brickhill, you stay as long as you’d like.”
“Thank you.”
Arlen said, “You keep the hell away from Solomon Wade while you’re here. Understand me? You keep the hell away from him.”
“Oh shit, my sister’s got you singing her song, does she?” Owen said, giving a theatrical groan as he walked around the bar in pursuit of booze.
Arlen ignored him, looking hard at Paul. The boy turned away from the stare.
That night Paul sat up with Owen Cady and listened to the latest round of gangster stories. Rebecca had gone upstairs in a cold silence, and Arlen went outside and circled back to the front porch, where he was beside an open window and could hear what they were saying. He slid down until he was sitting on the porch floor with his back against the wall, then put a cigarette in his mouth and listened.
Owen Cady was singing the praises of Solomon Wade.
“Man doesn’t look like much, and doesn’t sound like it either. Just a judge in a backwater town nobody’s ever heard of, right? Well, I’ll tell you this: you go around the country, you’ll find men who know the name. New Orleans, Miami, New York. They’ve heard of him, and they respect him.”
Arlen waited on one of two things: Paul’s rebuttal, or his silence. What he heard was Paul’s encouragement for Owen Cady to keep running his mouth.
“You been working with him for long?” Paul asked.
“Few years, ever since I was old enough to be worth a damn to him. See, he and my father used to run liquor through here, back in Prohibition days. Bring boats into the inlet or keep them off the coast and go out and meet with them.”
“Rebecca was around for this?”
“No, she was in Georgia. She never understood my father anyhow. He was a good man, but he was also a smart one. Knew what had to be done to make it in this world. Rebecca’s never gotten that. Be better for me if she left again.”
“You want to stay here?”
“Hell, no, but I need to for the time being. Solomon Wade, he’s holding my ticket for wherever it is I want to go, understand? I can make more money in a month of working with him than I could in two years doing anything else. I’ll build my nest egg and then head out of this place.”
“Where would you go?”
“New York, maybe. Chicago? Hell, I don’t know. Someplace where there’s always things going on. It’s a big world, brother, and I intend to see it.”
“I’d like to myself,” Paul said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Where you from?”
“Jersey. Be damned if I’ll go back there, though. But I can’t get back into the CCC, and I’ve got no money. It’s why I came back.”
“How’d you boys end up here anyhow?”
“Arlen’s out of his mind, that’s how,” Paul said. “I’m not fooling either. He’s crazy. We were on a train headed down to the Keys, and he pulled us off because he thought he saw dead men aboard.”
“You’re lying.”
“Not a bit. He pulled us off that train, and we got into a car with a guy named Walter Sorenson.”
“I know Walt.”
On they went, Paul narrating the events that had led him to the Cypress House, cursing Arlen at every turn, and Owen Cady offering grunts of disbelief. Arlen still hadn’t lit his cigarette. It dangled from his lip, going soft as he listened.
“I want to get out of here,” Paul said. “Go someplace brand-new, start over. But I don’t have a dime to my name.”
Tell him why not, Arlen thought. Tell him what contribution the great Solomon Wade has made to your fortune.
But Paul said, “Any chance you could find me some work? Maybe I could help out, make a few dollars.”
Arlen almost came up off the porch and went through the door. He wanted to grab the kid by the neck and slam him around, slap him in the mouth and ask him what in the hell had gotten into him, how stupid could a person be? He held his place on the porch floor, though. He knew what had gotten into the kid-Arlen and Rebecca. He was different now than he had been before, sullen and bitter, hardened. It was no mystery what had made him that way.