Arlen winced, and Sorenson noted it. “What?” he said.
“Nothing,” Arlen muttered. “You just… it reminded me of something my father used to say.”
They’re only dead to people like you, Arlen. Truth is they’re carrying on, bound to a place where you can’t yet follow. This life is but a sojourn.
“A story you’d like to share?” Sorenson said.
“No,” Arlen said.
Their stops were roadhouses similar to Pearl’s. At each of them, a large black case with two metal locks entered and exited the establishment with Sorenson. The stops were swift indeed, short disruptions as they drove through a green, saturated land. The ditches on either side of the road were swollen with muddy water. Arlen’s father used to caution about dreams of muddy water, claiming they warned of impending trouble. Arlen wondered if his father had such a dream toward the end, or if dreams had failed him.
They pushed west as the heat continued to build and with it the thickness of the air. Sorenson had the windows cranked down on the Auburn, and out on the back roads he opened the engine up and let the big car run, Paul grinning as the speedometer hit seventy, eighty, ninety, one hundred. Sorenson let it fall off then but kept it closer to ninety than eighty for most of an hour. Their next stop was at a place called the Swamp. Unlike the previous roadhouses, this one seemed to be booming-the building was outfitted with electric lamps and glossy wood on the front patio, and cars filled the parking area already, new Plymouths and Chryslers and one Essex Terraplane that turned Paul’s head.
“That one would blow your doors off, Mr. Sorenson,” he said.
“You say.”
“Oh, it’s a fact.”
“Busy place,” Arlen said. “And one with some money.”
“Casino inside,” Sorenson said. “They do it right, too.”
“Let’s have a look,” Paul said, but Arlen shook his head.
“We’ll wait on him.”
“Oh, it can’t hurt to wander around in there a bit, Arlen.”
“We’ll wait.”
They leaned against the Auburn and watched people come and go through the doors, women in dresses and heels, men in suits with drinks in their hands. I guess we drove out of the Depression, Arlen thought. Be back in it another mile down the road, but somehow it doesn’t exist right here. Must be nice.
“This is what Key West is supposed to be like,” Paul said. “Saloons all over the place, people having a good time just like here. That writer’s down there, Hemingway, and I saw a picture of Dizzy Dean, taken on his vacation. All sorts of famous people pass through. Why, we could have a drink with them.”
Arlen regarded him with surprise. He wouldn’t have imagined a kid like Paul would give the first damn about saloons and Dizzy Dean. In his mind, the only thing the boy had been after in the Keys was work on the bridge. Well, that had no doubt been a naive, idealized notion. Paul was nineteen, probably wanted himself a taste of many things. All this time Arlen had seen the kid eyeing his flask, he’d assumed Paul was antiliquor. He was probably just curious.
When Sorenson returned, Arlen said, “Say, weren’t you going to let the kid drive?”
“He probably won’t want to if it isn’t that Terraplane he’s so sweet on.”
“I’ll drive,” Paul said, and Sorenson grinned.
The funny thing was, once he got behind the wheel, he was scared to let the big motor run. Wouldn’t take it beyond forty until Sorenson said, “Boy, if I’d wanted my mother to drive, I’d have brought her along.” Then the kid finally laid into it, got them as high as sixty. Arlen wondered when Paul had last driven a car. Hell, if he’d ever driven a car. He handled it well, though, seemed comfortable behind the wheel even if hesitant of the engine’s power.
“Mr. Sorenson?” Paul said after they’d gone about ten miles. “I thought we were going to head south today. We’re driving due west.”
Sorenson flicked his eyes over to Arlen, then looked back and said, “Didn’t know I was required to stick to a specific compass point when I agreed to give y’all a ride.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, I was just wondering-”
“We’ll be southbound shortly. Only one stop left. And it’s on the beach.”
“The beach? Now that’s better. I’ve always wanted to see the ocean.”
Arlen frowned. “Thought you grew up just south of New York.”
“That’s right.”
“Hell, the ocean can’t be but an hour from there at most.”
“It’s not,” Paul said, and there was something different in his voice, an edge Arlen had never imagined him capable of. “I just never saw it, okay?”
“Okay,” Arlen said. It struck him then how little he knew about the kid. His name, his age, his home. He knew those things and the undeniable fact that he was the closest thing to a mechanical genius Arlen had ever encountered.
Forty-five minutes later they caught a flash of blue, the expanse of the Gulf of Mexico ahead, and for the first time Paul seemed unsteady with the car, drifting across the center line for a blink before he brought it back. Sorenson told Paul that if he wanted to gawk at the water, he’d best give up the wheel.
It did look pretty. The sun had broken through-though there were dark clouds in the mirrors and more massing to the north-and the breakers glittered. There wasn’t a boat in sight, the water an unbroken vastness of prehistoric power.
“Wow,” Paul said. And then, softer, “That is something. It really is.”
The road curled away from the coast again. There wasn’t much development out here, wasn’t much at all except for the road, in fact. Once, they crossed a set of train tracks-Paul going over the rails so gingerly Arlen thought he might get out and try to carry the Auburn across-but then those were gone and nothing showed ahead. Eventually they came to a four-way stop, pavement continuing south, dirt roads to the east and west, and Sorenson told Paul to turn right, west, back toward the Gulf.
They went maybe a mile down this mud track before the trees parted and the road went to something sandier, shells cracking beneath the tires. A moment later the water showed itself, and in front of the shore was a clapboard structure of white that had long since turned to gray. It was a rectangle with a smaller raised upper level, steep roofs all around. At the top of the second story was a small deck with fence rails surrounding it. A widow’s walk. A porch ran the length of the house, and an old wooden sign swung in the wind above: The Cypress House.
“Tell you what,” Sorenson said, “let’s all go in here.”
Paul passed him the keys and popped open the door, eager to step out and gawk at the sea. Arlen started out, too, but Sorenson put a hand on his arm.
“You might want to bring the bags in.”
Arlen tilted his head. “Why?” They’d never been so much as invited in at any previous stop, and now Sorenson wanted the bags out of his car, too?
“This area,” Sorenson said, and let the words hang.
Arlen looked around in every direction, saw nothing but the shore ahead and tangled trees and undergrowth behind.
“Looks peaceful to me,” he said.
“Mr. Wagner,” Sorenson said, and there was a bite in his words, “you ever been here before?”
“I’ve not.”
Sorenson nodded. “Then perhaps you should reconsider my advice.”
Arlen held his eyes for a moment and then turned without a word and grabbed the first bag and hauled it out with him. He tugged them all free from the Auburn and then hailed Paul to help carry them in, and while he worked he pretended not to notice that Sorenson had retrieved a small automatic from beneath the driver’s seat and tucked it into his jacket pocket.
6
WHATEVER ILL FEELINGS Sorenson had about the Cypress House were not justified by their entrance into its humid, shadowed interior. They were standing in the middle of a long, narrow room without a soul inside. There was a fireplace on their left and a bar on their right. Behind the bar, liquor was displayed on thick wooden shelves, and atop the shelves was a massive brass-ringed and glass-faced mantelpiece clock that went about two feet in diameter and was clearly broken-according to the hands it was noon. Or midnight.