The Cypress House (31 page)

    They
were married for seven years before her death, and during that time she bore
three children and grew increasingly quiet, seeming content to offer
formalities and then retreat within herself. She was well known in Fayette
County but yet not really known at all.

    On
that early November evening, when they brought her to the Wagner house just as
the burst of warmth from earlier in the day was disappearing with darkness, Joy
Main was a week past her twenty-fifth birthday and dead of a fractured skull.

    Edwin
came with her, tears in his eyes and the sheriff at his side. He explained that
Joy came out to the stable to see him and a horse had bucked and thrown a
sudden high kick and a rear hoof caught her square in the head.

    He'd
shot the horse, Edwin explained in a choked voice, and then sent for the
sheriff. Maybe it wasn't the right thing to do, shooting that horse, but he
couldn't help it. There needed to be blood for blood.

    Arlen
had heard it all from inside the house, the men standing on the porch with the
body at their feet, wrapped in blankets. When Edwin told the story, Isaac
Wagner said, "You had the mind to shoot the horse while your wife lay
dying?"

    The
sheriff stepped in then, told Isaac that Edwin was a grieving man, damn it, and
there'd be no such questions, who cared a whit about the horse at a time such
as this? Isaac had said nothing else, but Edwin Main had watched him with dark
eyes, and Arlen, standing at the window, felt the coldness pass through the
glass just like the wind that had returned out of the northern hills.

    Isaac
gathered the body in his arms and prepared to carry Joy Main back to his shop.
Edwin spoke up again and told him to make it the finest coffin he'd ever
constructed; anything less would be a sin, and how much the box might cost
mattered not, he'd pay any price.

    Isaac
told him that every coffin he made was a fine one.

    It
wasn't long after they'd left that Arlen heard the dreaded phrase from his
father's shop:
Tell me
.

    This
time he'd crept to the door. Usually he tried to clear himself away from the
sound, but there'd been such tension in the air tonight, with his father asking
that question about the horse and Edwin Main staring at him ominously.

    
Not
her,
Arlen thought
,
of all the ones in town for you to speak
with, not his wife. We'll be run out of this place if anyone knows
.

    The
talking persisted, though, and it horrified. Isaac Wagner was pretending to
hear an explanation of murder.

    "He
laid hands on the servant? That girl's no more than fifteen, is she? He
intended to violate her? Did she see what happened after? What did he strike
you with? Had he beaten you before? Did the children see? Did anyone see
?
"

    Arlen
stood at the door and heard it all and felt a trembling deep in his chest that
intensified when Isaac said,
"I'll see that it's dealt with. I'll see
that he has a reckoning. I promise you that; I swear it to you."

    Arlen
opened the door and went into the room then and shouted at him to stop, and
what he saw was more terrible than he'd imagined. Isaac had lifted the dead
woman and placed her hands on his shoulders and was looking into her face.
There was still blood in her hair, and her eyelids sagged halfway down, but the
hint of blue irises remained and seemed to stare over Isaac's shoulder and into
Arlen's own eyes.

    "She's
telling me what happened," Isaac said. "Don't be afraid, son. She's
telling me the truth."

    "She's
not," Arlen screamed. "She can't speak, can't tell you a thing, she's
dead! She's gone!"

    "No,"
Isaac said, "the body is gone. She is not."

    Arlen
stood at the door and shook his head, tears brimming in his eyes. Isaac lowered
the body slowly and very gently, then turned to face his son.

    "I
have to touch them to hear," he said. "There are those who don't,
those who can conjure without needing a touch, but I'm not one of them. Maybe
in time. It took me many a year to reach them at all."

    "Stop,"
Arlen said. "Stop, stop, stop."

    "You
don't believe," Isaac said. "Those who don't believe can't hear. But
you've got a touch of the gift yourself, boy. I'm sure of it. I see it in
you."

    "No
more," Arlen said, backing away through the door. "Don't say any
more."

    "Look
past your fear," Isaac said. "It's about doing what's right. This
woman was murdered, beaten with an ax handle and killed, Arlen! That demands
justice. I'll see that it's delivered. I've promised her that. And if there's
anything I hold sacred, it's a promise to the dead."

    Arlen
turned and ran.

    He
spent close to two hours in the wooded hills, stumbling through the underbrush
with hot tears in his eyes and terror in his heart. He wondered if his father
was still down there with Joy Main or if he'd gone off in search of the
promised reckoning. The longer Arlen walked, the more certain he became that he
could not allow such a thing to take place.

    
You've
got a touch of the gift yourself, boy. I'm sure of it. I see it in you
.

    It
was that statement more than any of the others that drove him out of the woods
and back into town. His father was insane — the dead could not speak to the
living; they were gone and nothing lingered in their stead — but Arlen was not
insane. He was
not
and he wouldn't ever be.

    Let
Isaac Wagner bear his own shame, then, and not put it on his son as well. If
Isaac would show the world that he was mad, his son would show himself to be
sane.

    The
sheriff was home, and when Arlen told him the story, he stared with astonished
eyes. When it was through, he gathered himself and thanked Arlen for coming
down and told him to go on home and wait.

    "I'll
come for him shortly," he said. "And you did the right thing, son.
Know that. You did the right thing."

    Arlen
went home. He waited. Isaac was back in his shop, silent.

    Thirty
minutes passed before the sheriff came, and then he wasn't alone. Edwin Main
was with him, wearing a long duster to fight the chill night wind. When Arlen
saw them approaching, he felt sick. Why had the sheriff told him anything?

    They
came through the door without knocking and saw Arlen standing there and asked
where his father was. He pointed an unsteady hand at the closed door of the
shop.

    They
went in for him. Arlen stayed outside, heard the exchange, Edwin Main shouting
and swearing and Isaac speaking in deep, measured tones. When they emerged
again, Isaac was handcuffed.

    Isaac
looked over and locked eyes with Arlen, and his face was so gentle, so kind.

    He
said, "You're going to need to believe. And something you need to know,
son? Love lingers."

    They
shoved him out the front door then and off the porch and down into the dark
dusty street. Arlen trailed behind. Edwin Main was still shouting and offering
threats. They'd gone a few hundred feet before Isaac spoke to him.

    "You
killed her," he said, "and it will be proved in time. We'll talk to
your house girl and to your children and they'll tell me what Joy already
did."

    Edwin
Main went for him then, and the sheriff stepped between them. Edwin was a big
man, but Isaac was bigger, and he stood calmly and looked down at the screaming
widower and didn't seem troubled by him.

    "You
struck her with the ax handle," he said. "She'd run out of the house
to get away from you, and you chased her into the yard and killed her there.
Then you dragged her into the stable so there'd be blood in it, and you shot
the horse because you believed it would add credence to your tale. That's what
happened. That's the truth of it."

    Edwin
Main shook free of the sheriff's grasp. The sheriff stumbled and fell to his
hands and knees in the road as Edwin reached under his duster and drew a
pistol. Arlen cried out and ran for them, and Edwin Main cocked the pistol and
pointed it at Isaac's head from no more than two feet away.

    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.

    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."